I have ancestors on both parents' sides in Virginia and the Carolinas for 10 generations, so probably. As a member of DAR, United Daughters of the Confederacy, and Colonial Dames, I have learned quite a bit not only about my ancestors but also about early American history, much of it not what I learned in the 50s in Virginia, which was still recovering from "Reconstruction."

I watched it awhile ago, and I've been thinking about watching it again, just because of MIrrin and Reynolds.

Friday. Laundry. That is all.

Tonight's hula:

A friend said that Sonlight changed her life (for the good, of course!) and she wished she had done it from the beginning (she started hsing before Sonlight was invented). Her ds was older, maybe middle school age, maybe high school, when she started.

I did an elimination diet several years ago, and eggs were fine for me. But recently, they have started giving me reflux. What the actual heck.

I have just two children. Some things changed because different ages/activities. One early evening a week for dance. One evening a month for the general 4-H club meeting, plus random project meetings. Weekly library trip for just us. Weekly field trip for just us. Monthly park day with support group. Twice a week soccer practice, weeky game on Saturday (only two years) Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday marching band rehearsal (only for one year). We did not leave the house on Mondays and Tuesdays during the day. Wednesday library and Thursday field trip were inviolable. Both dc were Camp Fire members, so our field trips were often to work on Camp Fire badges. We were independent members, not part of a club. I recruited quite a few homeschoolers into Camp Fire, because its badges were so kewl, and we did a few things together, but mostly we were independent. Both my dc went to day camp and residential camp several times. I could not leave the house every day to do things with other people. I just could not.

It was new. I reviewed some of it, and it read to me as if it was written by a public school teacher for a classroom. And then I found out that the author had, indeed, been a public school teacher. I thought it was awkward and contrived. Maybe as time went on, people began to be less enchanted with classroom-based learning disguised as homeschooling. The author was a member of a website I used to be a member of, and if anyone ever posted anything negative about HOD, she'd jump in and have at it.

Tonight's hula. From the Academy of Hawaiian Arts in Oakland, California, at the Merrie Monarch Festival in Hilo, Hawai'i, just last week.

Neither of my dc needed much formal grammar instruction. We did not do diagramming. Both write well, and did well in college. Daily Grams is intended to be review, not the primary instruction, which is why it repeats, or reviews, each year. That's what Easy Grammar is: the primary instruction. My younger dd did Easy Grammar when it was first published; DG had not been written yet, so that one year of EG, when she was 11ish, was pretty much her whole formal grammar instruction. Personally, I would say, at the most, to do Easy Grammar Plus next year and call it good. Of course, EG doesn't cover all the things that CLE does, so you'll have to find other things to do that.

Boy, I was so glad when I left home and could buy actual fitted sheets for my bed, because my mother never did, and tucking in the bottom sheet every morning was a PITA!

Jann, I'm so excited for you!

The reason I perfer R&S's English series is that it is a textbook rather than a workbook. I believe there's value in having to write out assignments on actual paper. And I believe the writing requirement to be age appropriate. That the English series "only" goes to 10th grade is irrelevant; students who complete up to or including that book will have a really excellent working knowledge of grammar and of all sorts of writing. You could do nothing but literature after completion of the last text and it would still be more than fine. Also, the series starts with 2nd grade, which is fine, because your 1st grader doesn't need to know the grammar and whatnot covered beginning with 2nd grade. You would need to add the Spelling by Sound and Structure series; and if you really wanted to pile stuff on, the Bible Nurture and Reader materials. I don't actually recommend SSS until the 4th grade book. I'm not a big fan of basal readers, either, so I might or might not use the BNR series, but you might like them. 🙂 You could add the penmanship, but I don't love that, either; the primary letters are much too big, IMHO, so that the dc are drawing letters instead of writing them. And R&S thought it was important to have a transitional, slanted penmanship between manuscript and cursive. IDK why. The cursive is a traditional hand, and the dc are taught to reduce the size of their writing. I just think it unnecessary to do such large writing in the beginning, and I don't like the transitional writing.

Didn't Ree leave because someone from the board was stalking her?

If you aren't going to stay with AAS, then my recommendation would be Spalding, as well as dropping ETC and any language-related stuff from TGATB. Spsalding covers it all: reading, spelling, penmanship, capitalization and punctuation, simple writing, all in one fell swoop. You only need the manual (Writing Road to Reading, preferably the fourth editon or earlier) and a set of phonogram cards, a one-time purchase of less than $40. When I did Spalding in a little one-room school (children first grade through high school), all of the children improved their spelling grade levels by *at least* one level by Christmas, including my little 2nd grade guy, whose first grade teacher tried to tell me he had a learning disability. No, m'am, he did not; the schooll had a *teaching* disability. Hmph. 🙂

IDK why. It is just a thing.

Not many on tables, because dust. In fact, I have few framed family pictures at all, and those are upstairs in a niche near the bedrooms. I'm with the professional decorators who advise against family pictures out on display. That's what photo albums are for. ::ducks and waits for the heat. I can take it.::

A 12yo is surely old enough to stay home by himself for a couple of hours.

I never heard of it until I was all grown up and almost finished homeschooling. I'm not sure which denominations fit in the "fundie" category, but I do know some women who use that voice, and they tend to be in heavy patriarcal denominations. One was almost a cult, and it took my friend several years to recover from her association with it.

This is exactly why I used it the second year I taught in a little one-room school. The first year I did Spalding, with all dc, 6-14yo. They all showed so much improvement, in reading and spelling, just by Christmas, but I did R&S the next year so I could give the seatwork to the only 6yo to work on while I did stuff with the others. It's not nearly as strong phonics as I like, but it did the trick.

The whole reading course includes phonics. And there are lots of moving parts. I recommend getting all of them. So yes, you should use the phonics cards. The way it's supposed to go (scripted lessons in the teacher manuals) is that you teach, then you give the child the seatwork. Then you teach again, and assign another workbook page. Then you teach again...All of the workbooks assume that you have taught first, not that you give your dc the workbook page and teach the page. No. You teach first, then the seatwork reinforces what you taught.

You could start a support group, instead of a co-op, which could provide as much socializing but without all the work that a co-op requires. I never made lasting friendships through 4H or any other activity that my dc were involved in. I enjoyed it while it wsa happening, but it didn't go home with me.

Well, back in the day, by definition "prom" was formal, and formal meant floor-length. I didn't know I was going to prom until the day of, so I was lucky to find anything! And I still have that dress. ❤️

That's so tragic.

I don't think so, but I do think that parents hear a great deal about online learning in general (I have not heard anyone refer to them as online "academies"), especially after c@vid. And it is the easy way out.