On behalf of my DS7, I am really looking forward to a new informal co-op/group we are trying out in the fall that will be much better suited to him than our previous co-op. But sad at the same time on behalf of the other two DS's who are going to terribly miss certain aspects of the old co-op that aren't present in the new one and are tough to duplicate at home (We were already planning on switching DD to a weekly drop off tutorial instead of co-op for 7th grade). Also looking forward to starting Beast Academy with DS7, who should be ready for it either right when the school year starts or soon after.

I used to look over my shoulder, but now I use the screen on my backup camera! :-)

We don't start until the last week in August (most schools here don't start until after Labor Day, so this is actually early here). But here summer is the only nice time for outdoor activities like swimming and my kids do many outdoor camps and sports classes all summer. We go to the pool many times per week since it is only open for 10-12 weeks out of the year! I guess you could say that summer is "PE" season of school for us (though not all the camps my kids do in the summer are sports related though, I guess). ;-). We do try and get a little bit of schoolwork done when we can thru the summer.

Thanks for the ideas. I've looked at a bunch on Amazon too, I was just curious if anyone had tried them and had experience to share.

Not from New York, but the insurance thing sounds like such a "convenient excuse". Plenty of other states allow partial enrollment or participation in individual classes or extracurriculars and have found ways to work that into whatever insurance coverage they need. Probably the same large insurance companies are insuring districts around the country and they just get policies written for whatever the situation is in each state. Good luck, OP. Sounds like a tough but worthwhile battle to fight.

Yes, he has already done quite a bit with Scratch, and is a bit bored with it. I'm sure he hasn't taken that to the full extent possible, but he is SUPER interested in Minecraft modding, so I am looking for options in that direction. ETA: He just finished a typing program, which I said was a pre-req for him to learn modding (Since I am assuming actual typing will be required for real modding), so now that he has finished the learn-to-type program I feel like I need to come through on my end with at least some kind of option to work on modding.

I'm looking into options for helping DS9 learn Minecraft modding. I've heard great things about the Youth Digital course, but even at a discounted price, I'm leery to start out spending that much money on something that he may not really want to stick with. That price tag would be more "Christmas gift" territory for us. Has anyone's kids had success with any of the less expensive options out there?

We had an older Gran Gaggia for close to a decade that we loved. We got it on eBay for less than a hundred (no idea if an older one would still be a similar price). The downside was my husband had to really give it TLC to keep it running correctly. We paired it with a burr grinder that was around $100 and it made pretty great espresso drinks. When the Gaggia finally bit the dust and was actually beyond repair, we were fortunate to have received a large Christmas gift that a family member insisted we use for a "splurge" and we bought a Silvano that was more in the $1000 range. I don't know that it is ten times better based on price paid for each machine, but it is much faster and requires much less repair. When the grinder broke down a year or so ago, we replaced it with a much more expensive Vario grinder DH chose after reading many reviews. I've actually been disappointed in some ways. I thought we would be able to switch effortlessly between different grind settings, but the reality is that if we change it to make a pour over, it takes several shots to get back in just the right setting for espresso. It's easier just to keep it on our espresso setting and use a simpler grinder for pour overs.

This is my experience as well. Family practice doctors seem a lot more laid back in my experience. I'm sure some of this is just limited sample size. Our first ped was a royal jerk on many levels, and then after a move the first ped clinic that we took our kids to seemed to serve a demographic that maybe needed more "hand holding"? Not sure. We certainly got way more unsolicited parenting advice there than our current clinic. Family practice docs we've met at our current clinic are all great for the most part. However, the family practice doc we've mostly seen for the past several years I decided was too laid back or maybe not well educated on mental health issues. When I brought up some behavior/emotional concerns with my daughter a couple years ago and asked about the value of seeing a counselor/therapist, she totally wrote it off and told us not to waste our time because my DD seemed really normal for her age. My daughter took that to heart and even as some issues worsened, she refused to even consider a therapist because "the doctor said this is normal". Finally she agreed to go this summer and it has been so helpful for both of us (we're going together to a family therapist to work on conflict resolution). I still can't believe the doc thought it would be a waste of time! This same doc seemed really clueless when I asked for suggestions about recommended places to get ADHD testing done for DS7 I got better advice from Google and Facebook. After testing when we wanted to pursue meds for ADHD for DS7, I switched to a different doc whom the staff said was more knowledgable about ADHD and mental health in general.

Is there value to Touch Type Read Spell for a student who finished a "fun" typing program (Typing Instructor Platinum) and knows all the keys but could use more directed practice to continue improving accuracy/speed? This is my DS9. Spelling is not a strength for him, so my thought was that this might be a good choice to both improve his typing and get in a bit of spelling practice at the same time (I just finished Apples and Pears B with him, if that gives you an idea of his spelling level).

