Thank you all so much for the input and advice! It is hard to know sometimes what is "on level" or "normal" when homeschooling, even if those aren't super important markers, it does help to know when to keep pushing and when to chill out a bit. After talking it over with my son, we are going to keep using WWS as he does enjoy it, but just slow it down quite a bit and take multiple days for hard assignments. Lori D your examples of writing steps are very helpful, and I will also start using these when writing in history/science to give him some structure to follow to aid in writing summaries. I think I have decided to only focus on grammar/spelling in his WWS work, or other assigned work in Language Arts, and to not worry about it overly much in his history/science. Does this seem like a good balance to strike? I don't want to ask too much at once, but to want him to keep writing across subjects - especially as writing is the only real output for those two classes we have this year.

I posted this a few weeks ago in the Writing Workshop, but I didn't get any feedback there, and I'm wondering if it's just a board people don't look at. I'd love some feedback on writing levels and expectations for my 5th grader. He is working through WWS 1, and does well on the outlining, but struggles with the summaries. He also, imo, struggles with writing summaries in history and science, but I do not know if my expectations are too high. I am struggling with whether to stop and focus on grammar/spelling exclusively, or continue with WWS and working on writing summaries in content subjects. I'd love any feedback on this writing and where to focus to improve.

My 10yo is similar. I focus only on meals, and let snacks be whatever they want. He makes his own breakfast and lunch, and I can't imagine trying to make something for those meals to please everyone, so for us, it is worth the mess and cleanup time. It's also a life skill, if that helps you manage the stress of the mess. The rule here is you have to satisfy each meals requirements to get snacks or dessert after that meal. For breakfast I require a protein and a carb. For lunch I require a protein and a fruit or vegetable (almost always fruit.) Must be different protein than breakfast, and cannot repeat carbs (no bagels for breakfast and lunch, etc). For dinner they get whatever I make, and they either eat it or get a PB&J (no dessert if they choose this route). Dinner always has a protein and a vegetable. Easy proteins include: peanut butter, hummus, hot dogs, eggs, salami, and occasionally I'll let them count cheese/yogurt, but not always. Fruit can be either fresh, frozen, or a smoothie (made with real fruit). These meals often don't look healthy, but I figure it's good enough, if he gets protein it dampens the hangry issues, and my pickiest eater will suffer through scrambled eggs and an apple if it means he gets chips or cookies for snacks. I don't limit snacks, and we have dessert available every night, but my kids are also underweight, I might choose to limit if weight was also an issue.

I would love some insight on my 5th graders writing. I am currently struggling with knowing what is age appropriate and what is not. When I read these, I just see many flaws and don't know where to start. This year we are using Writing with Skills 1, and also doing weekly summaries of history and science as per the WTM. This is an example from WWS, summarizing a section in 2-3 sentences. Then 2 examples of history summaries and a science summary.

We love Maryland. It is very very diverse though, and each area is different. Southern Maryland is very different if you mean St. mary's and south/east, versus Charles county versus PG county. It goes from city to suburbs to rural very quickly, with corresponding cultural differences in each area. The downside of southern/central MD for me is the weather. Annoyingly hot and humid in summer. Cold and wet in the winter, but rarely do we get snow (1-2x a year, some years no snow). The bugs are no joke either. We are in southern MD now but hope to retire to western MD for a better climate and traffic situation.

I think both types of play are important, and try to make time for both. I always intend to give my kids hours upon hours of free play time everyday that is not in any way directed by me or my goals for their education. But I also schedule lots of educational games and play activities into our school time, though mostly just games. Things like Valence, or Noggins Trivia Games, or GeoPuzzles, or even apps like Dragonbox or Starfall. These are games, and my kids definitely consider them playing, even choosing many of our "educational" board games for their own play during freetime, but I do consider them separate from free undirected play. I think there is space in a kid's life for both, and both can hold significant value.

