Here's another angle. I don't disagree at all with what others have posted. This is just an additional potential way it could manifest. In some churches I've been a part of (or known closely of via good friends attending), there has been a strong church culture of most "committed" people making certain lifestyle choices. Certainly, not everyone...but it was clear that those in the inner circle would be more likely to make these choices. These might involve moms staying home, homeschooling, using certain discipline methods for kids, partaking or not partaking in certain media, etc. I'm sure there are some churches that might take this to a cult like level ("you MUST do x, y, and z"). but even just a strong peer pressure to do certain things feels like a potential part of being "high demand".

It's getting easier and easier here. I found a pharmacy appointment and then got an email from the state vaccine connector within the same week, Public school district organized a vaccine clinic for 16+ students. I'm hearing of several friends locally getting contacted by their regular primary care providers for scheduling vaccine appointments too. I wouldn't say that anyone and everyone can find a shot any given day, but it probably won't take too many days of trying (pharmacy appointments go pretty fast - there are usually more 30-60 minutes drive away in more rural areas).

DH got his second shot today at a mass vaccination event and he said it was about the same in terms of levels of people there. He was running about half an hour late (forgot his card the first time he left the house) and they didn't even ask him about the appointment time. He thinks people may have figured this out and just came whenever they pleased. On the other hand I talked to an older gentleman at church today who had 3 weeks of headaches after his first shot and is delaying his second with the possibility of not getting it. He isn't sure he wants to go through it again (even though he knows he may not have the same reaction the second time).

I haven't used it as a curriculum and only listened to the first volume, so take this with a grain of salt. I think it would take the right kind of motivated student to enjoy those books at that age. I really like ancient history in general but found the first History of World book to be rather dry. I think the level of detail could feel like a slog at that age. My 8th grader tends to be a lot more motivated to dive into an adult level history text if it is a book focusing on a topic of interest. I'm not sure if he is at all typical of somewhat-accelerated middle schoolers (and he tends to be more accelerated in STEM areas), but he much preferred the idea of a "lighter" textbook for history in middle school with plenty of time left for history reads he chose on topics like the Hundred Years War, the black plague, and early Roman history.

I helped a retired teacher neighbor who had six boxes of books and supplies to get rid of. She was really excited about giving them away to homeschoolers. After I sorted through what I wanted, I posted pictures in a couple of local groups and told people to "claim" what they wanted in the posts' pictures and message me for my address. I then put things on my porch with people's names and they stopped by for pick up. Then I donated to a thrift store things no one wanted or things that people didn't follow thru with picking up. This was pre pandemic but I've seen other people doing similar things during the pandemic. At least where I'm at, no-contact porch pick up seems to be something people are pretty comfortable with.

Bunny trail for a minute...would you mind sharing what dyslexia groups you have found helpful? I'm in a couple groups on FB for OG practitioners that I joined after I took OG training, but both groups are heavily populated with classroom teachers and school interventionists, and their needs are so different from mine just working with one kid in a homeschool setting.

I've read from multiple sources that b-d confusion and other similar reversals can be "normal" up to age 8, but a lot of kids who turn out to be dyslexic do struggle with this. Like others that said, checking with a developmental ophthalmologist might make sense to rule that out as a reason. I would also look at her phonemic awareness. This is one of the primary measures that is used to diagnose dyslexia, and you could get a feel for it by doing a screener with her like the PAST (direction and test are at this site): https://www.thepasttest.com/ Have you tried any spelling? My oldest never got a dyslexia diagnosis, but the more I have learned about dyslexia with my youngest having a dyslexia diagnosis, I'm pretty sure she is mildly dyslexic. However, it didn't show up for her until we did any spelling. Then, despite being able to read at grade level or above, and being taught using decent phonics methods (not as robust as what I used with my boys, but not terrible), her spelling bore very little resemblance to reality. Like, phonetically regular words were totally missing sounds that belonged in the word, or were represented in her writing by letters that didn't at all make those sounds. At the time I didn't really know that dyslexia could present that way, and we just worked really hard with Logic of English for a while to get her spelling to the point where spell checker might be helpful. But she was in 2nd grade when it dawned on me that her spelling was not improving anywhere close to how her reading was improving. It sounds like you've tried a lot of things for the B-D confusion, but if you haven't tired the MA Rooney foundation's method, it might be worth a look. It was totally the thing that worked for my DS9 when everything else I tried failed. In summary, instead of just having a student make a b with their left hand (a method I had seen elsewhere), you have them make a b with their left had and a d with their right hand, and do a lot of practice exercises always associating making the b hand sign in the b hand when seeing the b, and the d hand sign in the d hand when seeing a d. A year and a half after working on this my DS9 still has to use his b and d hands semi-often, especially when writing (a lot less often now with reading). The one downfall of this method is it doesn't work with upper case D. 😁 I just avoided upper case D with him for a while, and now he's got the association for that one correct even though it doesn't fit the hand pattern.

