While I have multiple kids, they're far too spread out in age (and athletic ability) to really combine them. :P Last year, we did a combination of things: swimming at the Y periodically, participation in a low-key homeschool soccer league, and ice skating lessons. I'm making dd do C25K this summer and will require her to keep up running throughout the year. She'll probably do soccer & ice skating again, and I think we'll take November & December to do some nutrition/healthy lifestyle stuff. We may use GS badges/interest projects as a guideline for some of it, too.

I pass on the right. Heck, I pass on the right even when it's a 3-lane interstate and I was in the middle lane, if I can't get over into the left lane. There's no 'passing lane' concept in my head, left is fast, right is slow, and however many are in the middle are a continuum. In theory, I learned to drive in rural NW Georgia, but I moved to Atlanta when I was almost 18, so really I think I'm just an Atlanta driver. We're a little obnoxious and I can always spot a fellow Atlantan when I'm driving out of town. :D

I haven't been blogging much lately (spring fever!), but mine is linked in my sig. SmrtMama has a good one, too: SmrtLernins, though she's been infected with my spring fever. Or I've been infected with hers. Lol.

Whenever your kid is doing a class that might need to be listed on his/her hs transcript if you include a section for classes taken before high school. It's probably more CYA than most need, but I'd much rather develop course descriptions & a transcript that I don't end up needing than try to think back five, six, or seven years when the time comes.

I am letting dd (11 this summer) watch Forrest Gump with me this summer. It has a lot of language but I decided that she's now old enough that the panorama of history it presents outweighs the negatives. YMMV... I know last year I didn't think she was quite ready! Not a movie, but selected Quantum Leap episodes are also great for modern history.

Me too! My kids think it's hilarious how much I love that book.

iPad for dd. I have great plans if we can swing the cost & she can prove herself responsible.

Oh, sorry, The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling Teens. It does have some conservative Christian content, for those of you who care either way about such things; either way, the academic-related content of the book was one of the best that I've read.

I would choose math. Science facts can be crammed, tbh, but if you don't get the mathematical processes and understanding down, you're hampered both in further math courses AND in upper-level science.

The Debra Bell book has a section on planning middle school/junior high that I found really helpful. Overall, I really like that book, as well as another mentioned above, Setting the Records Straight.

We used it alongside SOTW 3 & 4 in 3rd & 4th grades, along with an Am History encyclopedia. We'll probably use the full Zinn next time around.

I don't have curriculum planned all the way out. I do have lists of possibilities. I also know where I want the kids to be before they graduate, and I work backwards from that each year.

Estimation is always 'behind' her other math scores. I still remember the wasted half a year we spent on "ways to estimate" when I was in fifth grade, so I tend not to do anything with it. I probably should at some point.

Me too. I want metric more than anything. I write dates in d/m/y format if they're for myself, but I usually do it like: 16.5.2011 if I'm just using numerals, and 5/16/2011 if it's on a check or whatever. So the '.' versus '/' is my code to myself as to which I'm writing first.

Mine are too far apart to combine and have them each at the appropriate level. My oldest has very different needs going into both science & social science than my middle guy, so ack, yeah, I have to have them separated AND studying different topics. Simplifying... our big thing is dropping back on some of our outside-the-house activities. Dd isn't doing Master's Academy next year, and the only other during the day activities/classes that they are registered for are music/band on Friday afternoons. I'm sure we'll have late afternoon/evening stuff, but nothing else during the day, hooray!

*shiver* I'm glad I'm not the only one, though. I try to put it out of my mind... in the summer of 2000, I had a very vivid dream about a plane crashing in a field. I was watching from a distance. It was very disturbing, and in a place I had never seen. A year later, on September 11, I'm watching the news and they cut to PA, about Flight 93. There was that landscape. I've never quite gotten over that horror-struck feeling at that moment.

Dd is 10. She's taking Counting/Probability through the online course right now. My advice would be to work through algebra at his pace; the Counting/Probability book is the shortest of all the intro-level books (and it's also relatively high interest for dd), so it's been a good first online course for math for her. It moves at the rate of a chapter a week, so some weeks she has more work to do than others. She really enjoys the class component but again, I'm glad it was C/P and not algebra. We'll see how she does with geometry in the autumn. (And no, I have no idea what to do with this child for math when she hits high school. Sigh. She's 2E and no way she'll be ready for college early emotionally or in any other way but possibly intellectually. Agh!)

Y'all are adorable, non-academically speaking too. ;)

I would look in the north Cobb area, both the eastern & western sides. We have a Whole Foods (opening a second one), some independent health food stores, and a Trader Joe's all more on the eastern side. Depending on how many bedrooms you want, there are some 4 & 5 bedroom houses for under $200,000 and some even cheaper up in Acworth right now. (Can you tell we're house hunting? LOL) The best advice I can give is to try to be relatively close to 75 or 575--it's the time getting to and from the highway that can really add to travel/commute time.

There is a ton of local support for homeschooling. Lots of different groups offering classes, homeschool band, art classes, etc. The homeschool law is pretty easy, though it looks complicated: Declaration of Intent once a year, and "attendance reports" monthly. That's all you turn in. We're required to do standardized testing every three years + write an annual report, but those are not required to be shown to anyone. What type of area are you looking for? Is it important to you to be close to Atlanta? Health food stores? Certain types of activities? I live in east Cobb and like the area. Kennesaw is a 10-15 minute drive, plus it'd be reverse commute. Several of my friends live in Kennesaw & Acworth and love those areas too. Woodstock is an easy drive up 75/575 from any of those. Actually, I'm putting my house on the market any day now... LOL.

Simply? They're the best math textbooks I've seen. Dd really wanted to use Fred for algebra, so we did that, but Fred, as you know, isn't big on standard algorithms. And while it would work for another kid... this is my kid that just loves math so very much. Fred literally was not *enough* for her. AoPS finally is making her THINK. She's basically bulldozed her way through math, just grasping it, and oh, finally, finally she's having to stop and think and make new connections in her mind. Frankly, I wish we'd never wasted any time w/ Fred, but at least she enjoyed it.

I think time isn't actually linear, but our minds can only comprehend it by thinking of it as a linear things. So precognition seems entirely valid, and some people are more willing to accept the weird feeling that briefly considering time as non-linear causes. I get precognitive feelings and dreams a lot. It does freak me out sometimes but I've come to accept and welcome them.

Yep! Dd slept 45-60 minutes later for the last two-three official weeks of school. I also purposely plan most subjects to be 32-34 weeks (instead of 36), so by the end of the year she was just doing math, some writing, ITBS prep, and work for her online class.

Yep, that's the one! I always remember the astronaut on the cover. :)

Art of Problem Solving Ellen McHenry--different program, obvs, but we love her stuff Teaching Co DVDs music appreciation using The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music History art appreciation using Art and the Venezia biographies onlineg3 for a class or two Duke TIP materials