We have been considering it. It would be a big deal, since my husband and I both have major leadership positions in our church. Our other kiddos are all settled into the church, but we are open to it. 😢 lots of changes.

Great suggestion! I thInk she would love that. She will certainly have to find something positive to put her efforts into. 😃 she has a very supportive dance studio so I know they will try to accommodate the best they can.

Thanks so much, everyone, for your kind thoughts and words. I hated to share all that in real life, because the kiddos deserve their privacy, but I need a little support. It's a new day and we are going to push through. One more early morning soccer game and then taking some family time. :)

I'm kind of heartbroken for my kiddos. I realize struggles are part of growing up but dang-this feels pretty rough. Dd11 has dreamed of nothing but ballet since she was 3. She was invited to begin pointe classes in September! However, after a summer of physical therapy for her knees and hips she still cannot comfortably walk from the couch to kitchen. She is registered for 6 dance classes a week, beginning the day after Labor Day. And the doctors want to revisit the idea of a diagnosis of lupus and/or connective tissue disease. She is understandably depressed. As a homeschooler the bulk of her social life revolves around dance. I also, have to tell her that I got a message from her best friend's mother that they are changing churches. This is going to be devastating to her, because they will not have much of a chance to see each other again. And DS 12 has sacrificed scouting and youth group to be on a club soccer team that has conflicting practice times with the other activities. He has been playing absolutely phenomenally in practice. My husband (a former coach) has always been brutally honest about DS 's skills--(never sugar coats anything) and he has been thrilled with DS's development. In practices he has played the best he ever has and is consistently one of the better players in practice. But, in the first tournament that began today he played only the last 4 minutes of the games. That is it. The rest of the time he sat on the bench. The four minutes he played he did great! But, he was crushed. He showed up ready to play and contribute and flat out was not given a chance. They brutally lost both games. It was ugly. He is one of those sensitive, kind spirits that internalizes things. I fully expect it to take months to rebuild his confidence. I can't fix any of this for them :( Typing on my phone through a few tears so excuse typos, please.

I agree with rest, ice and Epsom salt baths for a few days. If not significantly improving, I would head on in for an evaluation. We just spent our entire summer in physical therapy because we allowed DD to push through the pain during spring showcase.

Somehow Spelling you See made it into my cart!!! What was I thinking? We have been doing OG based reading and spelling for so many years. My older kiddos are still miserable spellers and I just HAD to try something different. I could not take another year. I can only hope that a season of taking a different approach doesn't kill them. I did show a bit of restraint after putting 3 Memoria Press grade level packages worth $1500 in my cart! So did anyone else get pulled into an impulse purchase?

Thanks so much, everyone! I am usually a good scam detector. I've been after those microsoft guys for a decade. LOL. But, this one had me stumped. :) Now back to buying curriculum instead of keeping the money aside for unexpected legal expenses!

For years we have only used our home phone in order to get internet service and the occassional call from telemarketers. There are no caller id features or anything. Basically, it just sits there. But, today I was walking by and it happened to ring. Out of instinct, I picked it up and said "hello." The sound quality was horrible and when I realized that it was a recorded message I was just about to hang up. Then I made out a few words that sounded kind of like "papers will be served to this address within the next 48-72 hours." Then there was a number to call for issues, but of course I could not make out the number!!!! HMMM!!! Its been a long time since I was in law school, but those words kind of sound like a lawsuit to me. I am completely freaked out!!!! Does anyone know if that kind of phone call notice is typical prior to the actual service of some kind of legal documents. I am just sitting here trying to order my homeschool curriculum for the year and thinking 72 hours is a long time to wait for a sheriff's car to pull up. We have pretty boring lives so I just can't imagine what it could mean. Thanks for listening!!!

