We got ahead because we started early, and I will do 2 lessons a day, one more difficult, like regrouping and an easy fun one, like measuring with a ruler or scale. We use TB, WB, and CWP. We will finish 3B by October and then we are only doing one level per year hopefully, so 4A/B in second grade, 5A/B in third, 6A/B in fourth.

We don't allow Legos out of their bedroom, ever. If I see a Lego anywhere else, I call the offender to immediately stop whatever they are doing and come and return it to their room. I don't care if you are eating, watching TV, playing outside, you must immediately stop and come and get it. That has greatly cut down on the "everywhere" problem. We have bins for each color in their room and a shelf that runs the length of the wall under the window. Creations go on the shelf, pieces go in the bins. I make them get every Lego off the floor and in one of these locations before they are allowed to go outside to play or watch TV or we leave the house.

I have never seen BA, but we use CWP and am going to start IP with the next book in the next few weeks (3A). My 7 YO DS loves the CWP, they are not too challenging to him, but it does take him longer than 3 seconds to figure them out, which he enjoys :).

I haven't read responses, but I would not be okay with watching someone else's two year olds without them expressly asking me...as a favor...occasionally :). I don't even let my four year old go out of my fenced backyard without me, my three year old, no way! She makes foolish (typical three year old) decisions inside the house, with me in the adjoining room where I can rescue her. My neighbor sends his four year old out to play with my kids, which I think is borderline annoying, and I don't stay out to watch him if my little two go in. I would just mention to the parents that you are uncomfortable with the situation.

Me, too :). We are testing the waters this summer, I had forgotten how long it takes to do everything with a pre-reader.

Mine will be 5 and 7 in the fall, too. We will be doing The One Year Bible, SOTW, Science in the Beginning, and CC together. Math, reading, handwriting, and spelling separately. My 7 YO will be answering the SOTW questions in a notebook and reading the extra books independently and 5 YO will be doing them orally and I will read to him.

And to add, we do spelling and Shurley English for the other parts of language arts.

I have been looking at a lot of my friends' curriculum and all are doing some sort of reading program, A beka, Bob Jones, Sonlight, etc. We used The Writing Road to Reading to learn to read, now he can read practically anything. He has read the first two Harry Potters this year, all of the Hatchet/Brian Saga, the Mysterious Benedict Society, Inkheart, so that gives you an idea of his reading ability. So where do we go from here? When I taught, we had readers, with generally stupid stories and reading comprehension questions at the end, and a vocabulary section. Do I need to find something like this, or is just reading enough? Do I need to make up comprehension questions for him based on the books he's already reading? I mean, he clearly understands what's going on, he finishes the books and asks me questions about words he doesn't understand, but do I need to be searching for a reading program for second grade? Do I search for a reading program for a higher level since the books he's reading are higher than second grade? ETA: He also reads lots of nonfiction, he reads the Usborne World History and science encyclopedias daily, plus nonfiction about whatever CC topics we're covering.

I love that I have room for a dedicated schoolroom and playroom, it helps keep me from going insane from the amount of stuff we have. I love that my kitchen is enormous, we actually have more cabinets than we can use. I love that it's all hard floors on the bottom, except the playroom, and all carpet upstairs. I love that we have enough room for my husband to have his gallery in our house which doubles as a dedicated media room. I love that we have lots of windows so lots of natural light. I love my fenced backyard where my littles can play safely any time. I love that we have friends for my kids in nearly every house within walking distance. I love that we have lots of friends for ourselves within walking distance. My favorite feature is we live in a cul de sac where they can all ride their bikes in safety :).

We signed him up :). Asher is going to take a break from swimming in the fall, and both he and Jax are going to swim in the winter and spring. Sweet P will be old enough for Awana in the fall so I will be able to grocery shop alone every week, whoo hoo!

I loved the idea of an unhurried family :).

LOL, no she lives in PA. She is offering to pay for art camp this summer, and wants them to go on different weeks so they will feel special. The camps my 7 and 3 YO's chose are a week she is going to be here for part of the week, I seriously considered making her take the 3 YO in the morning, coming home, going back at 1 to pick her up and drop off the 7 YO, coming home, and going back at 5:30 to get him, just so she can get a feel for my reality ;).

And no, I don't even have enough bedrooms for everyone to have their own room.

And again, thank you for all your replies. My MIL is making me feel like I am a terrible parent for not giving my children their own rooms and that I need to put them all in different activities until they find their "gifted ness", even my 3 YO. And yes, she is willing to pay for this exploration.

