I agree with this post. Sarah Mackenzie isn't trying to sell that she knows every remotely good book ever written for children. Not even close! Her point is that she wants to have a family culture filled with shared books and she wants to share her journey (cause even she has said she's still travelling - and really, aren't we all?). Not ony that, she wants to encourage us to get out there and discover our own great reads with our own great families, then come back to the community she's built and share it - so everyone can benefit! As always, take what you can use and leave the rest. Best part of homeschooling :)

critter, I admire your empathy and sense of humour - and the practical, supportive way you tackle these pesky problems. I keep repeating what SWB says in several of her talks and interviews: "You are teaching people, not cogs in a machine". You remind of this all the time too :) I think this would also help my kids! Thank you!

I have a complainer too so some of these posts are very helpful. She's a young about-to-be a fourth grader though so I have't expected a lot of independence except in a few areas. While I'm working with her young brothers, she needs to be practicing skills - and those skills can be tough since she's not quite an independent reader yet! this year I bought her a pretty student planner from Plum Cheeky and I'm planning to sit down with her each week and go through the week's indpendent work (so ETC phonics sheets, copy work, foreign language vocab practice, fact practice that kind of thing). Anything she needs to do with me (reading, spelling and math) won't go in there, only the stuff she needs to get done in the hour or so she has. When we start our one-on-one work I'll quickly go through her papers and anything that's not done will need to be done by screen time - or she'll have to do it instead of screen time. I don't like to take away from time spent playing outside because that's a priority for our family, but I have no problems taking away from screen time lol. A lot of this is the same as last year, but sitting down for a "grown up" planning meeting and the planner itself are new. There's nothing else my complainer wants more than to be treated as a grown up (we're working on the concept that if *that's* what she wants, she needs to *act* more grown up - you don't see many grown ups complaining and whining when they have to get someething done. At least not in our house ;) ) I'm hoping this helps a bit? Something to think about.

Yay! math for dsd8 (from last year lol) is done! So two weeks (less a day) off until we start up again. And technically she's starting up with the last chapter of grade 3 cause we're making up for lost time here, but I still consider her done :) And boys are finally back!! Only a week late lol. My MIL teaches elementary school and she's been doing the CLE math unit I sent, but she doesn't figure ds8 is ready to do multiplication, so she didn't teach that. I'm not arguing at this point, I just haven't seen what they have done or really had a chance to hear her concerns, so we'll see on that. It's in the grade two level, so I think they only do 5, 10 and 2 tables, but I could be wrong on that too lol. So I'll have a chat with her tomorrow maybe and I'll make a plan from there. ILs will be here for a week or two, some good friends of the family are here for a night or two. So I doubt we'll get much of anything accountability related in the next little while. But I"ll probably pop on and off to encourage you all ;)

Aurelia, I LOVE peaches. We live within a few hours of a big orchard area, but alas, only a very few varities can survive where I'm at. Need a zone 2-3 peach tree lol! Which reminds me, I haven't done any peaches yet. Usually my MIL does a whole bunch for me but she's been camping these past two weeks . . . does that mean I should do them MYSELF?! What the heck?! Last page of math today with dsd, then she has a riding lesson. I'm going to start ordering in inter-library loans for the first month and see what shows up. Two weeks to go. I'm both looking forward to it and . . . well, dreading it feels a little strong. . . but I have some anxieties. Should do more freezer cooking too, to help us ease into the transition ;) Hoping ds's reading program shows up in the next few days. In the last email I sent, they said they were expecting late last week and would send it in the mail (free of charge since it's now three months late). Cross your fingers for me!

Gulp. My 2 yo has decided that now is a GREAT time to learn how to open doors. Not good.

Yes Arliemama, I've loaded them into iTunes. This way there's no arguing about who gets to use the CD player (cause heaven forbid they do the same thing at the same time lol). I'm having the olders "prelisten" to the week's SOTW chapter to give them a little more digestion time before discussion. And the other two are just for on-their-own practice and exposure. I want it on my iPad for when we work on these things together. I'm usually so irritated by CDs and CD players, I'm hoping this will work better? Ask me a few weeks after school starts . . . Crittermama that's sad :(. I thought for sure anyone who has such a long growing season could grow anything they want lol! We struggle with clay soil but there's hardly a rock to be found. My condolences - enjoy the okra ;). If it helps, I can't grow that!

