I got through 2.5 days of school in what turned out to actually be a 3 day week. DS got invited for a mid-week sleepover since all the school kids are on break and I couldn't reasonably say no. He can't do sleepovers at all during ski season except for chances like this. Not that I need to really justify deviating from my plan.. poor kid is only 8 for heaven's sake. :) I am sure he will learn whatever he needs to eventually :) For me, I had a good change to set up my bullet journal for this coming year (or the first part at least). I am re-taking up my study of Finnish this year and working on Russian and also have decided to read 24 books in French. I'd love to do 52 in 52. Realistically, I want some of those books to be in physics and math and being my second language, I don't read as quickly in French as I do in English.

I like the idea of asking them to look at a question and go back to the text to try and find that information by looking at headings. It might give a better sense of using the text as a reference. I don't know if re-reading is a terrible idea. I re-read a LOT of material in its entirety for exams in college, but I am a super fast reader and it was easier for me than taking notes and trying to read my own handwriting lol. I could read the material 3x in the span it would take me to read and take notes, so for many subjects I just read. One thing that did help me in highschool was learning speed reading. I spent a lot of time practicing eye movement patterns and where to apply extra time if I had it (first and last sentences of paragraphs, first and last chapters, etc. ) I think 4th grade and probably 7th grade are too young for that though. There is time for these skills to develop.

When we used to rent, we had autopayments set up through the bank. For people who are wondering, your landlord doesn't have to have an autopay plan, it comes from your bank and a check is mailed automatically a few days in advance so that it is received on time. We do have a rental property that we are choosing not to rent out at this time. I would be extremely uncomfortable with a tenant who needed biweekly payments. A temporary issue with a tenant you believe is trustworthy is one thing. A tenant who is SO paycheck to paycheck they literally can't get a month's rent together from one check to the other is very scary. One tiny thing goes wrong in their lives and you are probably out the rent & have all the hassles that go with it.

Since it is only for a second grader, I'd stick to choosing from the list of world and supra-regional languages. That cuts you back to a little over 15. You could cover all the romances languages over a few weeks instead of entirely one at a time (honestly they will sound really similar to an untrained ear getting one class of exposure). Save one week to talk about how there are many many many minority languages and dialects that need protection all over the world. (We have a Russian dialect dying just two hours down the road from us, Ninilchik Russian and so many of the languages of Native Alaskans and other Native Americans are really struggling). I think a 7 year old might also find it interesting how some countries have a language of instruction for school that is none of the children's native language.

Ah gotcha. I haven't seen that book so I can't make a comparison. Buying the wise guide won't do you any good right now. It really isn't more than a list of words with the OG spelling rules listed by them. You would basically just be diy'ing the reading instruction part and if you want to do that, there are a million sources of words and free lessons. In and of itself, I think it would be a very poor choice for teaching reading to a kindergartener. It is really not hard to transition reading programs if you cover the basics in one that isn't OG and then switch. I started both my kids in 100EZ, failed both times (too much repetition for one, not enough for the other), used most of OPGR, then SWR when they were ready to write. Was very easy. :)

Ohh. Back to work for us this week. I feel kinda guilty for not taking a better Christmas break (we did take off Monday) but we missed half of last week with illness. With our October start and baby due in April I feel pinched on both ends. Midwife appt tomorrow morning so I am aiming for audio books, *really* light math just to get us warmed up again, phonics/reading/handwriting and maybe a Christmas movie in the afternoon. Started a new lesson plan book for the year bullet journal style. I am super excited about it and I *think* the format should be really useful. I want to get plans down more concretely and have backup plans going on so if anything happened and I couldn't teach for a while, DH or another adult could teach the kids. Either way I am planning on another adult (DH and/or my mom) taking over for at least 2 weeks in April.

My two children who can read and the third who is begging to read were not at all ready to write at the same time as learning to read. We just use SWR for spelling and handwriting. Do you have the SWR books yet? FYI, the "guide" book is insanely crazy and the most poorly laid out piece of "curriculum" I have ever seen. I briefly entertained the idea of re-writing it and sending it back to her at one point. If you already understand how to teach an OG program, you can pull a few tips and use the W.I.S.E guide for spelling pretty well, but if you are hoping to learn how to teach from the program I am certain there are better out there.