I'd encourage you to think of it less as city vs country, and be open to the many areas of compromise in between. I live 15 minutes outside of DC, and can walk to a bus stop that will take me anywhere in the greater DC area. However, we also live like we are in the country. We have 5 acres, some of our neighbors have 100 acres. We had a hobby farm at one point. I can't hear the highway or city noises, but I can hear the jets from the Air Force Base nearby. I get many of the benefits of city living (water, trash, short drives, public transit) but also many of the benefits of country living. I cannot see my neighbors' houses except from one far corner of my yard, I have room and land, and it is fairly quiet and peaceful. But I'm also only 5 minutes away from a hospital, and 20 minutes away from a full-service hospital, I get mail, deliveries, etc. without problem. I will say I could never move back to my house being close to a neighbors'. But I also don't love the thought of being so far away from city life and conveniences to move out to the "real" country. Also we are not a "town," just a random road in the suburbs that used to be old farmland, most people don't know the area exists, because it's about 12 houses. I highly recommend seeing if you can find a "best of both worlds" area for you.

We use duvet covers (same material as sheets) over down comforters. The duvet covers get washed weekly (actually every other week, but we have 2 sets, so they are only on the bed for a week) and the comforter every other month or more often if needed (we still have little kids, they are gross sometimes). We don't use top sheets though, so the duvet cover serves the purpose of a sheet. None of my kids could ever use a sheet to keep a blanket clean, nor could I, as we wrap the comforter all around us and between legs etc. Sometimes I sleep on top of the comforter, so... sheets wouldn't mean less cleaning but a duvet does. We also have many blankets around the house, and those tend to get washed as needed, on average probably every two weeks between dirty kids and the dog.

Ugh. This makes me so angry. We supported him and his videos and channel and recommended them constantly. This infuriates me. Especially rough after my kids favorite Ninja Warrior found guilty of similar crimes.

That is so scary! My 6yo was like that, honestly some days still is. We installed a pressure rod on the window so you can't open it. It is so tight I can't get get it off. I know they sell rods meant for windows, but I think ours is a shower curtain rod? The key is making it very tight so even if a kid puts thier entire body weight into it they can't get it off.

One thing I've been trying this year has been alternating independent versus together days on a per subject basis, so that no subject gets neglected due to too much independent work. So one kid might do math independently on Mon/wed, but work with me on math on Tues/Thurs. For science he could be independent on Tues/Thurs, but work with me on Mon/wed. Then I'd pick the opposite schedule for the other kid. This way each subject gets attention even if I can't give every subject for every kid attention every day.

Anyone have any good suggestions for boys shoes, to handle to wet and cold? We always used to just do rainboots or snowboots, but he really dislikes those, I think because they aren't tight on the foot and come up so high. He runs and climbs trees and heavy boots just aren't practical. But he goes through 3-4 pairs of sneakers over a winter because of the damage if being wet constantly.

We used BA 3-5 after using RightStart and Miquon with a fairly advanced math loving kid, for context. We LOVED BA 3-4. It was the perfect amount of practice with difficult puzzles. Lvl 5 was a completely different story. In order to process quickly in lvl 5, a kid needs to be able to quickly multiply multidigit numbers and easily and quickly divide multidigit numbers. IMO BA failed at teaching how to do this quickly and painlessly. It taught the concepts well, but at some point a kid will want to move on from concepts to quick use of algorithms and this is where we struggled with BA. It reflected what I think is the weakness of BA, the idea it has that teaching a concept once is enough for mastery in use. At that point we switched to MM 6 and it was the perfect complement and relief from BA 5. After that we moved into AOPS Prealgebra and have been going quickly through that with no problems. After reflecting on BA compared to other programs we used, I think it is the best for challenging problems and critical thinking in math, but does no do a good job of teaching the basics of math. Oddly, I have not seen this problem in AOPS at all.

Starfall - I highly highly recommend this. It is wonderful, from learning basic letters to reading books to kids, includes math as well, K-2 levels. Dragonbox - DB Numbers especially Khan if he can manage basic reading to navigate. Khan kids app on ipad if not. Preloaded Magic School Bus videos if you have a way to do this.

My recent thread there got locked, a thread asking for Sex Ed resources, locked because I defended the use of "male anatomy" and "female anatomy" as not transphobic. This has just confirmed my frustrations over the group, which have little to do with "secular" and a lot more to do with deleting/locking without any explanation. I did see that another facebook group got started for secular homeschoolers who are interested in "compromise" options if they are the best options. I am still very glad for some of the resources found through SEA, but it certainly no longer works for me.

