Biggest joy...no more school lunchboxes. ;) No more homework! Challenges...my own expectations, you know, expecting the perfect homeschooled child, the one who plays 3 musical instruments, knows 5 languages by the age of 8, is always neat, tidy, obedient, respectful, gets up before 6am to start school, never complains, runs to his/her school books with gleeful cries...this one has never lived in my house, and is never going to! Actually my biggest joy is my friendship and close relationship with my now adult daughters.

Our school year normally starts mid to late January, then a week off at easter, another in July (ds birthday week) another in September (dds birthdays) and we stop in December at some point! It depends on the weather how long we take for the summer break. If it is a rainy Jan we may go back to school and have an extra summer holiday in February when the weather is usually more settled and everyone else is in school! Note...we are in the southern hemisphere!

We did 'school' in 5 hours a day (or less) with the older ones through High school but this did not include art (serious artist dd) dance (serious ballet dancer dd) music (serious musician dd) or sports/activites etc. It was LA maths, science and Latin/foreign language plus History/Geog/Social studies on some days depending on music/dance/art lessons and homeschool sports sessions. They also needed extra time to practice and this was not counted as school either. We do not need to count hours/credits where we live so I never bothered counting fun things as 'school'. ;) So yes, for the basics, and she can do her 'fun' things during the day (if science is her fun thing then thats what she does without you)

I just spent almost the entire homeschool budget on a really really good microscope! In my defense I have next years maths (brought secondhand) and as I have graduated 2 already I do have most of what I need next year. Not all I would LIKE of course but thats another matter. :D And dh said if we were going to get one then for goodness sake get a good one. So I did... So did I do the right thing? Willow.

Get a female from a known hunter line (ask at a farm) most domestic moggies don't cut it! We have 1 ratter cat and 2 useless bundles of fluff. (but very dear bundles of fluff! ;))

We are in the middle of our school year here and ds is in 7th grade, going into 8th in Jan 2010....just to put the record straight before we start! ;) We have just brought Grammar and Practice Voyage, with a view to going into Magic lens 1...the whole caboodle... in January. We sit on the sofa and read the grammar book. We talk, ds gives me long lectures about the types of boats in the pictures! We read as much as we want. We memorize anything we think we need to. We took a long rabbit trail (down to the bottom of the ocean) via the word 'bioluminescence' We have only had the materials a couple of weeks however. We plan to start Practice Voyage as soon as we finish Grammar Voyage. I will simply split it up over the remainder of the year. Ds does not seem to need puntuation lessons, he seems to just get it. In January I will start the Magic lens stuff....the whole set, but I have not yet brought it, so cannot comment on that level.

If you do not live in the US and you don't need High School credits or do SAT type tests, how do you record your child's High School achievements?

My early reader (who didn't talk until she was 3....when it became apparent she could also read!) did not excel later. yes, very bright, not gifted, I think, although she went through the school system and was tested as gifted. Middle dd gifted, no question. Different in her way of thinking, at 12 was learning Medieval ballads by heart for fun. Published (not vanity or self published) by 14. Youngest (and my only boy) diagnosed as LD in school is still at almost 13 very small and puberty is not even a blip on the horizon, socially he would make a good 11 and a half year old, is speeding up academically by the day. Is he LD or gifted? Almost exactly year ago, we went back to the beginning in maths (MUS Alpha) we are now almost finished with Zeta, and his favorite thing is solving for the unknown. He did all 6 levels in less than a year and cannot wait for Pre-Algebra to get here. (Note we are in NZ so it is not our summer break, its winter and its cold!) In writing he went from not being able to write (both physically, poor handwriting and mentally) To the best of my knowledge he had never written a sentence independently in his life. He decided to write a story in a national competition (typed it) and came second. Is now, only months after actually starting writing, writing High School level essays, only the research component is shaky. So after all this. I had 1 dc who read well and early and slowed down. I had one who was gifted all through and one who was LD and didn't read until almost 10 and who now reads me out of house and home and for whom I have to keep revising curricula because he races through it and begs for more! I conclude...they do their own thing in their own way and us poor parents just have to hang on and enjoy the ride! Willow.

Thats a good idea, mine might enjoy that!

Well I can tell what we do (we are in NZ, so we don't need to worry about credits either) For General and Physical science I do not require the learning of definitions. I have one who learns them instantly....for a week or two and would then swear she had never seen them before! All we were testing was short term memory. I also do not do the tests...same reason. What we do is this. The dc listen to the MP3 whilst following along in the book. When we get to 'on your own' we discuss the questions and the answers. For the tests we discuss the practice questions in an 'open book' manner...for a definition, we look it up, and maybe one of the dc will paraphrase it for us. We also discuss any evolution/creation conflicts and discuss what we believe about the issue. After all this (normally 2-3 lessons on the practice questions, all done orally) we move onto the next chapter. They enjoy experiments and I do not require a lab book until Biology/Chemistry (we never made it to Physics) Even at this level I do not require it to be kept in good order once they have proven they can actually do it if required, eventually it simply becomes a note book. So we actually do NO written work at General/Physical level, and minimal beyond that. We do no tests. My kids love science and this way they retain heaps....which is after all, what I want. Hope this helps Willow.

