I had it in March - was mostly gastro. Loss of appetite, nausea, bad reaction every time I ate anything (I’d flush up and feel terrible). It was miserable (way worse than the flu), but I didn’t need medical care, so I guess I’d consider it mild-moderate? I did develop MCAS because of my bout with Covid and still am dealing with that now, though. Not sure that will ever go away. The symptoms are pretty similar to what I dealt with during my acute phase, actually. No preexisting conditions or risk factors (because everyone always wants to know, heh)

Um, thank you, Charlene! The intro to Expository Writing looks like exactly what I'm looking for. I can strip the LOE lessons down to just spelling, and he should get the rest in this class, it looks like. I'm excited about this!

I have never heard of Attuneup or knew the WTM had an academy online! Going to look both up now...

I have rising second and fifth graders. I also have a newly turned two year old. I'm hitting a wall with homeschooling, but don't want to give it up as we are military and this works overall. My oldest and I butt heads a lot when it comes to school. He doesn't like to take direction from me, and complains about just about anything I ask him to do. It's wearing me out. So, this year, I want to outsource his Language Arts, the thing he's weakest in and the one I struggled to keep up with this year. I have been using LOE, and I absolutely love it, but it's just too much work to plan a lesson for each of my boys, plus keep the baby entertained while we do it, all while arguing with my oldest to do it. His test scores this year have him advanced in math, but just barely at level in LA. (With the exception of reading, which he is several grades ahead and loves.) know it's mostly my fault for not keeping up on the lessons. Anyone have any ideas? I want a program that is easy for us to follow and gives him a lot of independence. He does okay when I am just guiding him through something versus doing all the teaching and correcting. He's also great with a computer, and loves any chance to do work on it. Something with great books as part of it would also be welcome. He really needs to write more, but hates it. That is definitely a huge factor in our LA frustrations.

Thanks everyone for the ideas! Story of the World seems what I am looking for - as much as I want to add in history, I just can't add anything that is prep-intensive right now.

So, we're now into our second year of homeschooling. I added Spanish this year, and it's going well. We're covering the 3Rs effectively, and I'm happy with the curriculum I've chosen for those. I would really, really like to add some history. I have a K and 3rd grader, and would like something I can do with both. It would be great if it were literature based, but I'm open to ideas. Mostly I want something that isn't too prep intensive as we already have several things, Spanish included, that require a fair amount of prep, plus I have a 4 month old to take care of in the middle of all of this. Any thoughts?

So, we're now into our second year of homeschooling. I added Spanish this year, and it's going well. We're covering the 3Rs effectively, and I'm happy with the curriculum I've chosen for those. I would really, really like to add some history. I have a K and 3rd grader, and would like something I can do with both. It would be great if it were literature based, but I'm open to ideas. Mostly I want something that isn't too prep intensive as we already have several things, Spanish included, that require a fair amount of prep, plus I have a 4 month old to take care of in the middle of all of this. Any thoughts? ETA: Cross posting this because I didn't put it in the forum I meant to.

Curious - I bought glue sticks for the kids about three years ago, and still have a couple we use occasionally. Never had a problem with them drying out, just me misplacing them every time we move! We live in very humid areas, though, so I am curious if that is the real reason.

I've really fallen in love with AAR, too! We switched after getting about a 1/3 through 100 EZ and he told me he hated it. It does seem to move more slowly than he does, though, which is a problem. I'd recommend it to any parent new to teaching reading to a kid - I think it was great for that. And, despite the fact that he's probably far past it, he still likes doing the lessons, so we'll keep it up to the end of LVL 1, I think.

You know, I may try this. He already follows along with a lot of what I do with his older brother, so I think it might work out. I might also try giving him the AAS LVL 3 test just to see where he is.

So, my five year old just read the word, "civilian" to me. He pronounced it correctly, but wanted to know what it meant. This isn't the first time he's read something large and seemingly outside his ability. We're about 3/4 of the way through Level 1 of All About Reading, and I am starting to wonder if buying the next level makes any sense. Instead, I'm thinking about finishing it, then moving on to just having him pick age-appropriate books and reading to me. I'll be starting my 8 year old on LOE's spelling program in the next month or so, so figure I'll then have him do it, too, in a year or two, but working with him on the basic phonograms with their app and the Doodling Dragons book. Buying AAR2 seems almost like forcing him to slow down when he wants to speed up. Thoughts?

As a child who came from a family of 7 kids, and a mother who just did NOT know when to stop having them, I say don't do it until you feel sane again. It's no fun to be that kid with the mother who is always too exhausted to give enough to all the kids running around. I think my mother tried, but she was so clearly overwhelmed (and I think at times depressed), that we all suffered for it. Even now, we don't have a good relationship. I've taken that to heart when considering my own family size.

I've never understood the argument that real food is more expensive. We've switched to a nearly all (yep, we still buy the chips sometimes!) whole foods diet and our food budget is pretty much the same. Granted, I don't buy organic, except when I can find it on sale, but it was pretty easy to cut out premade stuff, junk food, and all those packaged drinks of unknown origin without killing our food budget. It DOES take a whole lot more time, but that's a totally different issue.

We played with triangle dice when playing Dungeons and Dragons as a teenager. I'd be very surprised if you can't find any at a hobby shop or game store (any place that sells the D&D books). I remember bins and bins of colored dice of all different shapes. We'd pick through them and make a set we liked.

