It's a good question and I suspect the answer is yes. What about all the homeschool groups? If this isn't repealed, it probably won't be long before it's expanded.

Lynn, thank you for this lovely encouragement :)

Thank you for all these wonderful replies! I so appreciate it. We do have a savings plan for college so we will have some funds to contribute, but you know how it is when you're single income, and we live in an expensive area. I paid for my own college education and graduated with debt that I'm still paying off so I would like to avoid that as much as possible for the kids, but realistically they will likely need some loans.

I agree. It's very important to me to respond to anything with integrity and I feel that I have done that. We hosted his wife and children last night with grace and without mentioning anything about it and we would continue to be kind. I said what I wanted to say and I don't expect that he will ever apologize, and I'm ok. I also won't forget what has happened here. I do agree that his wife is lonely. I think she is often in the position of having to apologize for his behavior, and that is no fun.

Thank you, that's great information. I absolutely believe in the importance of fostering curiosity and try to do that. I guess it just doesn't feel like enough? I think it's hard coming from a schooled background imagining how we connect the dots between what we do now and all the content knowledge/scores we'd need for merit aid in college admissions. It's ironic - we chose and continued homeschooling for the sake of learning in a natural, fun way very differently from school, and now it's hard to conceive of the idea that that could just . . . work. I was telling my dh about all of this today and he finally said, "Maybe they aren't doing anything crazy to achieve this outcome. Maybe that's just what comes of homeschooling." That thought kind of rocked my perspective. Still, it's a nice touchstone when others can share the steps along the path.

I am so delighted that someone suggested I visit the college board. So encouraging to hear these wonderful success stories! I've been learning a great deal reading these threads, but I must confess that it also feels terribly intimidating. For those of you with kids in and beyond college, I would love it if you would share with me your homeschooling approach and what you felt was most important/helpful/essential in helping your child to achieve admittance and, particularly, significant scholarships? We will need them. I'm also very interested in hearing from those who were preparing for STEM programs, as I know I'm going to have at least one who is seriously into science. Thank you!

Update for those who were interested: my friend, the wife, spoke to my husband in the front yard about it last night. Not sure why she didn't say anything to me when I was out there. She apologized and asked what her husband could do to make it right, and dh responded with acknowledge it/apologize. She then sent me a text late last night apologizing and saying how offensive the post was on multiple levels. She said that in his mind he was being funny and had zero idea why it was offensive. From him, we have heard not a word.

I love hearing these stories! So encouraging! Thanks for sharing :)

Crazy! I was astounded to discover there are 2 million Esperanto speakers. How did I not know this?

No response so far.

I'm not sure why I had never heard of this before, but I was on the blog of the guy who's about learning any language in 3 months and he suggested that if you were learning your first foreign language, you begin with Esperanto, the synthetic Latin-based language. My ears went to full perk as I had never heard of this thing. Apparently, it was created to take the best of the latin-based languages and be very easy to learn, making it then easier to progress to the other languages. Who knew?! Turns out Duolingo has it and I immediately started in. It is indeed very easy to learn, but I'm biased because I've already studied quite a bit of Spanish. My 9yo became interested though and took it up and she is an absolute fiend for it, which is extra curious because I've never been able to get her interested in learning any languages. So there you have it. Esperanto - gateway to the Romance languages ;)

Magnetic is huge for us. I used a 2x3 for the initial years but once I was schooling 2 kids at once, we ran out of room. I can't recall what we have now, but I think it's a 4x4. It's enough. I would't mind it being a little bigger but I didn't want a humongous one.

Strong views are ok. We all have them. To me, the issue isn't making an argument for a controversial issue you believe in. It's making a slanderous argument against people who don't believe the same. And, in this case, making a slanderous argument against a group that wasn't even part of the issue.

It depends. It's a rare day when I'm in my actual pj's all day. If I know we're staying in that day, I'll throw on something comfy and no makeup. If we're going out, I'll do makeup and an easy outfit. We don't wear shoes in the house. I will say I notice that I am more productive on days when I take the time to put myself together.

I'm afraid I won't have a choice about whether to talk to them about it. You see, it all gets terribly more complicated - his wife is a teacher in a public school in another district. Two years ago, she ran for school board in our district as she wanted to better the local school system in time for her daughter who was 2 or 3 at the time. She has been on the school board since. She and I are also pretty good friends. She has always been very respectful of me in terms of homeschooling. I am confident that she either was or will be horrified by his post and will want to talk about it. Which is not to say that she doesn't secretly agree - she probably does. But I know she will think it very poor that he posted it.