I'm really curious about SWI because I'm trained in OG but didn't take the level of training that looks much morphology. I really love that SWI is coming from linguistics as a field of study. That being said I don't know much about it yet. I feel like this has the feel of implementing SWi in a homeschool curriculum, but I don't know enough to know if this is actually a faithful representation : https://www.rootedinlanguage.com/instructional-materials/word-study-packet.

The churches that I've been a part of (a tiny association of churches not affiliated with any major denomination) have been into complementarian beliefs but I've never heard anything at all about that specific kind of "Biblical counseling". People I've known who have seen counselors have seen various types of licensed mental health professionals. Or for more run of the mill "counsel with a pastor" situations that don't require a mental health professional, it isn't this counseling philosophy specifically. So it's possible to have just the one and not the other.

I don't think they are locally to me, but we live in a community with a higher than usual percentage of people employed in medical and scientific jobs. When I lived in a larger metro area, I felt like the religious homeschool groups had more anti-vax people than the general population, but it didn't seem as high as 50% by any means. Secular groups we were involved in could really go either way -- if they were "crunchy/natural" types of secular groups, there were probably more anti-vax families than the religious groups, but more academic secular groups seemed on par with our community in general. Some of this is conjecture based on group conversations, but it's definitely the type of thing that comes up in conversation when you have a bunch of homeschool parents hanging around. Unless there were more anti-vax types than I realized because they weren't being upfront about it (that's possible too I suppose).

Oh, yeah an electric part wouldn't do the same thing. I would try unplugging it. If you still hear the noise, it's not the stove itself? If you don't hear it, then you know it's some component of the range.

Oh! We had something like this happen and it turned out to be a mechanism that was failing. I think it was a part that ignites the gas for the oven? For us it eventually failed all together and it was one of those "almost as expensive to replace the part as the whole oven" situations, so we purchased a new range. Eta: since yours is newer there may still even be a warranty against defects if it's a similar issue. Ours was 15+ years old.

I agree with this. Saxon would have been a joy killer for my kids who grasp math easily. We love Beast Academy, but any mastery program will have the advantage of being able to easily move on when it is clear your child has grasped the material.

We were able to do one car for the first seven years or so of marriage - DH worked within walking distance of our house for a few years, then we moved to a major metro area and picked a place to live near transit options to ride the bus to work. Our kids were little and didn't have much going on so even if DH did need the car for something it wasn't a big deal. City was also very bike friendly, which made another good transport option. Now we live in a smaller city with fewer transit options and some destinations aren't very bike friendly. Even though DH only needs a car once a week for work purposes, with two teens (one who can drive) and two younger kids with activities, two cars barely seems like enough. 😁

This! We are required to test annually as per our state regulations, but they are a nice "check" on how your child's learning compares to other students. This can be a good way to put your mind at ease that even though you may not use curricula that "follows state standards" your child still can measure up well against other students of grade level. Or it can help spot any glaring weaknesses. For example it was a nice way to confirm my suspicion that my oldest was a really bad speller when she was in 2nd grade - her standardized test scores for a spelling subtest came back at a very low percentile. This wasn't just my imagination! I was planning on addressing this anyway, but it made me feel better about spending what to me was a lot of money at the time to buy a curriculum I thought would help us. Another thing to keep in mind is that state standards ensure certain details get covered (in classrooms) somewhere along the way - details you will almost certainly cover in the course of either the curriculum you choose or in the course of daily life. I'm sure our state standards state that use of an index and table of contents in a book should be covered in x grade for Language Arts standards. I've talked about that with all my kids in the course of reading books together. My 3rd grader was curious about the index of a book the other day (he's dyslexic and is new to really being able to do a significant amount of reading), so we talked about how to use it. We didn't need a curriculum or worksheet to practice this, but students in school probably do since other wise all students wouldn't have an experience of having it explained to them.

