My daughter was a Juliette from K through 4th, for a variety of reasons. She was in a troop for 5th, a different troop for 6th, and now may be in effect a Juliette again, though officially still registered in the same troop as last year. My dd could take or leave cookie sales, etc. ... a friend whose dd was really into cookie sales found Juliettes difficult because her dd didn't get to have her sales benefit a troop (nor did she get any cookie money -- it all went to council here). My dd prefers the social experience of having a troop, but we've done ok with her on her own. Now that she's in the older girl category, I'll try to get her in to some weekend/camping/high adventure experiences, but we'll make the best of it. I'm starting a younger girls' troop for my other dd, and she has been through Program Aide training, so she will get to help with that.

The old 3rd edition from before there was a US edition (with US edition workbooks as needed) ... because I already own it.

My oldest is 13. The others are 12, 10 and 6.

If we can find somewhere through http://www.sixsuitcasetravel.com, we book a room with enough beds for everyone. We have been known to book a room for 4 and put two on the floor in a pinch, though. And we've also gotten two rooms. If we can get connecting rooms, we usually put the dc in one and us in the other, and chain/use the bar thingy so that even the housekeeping staff couldn't access the kids' room. Once or twice, we couldn't get a big enough room (which is usually cheaper than two) or adjoining rooms, and we have split up, but that's more the exception than the rule. The most economical is usually a 'suite' -- one room with two beds and a foldout couch, so that's what we usually do

Congratulations! We're still waiting here. Maybe our 10% chance later that Sharon talked about will turn into actual rain for us. Last week, I got a dozen drops on the windshield when making a carpool run and got excited, but that's all we got.

You joke, but my father did indeed do this. We were told that we would be assigned the Navy lodge as our housing for 6-9 mo (we couldn't rent less than a 3 bedroom privately with as many kids as us, but the Navy could keep us in a glorified hotel room with not enough beds). My dad would come home, pack all the kids and pets into the car, and deposit us in the waiting room of the housing office every afternoon after school. They managed to find us something in about 6-8 weeks. This was for junior officer/warrant officer housing in Newport.

Right now, 972 miles by the calculator. Furthest was 2150 miles.

This is a lot of what the training our church has is ... making sure there are multiple adults around so that there generally isn't a question about what happened.

Yes, I know there are some really big homeschool groups out there who might be able to support this, but none of the ones that I've been involved with (including this one) have had anywhere near the resources that it would require to do this.

My ds will be participating in a group that I guess does require them, but only indirectly. They meet at a church that requires special training and background checks for anyone working with children or the elderly at/through the church. But the burden of the training and background checking is on the church, not the homeschool group.

That's why I stopped scheduling 5 day weeks, and don't often use curriculum that's scheduled this way. Our life just rarely happens in 5 day blocks. It's rare for us to have two weeks in a row that are very much the same. So I go through and figure out what a reasonable chunk of work is, and as we go through the year, they just take the next chunk to work on. Some weeks, we may do 3 days, other weeks, six. Some days, we might do 5 or 6 subjects, others we only get to one or two. I like being able to fit school around life and not constantly trying to re-order my life (which never works no matter how I try) to fit around some artificial schedule called 'school'.

They're pretty open, so I don't see where the cult comment comes from exactly. They do use a lot of Native American mythology, and while I don't have a problem with it, I can see how some people would. Some lodges pull the boys away from their troop activities and set up a flavor of elitism. Dh's lodge when he was a teen was like this, and he was turned off by it. He chose to stay with his troop. Ds's experience has been different, with OA serving as more of a complimentary thing to the regular scouting program. Both dh and ds are going to do their brotherhood in the spring ... for dh, it will be 25 years after his ordeal.