Are you mostly planning to stick to main world languages? 3 months seems like a long time for each language if you don't plan on actually learning it. If I were just doing a survey, I'd think maybe 3 weeks per language? Otherwise what is the point? You would only cover 3 languages in a year out of the hundreds and thousands that exist. I plan to do something like this when things settle down. We do it a bit but not formally. I'm a bit of a language study geek and I like to talk to my kids about the politics of minority languages, show examples of the different speech sounds used around the world (including clicks which are always awesome), and teach the (debatable) difference between dialect and separate language. I am hoping to include lists of minority languages with our study of geography and cover the politics and writing systems more formally some time.. Thanks to and Wikipedia, you will have tons of resources available. Edit: Sorry I don't know if I understood your first post, and even after re-reading I am unclear. You want to learn about 12-15 languages and THEN pick one to study for real? That makes more sense than what I was thinking but forgive me if I have it wrong both times.

What age is this for? I know it seems like a good idea to start language instruction with phonetic reading practice but it isn't really necessary. If this is for a child that already reads, the reading skills will transfer once there are a couple years of oral fluency. If this is for a teen or adult, there are great phonology courses from CLE. If this is a child who is learning to read simultaneously in English... Most people recommend avoiding that. There are lots of great ways to teach French orally. There will be a lot of assumed aspects in reading programs for native kids that will make the process unnecessarily tedious.

Then I would go with AAR.

I would set your base expectation to sleeping for a week, resting for up to 20 days. Hopefully he will be better than that but mono can be really bad. I had it as a three year old (which is apparently wildly rare) and it was several weeks. My mom just had it in the spring and she was down about 6 weeks and weak for another month. He should not be encouraged (or maybe even allowed) to restart sports a soon as he can make it to school. It can just take a long time to get back stamina.

About 8 degrees, dry, 5" of snow and hoar frost on the ground

Your family must be very lucky with illness for any of this to be unusual to you :) We just had a stomach bug run through the house. Everyone was vomiting non stop every 10 minutes for 6-12 hours. Things you can throw up into include everything from a small plastic trash can (like you keep by a desk) to a 1.5 qt straight sided food storage container, to an ordinary pot. He's not severely dehydrated after an hour of vomiting. Offer the Gatorade or water or whatever else seems good but don't push it if it doesn't just yet..

When I think of requiring a subject, I imagine a kid having to study it regardless of how much they hate it. I know that that is not how most of you are interpreting this. Because of my views on personal liberty and self actualization, I would only require reading and math as the minimum. Even history and science child be dropped imo if my kids were breaking out in hives or something. My kids will definitely get unusual subjects just by living with DH and I. DH would not let them go without understanding economics -- he is always taking to the kids about it already and the oldest is only 8. DH is also really into history and tends to cover a different person or time period in extreme depth every year. None of us escape the.."(laughs to self).. Oh, I was just thinking about this funny thing about Churchill.." So I am sure there will be uncommon aspects of history over the years (not that history is unusual of course) We hike and camp and I use lots of things we find in the wild as food or medicine so my kids already have a better ability in nature identification than most adults. It isn't a if I sit them down to study it though. They get tons of astronomy and modern theory of physics while we camp too.. Because what else do reasonable people talk about under a night sky except string theory and Schrodingers cat and chasing light at light speed. :) French is a requirement, but we speak it in the house so it is rather hard to escape. The older kids don't need to learn to read and write if it becomes a major issue but my basic expectation is that they will. I want them to do latin and the basics of Greek too. And I am with the posters above who believe drawing is a skill I do"require" it (in a loose sense). I plan to continue until they have a fairly developed set of skills in realistic drawing and drafting.