My guy is only 7 so our experience may be a little different. He is on a U8 and U9 (and also practices with a U7 team). They are tournament teams. I just wanted to verify terminology before posting too much, though. When you say league team, do you mean like a recreational team (what we call park ball team) that has a full season playing other recreational teams but also enters some tournaments? I know sometimes terms are different based on the community so just wanted to check. If most of the tournaments are local then that would be great. Sometimes local can mean up to two and half hours away. Tournaments for my little guy make for very long weekends. Usually the first game is on Saturday morning and then there is A LOT of sitting and waiting to find out when we play next. If it's a tournament weekend we pretty much plan to do absolutely nothing else for that weekend. So 10 tournaments in one season would be a huge commitment, especially in the fall which is a truncated season. I think playing tournaments requires a very flexible personality. A lot of times tourneys are added at the last minute or cancelled at the last minute. Sometimes we don't know which direction we are heading until late Thursday evening. It's also expensive to be out all day for two days, even its its local and no hotel expense. If the team is not competitive then it can be a real drag, seeing the same teams over and over. But, all that said the level of play cannot be replicated with city league play. With the right team you will develop a family type bond and the kids will grow and play together long term. My son loves it, even though he sometimes dreads the tourneys. We love that our coach is professional, paid and doesn't have to cater to his own son. At the team level things are fair and focused! But, league play with some travel can be a good balance. With league play we usually have a more consistent schedule with evening games that don't take up the whole weekend. We plY one game at a time, so no getting overly tired. If there is a problem there is a system of oversight (theoretically, lol)! Also, there is repeated success factor when you are a talented player on a park ball level. We have come up with a crazy approach that would sound ridiculous to many, but if you're interested I will fill you in. 😊 I'm not sure how things work in your area but in ours I think most people are cobbling together the same kind of craziness we have come up with. Good luck!!!!

We live in the southeast so no comparison on the temps, but my DH has cold urticaria and it's miserable for him. Cold damp air is the trigger--even temps in the 40s cause problems. His is accompanied by a drop in blood pressure and he's actually passed out before. The doctor cautions him about cold water lakes and pools. :( He carries benedryl and should carry an epi, but doesn't always. I'm sorry you are dealing with this!

Ok. So I chatted with DH who teaches high school and has so far avoided having a Homeroom because of his teaching rotation. I explained what I am thinking and he said at his school that would be more like what they call Parthenon. Parthenon is the first hour of the day. It's a 6 week non-credit class that explores special topics that the kids choose from taught by teachers with a special interest, community leaders, and local professors who are trying to get kids interested in certain college classes. DH taught a popular "cupcake wars" class. Others included ACT prep, gardening, music appreciation, frisbee golf, dog training, forensics, tumbling, fishing, rugby, chess. So maybe what I am thinking of would be a blend of Homeroom and Parthenon. :) I didn't even know they did that at DH's school until I asked. Pretty cool!! I may make a big deal out of checking off the attendance form that I'm required to do, but always forget!

Yes! That's pretty much what it was in high school, but I remember in middle school it was kind of where the school identity came from. When we had special things come up, like assemblies or pep rallies we went with our home room. I also remember we did a lot of self-esteem stuff. :)

Right now it's just CNN student world news. I think this year I am going to have them researching the legislative process. Maybe follow websites from some state leaders from both parties.

I did a litle googling and am getting super excited. I think this would be a way to get everyone centered. I'm thinking monthly themes. Big issue discussions. It would be so cool to somehow use an electronic classroom setup and have a virtual homeschool homeroom for middle schoolers everywhere, but I guess I will save that for another year.

I guess I have two middle schoolers now (6th and 7th grade). They are extremely interested in what their public school friends are doing and are absolutely opposed to such things as "morning basket" and "circle time." I do suspect it's always been their favorite part of the day, though. I guess it's kind of hard when your friends ask "what is your favorite class?" and you have to respond "circle time with mommy." So, I had a stroke of genius--my middle schoolers will now have Homeroom instead. In Homeroom we will continue to do current events, family readalouds for philosophy, Shakespeare, poetry and history, and go over our independent work for the day--just like always. However, we will not sit in a circle and I will absolutely not pull the books out of the wicker basket placed next to my chair. I'm totally going to rock this parenting/homeschooling Tweens thing!!!! They are excited and trying to come up with a theme song to start with each day! I wonder how long it will take them to figure it out! :)

I would place them at grade level without worry. I went down a grade level with my two after completing CAP Books one and two. It was unnecessary. They could have gone straight into grade level and they are very reluctant writers. Actually, the 4 and 5 levels were almost the same and in some places used the same sentences in the grammar portion. That is one program I would not hesitate to place straight in (or above) no matter what the background. Hope that helps.

