Yes. We haven't done a substitution but we have scaled back gifting for the past 2 years due to finances. We'd just honestly rather spend what we have on our kids. When we add in the adults in our family, parents, inlaws, grandparents, our own brothers & sisters, there just isn't enough & it would seriously limit what we could do for our children. It was hard to say, "we're not going to buy you presents & don't buy any for us, let's just focus on the kids" because we were the only ones in the family saying that. And it has been awkward when they open awesome, expensive gifts from others & nothing really from us, in front of everyone. But the gifting & financial pressure is not what Christmas is supposed to be about. Instead we did small things, I made a huge basket of cookies, candies, etc for my inlaws. I made a photo calendar for my parents, our brothers/sisters do a silly gift exchange instead & we opted out. We still do our children's gift exchange with their cousins but we do not spend a lot of money on that.

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I started Math U See Primer with my 3 1/2 year old today & she could do it & it was fun :) I actually bought it for my first grader because I didn't know if she'd be ready for Alpha. Until now my 3 yo and I have been working on a shape book and colors book that I bought at Dollar Tree, and with magnetic numbers 1-5 & lots of counting. We've just been doing it for fun & when she wants to (not every day or even most days). Yesterday she counted 12 barrettes in a pack I was buying at the store, yay! Usually she'll count 1, 2, 3, 19 :)

My daughter is 8 1/2 and just started 2nd grade. We held back from enrolling her in preschool when it was "time", because she wasn't ready, emotionally. She will be almost 9 1/2 when she starts 3rd grade next year. (But academically, things just "click", she's never had any issues and last year she scored very highly on her 1st grade standardized test.)

When I thought about this new year including all 4 of my children & all of the goals that we had for them, I made a detailed schedule to prove to myself that yes, it was possible to include every single subject that I wanted & that yes, I could meet with each child individually, every day for things like Math, Spelling, Writing, etc. But to actually follow the schedule now, with our crazy life, sets us up failure every day that we don't "start" at 8:00, every day that we don't "do" History, etc. So last week, I decided to switch to an every other day plan for Science/Social Studies, Grammar/Vocabulary, Art/Music. I also decided that we will start when we are ready. Every day is not the same here. M-F are not one way, with Saturday & Sunday "weekends". My husband's schedule makes Monday & Tuesday his weekend, when we'd be trying to get our week going. Saturday and Sunday were our weekends, etc. So anyway, starting when we are "ready" may be a different time every day but we are ready & it has been more positive. I have one who is a very motivated self starter (I can hear her emptying the dishwasher when I'm still in bed!) so some of her work she starts "independently" then she can "play" on the computer (one of the preselected ed. websites). Also since my state only requires an average of 4 hours per day, yet doesn't require me to report it, I stopped counting hours every day past 4 and switched to calling ourselves Year Round. That took the pressure of huge artificial time constraints off and lets us just learn. Its still early, although after so much time pondering these issues & finally making changes, its feeling like what we wanted from homeschooling, time to master material, time to go off on tangents if we want, freedom to stop and google for more information at that very moment that we want & need it (like last week while discussing the "Boston Massacre" my child asked "Who were the people who were killed that day?") and being able to encourage fun in & love of learning, the learning that happens all day long, not just during "school" time.

Our reason for schooling is mastery, we don't move on til, you know, they get it. So I grade right away, that moment that they say they are done, while its still fresh in the brain, if something is wrong I make a note on a post it, or piece of paper. I don't tell them what's wrong, but give them that chance to figure it out.

I also did not want to turn our family room into a school room, for a year we took things out for school, then put them away. I had maps hanging up in our attached garage. But now we've moved & am loving having space for "school" that can also be used for legos, coloring, puzzles, whatever when it isn't school time. I've even put up a school-y calendar area like I used when I taught Kindergarten, something I never thought I'd do!

Ah, I remember blue. That was the coolest. I bleached my dark brown hair, it turned out orangey. Then I bleached it again, better. Then I tried to go back to brown by dying it black. It turned out black with blue tints. Super cool. Good luck :)

yikes!! my "irish" twins are 14 months apart and the hardest parts were that my baby could'nt walk yet when my new baby was born, so I had a baby carrier in one hand, and a big sweet baby in the other :) and Ages 1-2 were just plain hard (but yet so awesome too), but it got much easier after that and while my girls are polar opposites, they are still the best of friends :) I overheard my 8 year old explaining to my 7 year old that if she moves to New York when she grows up, she would miss her very much.

Don't worry so much about your older child who may resist it & miss mom time; my oldest felt that way when she was our only & first homeschooled kid (for about 6 months); but adding our other children to homeschooling has enriched our experiences so much. The "sibling" rivalry thing diminished I think because we all had more time this way (time together, and time with parents) and it was just more fun. On our first day of school this year, both my 2 oldest cheered my 3rd, when they realized that "hey, this is different, now we have our sister too!!" I must add too that I know how difficult it seems to pull a child out of the "middle" of the year (middle meaning, you know, they started, you committed, they are "in" it, not to mention that you had hopes..). I pulled my first out in February one year. Then my second the following Christmas. Trust yourself :) I'm still kicking myself for making my sweet little 1st grader stick it out til christmas, when the crying started the 2nd week of school and never stopped :( we tried to make it work & tried to give the "system" a chance to work.