I waited until I was 17 to get my first job (I was pretty busy with school and extra curriculars, so my parents didn't push me toward a job. I also didn't have my drivers license until I was 17, so that would have limited my options). I had a summer job between junior and senior year of high school working in the office of a small engineering firm that had never had any "office help" per se. They wanted someone they could pay minimum wage to organize their files, blueprints, drawings, etc and answer the phone. It was a pretty fun and laid back first job (when I finished filing for the day, I could read a book between phone calls!). Then in the fall of my senior year in high school I started working at a telemarketing firm that specialized in fundraising and "membership renewals" (think, AAA auto club calling to ask if lapsed members want to renew roadside assistance). They lost a big client and I got laid off...and since I was saving money to attend a conference across the country, I just went for the first job I could find, which was McDonald's. It actually paid better than the other two jobs!

We raised monarch caterpillars several summers in a row. We don't have a good milkweed supply at the moment (and I have no luck growing any of my own in my yard). It was a great experience. We had a nice plastic shoe box with a hole cut in the middle and covered by a screen that we used as a "house" for them a couple of the years. When we just had the milkweed in a vase, we did have one "wander off" and we had to find where it went! When they are ready to make their chrysalis they get a bit of wanderlust sometimes looking for the right spot I guess. I heard from a friend though that if you put a dry stick I'm with the milkweed they will usually make their chrysalis on the stick.

My DS7 received an ADHD diagnosis and started Strattera about three months ago, and so far so good for him. It's a non-stimulant. He was doing pretty well academically (I had already figured out how to help him stay focused with me, one on one), but socially/behaviorally he was a mess before we started with meds and therapy. We did about two months of weekly CBT sessions with a therapist that were helpful for him in learning better responses to things that anger/frustrate him, and a six week long class that covered topics from the SuperFlex curriculum and other self-regulation strategies. My DH "shadowed" DS7 to all his church and co-op classes for about three months so we could catch behavior problems quickly. (It was a long stretch of weeks, but it was needed if he wanted to stay in those classes, which he did). He is really doing a lot better and finished Science Museum Camp today with no bad behavior reports all week. That was a big win for us! On the other hand, he wanted to try a fun tennis class at the neighborhood park that he could do along with DS9. They teach tennis skills through fun/silly games. That was a total "fail" because it brought out all the things that he still struggles with (losing in competitive games, not being able to "go first" in the games, not being chosen as "it", not being on the team he wanted to be on, etc). He was out after one day -- partly because he didn't like it, and mostly because the 16 year old coaches of the program told me they didn't know how to handle DS7s behavior when he didn't get his way (and it wasn't a time/place/situation where DH or I could be fully devoted to trying to work with DS7's behavior right there during class). Fair enough. So the things we've done so far have improved day to day life and allowed DS7 to be in some classroom situations with no behavior problems, even though it is still a work in progress in other areas. We're on a summer break from therapy and the Super Flex class, and we aren't quite sure where we're going with it in the fall. I do know we are not going to do a co-op with a gym class this year for him. :-)

I agree, it is surprising they don't offer after care! I think pretty much every camp I have ever signed my kids up for that was more than just a two hour class at the rec center offered this. Even though we don't need it, I'm thinking this must be "standard procedure" for camps to offer it and I think at some point it would be good to point it out to them (probably after this week of camp is over though).

Not to side track the OP's post too much, but your daughter's thought about the lockdown reminds me of a time in high school when a deer actually jumped through a floor to ceiling window and was on the loose in the hallways of the school! These days if that happened a lockdown probably would be called for liability reasons. As it was, as many of us a possible tried to gawk at it while an animal control officer tried to wrangle it out of the building. Very memorable! OP, remember that even if you do public school it doesn't have to be forever. It could be a year or even part of a year if YOU get to a point where you are doing better. Whatever educational problems they may face, outside influences you are concerned about (hearing things that don't line up with your faith, kids that say things you would rather your kids not hear, etc), one year in public school will not put them hopelessly behind or turn them away from the faith teachings they hear at home. And if you are healthier and in a better place emotionally at the end, that will probably do wonders to improve things for the future, whether at home or otherwise.

My experience is with First Edition, so I don't know how comparable it is with 2nd. With my oldest, we didn't find Right Start until half way through Kindy, and she completed A in half a year. Given that she had done other K level math in the first half of the year, I think in retrospect I could have started her in B even though math isn't her greatest strength. In first edition there is a lot of repeat from A to B. With DS9, we did RS A activities informally in PreK and he started B in Kindy. DS7 hated the abacus with a passion when he was 4 and 5, so I did Singapore and Miquon for him in Kindy, and then flew through B in the first little-over-half of first grade, and we made it through a great deal of C as well. My boys are defintiely strong in math though. With DS4.5 we will start RS A in the fall, but if he doesn't gel with it, I won't hesitate to pull out Miquon. We are already "playing" math quite a bit. Yesterday we were making various piles of ten Pokemon cards and then counting the tens with their "math names" and their traditional names. :-)

Before kids and while the older two kids were really young, we were really strapped financially so the only travel we did beyond our honeymoon was to visit family or occasionally attend a church conference out of town. Now our game plan is to take a "big vacation" every two years (10-14 day road trip with some camping and some hotels. The kids and I did use DH's frequent flyer miles to fly for part of our trip last year.). We've done two "big vacations" so far. In the past five or six years we've gotten to take two long weekend trips without our kids, but it is hard to find anyone willing to take on our crazy bunch, so we don't do that as much as we would like. We're way more limited in terms of child care than finances for that sort of thing now. We also take shorter trips that I don't necessarily think of as a "vacation" but some people might - weekend or long weekend camping trips in our state or nearby states (3 weekends per summer or so), travel to adjacent states to visit family for a few days around holidays (2-3 times per year), an out-of-state church conference once every year or two, sometimes a weekend trip to a family lake cabin we can borrow or a hotel weekend away bought with a groupon or something (maybe once a year or less).

