We're at about 120-150 per kid, but my oldest is getting a nintendo3Ds which was 200$, plus some cheaper things to even out how many packages each kid has

to denisemomof4: I totally relate, I feel so random in that all I know is to not be like my mom, and to do what I 'feel' is right. But being a mom I really need a mom for advice, and I don't have one. I love her so much, but she is so disappointing, even now when she doesn't ask how we are or know how the kids are or what they are interested in. I'm so sorry that you miss your mom. I hope mine can be a grandma to my kids.

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Growing up, no we didn't open anything until Christmas morning (but our gifts were all from our parents & santa plus one from grandparents, we didn't have cousins or aunts and uncles old enough to buy us gifts). My husband's family's tradition is to have a huge Christmas eve where everyone opened everything. So we all got together and our children opened gifts from cousins, grandparents, great grandma that night. Then we came home home, went to bed & opened santa's, other grandparents, and other aunt's gifts on Christmas morning. We aren't doing that this year because we've moved and are celebrating at home for our first time ever in 17 years. My kids buy each other gifts at dollar tree, wrap them, put them under the tree. So tomorrow, we'll have an early dinner, they'll open their sibling gifts, a little something from us, and something from their aunt, my husband's theory is make room for santa... and they would have opened their cousin gifts too except that none of them were sent :) so who knows about that but its not that important. So yes, they will probably each open 6 gifts that are small but full of heart tomorrow.

omg!

every other week we play a trivia game, we go in rounds & I ask questions of each kid from their topics, i make it competitive, but they all win a prize, its so much fun that my 3 year old asks when we'll play again.

thanks everyone!! we're in a city big enough that goodwill will come by & pick up donations, that will make this so much easier!! thanks for your feedback on what & how to sift; Moving is hard, but I actually like it, we are in a bigger city now, more conveniences, less stress & fewer obligations since we don't know anyone yet (is that bad?). Our move is big in that now we are with my husband & he and we won't be alone this Christmas. :)

nope

I agree! I have a wonderful family, but none who really understand homeschooling, our mission, goals, and hopes for our children. It really just seems like if they aren't in public school, then they can't relate so they aren't a source for feedback. This board is my sounding board, support, backup, etc. I love it too!

nope, never. once i accidentally saw something i shouldn't have, and felt awful....

I've always wanted that too, and we are close to celebrating our 19th year so maybe it's time! I love my wedding rings but stopped wearing them after our first was born because I accidentally scratched her face with them! I even tried again and scratched my 3rd baby with them & quit wearing them then. Good luck, I'm eager to hear what you do...

we use new envelopes each month, that way we can write on them & throw them away, they are pretty cheap. (When i first started I used baby jars labelled with what it was for).

I make a breakfast quiche every year and it is awesome, i also make blueberry muffins and have orange juice (because the kids aren't old enough to know how awesome the quiche is, yet), plus they'll just mack on chocolate from their stockings anyway. This year we are making a turkey dinner, turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, bread rolls, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie with icecream..... Lunch will be conveniently overlooked by the crash naps they'll take after eating all their stocking chocolates.

i thought i'd go all in and buy mine mario kart complete with 4 steering wheels, but the steering wheels themselves are $40 each, so we went with cute little lip gloss & makeup kits instead... I'd love to have mario kart or supermario bros. tho :)

The point is that your daughter is uncomfortable and being so young, you need to support her in learning to trust her instincts because they will help her throughout her life.

Our best Christmases are spent at home all day! Opening presents way too early, attempting to pry them out of their packaging, the clean up, the crash naps, then enjoying our presents and eating a good dinner. Why not bring the stockings?? And the presents!!? Its just going to be different & importantly so. We spent christmas in a hotel one year, brought a tree, decorated it with a box of decorations from the store, hung stockings, etc. Can you stay in a hotel with a kitchen, like residence inn or?? If so, you can do whatever baking you want. Those Christmas traditions are about being together & it doesn't matter where that is...

Argh! We are just finishing our 2nd move in 3 months. And while it went really well, it is just so hard. We rented a huge Uhaul truck and trailer to lug our "stuff" (family of 6 stuff) across the state, but it wasn't enough. We went back and filled the trailer again, and again, and we're still not done. What's worse, this move isn't permanent. So I'm on a major sift & purge of our belongings. Some things are really easy to get rid of (donate) knowing someone else can use them. The one thing I have a hard time getting rid of tho is books! I have no idea how we have acquired so many books but we have boxes and boxes of books, and if you've moved you know how heavy those are. Ironically, we are big time library users! So that's not even to mention how hard it is emotionally! My kids have been at each other and they are never like that! It's so crazy and add Christmas on top of that.

