I mean the actual translations, not retellings? I was reading on the Classical Conversations website about why they do their history cycle differently than WTM and one of the reasons was to save the more difficult ancient lit. for senior year. And it seems like I remember SWB saying something about that issue in WTM. So I guess I don't know what to do. We've followed the cycle so far and we're ready to do ancients with everyone (I have 5 kids) next year. My oldest will be in 9th. But I just cannot see her reading most of this stuff with any real comprehension. She reads voraciously, and loves it, but so far she's just read a few of the "regular" classics. We even tried dickens this year and it didn't go too well, so I'm a little concerned. I don't want to shortchange her chances of understanding an appreciating this stuff by requiring it too early, but I don't know what other choices I have other than totally redoing our cycle somehow. What has been your experience? I need real life stories here:D Thanks, Jen

How many bedrooms do you need? What's your price range? I know of a couple of places.

OK, so I am seeing this correctly? The whole thing is totally free and it's high quality? Why are there not workbooks for earth science and life science? And no teacher's manual either. Are they still working on these? I've never even seen these resources before. I'm getting so excited...

I don't have a blog. I don't have a signature line or a little picture beside my name. I don't have that many posts even thought I've been around for years. No one has ever accused me of being a troll and all my questions have been answered very politely and thoughtfully. I do think twice about posting info about my kids. I don't want them reading it someday and feeling bad. Jen

Ultra pasteurization will make the milk smell and taste weird. Like, I can't stand it! A lot of organic milk and cream is ultra pas. Which is so sad. I always check the label carefully. I'd rather buy conventional regular pas.

Thanks for your insights/experience. I love the idea of the accountability and interaction. Especially for Latin and writing and debate. It such a hard decision. It's a lot of money. I guess I also feel unsure about leaving the WTM history rotation. We're right on schedule with year 4, if we did CC we'd be basically redoing it next year... I'm not enjoying trying to figure this all out right now. High school planning:tongue_smilie:

Sort of along the same lines, I've been looking at CC for my 9th grader next year. But my main hang up is Apologia. I don't want young earth creationism for science. So could we just do our own science and skip theirs, or would this be a big issue through the whole program? I mean would it mess up doing CC? I feel really caught.

3rd year using it. I love it!

Mine get to take their finished workbook out back and burn it. They love this so much! :lol: They also get 30 min extra computer time. This is a big deal around here. :001_smile: Jen

Well, that is a great idea. I hadn't thought to ask if I could observe someone before I made the decision. I want to work for myself. And I'd like to appeal to wide variety of moms. I did homebirth, but I'm not against hospital birth, etc. I want to be able to educate women on all the potential situations, meds, interventions and all. My heart is to be able to reach out to women who might not have a lot of support or resources on their own. Thanks for the feedback

I am trying to decide whether I should choose a specific method or just go with the general icea certification. I didn't really go to any classes myself when I was pregnant, but I read through all the different approaches and had 5 births at home. So I feel competent in the experience dept.:D But I'm just not sure which direction to go as far as teaching/cert. I also have general questions about how you structure your classes, advertise, etc. but that's further down the road, I realize:D Jen

I'm thinking about doing this and I have some questions:001_smile: Jen

30 min/day reading, math, handwriting read-aloud 20 min/day drawing or something artsy 30 min/day when I remember When my olders where little we did so much more. It makes me sad actually. We used to read for hours every day. We did geography and science and history. My little guys are getting the short end of the stick for sure.:tongue_smilie:

Times tales!

Thanks for the replies, everyone. It seems l like most of you have kids that will sleep in later to compensate for later bedtimes. That is so not the case here. 7:30 is the absolute latest they will sleep in, usually 6:30-7 is more like it. So I'm not sure what to do at this point. I'd love for them to sleep in more, but it just isn't happening. I do agree about not liking bedtime battles, which is why I currently let the little guys stay up as late as the older ones. Well, thanks anyway. Jen

A nice loud fan is what works for me. White noise machines don't work nearly as well.

I would love to have my 5 and 7 yo in bed by 8:00 (or earlier)but I have 3 older kids still up and around until 9 at least. The littles bedroom is right off the hallway, there is no way to put them to bed in any meaningful way. I mean, they could be in their room, but they wouldn't be sleeping with the house so awake still. Does anyone have any good ideas for dealing with this? It bothers me because I think they could use more sleep. Jen

Mexican Lentils and rice 3/4 c lentils 1/2 c brown rice 1/4 c dried onion 2 t cumin 1 t basil 1 t oregano 1 t garlic 1 t salt 3 c. broth (no salt) cover and cook 2ish hours at 300 in oven top with nacho toppings: cheese, olives, avocado, salsa etc. serve with corn chips we eat this every week.

_ This is it! Please try it. 10 mg of the B6. I was able to take it just at night for one of my pregnancies. The other required 2x/day. And make sure you get the right unisom. It has to have the active ingredient DOXYLAMINE.

That's all!

My 10yo dd and 12 yo ds both have these. My dd actually does a little better on care because she is better at remembering things. We made the kids wait for pets until around 9-10. They are easy to care for. They do eat crickets which gross me out and have to be kept in a separate tank and bought weekly or they die. And you have to get them out of the tank and give them to the gecko and then get them back out if they aren't eaten. So if my kids couldn't do this on their own, it would be a deal breaker because I would never do it. They do fine with being handled. I wouldn't say they "like" it. But they are slow moving in comparison with many other lizards which helps make them easier to get out of the cage and keep track of. But you still do have to be really careful with their tails etc. Overall we've been happy them for fairly low maintenance pets, but I don't know that it would have worked at 7 unless I was willing to be a lot more involved. but that's just me. I don't like caring for animals. So your situation might work out better in that regard. ask if you have any more questions Jen

The kids and I decided to spend the morning writing letters and drawing pictures to send to a family that is living in Africa starting orphan homes. We were thinking that it is always nice to hear from people "back home" when you are so far away during the holidays.

4 happy homebirths here.

definitely keep them all in the same time period. I have 5 children and this is what we do. I just get appropriate level readers for each of them. I couldn't imagine doing it any other way. Some of them happen to hit the WTM 4 yr schedule exactly this way, some of them are a year or two off. I don't see that it matters at all as long as the material is being covered a couple of times at different levels during their 12 years. Welcome to homeschooling!

I have 5 kids about the same ages as yours. My youngest is 5 and my oldest is almost 14. I work all day long. We start at 8:30 and I am actively schooling/teaching/directing until 3:30-4:00. Then, I am going over things with my oldest that she needs help on. We do read alouds and art/coloring in the evening. I, too, never thought this would be a full time job. I imagined everything being so easy-peasy. It's not. It's a huge amount of work to do a quality job for this many children. I don't see any way around it. So I'm just giving myself to it. I cheer myself up by getting some alone/fun time when I can. Reading lots of good books. Taking breaks for all of us to do something fun or different once in a while. Remembering why I am doing this. Looking forward to the results of a job well done someday. Hang in there jen