I don't know if it's the one that is "best" but we had the one pictured in the first three listings. Kids loved it, I loved it, everyone was captivated and more knowledgeable by the end :)

I *wish* we could grow giant watermelons. All the way up here, it's actually amazing I get any watermelons at all. The ranch is in a small valley right next to a very large river (the Fraser) and this area is called "The Banana Belt of the Cariboo" lol. But even our watermelons are about mini-watermelon size - maybe 10" across? That's all they have time to grow before it's too cold. The leaft mold is really my fault. I grew them too close together and they couldn't dry off properly. I always forget how GIANT squash plants get. . . already made a big note for next year.

Wow! We really take on a lot don't we? I feel so much better knowing we're all worried about something. . . honestly, at this point, I think we should all pat ourselves (and each other!) on the back. I feel like if we're this worried about the school year, then we're probaby going to do all right. Maybe things won't go as planned, maybe our fears will come to fruition, but if they do, well, hey, we've already got our heads and radars up and we'll deal. We'll talk to someone, do some research, and make a new plan. And if they don't? Even better! Either way we win. This isn't just talk, I really do feel relieved. Thank you everyone :)

Human reproduction! Lol, every mom's dream to teach ;) Sounds like you have enough barnyard animals at least it won't be a total shock for them. Up here, it definitely feels like fall is on its way - every since the week of rain showers there's been that certain crispness to the air. I'm sad, summer seemed short this year, but that was probably because I was so busy through most of it. Our garden is going crazy though - although I've lost some squash to leaf mold :( Let's see. . . accountability related stuff. . . ummmmmm. I realized yesterday that although the kids' iPads all have SOTW and SSL and Ecoutez Parlez French loaded on them, *I* don't have all that on *my* iPad lol. Will remedy that today. Me and dsd8 will finish the LAST TWO PAGES in her fractions chapter. I'll fret more about whether or not ds8 has been doing his math with MIL while camping (not critical, I love that he gets to go camping! it just changes my plans a little). I may go purchase a couple Kumon books or something for dd2 1/2. Whenever I sit down to do math with her big sister she demands "maff too" so I give some old MM pages we skipped a year ago and she's content to scribble out all the numbers. But this would change things up or give me an option when I run out of old pages lol. And I think she'd really like the colouring one. And yesterday we had an accident free day!!! I may be diaper free in a few months. That hasn't happened in 8 years! Anyhow. Have a great day!

Let's get them off our chests. For me, it's writing. I intend (maybe hope is a better word?) to focus more on writing this year now that the basics in reading have been mastered. Having said that (sigh) I know my two oldest still need to work dilligently in improving their reading - especially in fluency and advanced phonics. Still, I'm worried there's going to be too much writing for them (I've gone with W&R Fable for various reasons) or too much original thought or they won't like the fables, or they just won't like it. I have WWE3 waiting in the wings just in case, but I'm not sure that's right either! The dictations were getting to be too much by the end of WWE2 so I'd like to give it a year. Apart from academics, I'm worried about keeping my cool around my strong-willed dsd (nearly 9). We know how to push allllll of each others buttons. I *know* most of it stems from terrible insecurity. Sometimes I can be the adult and guide her, other times I just can't. Having just finished reading Mindset, I can see how terrified she is that someone might think she's less than perfect (newsflash! we all are! It's okay!) and how that brings about these behaviours, but at this point I'm floundering around trying to help her - I'm working on pinpointing what to do next. In the meantime, it can make for some incredibly difficult school days and I DREAD that. Trying to keep it in perspective - the awful days aren't every day, probably not too much more than once a week. But man, they stick with me and I feel terribly guilty. Any one else?

Grr, you know what? All this time I've been fussing and fuming about WHAT to get dsd for the next step in reading, then playing phone tag for weeks with Fedex re taxes, duties and rural delivery joy it's only now that I realize the reading program I ordered for ds in APRIL!!!!! still isn't here! I realized it a month ago and emailed them and they promised (again) that it would be in a week. They agreed to pay shipping from their store to my house, and now it's STILL not here. I know I have two weeks (or is it three) before our August 31 date, and it's open and go (All About Reading 3) but there is some prep and I'd like to at least have it by now for crying out loud. I ordered it months ago for that very reason! I've heard some of my friends complain about this store (it's located about six hours from me but I use it because I have family in the area who visit often and they'll pick it up for so I don't have to pay shipping) but it's always been so good for me. I'm gonna have to go through my emails and figure out when I last inquired on the delivery date. Luckily I don't do a summer term like many of you! I'm not even sure I can cancel the order (or I would have by now) since i ordered it using last year's umbrella school's credit card and it's since expired. . . I think the best I can hope for is store credit. . . not sure I want it at this point? Other than that (and I feel like it's pretty major cause I want to get this level done in this year, max, and I know ds is going to need all that time), I'm all set lol. I showed dsd all her new stuff today (she's bored and really missing her brothers lol) and I got some really good feedback. She also helped me think through a minor rearrangement of the furniture in order to accomodate an older toddler (less high chair, more "My Turn" at the table iykwim lol). So that's nice anyhow. Sorry. I've got to start typing at a 100 character count or something. I write waaaaay toooooo much in one post! If you're still reading, thanks! Have a great evening :)