And yes, we (parents) chose swimming. They have been in lessons since they were tiny and they all absolutely love to swim. We chose it because all three could do it all the way through high school/life, and to make my life easier :). My 7 YO really, really loves swimming on the team, and does not like soccer at all (we let him play twice when he was 5 and 6, that's how my 4 YO knows about the snacks.). I did offer up Gatorade and Oreos after swim meets :). DH is not home to help on any sort of regular schedule, he has photo shoots 3-4 nights a week, then meets with clients on nights in the winter. Moving to a small town sounds good, no matter where you live in Greensboro, you are going to be driving 20 minutes to something, we actually live in the city limits.

Here soccer is one one hour practice during the week (day determined by coach in the fall) and one 45 minute game on Saturday. He will always be in the first set of games. Half our games will be played at a field 6 minutes from our house, half are played at a field 25 minutes away. Hopefully, practices would be at the close field, I think they assign teams geographically. Carpooling is an issue now because if car seats, we just moved A to a low back booster two weeks ago, J is still five point harnessed. I would have to move his car seat if he was going to ride with someone to games. Another issue is we still have a bunch of weddings in the fall, so my nanny would probably have to take him to half the games, two September games, two in October, one in November. She wouldn't mind, I don't think, but we wouldn't be there to watch.

Thanks for your answers, I was a little overwhelmed last night as I was looking at art camps and realizing I was going to have to choose three separate weeks for them, and all the driving that was going to go with it, and what my fall was going to look like if we added something else. Just to clarify, they both know how to swim, this is swim team, so the swim on T and Th are practices, not lessons, and not mandatory. My dh thinks we should let 5 YO do soccer in the fall and tell 7 YO he has to take a break from swimming for those three months. He can start swimming again in November when J is done with soccer. I don't mind doing soccer two days a week if we take swimming out of the equation two days a week. I forgot that we are also adding piano for 7 YO next year. We live 20-25 minutes from everything, so I guess I'm seeing all this time in the car in my future. I realize that I am also panicking over something that may never come to pass, he might just play one season and realize he doesn't like it as much as swimming (or diving, really, that's the carrot I put out there). He told me last night, "I really want to play soccer because you get to have Gatorade and potato chips after the game." :).

Up to this point, I have only had one child old enough to do extracurricular activities because we don't start until they are five. We specifically chose swimming because all three could do it, it would have the same practice times and places, and they hopefully would be competing in overlapping locations. Now my four year old says he wants to do soccer in the fall when he turns five. I don't want to do soccer, I don't want to go to another practice and game every week. I just want him to swim, that's easy for me, his brother already swims, we are already used to the schedule and it works well for us, it doesn't conflict with church activities or photography demands, he LOVES to swim and he's really good at it. But...he wants to play soccer. Sigh, so what do I do? I feel like we are already stretched so thin, we have small group on Monday, CC and swimming on Tuesday, Awanas on Wednesday, swimming on Thursday, and sometimes a swim meet on Saturday, and church on Sunday. I want to let him be his own little person, but what do I do if he loves it? They play soccer year round here and the traveling teams start in third grade. What do you do when you have two children in two different sports? Or three, what if Piper says she wants to do ballet instead of soccer or swimming? It sounds so stressful!

And I now see about 17 people before me made this same observation ;).

I can sew, my mom is a great seamstress and taught my siblings and me as tweens. My sister is actually a high school Family and Consumer Science teacher, which used to be called Home Ec), so she is amazing, she makes her own fitted blouses and dresses so they always fit perfectly. I mostly make boutique dresses for my little girl, but I can sew nearly anything with a pattern. My 7 YO DS just asked me to teach him how to sew this week, mainly because he likes the way the machine sounds, I suspect. I told him I would put it in the queue for summer school.

I have started buying/selling things on several online yardsale facebook pages. I do pick up only, or if I'm going to be at a Central location for something else, I'll offer to meet there.

This video sums up what I think about the book and/or movie :).

So where is your thermostat? If it's downstairs, and downstairs is significantly cooler, maybe that is the problem. Our downstairs is 10 degrees cooler naturally, when we don't have anything on.

My dh left me with my offspring today to do a double photo shoot in Charlotte. My three year old started my mother's day with three extra loads of laundry because she wet the bed on top of her quilt. Then my seven year old threw a tantrum at church because he wanted to stay and play. My four year old turned on the hose outside and sprayed the other two, so my seven year old used the dirty laundry from the laundry room to dry off, getting my three year old's peed on white sheets covered in mud. My three year old used a blue crayon that my seven year old had left in her room to color her wooden Plan dollhouse, wall, and carpet during rest time. It's basically been an awesome Mother's Day :thumbdown: .