We keep chickens year round, but -60 deg is REALLY cold for chickens. I would ask around locally to you to see what other people in a similar climate do. They will definitely need a heat source with it that cold, and the water will need a heater to stay liquid.

The one I have is frosted so you can see through it, but not clearly like a window. The frosted effect (on the back) helps make the writing on the glass clearer. We also use frosted glass top tables as whiteboards as well. With glass, you never get the shadows if you leave the dry erase on for too long.

I really like the look of glass for whiteboards. Ikea has some nice ones.

So, thinking on this further, I cannot think of a single elementary science homeschool curriculum that talks about evolution, with the exception of CM style ones that use living books (BYL, B&R) etc. If you take that strict of a stance, I'm not sure there are elementary science curriculums you would consider secular. I'd love some examples. Imo excluding RSO, Evan Moor, Prentice Hall, Mr Q, and hundreds other as secular because they don't cover elementary level evolution is extreme. That's also part of the frustration I have with SEA. They don't exclude them all, just some. Others get a pass even though they don't cover the evolution topic at lower levels. It's inconsistent. I think most of us here can agree though that elementary science would be so much better if it did routinely cover evolution and geological time.

I think there is a large difference between saying that teaching evolution is easy and good for elementary, versus declaring a science curriculum not secular simply because it doesn't cover those topics in elementary level. No one calls RSO Life religious, but it doesn't cover evolution. I teach evolution early as we read preschool age picture books about prehistory, the big bang, and evolution. However, I have no problem with a elementary science curriculum that doesn't cover evolution being called secular. If it is explicitly YE, or even if the author is YE(see RS4K) I wouldn't call it a secular, but just because something like Mr Q which waits until middle school to tackle evolution doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered secular.

I am a member of SEA and do get a lot out of it. I remember when it formed and was there at the start. But it's silly to pretend its perfect, and its getting worse. I have *no* problem with not allowing recommendations of religious based works. But its not as simple as "Well just go somewhere else." They have already pressured curriculum creators to drop borderline books just so they can be recommended. They have power at this point within the homeschooling world, and the extremes they go to (including bannings for mistakes or questions) have negative consequences. I have no problem saying I love the idea and goal of the group, but it could be *so* much better if it was less extreme. It has had a huge influence on secular homeschoolers far outside the community, and I can't count the number of times I have heard "well x,y,and z isn't *really* secular cause SEA says so" in other forums.

I know the group and have had the same frustrations. Especially with SOTW and science curriculums. I'm as secular as they come, but the exclusions can be extreme. Example: not allowing Mr Q science because he doesn't teach evolution until middle school. I also believe the groups has lost the "academic" focus it started with. I believe the firm stance against books like SOTW is just to promote the owners companies new history books. The reality of restrictions don't line up with the supposed philosophy laid out in their rules, and it's become worse over time.

The "school should only take 2 hours" is rampant on my local facebook groups. The worst was when a mom posted with 3 kids plus a baby, two in middle school, wondering why she couldn't finish everything with all of them in 2 hours. Hundreds of people responded with how to shorten school. I was one of very few who asked "why do you think that should only take 2 hours?"

Do you have suggestions for double consonant blends? Like B-L, S-T, etc. I feel like we've been stuck on this for over a year with my kid. He can't help but add a vowel in between, and I'm at a loss. We are using LOE and it's working well, after 100EZ was a complete miss for him, but we once again hit this wall.

We have used RSO, BFSU, and RS4Ks. We ended up hating RS4Ks, maybe because it was too textbook like, but also too simplified. My 2nd grader found it babyish. We *loved* RSO but it was exhausting - every single lesson has either an activity or experiment. It made for a great year of science, but was tiring, and we won't use it again. It also did not lead to high levels of retention for my kid, who seemed to learn more from high quality (not dumbed down) books instead of demonstration after demonstration after demonstration. BFSU has been our absolute favorite, but it requires a lot of work ahead of time for the parent. Prereading, preplanning, finding resources, etc. We have loved it but could not do it every year. Despite extensive use of curriculum, and way too much money spent, my kids have learned the most science from library books, good shows like Wild Kratts, Octonauts, Bill Nye, etc. and Youtube videos. If I could do it all over I would have spend the $30 or so on BFSU and not wasted money on anything else except supplies and tools (and many books of course, but those don't count right?).