It sounds like a lot to me, but then my ds is NOT academically inclined but he is highly artistic and I have to remember to give him clear blocks of time 2-3 hours at a time, to draw. This means I have to stick to the basics...maths, IEW, grammar, and science. Other stuff we do when we get to it. ;)

What fun, thank you. I think my son will enjoy making one of these. Maybe I should buy a second hand one while they are still available! Willow

OK, I know I am showing my age here, but does anyone remember using slide rules at school? And can one still buy them? We used them at High School, but my mother cannot remember what happened to mine. I was no scholar so maybe I tossed it away after finishing school! ;) Willow.

I'm a mix and matcher too. I think we have done best with things we have followed through for several years, but maybe that is because the kids know what to expect and how to do it. Maybe one would need to think through what you mean by a 'quality education'. Obviously this would differ from person to person and would be a great exercise for us parents to try, if we haven't already. I did this years ago when we first began HSing but I think it would be different now, less emphasis on the academic and more on the child. If a quality education leads to a academically, spiritually, emotionally fulfilled adult who has a broad general knowledge, a thirst for learning, the skills to self educate, the ability to express themselves clearly and logically both when speaking and writing and finally a zest for life, then one has clearly succeeded no mater what the educational philosophy. One must also be superparent and please could you let me know the secret when you find it. :tongue_smilie:

Come to the edge, he said. They said: We are afraid. Come to the edge, he said. They came. He pushed them....and they flew. by Guillaume Apollinaire Take your little ones and go fly. Enjoy yourselves. Willow.

Congratulations! :hurray::hurray::hurray:

When this happens (and i have graduated 2 and it happened a lot over the years) we concentrated on one thing only. So for long division we practiced saying 4 hundred and twenty seven divided by 3 will be written out like this. and we would write out the sum correctly (yes one of mine needed to go this slowly sometimes:glare:) That is all we would do. We would write out sums! When we could do this cold we would then say "what do we do first?". We need to know how many times 3 goes into the first number. And we would practice writing out the sum AND then doing the first step. And so on. By the end of a month she could do them cold and never ever forgot how to do them, in fact she enjoyed long division because it was so easy! ;) We never had the same problems with grammar, but i would break it down just the same. Is this singular? is this plural? When that is perfect, move on ('perfect' is being able to do it cold, 3 days in a row) One small step at a time. I find so much curriculum introduces too much too fast....and then does it again next year and the next and the next..... We prefer to do it once and learn to do it properly, of course they need revision and reminders sometimes, but it is quicker this way in the long run I find, for my lot at any rate :001_smile:.

Read "The Calcium Lie" by Robert Thompson and Kathleen Barnes

I love it, and I am so green with envy. :D I think that one room might be bigger than our whole living space, but we are creative with bookshelves, and have about 1500 books. Our whole house is under 900 square feet, but I am not complaining as we live on a beach! This means raised beds for gardening and sand everywhere...

I have a whole bookshelf we use for the 'current' stuff including books, binders of work, workbooks, boxes for stuff like MUS rods etc etc. Then the rest go where they fit! For example the kitchen dresser (we use for books rather than plates ;)) has deep tall shelves so deep tall books go there. I do try to keep reference books together. Cores I only keep together if we are actually using them, but i do put stickers on the spines so i can retrieve them. The kids have their own bookshelves for their own books, the older ones are putting them on 2 books deep now. I also have a tall shelf by the sofa, this has all the eyewitness guides and similar on it so kids can grab without getting up! So, 1 bookshelf for current stuff, and the rest where it fits!

I don't have twins but my friend does. She put her kids in very different maths programmes so they could not compare. One did Singapore and the other MUS. As Mus has such a different scope and sequence it helped with the teasing about one being quicker at grasping maths than the other. Twice the cost though.....

As my youngest is now 12 I have been weeding out a lot of the primary age stuff. We also have a small house, 3 small bedrooms, one other room for living, kitchen, eating etc. no garage. But we are creative as to where we have bookshelves. We compromise, I keep the really great stuff...I have adult daughters, who may marry and produce homeschooling grandkids....but I have got rid of a lot of the so-so stuff. I have kept all the historical fiction for example, but sold famous five type books. I can always get them from second hand shops if I do get grandkids!

I am planning a trip to the Uk for 6 weeks next Northern Hemisphere summer. I am taking Maths to do on rainy days (this IS the UK ;)) and we are planning to visit castles, museums, Yorvik, Whitby (replica of Captain Cooks ship) etc etc. Thats it, no journaling, no workbooks, just maths. My sister, whith whom we will be staying, owns a second hand and antiquarian bookshop, otherwise I would take holiday reading but as it is, I think we might find enough to read! I think traveling and seeing what is there is great education by itself. I so remember school trips as a child. I dreaded them. A week of writing about what we were going to see. When we saw it, we had to fill in questionnaire sheet all day, stifling any possible enjoyment, and then another 2 weeks of writing about what we had seen! Ugghhhh..... I swore never to do that to my kids!

That is good to hear Laura, well done to both you and Calvin. :) Ds is doing well now, so well that I begin to wonder if far from being 'slow' he is actually quite bright. (Of course there never was a boy like mine, he is the most wonderful, caring, talented child the universe could ever produce, only kids who can touch him are his siblings...:tongue_smilie:) I don't now know if he just needed time to grow, or if school was a place he was unable to learn or if they didn't, as you feel, simply have the time and resources to teach him. Thank God for homeschooling.

Lori!!! That is an amazing list. Thank you so much. Thank you for other suggestions as well....I had heard about the Tomorrow when the war began books...are they too 'scary'? Willow