My 4th grader is going to read Mary Pope Osborne's Tales from the Odyssey later this year, and I am wondering if anyone has a recommendation for a guide to go along with it. I feel like I should be able to pull together something for discussion at this age, but I'm just not feeling up to it. :) Has anyone used any of the resources from TPT? Any other ideas? Thank you.

All of my kids do the same activities, which makes driving easier on me. :) They do orchestra/violin class, swimming lessons, activities once a week with our homeschool group, and Sunday school. Add in appointments and it feels like a busy schedule.

I don't think that the tendencies are meant to explain everything about a person, just to suggest what types of methods will work when one is trying to instill new habits. Someone who is an obliger will do best when they have outside accountability regarding the habit they are establishing. Someone who is a questioner will do best when they have solid logical reasons for why they are establishing the habit. No, the tendencies aren't validated in the psychological literature, but I still find some of the ideas helpful. And I do really enjoy Gretchen Rubin's podcast. The episodes are short, they give a small self-help idea to try, she and her sister banter for a time, they might have a guest, and it's done. It kind of reminds me of the old Satellite Sisters show on NPR.

It seems there is a very small range of acceptable female voices. Too high: childish. Too low: vocal fry, hipster, annoying. Just like everything else. :sigh

It has a bedroom for each kid, 2.5 bathrooms, and a dining room with doors that we use as a schoolroom. There are separate family and living rooms so we made the living room the music room. It feels huge to me, even though it's relatively modest at 1800 ft^2. We have a big front yard where I can grow pretty things and the kids/dog don't destroy them. It's on the edge of a suburb but it feels rural. We can be in a big city in 45 min, at a salt water beach in 30 min, or at a mountainous national park in 45 min. I love where we live. :)

No, but I am scaling back a bit. All of our homeschool groups use fb as the primary medium of communication, so I am not willing to get rid of it completely.

"Carcass" is our family pet name for a pre-made rotisserie chicken. "What do you want for dinner?" "Oh, I don't know, I don't feel like cooking...could you pick up a carcass on your way home?" :laugh:

I’m old enough to remember when “soup bones†were the cheapest item in the meat section of the grocery store. Once bone broth was hipsterized, bones became as expensive as the meat. :O

I loved the onesie shirts! I have a long torso and at the time I wore them all of the other shirts in the stores were of the short boxy type, so I liked the option of a shirt that would not bare my midriff no matter how high I raised my arms. :)

There was a bone broth-heavy "protocol" that was popular a few years ago that claimed to heal all sorts of conditions, including asd/adhd. I always wondered if the kids on the protocol who became calmer were actually lethargic because they were hungry.

And some of us were already geriatric when we started having kids! :lol: Do you know what really makes me feel old? The time between WW2 and the year of my birth is shorter than the time between the year of my birth and today. My kids think of WW2 as happening ages and ages ago. SaveSave

It wouldn't be unusual to lose 20 lbs in 6 weeks if going from a carb-heavy to a low-carb diet. Several pounds would be water that would rush back with the first slice of pizza or baked potato. :)

My son with multiple learning disabilities was able to learn facts within ten, but despite lots of work on number bonds, drills, cuisinaire rods, etc. he still gave me a blank look when I asked a problem like 9+7. So we changed direction and had him practice using counters on number tracks with Slavonic shading, then progressed to visualizing the same process, then went to mentally making the ten without visualizing the tracks, and now he can figure out his facts quickly enough that I don't worry about memorization. Maybe they will become automatic with time, maybe not. I'm not sweating it now, though. We also really enjoy the Ronit Bird games in her free e-books. Century and matador are big hits here, as is the game whose name I can't recall in which the player rolls a die four times and chooses tens or ones for each roll to get as close to 100 as possible without going over. It reminds me of the Price is Right. :)

I have noticed an interesting age-related trend among my Facebook friends and family regarding "taking a knee." My friends and family who grew up during WW2 are all vocally supporting the NFL players who kneel during the anthem. The flag and anthem adoration being demanded really hits a nerve with them, regardless of their political party.

70s.

My son received his dx a few months ago, and I have been surprised at some of the programs he now qualifies for: OT and social skills groups, obviously, but his OT has put in a referral for PT and a group exercise class for kids on the spectrum. It has been worth it for us. We were on the fence about getting an official dx because ds presented as so mild, but the gap between him and typical children was growing each year and we decided to go for all the interventions we could. :)

When I was a kid one of my neighbors grew a zucchini that was well over 2 feet long. It spent about a week being left on various front porches, then it disappeared for a few days. The next time I walked by the gardener's house, he asked if I'd like to see his fine Italian sports car. He brought out the zucchini, which had been carved out, given wheels, upholstered seats, a steering wheel, license plates, etc. His "Lambrozucchini" was the talk of the neighborhood for weeks.

If space is at a premium, I'd choose the small fridge over the dishwasher. I like having a double sink. I would not choose the sink I chose for my last house--one large deep basin and one small basin, with a stainless flat dish draining spot. That tiny basin was useless. :)

In my opinion, Waldorf looks nice on the surface, but once you start looking into the underlying philosophies it gets murkier. We use some of the surface elements happily. :) The art supplies are lovely, and I like the focus on nature and seasons. It's easy to integrate a seasonal rhythm into your life using your own religious observances. Of course, once you strip away the Anthroposophy, is it really Waldorf anymore? To me it kind of seems like unschooling except for the 3 Rs. :) I call us eclectic, so I'm not hung up on labels anyway. How old are your kids? We use a loosely Waldorf-based elementary program, Wee Folk Art, and we like it a lot. My 4 y/o is going through Simple Seasons, my 7 and 10 y/os are doing Cultural Connections, and we love it. It's gentle, but provides a good base for rabbit-trailing.

When I wear it I use it neat but I think you could just mix it with a carrier oil to tone it down a bit? I don't know much about oils-I just like the way some of them smell. :)

We like I Speak Latin by Andrew Campbell for younger kiddos. It's oral and active and my kids beg to play Simon Dicit. :) My fourth grader who has dyslexia is doing Prima Latina this year. It doesn't require much writing, and we add little activities and pantomimes to help him retain everything, so it actually doesn't seem too dry.

When I was a teen working in a grocery store, I broke a cfl bulb while carrying a long-handled mop up some stairs. I was showered with broken glass and an odd powdery substance that I'm sure was the most toxic mercury compound known to man. I'm still here, relatively healthy, and only occasionally have to remove an extra limb that grows in a random place. :)

When I worked in my college library one of my jobs was to reinforce paperback books. We used a product similar to this http://www.thelibrarystore.com/product/ad30-0570/adhesive_book_covers that we cut to size. My only advice would be to cut the corners slightly round so you don't impale yoursale on the corner of a book. Ouch!

In my experience, this is inborn. One of mine spends 90% of his time playing with his pencil, scratching his feet, looking at everything around the room, etc. His brother picks up his pencil, starts singing a song about his lesson, and gets through it within a few minutes. If I take a bathroom break while he does math, he will race me, and when I return he exclaims "I can math faster than you can pee!"

We took a break this year. I thought that by playing math games several times a week we'd avoid the brain dump, but I should have remembered that ds doesn't generalize. After starting school back up I presented ds with a simple word problem--and he melted down. So we started going through the Singapore word problem book, several grades behind, relearning word problems. And guess what? By the third day he had it back. There is hope!