In the past (pre-Windows 10, so this may not be relevant), DH was able to access files on computers with messed up Windows installs by using a Linux live boot CD or USB. If you have a techie friend with Linux experience they might be able to do this for you (assuming Windows 10 doesn't prevent this sort of thing from working somehow). Good luck!

Minnesota has a somewhat unique program in that homeschoolers are eligible for their students' share of the per pupil textbook reimbursement that the state (I think) gives to all schools public and private per student - around $80 per year, per student. I think here it is up to each district how to handle the details with homeschoolers, but we can use it to buy any non-religious student materials. Since it is per pupil textbook $, it can't be used for teacher's manuals. In our district we simply submit a form with receipts by October 1st and a few months later get a direct deposit. I've never been denied reimbursement. I've heard in some districts an employee actually looks over the purchased materials to make sure they are secular and I have friends that have been denied, say, math books by Chrisitan publishers. My large district has bigger fish to fry and I don't think they care about the details as much. I personally stick on the safe side with what I put on my form, and wouldn't try something obviously more religious like CLE math. It doesn't cover what I spend on educational supplies (especially since I can't use it for teacher's materials), but it is nice to feel like I am taking advantage of some of the tax dollars that would otherwise have been spent on my kids if they were in public school.

Here it is in the logic stage subforum (sorry for the ugly link...I'm on my phone): http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/585995-2016-2017-7th-grade-plan/

12 year old DD and I just started the first book in the "Dark is Rising" sequence by Susan Cooper and I think this is going to be our summer read-together series. Then in the fall we're going to begin the Mensa middle school book list. She just recently re-read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking glass. She read Green Ember and will soon read the prequel (and the sequel when it comes out next month). She also recently read one of the Enola Holmes books and just picked up the rest from the library.

Not sure if you are still thinking on this, but you might want to see if you can get any of the Social Thinking books via InterLibrary loan in order to see them in person. I was pleasantly surprised to find that quite a few of Michelle Garcia Winner's books as well as others are held by various college/university libraries in my state and I can get them from interlibrary loan! It looks like a great time to be requesting books from University libraries -- most of what I was looking for was actually available...so many fewer students needing them in the summer I suppose.

I think we just read of out a "reader" aka textbook for school. We did have a book report assignment and we got more points for longer books, and I remember I chose The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsaratt. I think it was my step-Dad's suggestion, as it is one of his favorites. I can't remember if I liked it or not, but I do remember that it impressed my teacher. :lol: Other than that I read a lot of Star Trek books and some other random mysteries and sci-fi books from the adult section of the library. At the beginning of 6th grade I eschewed the Children's section as being too juvenile for an advanced reader like myself, and I don't think "teen" library sections had been invented yet. Ah, the joys of being a sixth grader that thought reading Star Trek novels was more advanced than reading classics of Children's lit...LOL!

I'm not as much of an expert on the social thinking materials as Oh E, and I've not seen Incredible Fleixble You yet, but my 7 year old DS loves the SuperFlex material he was learning in the six week class he took this spring and will do another session in the fall. I find that the super hero/bad guy characters really resonate with my DS and give us a really good framework for discussion. He likes to make up his own unthinkables and "weapons" that fight against them. But like I said, I haven't seen IFY so I can't make a comparison - I'm just working with the material we were sent home from class.

I would say just because she is using CLE 1st grade materials, you don't have to say she is a first grader. Even if you start CLE first grade now, she may not move through all the material as quickly as an older student, and you may not use CLE all the way through. Worst case scenario, if she finishes all the CLE 8th grade Light Units when she is only a seventh grader by age, you grade skip her at that point to start high school if she is ready, or you have some time for diversions and rabbit trails in 8th before starting high school. CLE takes two years in 7th-8th to do what many courses do in one year for pre-algebra anyway, so if she did CLE math all the way thru starting in 100s in K, she would still only be doing Algebra in 8th, which is really common in public schools anyhow. ETA: My current 4 year old is going to be doing some K level work this year, and so may be doing first grade level work when he is still a K'er on paper. His b-day is also October. My general plan is just to assume he will be "working ahead of grade level" in some or all subjects, but we'll keep him as the legal grade level on paper for reporting purposes unless as we get closer to high school it's clear he is ready early (we also plan for brick and mortar school situation for high school for our kids).