I have no family here so real stories this time of year but my one little vent: I opened MIL's gift to DH today to wrap it for him (as requested, it was direct shipped) and realized she got him the same thing I did. So that sinks and I am generally annoyed and pouty about it. Probably should not let MIL annoy me from a distance but I am not feeling very reasonable tonight:( I guess he is still doing better than me. DH didn't get me any Christmas presents this year, or birthday presents (which was a couple days ago). And I know why and we talked about it and it's totally fine but I am still feeling a little sad I won't have any presents at all to open tomorrow.

No, the dating part. In fact I am celebrating Christmas tomorrow with friends who started dating at 15 and are still happily married 18 years later. Honestly, after reading the bathroom thread, I am sure nothing I have to say to you will matter. I hope your family manages to have a wonderful Christmas.

That was the standard rule in my grandmother's social circle when she was young! I think actually it was just that it couldn't be the same person twice in a row, not the two others though.

There is nothing age-inappropriate about being deeply in love at 15. Lots of successful long term marriages began at that age. We call them "high school sweet hearts and get all sappy and teary eyed when they celebrate 60 years.

Isn't that the worst? If they actually ship 2 day it doesn't bother me quite as much, but NO ONE takes a full week to put your stuff in the mail anymore. Not even when you buy things off eBay or pre-made on Etsy. Why should amazon be doing this to Prime customers?

I do think an OG based program might be best. Something that has a CD of pronunciation for the phonograms. Honestly there are youtube videos for that too. A 5 year old who is just learning English should probably not also be learning to read -- or at least stop at only memorizing the phonograms for a while. Decoding words will be useless unless he has a strong oral fluency already. You can post this on the bilingual board too.

So my IL's like to give my kids things that can literally kill me. We do not allow certain foods in the house at all. They know this food can kill me because they were visiting (staying in hotel) during my last anaphylactic reaction/hospital visit. It would be some sort of insanity to just accept their gift and be thankful it is a gift. In our house, DH gives his parents a talk while walking the food they just bought to the trash can outside. Your advice applies to ugly sweaters and fruit cake (if it won't kill you) and books that don't suit your taste. This is not applicable to serious food allergies. I don't know how serious the OP's food allergies are but I won't make an assumption either way.

My brother and I used to leave a pile of the tiny nubs that are inside a peanut when you split it in half. We were always convinced that that was the best part of the peanut. Never seemed odd as a kid but now it really does.

We keep Advent pretty strictly with a fast so it doesn't feel stretched out at all to me. I don't find it any harder or more stressful than any other holiday and I wouldn't even find it very hard if we didn't have such crazy allergies requiring me to bake every.single.sinking.thing from scratch with basically a new recipe every year (meaning lots of stuff fails as I try out different things).. All from really expensive ingredients I need to order a month in advance or drive 2h round trip to track down. But that's just our life and not doing it would mean the kids not getting special meals and treats a few times a year so I am certainly not giving up. We moved away from family when our oldest was little. A good part of that decision was influenced by how many insane expectations they put on us, with a tiny baby that first Christmas. I do love my (extended) family but DH and I decided to put our little family first and do whatever we felt was best for us as a whole.

I quit shopping on amazon for gifts by dec 10 because even with Prime, they don't send me stuff for 2-3 weeks. It just sits in "shipping soon" for almost all that time. Such a scam. I am not done shopping due to illness but I'll just go to go out locally. Hopefully tonight. DH and I are putting off bigger gifts for each other until after Christmas for a couple reasons so I don't need much else. Just a few things to round out the kids.

I like all those suggestions :) I can't ever eat food people give me but *if* I still get a food gift, at least I can usually see where the effort went in. It was potentially easier for us because DS is almost as bad as I am. I was not afraid of being rude and just handing back what he couldn't eat. It still took about 5 years for the inlaws to start to catch on (and seeing the disappointment on DS's face for a couple years). I think the giant tube of M&M's that we had to take out of his hands in front of them finally helped them get it. Your mom probably thinks "there must be something" in there you will enjoy and that you will share the rest with the kids. Doesnt make it any easier. I don't know why some well meaning people can't wrap their heads around actually reading labels.