I LOVE Spelling Power for my older daughter who has passed through 4th, 5th, and is now in 6th grade. But it just wasn't the right thing for us for 1st grade. My first home schooled 1st grader was a "high" achiever when I took her out of public school mid year last year and her little sister, my new 1st grader, is more Math-y than Language Arts-y. It doesn't seem to be the best thing for that grade for us (and I've read that's its more for maybe 3rd grade and up) but it seems to be really clicking now this year for my 2nd grader. I'm going to try to work on word families, sight words, and just lots of reading my new 1st grader... :)

Me Too!!! We are loving Apologia Science's: Zoology 3!! And Writing With Ease for our first time is clicking!! We are also doing God's Gift of Language for Grammar for the first time, which might be just right for my 6th Grader but a little too easy for my 1st & 2nd Graders (although they love the workbooks!!). Other favorites that we discovered last year are Math U See, Spelling Power, Bible Study for All Ages, Time Traveler's History Units, and Wordly Wise (although I don't like the 1st grade book, but we'll just make it work) :)

I learned to read with Sam books and I even saved almost my whole set. They are very old & torn now, but I loved them as a Kindergartner. Then 30 years later, I taught public school Kindergarten and we used a very similar, phonetic format with same main words, etc. (different program, different characters, but same goals). I love the Sam books and am so excited to see they are still being published, I may just order them for my youngest!!

Some days are just bad days & don't truly reflect what they know....

My difficult child got better by home schooling. I relate to your frustration, my oldest is the source of much of ours as well. However she just came out of ps 1 1/2 years ago and she was more miserable then, coming home seeming angry, exhausted & just not a nice person :( While she is still frustrating, she has more opportunities to be kind to her siblings and is sharing more experiences with them now, we also have the time to talk about and deal with situations, although I'd rather not have to.

I failed all of my "glucose tests" with my 4 pregnancies, was handed gestational diabetes literature with each one, etc. Each of mine were born at 36 weeks at or under 6 lbs, but perfectly healthy. I must add that with each I started preterm labor 4 weeks earlier than the one before, 2nd started at 29, 3rd at 25, and last at 21 (maybe it had something to do with that full time public school teaching I was trying to do :) Doctors have to go by the book, but don't forget to listen to yourself and your history.

I'm using WW4 and it is huge also!! I tore all of the pages out, but left the teacher pages in the binding, then cut off the back cover. I slid all of the student reading passages into protective sleeves & photocopied all of the work pages. That way at the end of the year I have all of the passages ready for my next child & just need to photocopy the workpage originals again. It was a lot of work at first but seems to be working fine...

I wasn't too sure about Wordly Wise but still had my daughter complete it last year, her first year of hs. At one point during the year I doubted whether she was retaining the words but after going back and quizzing her on the 1st chapter, I realized she still knew them. Then her standardized test scores came back and on the vocabulary section her score jumped 5 grade levels after that year, so it must've worked for her. Needless to say, we're doing it again :) Good luck in your pursuit.

I believe in the Classical approach. I believe it is my duty to educate my children. But I love and appreciate "unschooling" or the learning that happens on its own. I'm trying to write and define my homeschooling philosophy and am torn because I don't know how to do it, these are two very different ideas. My background is teaching. I taught 10 years in public school although it was not just a job for me, it is what I am. Now I teach my own and am struggling in my philosophy by these two very different ideas. I "plan" from the classical approach, but respect and encourage everything else (which might be unschooling). I love that they are learning but I also know that if I didn't plan anything my kids would still be learning. What is this "style" called and why am I torn in this way?

My goal for us is 8, if we start at 8 we'll get everything "in" in a leisurely way - no rush; and be done early, by 2. But it just doesn't seem natural, so far we are slow to get up & get going but it may be "summer - lag/jet lag" We only started last week after many, many late nights and late mornings ( due to moving ). I love our school schedule, I love our goals, but I love the rhythms of "life" as irregular as they may be, and we roll with them...So this week we went gung-ho after last week being our "first" week. Gung-ho Monday, then suddenly, Tuesday, we spent all day moving, no "school" assignments, then back to "school" on wednesday. My point I guess is, having a goal is good, but I'm also flexible for those days we can't plan...and either way I know that learning is happening...

My 3 1/2 year old really likes our new calendar (from dollar tree) & wants to do more with that. I'm thinking it'll help her recognize numbers. She likes sesame street.com and has an older sibling sit with her for help. She does bible story & apologia science with us (zoology 3). Then goes off to "do her thing" (play, etc). I'm starting handwriting without tears with her and she does vocabulary with my 1st grader (wordly wise) although I don't like the 1st grade version but we'll just deal with it til next year. She loves "workbooks": we're working on a Kumon maze book and a random shape book that I also got from dollar tree. Other things that seem to be working so far are when her older sibling reads to her a book that she picked out from the library, and doing some Math U See with her 1st grader sister (Primer). She also enjoys "journaling" like her sisters. She feels very excited about school by having the same supplies as her sisters altho she can only sit with us for just so long. Having been a former ps kindergarten teacher, i'm thinking about starting "letter of the week" for her, but may instead make a "board" that has letter of the week, shape of the week, word of the week, story of the week, etc - but just kind of busy with my bigger kids just yet to figure that out... :) Best of luck!

Our area age cutoff is July 1 in South East Colorado, but I know some cities in Northern Colorado cutoff sometime in October. So a child with that birthdate would be in 5th Grade here, but 6th there :)

Have your homeschooled kids participated in public school sports? Any advice? Mine began junior high girls volleyball this week, so far with mixed results...

I went to a Depeche Mode concert with 3 friends when I was about 15. We had a chaperone -a limo driver - but once we got out of the car we were on our own, completely, getting in, getting out, and enjoying the concert - I knew there were drugs ( i could smell them) but it didn't affect us or the great time we had. It was a lot of fun and we got home safely, but would I send my daughter when she is 15?? NO.

4 kids, 0 epidurals, no drugs during or after (except tylenol) but such awful cramping after the 4th I asked for meds...