Exactly, 8. None of our friends chose homeschooling; obviously, they have different views. It is a very different thing to belittle and insult. I did respond to his post. I took a couple of days to calm down first. I wanted to respond to it in that forum, in addition to privately, because what he said went out to so many others. I felt it was right to offer a rebuttal for them all to read as well. The problem with what he did is that rather than discussing the merits of SB277 using reasoned arguments, he made a straw man of homeschooling and made the argument that the type of people who don't support SB277 are the type of people who homeschool, and the type of people who homeschool are parental failures who raise losers. In my rebuttal, I began by pointing out that my children are well educated, well socialized, and well vaccinated, and that he was in a position to know that better than most. But then I moved on and took it back to what his post was supposed to be about, which is whether or not SB277 is right. I devoted the rest of my post to my thoughts on that issue using actual reasoned arguments and without insulting anyone. You could say that I schooled him :lol:

"One of the greatest things about SB277 passing is that all the "concerned parents," who have an honorary doctorate from Google's college of medicine, will now be homeschooling their children and creating smaller classes for my children to succeed! Plus without any true schooling and socialization, my kids will be leaps and bounds above theirs when it comes time to move into the professional world. It's a win win!" This is a Facebook post written by my next door neighbor a few days ago in reference to the California vaccine bill (SB277) that was just signed into law, the most stringent in the United States. It dictates that no child may attend any school, daycare, preschool, or aftercare program unless they have received each and every required immunization. My neighbor is a friend, or at least we thought so. We have been friends with he and his wife for the last 7 years. Our kids play together and we babysit them. My kids love their whole family. This post was such a slap in the face, not because of his stance on SB277, but because of his insults to homeschoolers, and therefore my kids. He knows how bright and articulate they are, how kind to their children, everything. Yet he posted this on Facebook knowing my husband and I would see it, and perpetuating this to tons of people. A number of people I know personally liked his post. My kids are young enough that they are not on Facebook and we obviously didn't tell them he had written this. They would be devastated, and knowing that is kind of what hurts me the most about this. Where we live, homeschooling is an extremely uncommon choice and we know that, but to see that your friends think this about your children - that your children will grow up to be inferior and unsuccessful, particularly when they constantly tell you how well-mannered your children are, how articulate, etc. - and that they are willing to publicly insult us this way . . . I guess I just wanted to share with people who would understand. It's upsetting, especially on a day when we celebrate freedom.

I haven't been able to find anything I want to do for science next year, and since I'm already planning to orient our LA around history, I got to thinking it might be interesting to do a series of science units that correlate with our history. Has anyone done this? Any resources? My preliminary Googling produced little. We are going to be using Bookshark2/SOTW2 - Middle Ages-ish.

I'm really only looking at it for Reading with History so that's good to hear :) LA is a tricky area for us as well. DD9 is a copious reader with beautiful handwriting but hates to write. TC has been good for her this year. DD6 (almost 7) avoids reading but wouldn't mind writing if she could get past how difficult handwriting is for her. Le sigh.

That's what I meant, but said it backwards :) BatmansWife, how have you enjoyed Bookshark this year?

I downloaded the free unit of CAP W&R last year and taught it to my oldest and we both enjoyed it so I ordered it. Then TC came out and I ended up using that instead. It was perfect. I'll probably get around to CAP next year. I honestly don't think that any type of learner wouldn't benefit from TC. It is thorough, incremental, and holds your hand every step of the way. We are in Section 2 right now and it has been great for helping my very reluctant writer to feel less intimidated and more empowered and excited about writing. I dearly hope 8 will write some more curriculum :)

My oldest did K, mainly because she had already done an academically-focused preschool and she was enrolled in kindergarten for 3 months before we pulled her out. She enjoyed learning and had a lot of thirst. I still wish I would have been more laid back than I was, but it was a good learning experience. Back then, my middle daughter was only 3 but she loved to tag along and listen in on our read-alouds and lessons. I simply allowed that to continue. When she demanded a workbook, I gave her Singapore Early Math and she thought it was lots of fun. As we read books, I taught her phonics and she learned to read very naturally. I pressured myself a lot more with my older daughter. Nowadays, I am much more focused on how to keep that sweet, natural learning that we all enjoy. It's always me who gets in the way of that with my ingrained attitudes about academics and I have to have a lot of talks with myself about what the point of all of this is, after all.

I think I've settled on trying Bookshark next year for history and possibly science. I've been eyeing Sonlight for years because I'm a fan of the literature-based approach but I just could never pull the trigger on it because of the amount I thought I would have to modify. In past years (pre-Bookshark), I had read that Sonlight science wasn't very rigorous and was kind of all over the place. Then I recall hearing they had revamped it and have recently heard some very positive outcomes for kids using it. I know Bookshark hasn't been out long but I would really love to hear some input from those who have used their version of the science program. Also, if you feel like chiming in, what level would you put a 9.5 and 7yo in? I'm looking at 2nd grade/Year 2 World History although even the advanced readers seem light for DD9, but I'm afraid that Year 3/American History might be too heavy. I've heard a lot of "stick to the younger end of the age range".

We have decided to invest in a travel trailer and start roadtripping the US over the next several years. Our first big trip will be this summer. We're beginning in Sacramento, CA and heading to Yellowstone/Glacier NP and back down through Idaho. We're planning to take 2-3 weeks. Of course, being a homeschooler, I decided that the kids would get the most out of this trip by doing some historical preparation. Except that we're right in the middle of the early Kings of England and have only touched upon American History :) Suggestions? Am I crazy and should just leave a good trip well enough alone? I was contemplating just seeding a series of good living books. Otoh, it might be a great opportunity to motivate early American history.

My eldest loved RSO Life and liked RSO Earth and Space. This year we tried Elemental Science for Chemistry and it is way too dry. I much preferred the approach of a short lesson with lots of living books.