A lot of families are able to do 4 days per week with the 5th day being a co-op, field trips or other activities away from home, but even in the younger years I think three days per week won't be enough. My kids need more consistency and practice in the younger years, and don't have the attention span necessarily to do longer sessions to "make up" for missed days. We even found 2 days per month away from home on a school day was plenty (so, in a given month, 2 weeks with only 4 days, and the other weeks with five days). If your kids are able to develop independent work skills as they get older, you may find it is easier for you to work 2 days per week even as their work get more difficult, since they will be able to do much more on their own. My middle school age kids are able to do nearly all their work independently, with spending a short time with me each day to check/discuss math, go over edits on English, talk about progress on their work, etc. We do still do read-aloud time together because I enjoy reading to them, but if I had to be away from home, they (the 6th and 8th graders) could do that reading on their own.

IEW does a free shipping special right after Christmas every year - they do a "12 days of Christmas" sort of promo that starts on 12/26 or so. That being said, I usually order my IEW books from Rainbow Resource in the summer, and it's easy to get over the $50 free shipping threshold when ordering books for the new school year.

I didn't read the other responses, but here's what happens here. My just-turned-14 year old DS is the DM, and his party are his younger brothers along with two other 14 year old friends who both live out of town, so they call in via video chat. Their ideal (which was working for a while) was to do a 1-2 hr session once per week on an agreed upon evening. One of the out of town friends has been having more and more nights though where at first agrees to be available, but then at the last minute says he can't play due to not having his homework finished, and parents won't allow D and D if there is any outstanding homework. Friend would be allowed to play later into the evening, but my boys have to be done by 9om due to youngest not being able to reasonably stay up later. That's been annoying for DS14 as actual sessions are becoming less regular. With four party members (not counting DM), they only play if everyone is present. I've suggested to DS14 to recruit another party member or two and inform everyone of the time (generally agreed upon). If at the last minute friend-with-lots-of-homework can't play, he'll just miss out and maybe think harder about his scheduling. Not sure if that will happen. I probably wouldn't let my kids devote more than 2-3hrs per week max to D and D, as we have other priorities and whole-family hobbies that also take time.

I think we'll do a family vacation that will involve camping. We haven't locked down any plans yet but it would normally be our year to take a bit longer trip and visit national parks. DD and I had long planned to take a girls trip this summer somewhere out east where we could visit art museums and other attractions her younger brothers are less interested in. We should both be able to be vaccinated sometime in the next couple months (our state just opened eligibility to everyone 16+), so it seems relatively safe, but I'm not sure enough places like museums in major east coast cities will even be open??? We haven't really checked into it and I hate to make firm plans until we are actually on the calendar to get our vax.

I would also consider contacting your new state's department of education to ask them about the relevant state law. Perhaps they could direct you to something you could show the local district (section of the state law, etc) that will remind them of their legal obligation to educate all students living in the district. Students enter school as newcomers to the country with no formal education, and schools still have to accept them. The one thing they could be a stickler about is high school level work. If you can't provide a transcript, they would be under no obligation to honor any credits previously earned. In terms of tracking down the transcript or school records, another tactic to try would be contacting the state department of education in the old state. There may be of some help tracking down information for closed schools.

I have mixed feelings about it despite using 1 or more books with three of my four kids so far. Oldest DD used the first three books in the series starting at a bit later age than some. We focused heavily on needed spelling remediation in 3rd grade, then did Treasured Conversations in the first part of 4th grade, then did W&R for the rest of 4th grade and all of 5th grade. It was a great fit for her at the time - some creativity required while still having good instruction about what to do within those creative assignments. By the start of 6th grade I was interested in fast-tracking her toward more typical academic writing, so we did a year of WWS, which she did not enjoy at all, and then I enrolled her in a local writing class the following year. Oldest DS was absolutely "allergic" to the idea of any creativity in writing at 3rd/4th grade age, and just hated the idea of writing about fables, myths, etc. After TC for him, we went to IEW. However, in 7th grade after finishing a short essay writing program in the first half of the year, I needed something to fill half a year, so I got the 7th book (Encomium and Vituperation) and he was able to jump in there. The later books seem to require less "creative writing" as the focus is on various types of essays rather than stories. It was a fine way to finish the year but he found writing the same format of essay to be a bit boring for an entire semester. Middle DS used the first three books in 3rd grade through the first half of 4th grade. It was a great fit for him at first and he loved the creativity, but his desire to be creative tended to go off the rails and cause it to take waaaay longer than necessary to complete assignments. There might be a prompt like, "Describe what the man looked like," which would be a precursor to writing an expanded version of a story. But then this DS would want to spend a long time really thinking hard about what the man would look like, and probably writing way too much unnecessary detail in his description of the man because the prompt did not give a guideline on the maximum allowed amount of description. I decided to try IEW for him after this experience, because I felt like it would keep him a bit more reigned in. 😁 I think the other thing that as a parent/teacher made me less inclined to continue long term with the series is the number of books (starting with the the 4th book) focused on odd writing formats that students rarely encounter in other academic settings, and the fact that an entire book is focused on each of these formats. I like programs with more variety in styles of writing and types of assignments, generally speaking.