I haven't read this book, but am skeptical. By all accounts, I had a pretty stable, normal babyhood, but a few years later, when my mother was overwhelmed with my younger sibs (she had four more after me, three of whom are a year apart), and my father sexually abused myself and one of my sisters, my personality dramatically changed. I'd say I'm definitely your description of ambivalently attached now, but don't think this is how I started out. In fact, while she doesn't want to acknowledge anything of what happened while we were growing, I ironically have evidence of this from what my own mother wrote in my baby book. At about age four, I had a dramatic personality change from a child who was outgoing and happy, to one who wouldn't talk to anyone outside the family and was labeled "painfully shy". So, nope, I don't think the first 12 months determines the course of your life.

I don't believe you have to respond at all to this letter, but would certainly hang on to it if you think it might be an option you would consider in the future. As to the diploma thing, I'm not as dismissive as most people here. I was a homeschooled student, and found it difficult when it came time for college. The real problem was a lack of transcript. My mother could have written out anything she liked, but they wanted something official. I ended up taking both ACT and SAT, submitting both scores to each of my schools (I scored extrememly high in the English side of things, but only had mediocre math scores, as my mother basically allowed me to ignore math at some point when I made it clear I disliked it and she clearly had no more energy to teach it - hence my distrust of unschooling), and writing an essay even when it wasn't required. There were no scholarships for me, and my first choice school sent me a letter that said they would consider me as a transfer student only AFTER I had completed a year with at least a B average. I ended up graduating my second choice school cum laude, so clearly academics were not the issue at all. Anyway, all this to say that while I am homeschooling my kids now (both elementary), if we choose to go into high school, I'll be looking at a hybrid option if we are still homeschooling. I want them to earn grades from someone other than me for the bulk of their subjects. I realize that it's been fifteen years since I went through the admissions process and things can change, but I feel like I would be doing them a disservice if I didn't make sure they had something more than their mother trying to prove they are smart and did the work.

I just checked and it made it to 50% - glad I didn't forget about this!

My kids love it, but since they are addicted to LEGO, this didn't surprise me. Even the five year old figures out stuff that sometimes surprises his dad (who was the one who originally bought it). I would much rather they play that for their computer time than a lot of the other games that are out there. Should they spend their entire day on it? Of course not! But they get computer time, and are not spending every day outside, especially now that it's freezing out there, so I don't really see it as any different than any other computer or video game you'd consider allowing your kids to play.

We're using AAR, are about a quarter through the first level, and I love it. It's totally helped get my five year old over the hurdle of reading. It's very phonics based, and is teaching him not only basic letter sounds, but how some letters make more than one sound, which really makes me happy. I think it's definitely worth a try. My one caveat is that if he really doesn't know hardly any of his letter sounds, it might move too fast for him. The first lessons have letter sounds coming at you kind of fast. It slows down, but still we're getting one or two every other lesson. It was fine for my son because I had already done some phonics work with him, but you might find you need to slow it down and give him a little more practice. I still think you can use the program, though!

Is AAS best for visual learner, do you think? I am asking because I'm realizing that my son is a lot like me in how he learns - he "sees" things in his head. I'd really like to do something that works with that. And thanks to everyone for responding! You've given me a direction - I'm still not sure what we'll go with, but I'm studying all of this. And I thought math was going to be the hardest decision I had to make...

Hmm, I'm intrigued by this one, too - sigh. I really like rule-based spelling, I just don't know how to teach it effectively, and most of these programs are so expensive! It really is so hard to teach something that came to me without any real work. And I was an English major with a lot of teacher training in college!

This is similar to some of my son's issues - he often stumbles on letter sounds, which has always baffled me because he was an early reader and reads far past his grade level. How can he puzzle out long words, yet not tell me what the short and long sounds of vowels are? Or, even what all the vowels ARE? I did take a look at Spaldng - it's really pricey, though. Is the full homeschool kit necessary, or would it be possible to start with just the book and go from there?

This is our first year homeschooling. I have a second grader whose teacher used the "memorize a list of words, then test later in the week" method. He hated it, and, by her own admission, promptly forgot the words he drilled every week. So, I didn't look at any programs that looked like that. I started him on a rule-based program and at first it seemed to go okay. A few months into it, he seemed to hit a wall, and also seemed to have forgotten everything else I thought he'd been doing okay with. We've gone to a more informal method of writing sentences, then looking up words he doesn't spell correctly. Problem is, he's still not seeming to make a lot of progress, and both of us are getting frustrated. I just don't understand how you even "teach" spelling. I was homeschooled by a mother who didn't give me any formal spelling instruction. I was an avid reader, however, who learns by visualization, and spelling has never been a problem for me. I am torn right now - do I just give up and assign extra reading and hope he will be like me, or is spelling instruction truly necessary for most kids? I keep staring at AAS, but can't bring myself to pay so much for a program I'm not sure really works long-term. I'm doing AAR with my five year old, who loves it, and so do I, but I just don't know... Anyone else struggle with this issue? Advice?

Just an fyi - a lot of coughing is a sign of asthma. We have a son who has dealt with coughing bouts that linger longer than anyone else in the family whenever we get sick. I really thought nothing of it, but a few years into this, he finally had an actual asthmatic attack that landed us in the emergency room. It seemed to come out of nowhere, but when talking with his ped, we discussed the coughing history and she said it was a red flag. Not sure what this is just a single event or something you deal with a lot, but thought I'd throw that out there!

So, my eight year old has shown a lot of interest in a microscope. I'm thinking quite seriously of picking one up for Christmas, but am dismayed to discover what a difficult decision that is turning out to be. I really don't want to spend a fortune on this, but would like one that has some lasting power and actually works well. I will have two more kids to go through it, so at least that makes the cost a little easier to swallow, but does anyone have some recommendations? I find web reviews so uneven and it's hard to decide which ones are genuine...