I checked 'after hours' and 'in the car', altho its never "only" in the car. We seem to often be going somewhere & I get "educational" dvds for those times almost always. I don't consider brainpop the same tho, we use it and my kids have a designated time on the computer that they use brainpop or something else, or I show a quick video during an American Revolution lesson for example, so I just consider that as enhancing education, those videos are pretty good. We have a daily schedule and dvds aren't a part of it, when I find something cool I save it for the car or later in the day. P.S. My kids watched the entire Liberty Kids series on a road trip to California last year!

I totally get severe allergic life threatening reactions. But I think restrictions should be so much more specific. Why does everything have to be totally banned without first just explaining to the "suspect", hey, one of our students has an allergy to ..." We followed a peanut free public school ban for class snacks, school lunches, etc for 2 years when the school didn't even have a child with a peanut allergy!!!! (but we didn't know that) I was all about following it, checked every little cracker box that I sent. Later I found out that there wasn't currently a single student in the building with a peanut allergy, but, a teacher explained, it would be too hard to change back when they did get a student with a peanut allergy. My child's school also segregated lunch box kids to a different table, citing the peanut allergy, just in case I sent something, but I didn't and being segregated from her friends who bought school lunch, created a big problem for my little girl! Seriously, we were on a tight budget then but made the decision to pay for school lunch every day after that.

Tv is fine, with limits. There are amazing programs that get my kids to think about things they just can't see yet like the bottom of the ocean, and other parts of the world. TV isn't really the problem, its the access I think. My oldest have tvs, not because we decided they should have a tv & then bought them one, they inherited them, and they can only use them to watch dvds. I don't see anything wrong with watching a dvd now and then, I love movies and they can be so educational!! Anyway, we only have actual tv access in our main living room, where anything they want to see, we see & monitor it. But there is 'tv time', no unlimited access. Here, we are the parents, any dvds our kids have, we bought, or rented, so we know exactly what they are watching and when. We have allowed our kids to watch Disney channel and Nick shows that we've had to since nix. But, I don't see any problem with a kid having a tv in their room that isn't hooked up to cable, if they know when they can use it.

I get it, when we work on something, if they get it, we just move on. If the page says 'correct and rewrite each sentence' then really we just need to correct it, rewriting it would slow us down. If my kids get a lesson, we're done. Lessons are for teaching and learning. Some take longer, some don't. I can't say a Math lesson starts on a Monday and ends on a Friday. A lesson might start on a Tuesday and she gets it and we move on by Thursday. I don't know, I just keep seeing that the 'gains' they are making are so much more than if/when they were in school, (just based on my own teaching in ps experience and having my kids in ps through 4th) Even if we don't do everything every day, they get so much out of what we do when we do it. My oldest, who isn't math=y, completed Math U See's Beta, Gamma, and Delta in 1 year. My 2 oldests completed a whole level of Spelling in 3 months. The leaps they continue to make constantly amaze me.

because I know I did what's right but still, ug. My 11 year old's friend's mom asked if she could go see Breaking Dawn with them tonight. How do you say 'omg, no' gracefully?! I said 'we're going to wait til it comes out on dvd' (so we can mute and skip the scenes that need to be). I don't feel bad. My daughter doesn't either, she already knew she couldn't see it in the theater. And she also had something else to do to so really didn't think too much about it. I know I made the right decision but I still fight this image of being overprotective. I'm not, but I am protective, I'm raising 4 girls. But when you take your kids out of public school, raise them 'differently', and then don't let them see this new hit movie, well, you know... Just need some support from the hs world..

We're doing pre-preschool with my 3 year old, we include her with Bible & Apologia Science (early in the day) & sometimes history (altho that is late in the day so she's not always interested). But if she's not into it, she'll say, 'Ok I'm all done now' and that is fine, she is 3. She loves her Handwriting Without Tears stuff, Math U See (Primer) like her sisters and a variety of color/shape/math/letter workbooks from Dollar Tree. I have read many many times the advice, teach your littlest first & it works. We do 'calendar' time together with my 3, 7, 8 yr olds then when I give her my first 1 on 1 time while the older kids start "independent work" that satisfies her & she loves it.

Sometimes little writers get hung up on the spelling and don't get their ideas down. When I taught, writing time was for ideas, hopefully kids spelled correctly, but if they said they didn't know how to spell a word, I almost always said, "write the sounds that you do hear" and go on.

I'd highly recommend Math U See, highly!! Even if you watch the videos, skip ahead & just do practice pages as needed. I have learned so much guiding my kids through it. Math U See explains everything and sequences everything so that you see the connections. Things are not taught as separate topics, they are taught as one giant continuous topic. When I took our daughter out of 4th grade, we began with Beta - place value, decimal street. She has worked so hard to get to Epsilon now in 6th, but I know that understanding is so much more important that any superficial age requirement because while we hope that she is ready for high school math in just a few years, the most important thing is that we prepare her for the whole rest of her life.