We've been married a little less than 20 years, and still use many things we got as wedding gifts - baking pans/casserole dishes, fine china we get out for holidays, camping gear, kitchen knives. DH and I had both lived in apartments with roommates before we got married, but between the two of us we owned much less than a "complete" set of kitchen needs. Wedding gifts were super useful toward getting started on our own.

I'd first be honest with them about the situation of it not being at a scheduled break time, and ask them if those dates are flexible. Could they adjust their visit dates to come when you are on break for the summer? If their schedule is not flexible, I would chat with at least the older two kids and ask them what they would prefer. Would they prefer to add two weeks onto the end of the school year and have two extra weeks off in April/May? Or would they prefer to try and get at least the most important subjects done while grandparents are visiting? I think it won't matter what the younger two do, and maybe not even the 4th grader. Potentially it's really a discussion for you and your 8th grader as to what he/she prefers. My mom visits about once every six weeks and stays for 3 full days. She knows that the younger two kids need to do a couple hours of school each morning she is here, and my 8th grader will do his best to work efficiently but he has outside classes and other goals he is working toward that can't exactly be dropped every time she comes. But she comes pretty often! If MIL could visit (whom we haven't seen for 1.5 years also), we would in a heartbeat drop all but what my 8th grader has due for outside classes (and maybe even ask for grace on those assignments also). But I would also not hesitate to ask my kids to work into the summer if needed to finish up something that wasn't finished due to unplanned time off.

Is this the Aigner proof book? https://www.amazon.com/Proofs-BOOK-Martin-Aigner/dp/3642008550 Does it require Calculus and beyond level math skills or could a student who is finishing up Geometry and Alg 2 get something out of it? DS13 is highly disappointed in the lack of proofs in his geometry class and wants to explore proofs "for fun" - It actually hadn't occurred to me there might be whole books just about that topic.

I've now been involved in 6 different co-op/tutorial situations over the years with my kids, in two different cities. I think the ones that were most excellent were ones that paid their teachers/tutors more than a token amount, hired outside teachers where necessary (perhaps first offering positions to parents in the group, if they have skill/expertise), and had a clear focus. When I was a part of three groups (for one year each) that relied on parent volunteers to each lead something a different week or month or semester, quality was sketchy and parents would often not put a ton of effort into what they were teaching. These groups were not serious academic co-ops, which was fine. My kids were young when we participated in these groups and I wasn't expecting a full-on academic class. But sometimes it seemed like it would have been a better use of time to just call it a social group and not even try on the classes. When my kids were 0-7 a homeschool playgroup might have been the best thing ever, but I had a hard time finding anything like that in my area - most moms wanted "classes" even for littles and living in a cold climate meant park days were only an option a couple months of the school year. The co-op I was a part of that had more organized classes for all ages and paid teachers something that amounted to a "token" amount was better. The price was great when I had 4 kids to pay for in co-op, but having been one of those teachers paid a "token" amount I always ended the year feeling exhausted for the amount of work I did and what I was paid. Everyone took classes assigned by grade rather than picking individual classes (i.e., all 1st-6th graders had gym and science, all 7-8th graders had art and science, etc). That idea seemed ok to me at first, but then when one of my kids was just not jiving with a particular class, it caused a lot of problems and in the end caused us not to continue with that group because a-la-carte was not an option. The two organizations I thought were best organized, and were certainly the most "popular" were/are drop off tutorial-style co-ops for older kids (one was 6th and up, one for 7th and up). Both groups paid outside teachers, had academic classes, required minimal parent participation or help, and provided an excellent academic environment. They seem "the best" to me now, but they would have been no use to me when my kids were all elementary age, KWIM? So in some ways the "best" co-ops are in the eye of the beholder based on what people are looking for. I can afford $250/class (per year) now with only a couple kids signing up for one or two classes each, but I wouldn't have been able to afford that x4 when all my kids were looking to be in class and my budget was a lot tighter.