Thanks. I am checking into why this document reads a little differently than the one provided by our cover school. I appreciate the links. :) Edited to add: Now I cannot find anything about the private school exclusion. So strange. I sat with a lady just this weekend and we looked at the bylaws and talked about how upsetting they were to some of the private schools in our area.

We did VP Ancients last school year and Beautiful Feet Medieval this year! Just my opinion, but I think that will be A LOT of history. The BF Medieval books are pretty meaty. They are amazing, but not necessarily easy reads. When we did VP Self-paced it took about 45 minutes a day, not including the suggested reading for the student. This year, I read about an hour a day from the BF read alouds with about 20 minutes for some of the extra goodies in the teacher's guide (and we are still a bit behind). Personally, I think it would be difficult to keep it all worked out. But, I did add the VP history cards where appropriate with some of the encyclopedia type readings and it worked out well. Every family is different so, it may be just right for you, but having used the two programs I don't think it would be beneficial or necessary. Edited to add: I don't think it would be a problem, and might be quite lovely, if you did that with the BF American History programs because the books are less intense. :)

Thanks, Lori D. That sounds like a good plan. Practicing a few timed tests is a great idea. I think my guy is absolutely brilliant and then I try to give him some kind of review or quiz and it never goes as planned. Lol. That is one of my goals for middle school anyway so this may be just the motivation he needs.

Thanks so much for the response. I was able to find the course content standards from the state. It looks like it may not require a whole seperate thing, especially for the civics/geography stuff. I can't imagine how these tests would be developed, but as long as they actually test on the content standards it shouldn't be too bad. I think critical thinking press may have a civics workbook. We may have to wait a year and see how it all develops.

I have everything planned out for 7th and 8th grade and am pretty excited about it. It will be our first big American History focus and I planned on a physics and chemistry year for 7th and then just launching right into a high school level biology for 8th. All good! But, our state athletic association just passed regulations allowing homeschoolers to participate in public school sports. Some things in the regulations are throwing me off my agenda. First, my son had planned to play soccer for a local private school. The new rules say homeschoolers can no longer play for private schools so the only option is public school. The other problem is that students who want to play for public schools must take some unspecified test in four content areas each semester. I'm not sure how all of that will play out, but I'm guessing that is math, English, science and social studies. In seventh grade social studies is geography and civics and science is life science. I'm considering letting him try out to play, but don't want to change our curriculum plan which better meets our needs. So are there any basic resources I could add to cover some of this without it overtaking our day? We could try a quick unit study a few weeks before the test or we could give up 20 minutes a day to cover it. Any suggestions.

Dauphin Island is beautiful, but not necessarily touristy. It's been a while since we've driven out but it's more of a nature adventure kind of place. There is the sealab, historic fort and birding. There is also the ferry that would take you across to Gulf Shores if you want more touristy type excitement. Gulf shores just opened a trampoline park!!! All kinds of cool stuff to spend money on.

Not necessarily the simplest in appearance, but the simplest way to learn for my crew was handwriting lessons through literature. I really thought my kids would just never be able to write in cursive. The success even extended to the left handed boy who still struggles with manuscript. It is great and it makes sense.

This is what I was trying to say, but had trouble expressing it.

I think it's ok. He mentioned his son and you followed up with a question. I think that's a natural conversation flow. Actually, I think it's better to ask than trying to come up with something else to say, minimizing the loss or pretending that he did not just open up to you. I know people who have had profound loss and they typically are quite gracious when it comes to our conversational mistakes. It's ok! Now you have the beginning of a relationship with them