arliemama, that was perfect. Very practical and very real. And it sounds do-able lol! Okay, so my second son is the same age as your Robby. He used it very dependently on me (but that was his kindergarten year). Poor kid, I really focused a lot more on the older ones but had I sat down with him every day and we went through it together, I know he would have gotten a lot more out of it. Bit of advice: Don't start with September! I'm pretty sure that was the month where they have you graph cloud types and it was too unfamiliar for my kids. In the instructions for use it mentions that there are more simple months (why didn't they put those in the beginning of the year when kids are still getting used to format and such?). I recommend waiting until a simpler month. I would do "kindergarten" type things with ds (days of the week, months of the year) and the bigger kids would record the date and check that month's item to track. Some of them were very simple. We would all work together to answer the questions about each month and when the month was done, we all worked together to graph the data. It was simple, but effective, and the kids really enojoyed it. took three minutes most days! Oh, and the pictures were good for a quick discussion, usually about seasons and usually instigated by them. But they rarely coloured them as suggested. My kids don't really enjoy colouring any more. HTH

Maize my ipad and iphone haven't been letting me stay logged in for weeks now. It's SO irritating. I don't even think it's related to updates, but if it's a universal problem, maybe I'm wrong? I keep meaning to play around in settings and see if my toddler switched something (she's contantly stealing my devices lol) but it was always quicker just to sign on and do what I need to do. mama25, here's the link: http://www.chow.com/recipes/10712-braised-red-cabbage-with-bacon

Morning everyone Maize, we live an hour from town so our extracurriculars are severely limited. Plus, since 99% of them are geared toward schooled children, they often happen in the evenings and by the time we get home, it's late. My kids are all in bed around 7pm. I'm not willing to have them awake till 830 at night on a weekly+ basis. And honestly, I like it that way. Our small town options are also limited and it's frustrating because we won't even know what the community center will offer until August 24th, which seems very late. How do working parents handle those unknowns when they're trying to line up childcare? Soror, I'm pretty sure it was you that recommended I look for braised cabbage recipes. I found one that included bacon and made it yesterday for dinner. OMGosh! I'm in cabbage heaven! It was awesome! I even had a big bowl of leftovers for breakfast. So thank you :) arliemama, how do you make a family nature journal work? I'm interested. I've actually scheduled in a weekly nature walk on Monday mornings so they may actually happen (in the past I've though 'oh, yeah, we should do that on Sunday afternoons' or something like that and of course it rarely happened). I want to eventually evolve in nature journaling so I'm curious how that works in your family of young children. Also: we used the CLE Calendar booklets last year for all three older children and it was a big hit! I'm starting to really like CLE stuff even though I'm solidly secular by nature. mama25 we've completed WWE1 and 2 and I bought both level 3 and CAP W&R Fable this year. After looking through both and knowing I was definitely ready for a change and I thought at least one of my kids were as well, I decided to go with Fable this year. I'm keeping WWE 3 in case Fable doesn't work out for anyone this year (I'm REALLY hoping not to do TWO separate writing programs though!) or because I suspect we'll come back to WWE 3. I feel like it's a pretty solid program - although, really, what do I know lol?! - but it seemed like level 3 was a bigger jump than my struggling readers and pencil phobic kids were ready for. And while I love routine and structure, after two years of the same types of exercises, it was time for a change. So, today, for me, there's very little in the way of school accountability for me to accomplish. I would like to get at least 2 pages of dsd8's math pages done. I would LOVE to spend more time looking at REWARDS and figuring out how it will work into our day this fall. I'll check my list of prep work to do, I'm sure there are a few odds and ends I could tick off my list. Other than that, I thik I'll feeze some more cabbage, maybe some broccoli and I have one pooooooooor tomato plant that is just SO LADEN with tomatoes it's flopped it's cage over (despite being stakes with a length of metal rebar!) so I'll try and fix the poor little thing up a little. I'm also hoping the chickens have laid a few more eggs so I can mix up a triple batch of zucchini cakes for the freezer, but it's been a little slim lately. Especially cause one keeps on getting out and hiding her eggs in the garden somewhere . . . Anyhow, that's a novel! Sorry! Have a fantastic day all!