With at least one of my children, it's very likely that he'll stay home until community college and/or trade school, then off to a 4 year university after that. He's already in his third year of high school work, adding in some college level materials this year. The next one is already planning to return to brick and mortar school when she's ninth grade age. She's using mostly high school level materials right now. The third might mostly stay home, but will likely do at least one year in middle or high school in a charter or high school in public school. I was hoping to send him for fifth this year, but the options weren't going to be positive experiences. The fourth will likely go out somewhere to high school. She's too social to be home with just her and me, and her closest sibling will graduate on one end or the other of her freshman year, depending on if she keeps the grade skip we have her on now. She might go before, I don't know, it's year to year, and with our locally zoned elementary more over crowded and more understaffed than usual, it didn't seem logical to send them this year.

I've met you before. You didn't seem large and lumpy to me. :D

There was nothing specific that I wanted to change, but I didn't think that with a history of 50 year marriages on both sides that he'd stay the same for that long, either.

It wouldn't have gone anywhere. It was in a state/city/school district that is run by a religious organization, and the principal's father was a high official.

Exactly. Spell check on the computer, secretaries; there are ways to work around this problem if you're intelligent enough to know that they exist.

It's required by the state in schools. Right now at the beginning of the school year, when the dc are on a schedule, whoever is leading opening (one of them) usually does the pledge (or sometimes The Star Spangled Banner or some other patriotic song) and a prayer. Within a few weeks, they probably will start drifting in at varying times, and we won't have any kind of formal opening, so no pledge, no group prayer.

When my kids were in ps, their principal was one of the worst kitten killers I have ever seen. The newsletter would come out with things like 'Dad's and Donuts'. I'd protest, bring in grammar resources, get their third grade teacher to back me up (she was one of the few school staff I was sure were literate). And then the next month, I'd be invited to 'Mom's and Muffins'. I admit that it was a factor in pulling them out in April that year (that and she didn't see a problem with the lunch lady abusing my 4th grader by making him wear a hat saying that he liked to wear diapers in front of the whole school).

Hi. I've also moved from CO to UT to TX (in that order, even) ... we've only been here 2 years.

I tried to post last night when the site crashed, but I've met ZooRho IRL, too. And I regularly look up Fedex rates for sending her a now not as small child who seems to have somehow inherited her orneriness via the internet. :lol:

When mine were 6, I just let them get done early and let them play the rest of the time. I got creative in documenting play for academic record keeping purposes for state records (which no one checked in my state). Mine are 'only' HG, but going through 3-4 'grades' in a year now or then wasn't unheard of for any of them. Then, other years, they act like 'normal', 'bright' kids and only cover a year to a year and a half of material, even if it is many 'grades' ahead of where they 'should' be. With my current 6 year old, I'm loving http://www.theheadoftheclass.com ... very repetitive, but I can cut that down in the program, and I can bump her up a grade when it gets to be TOO easy (like when she sat down and did 25% of the third grade in two days). and it's free, so no additional outlay for me. Khan academy for math practice is great, too. It makes them do 10 of a problem to ensure mastery, but if they get them right, they move on along the path, and the activities go all the way into Calculus. I've learned to spend as little money on things like Language Arts and Math because they just go through them too quickly, and instead spend money on less 'graded' stuff like SOTW or Joy Hakim books or other things that aren't really for a specific level, so they don't really outgrow them.

As long as the differences in parenting weren't manifesting in specific concerns along these lines, I'd have them share the room. I wouldn't have any problem with my 12 year old dd sharing a room with separate beds with a 10 year old boy cousin, nor with my 10 year old son sharing a similar accommodation with a 12 year old girl cousin. When traveling, my 12 year old daughter still sometimes shares a tent or hotel bed with her 13 or 10 year old brothers (the 6 year old is a violent sleeper ... having to share a bed with her for 2 weeks would mean no sleep for all that time, so we rotate them.

I used Pearables, too. They're a little more girl-focused than I'd like, but they do a great job in breaking things down into small. manageable steps.

Hi, MamaJo. I know you! (Though I guess I haven't met you in person, though I know several people who have met both of us in person ... does that make me 2 degree of MamaJo? LOL) I'm here off and on ... more lately as my younger ds has decided to use SOTW 2 and 3 this year, so I've been in the curriculum section gleaning ideas and over here because my main site (the one I work on) is alternately dead slow and crazy enough that I don't want to have to deal with it (as staff, I have to).