my kids loved the swing we hung in the basement. If you're concerned about them falling on the cement, there are some mats you can buy (at Menards) that snap together. We still use the mats though they've outgrown the swing.

There is a google classroom app, but it's only available to organizations that have a website.edu Has anyone been able to get this for homeschooling?

If you've been using Google Calendars for home work assignments..... is there a way for your students to check off they did an assignment? Would this need to be a To Do list item with a date? Trying to figure out how to make things streamlined. Google Calendars is my preferred choice of software. It's free. And I'm already using gmail accounts for all my kids.

Thank you! Yes, I'm looking for free. I started having this week by asking him to write out his word problems in his current math book. They don't require alot of thought, but he can practice writing it. I'll take a look at these suggestions. Thank you.

You know the kind of word problems that stop and make you think? A rectangle has one side that is 6' feet long. The perimeter is 20'. What are the lengths of all the sides of the rectangle? Or Billy and Bobby caught 4 frogs each day this week. How many frogs in all did they catch? The resource would be to supplement my math curriculum this year. Potentially I'm looking for a math curriculum that includes this type of activity. Thank you!

I highly recommend a virtual charter school. I have a teen who prefers not to work for me. In desperation I outsourced her schooling 2 years ago. It was a big learning curve for her. She doing it, she's working harder than she ever has before. There's a certain pride in her accomplishments that never was there before too. And I've become the "good guy" in her life again advocating when there's a need. :)) Now's the time of year to enrolll in the virtual schools.

Our charter school is a virtual based charter school. Math is always online using Aleks.com for k-12. This fulfills the virtual requirement. For all other subjects you choose: Online or Project based. It can be some or all in either category. The project based learning is where the challenge arrives. My stupid begins when the lesson plan ends. I like a lesson plan. The school will buy me curriculum to use, if I can get from it the required amount of projects per quarter. They don't care if I teach the lesson plan or not. Their objective is the project. This is whole other debate, please don'tstart that! Personally I chose this year to teach the lesson plan. My hope was that the projects/experiements/optional activities in the curriculum coud count for the required number of projects. Therein lies my challenge, there are projects, but no clue which fulfills which standard. Also projects in the curriclum never go far enough. So it helps knowing which standard we're working towards so we can make up the deficit by asking the teacher for suggestions. What we will do next year is in discussion. But for now I must dig my head into the internet and help 3 of my kids kids come up with 8 projects for second semester. The the other two just need 5 projects each. The teachers are asking for 2 projects minimuin English, Science, Soc. and 1 in PE. YIKES! Did'ja do the math? 34 projects. Yes, I already know you don't want to be me. Please don't be cruel.

Sorry, they are the next generation science standards. Yes, the process is new and messy.

OK, I called our curriculum providers, gave THEM the list of standards I have to choose from. They agreed to let me know where in the texts these standards might be/or not. :)) I think they were shocked because they didn't realize there are now science standards too. They thought it was just English and History. Nope, science has come online since the fall. Ours is a virtual charter school. It is different from K12 and Connections Academy. Change? Aboslutely is being considered. The letter to pull the kids out is drafted. The broken part is on the teacher's end. The children are learning despite the bickering over standards. If I pull the kids out, I lose their school materials half way through the year. Part of the reason we chose THIS virtual charter school was that we were given curriculum choices. The math curriculum is the only standardarized curriculum that every family has to use. It's Aleks Math, online with standards by each lesson.

Exactly, we're not homeschoolers any more. We're public-school-at home. We started this 2 years ago. Previously we'd been homescooling for 9 yrs.

The school has given us a short list of standards(15-20) that we have to choose 7 from for each subject area for the grade. It is not a comprehsive list because evidently it costs money to get the whole list put into the grading system. I take my curriculum and decide which activity/assignments/experiements can fit a standard they've listed. If our curriculum doesn't have anything to fit, then I have start googling looking for a lesson plan that will fulfill the specifics of that standard. Having a standards by lesson would make this process easier. Instead, with the common core aligned material I spend hours with my curriculum trying to figure out if any projects match. The projects and experiments are detailed in the rubric along with the standard. They're ultra specific. You could have a beautiful project and have picked standards that don't quite match. So your final grade will be that you don't meet standards. It's not about creativity & ingenuity. It's about doing those inside ultra specific parameters. Yes the school bought the materials. No they didn't have a handle on this when ordering materials. We were given a list of common core aligned curriculum to choose from. Hours have spent trying to understand the standard, and then to match it to an activity my kid can do. Our school is frantically trying to complie to DPI requirements for common core implementation. I do think they are being held to a higher standard than the brick and mortar schools. Believe me the school has evolved. If it was like this when we enrolled or we never would have enrolled. Why did we do this? In the top ten of reasons it was to give our kids an added layer of accountability to step up their academic rigor. The kids have to meet the deadlines. They have to do the assignment. They have to tell their complaints to another non-family individual. I tried many creative things as a homeschooling parent to hold their piggies over a fires of get-it-done. Those of you who exceed at this, kudos!

"Lessons keyed for common core standards" That's exactly what I'm looking for! "Common cored aligned" doesn't go far enough. I have to tell the teacher's/have to choose the standards for the lessons we're doing. I am not a profession curriculum writer, I am not a professional teacher who's supposed to know CC standards and when something fits it. I'm just the parent coach who's stupid starts the minute I'm without a lesson plan. Our reasons for getting more help is because of many personal reasons. Lots of thought has gone into this decision. I'm not open to debate it.

I want a curriclum that lists the standards covered in their curriculum. Is there any such thing? I'm exhausted with trying to come up with common core projects to cover standards that aren't being covered in our materials. We're virtual charter schoolers, for now. The teachers won't help with this. Their job is to give me the curriculum, emphasize the check boxes, and then evaluate how well we check off the standards. The project is entirely up to us to come up with. If I had 1 child, maybe. I have 5. This has me teaching 20 classes from scratch to meet grade level standards. No longer can I "lump" a couple kids together. My stupid started where the nicely laid out curriculum ended. Just give me a curriclulm, with the standards listed next to the projects/experiements in the curriclum.

Sheet Music. :001_rolleyes:

I wouldn't, and I don't, protect my kid's from any grandma lectures about safetey. Now lectures that start to go into negative predictions of their future.... those I stop, "Squirrel!" We tell the kids that a grandma's lecture is sooner over when you nod and blink--don't ever start to argue! Wait until she takes a deep breath and then stand up to go and say, "Thank you." We also tell them to be respectful, no matter what. We know that grandmas like to lecture in our family and if the kid disagrees with the lecture to talk to us about it before trying to reason with granny. DH and I have been known to politely leave sooner than planned because one of our children seems to have a target on their back. There's only so much grief a person can handle before they explode. We like to detonations in private. Less fall out, and less to regret. And it's OK that we disagree, but we don't have to convince granny with our words or logic.