My kids are the kids practicing 10-20 minutes a day. Mind you, they only just started last September too, so take this with a grain of salt. I've been completely hands off in this area - I teach them so much, I'm happy to let someone else take the reins. I provide the time, they do what they will with it. I admit, I have mixed feelings about this and I know they would improve a lot more if I supervised practice, but frankly, I just don't care enough about their progress. My kids enjoy piano, they're making slow but steady progress. We don't do grades, examinations, they don't do theory (yet, I'm assuming), and they practice what they want each week (except for a few weeks leading up to a recital). I'm content with that. I think you get out what you put in and if you want to practice 10-20 minuts a day, you're not going to have a just-turned-seven-year old playing at the level your daughter is (possibly?) playing at. That's a decision you'll need to make as a family :)

Wow! So many new faces! Must be the beginning of a new year ;) Dds8's REWARDS Intermediate FINALLY arrived today! I'm telling you, living an hour from the nearest spec of FedEx delivery is a PITA. I was playing phone tag with the delivery guy all week but DH was finally able to get a hold of him while he was in town today and they managed to meet up. Darn thing was more expensive than planned with taxes and duties at the border too, so it had better be worth it! I'm eagerly reading it with wine and scotch mints tonight (gad. now that I've written that down I see how odd of a combination that is lol!) You guys all make me feel lazy. 1/2 of my kids are camping with with their grandparents (supposed to be gone a week, now on to day 11!!). That leaves the 2 year old master of chaos and the dramatic nearly-nine year old. We've done math about 3-4 times in the past week, which I count as a win. Only 6 1/4 of a page left (see what did there? It's a FRACTIONS chapter LOL!). When we counted them up she was like, "Yay! That means I"m done math for the rest of the summer!" Lol. I didn't have the heart to tell her that regular school starts back up in just a few weeks :) I file the kids papers for the year and now I'm trying to decide if I should file the pages from the REWARDS book. I'm tempted (cause I love it being all neatly organized) but I think I'd better see what her learning pace will be first. I suspect some kind of (mild?) learning disability with this child but whatever it is, it's not straight forward, so I know I should wait. Have a great evening every one! I'll probably spend more time at my desk tomorrow (rather than the kitchen trying desperately to keep up the zucchini, cabbage, broccoli and tomatoes!) so I'll check in again soon :)

My kids have an hour of screen time every day at 5 oclock, if they want it. It can be games, youtube, netflix, DVDs. i've been toying with the idea of crafty how-to youtube videos for quiet time. My dsd8 would love to watch youtube videos about how to make this or that item on her loom band. . . Also, during quiet time they're allowed to listen to their play lists of music or audio books - all of which are uploaded by me. Any violation (such as movies) of screens during quiet time would result in NO SCREENS for a week. So far, so good. the five oclock time began when I had a houseful of young(er) kids and it was dinner and the baby was crying and I was ready to join her. Put on a movie and I could juggle the baby and dinner prep - add in a few preschoolers and I was quickly overwhelmed. It's stuck. The two eldest would watch TV all day if I let them, always would have, even when they were very small. My younger two only choose to use screens about half the time - they prefer the sand box or the water table :)

My older two (nearly 9 and 8) do things like listen to SOTW on CD to prepare themselves for history, listen to Ecoutez Parlez French, ETC phonics pages, RAZ kids online, math drill (we've gone back and forth between straight-up drill pages and flashy math apps), printing or cursive copywork, and they've recently started to do some of their math on their own too. CLE my ds mostly does the review on his own (after we've gone over it during our one-to-one time). My dsd is in math mammoth and I've started to have her complete a few questions in each section on her own (we'll complete 2/3 or until I'm pretty sure she gets it, then move on to the next section. She then completes that 1/3 in each section on her own. We call it "homework"). This year I plan on introducing Song School Latin and I expect it to be fairly straight forward for them so I think they'll be able to do some or all of the worksheets on their own. Also for some of the history novels recommended in SOTW AG, I'll get audiobooks and they can listen to those during their independent work as well.

Well, here we are in mid-August and after a week, the boys are still camping and fishing with the grandparents! This summer we were going to do nature study, photography and kidblog, and first nations studies and a light unit in math each and read every day. Oh and dsd8 was going to master her multiplication facts to make her division chapter a cinch :P I haven't had more than a 3-4 stretch with all three older kids home at a time!! We did ONE photography lesson. That's it! My dsd8 is about 1/2 through her fractions chapter in Math Mammoth lol. At least all of them have been picking up fun books to read randomly throughout the day. Given that I have two older struggling readers, that's a HUGE bonus for me - they still like to read for fun!! If I'm lucky, my MIL has been doing math with ds8 but I'm not holding my breath - camping is way more fun! It's awesome that they've had such an action-packed summer, I'm just sad we don't get to do some of these fun extras. And some of the things I'd planned would sort of pave the way to make things easier the rest of the year. . . oh well. Homeschoolers are nothing if not flexible and adaptable, right? I'll figure it out.

Just a bit of planning today. Although I just got a text saying the boys and my ILs will be home today . But the text was not clear at all so I'm not sure lol. Also, dsd is off for her first riding lesson today (with a fantastic teenage girl down the road). Did some tomato canning yesterday, may make jam today. I have lots of frozen fruit in the freezer and I want more space for precooked snacks. Also must do something withe the giant heads of broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage in the garden before they die off or get eaten alive. Wish I had mozzarella, almost all the recipes I've looked at include mozza. Will substitue cheddar and hope for the best!

I'm working through SWB world history books. Just finished her Story of Science but don't know that I'll tackle more than one or two of the books at this time. I'm playing with the idea of going through the first half of wheelock's again with the Latinstudy email list if one starts up in the next 2-3 months. Once my days are more structured and I'm spending less time outside I'll probably get back into my art journal a little more - as it is I only make time for the most basic of basics. Over the summer I've been trying to read through Time Magazine's top 100 YA books. It's been tons of fun and there are some greally great books I haven't yet read (which surprised me). But once the summer's done I'll probably go back to more "serious" reading from my own personal To Read list. I'd still like to get to Napoleon's Buttons and The Disappearing Spoon! I'll order them through the library to hold me to it.

Yup, I split up the room sharers as well. We have a playroom, so they take turns using that but in a pinch they've also had quiet time in the family closet or even on the stair well (that's actually a treat in our house lol! They play car accident with trucks and two trucks and emergency vehicles :) ) My 2yo seems to be dropping her naps :( But she stills stays on her bed - mostly cause it's really high and doubles as our guest bed lol. But I know she can get down if she wants, it just hasn't occured to her to do it. Yet. So she still stays in her room and plays with her dollies and books and sings and occasionally yells for me for two hours. I don't intend on dropping it although I may need to start child proofing her closet if she starts getting into it. This school year I'm going to introduce a room time for her 30 minutes while we get a few things done during our school day. I have five bins of toys (1 for each day of the week) that she'll only use during this time. I'm also making her a room time CD as someone mentioned upthread. I had originally intended on reading to her and creating almost like a memory work CD for two-year olds by saying her name and her age and a few other things but I had enough really fantastic toddler songs I wanted to share with her that I ended up just using them. I'm hoping it will cue her to wait until the 31 1/2 minutes are up before she comes out - over time. Finally, I plan on making her a room-time album. Just a cheap, dollar store photo album full of pictures of her family members, including grandparents, aunts and cousins, as well pets and other favorite things from her life (we live on a ranch so this includes the tractor, the donkeys, the sheep, the cows, our vehicles, the dirt bikes, and her stroller :P). If I need to fill more space, maybe some of her favorite toys and clothing items. My older kids LOVED looking at an album I made for them when they were small. Two year olds are tricky! They're so able, yet their conscience - their governor - is almost non-existant lol. You cross your fingers for me, I'll cross my fingers for you :D

haha critter, that's exactly what my kids have been doing! And our creek is full of baby trout and so-on and there's one pool below the culvert with swarms of them. They'll catch a whole cup full of grasshoppers (gag!) and take them down there and throw them in. The fish literally swarm after them, it's pretty exciting. my oldest son is a fishing maniac and he always goes fishing with a jar ful of grasshoppers as bait. We've got tons this year - a bit more than normal, but we always seem to get quite a few. I do have to say that the babies are quite adorable. I just wish we had better facilities. We're making do right now, but right now they're new and small and cute and exciting. I just know who's going to be doing all the extra work once the novelty dies down, and with make-do facilities, it's more work than it should be. I'm crossing my fingers that my partner gets things going. There are big plans, but I've learned that big plans don't necessarily mean big anything real, iykwim. Ducks are messy as all heck, but they ARE adorable. My mom kept ducks when I was small and I remember really liking them, even when they were bigger. But I also remember the work. And I have enough of that already lol! I want time to read, darn it!