Well, that *was* our foyer, along with a fireplace and an antique dresser in the alcove behind the steps, to keep mittens and things in. My table had to go when the piano went to live in there, on the only interior wall we have with no door or fireplace on it (against the stairs). NB: pianos are not great for shoe storage.

:iagree: with all of it. I don't have any great love of being the leader - organizing volunteers is like pushing jello up a cliff - and I'm happy to do my bits and avoid the whole coordination thing. I would even be fine handing over leadership to someone else and focusing on specific tasks. But I would not lend my talents to an effort where I was treated like that. That's just offensive. (and from now on, I'm just going to let Cat post for me. Just put my name on whatever you come up with, too, ok?)

To clarify my original post: I don't think there is anything wrong with participation. It simply wasn't an option - de facto, if not legally - when we were making the choice to homeschool, and we made our choice with that knowledge.

It's no longer being debated here. Until a couple of years ago, participation in sports or electives was at the discretion of the district; now it is explicitly not allowed. When I made the choice to homeschool, I chose to not partake of the school system. I don't really see how it is now scandalous that the schools are saying we can't have it both ways.

I'm an herbalist, so my approach to staying healthy is being healthy. That sounds trite... We eat well, exercise and get enough sleep. We practice good hygiene, washing hands, etc. We avoid groups of contagious people. Our bodies are strong and not over-stressed and vulnerable to infection. During cold and flu season, everybody gets elderberry syrup before bed. I add astragalus root to anything I cook in water - soups, potatoes, pasta, rice - and I simmer it for a bit before I add the rest of the stuff. I keep a spray bottle of usnea throat spray in my purse for when we find that we are exposed to people who are actively coughing and sneezing around us (also very helpful during the lick-random-things-at-the-market stage, when you find yourself wondering if you can Purell someone's tongue. Not that I have any Purell, but in that slow-motion panic as you watch your kid's tongue slide down the hand rail of the open freezer vat...). I have amassed a collection of vintage gloves that I wear at the market. They come off in the car, but I don't have to touch the cart handle directly... When we are ill - which is very rare, maybe a single mild cold for everyone during winter - we rest. We don't try to mask symptoms and carry on; feeling sluggish is the body demanding what it needs, and we honor that.

That is so sad.

Well, I waaaaas sort of offended at the lack of choices. But then I got to the Catholic/ other theistic evolutionist and I felt better. :D Though I would split the hair that it's like fighting over the answer "blue" to the question "what's for supper". I tend to enjoy the mysteries as they are. Meaning of life? I'm really okay with that being an unanswerable question. I'm pretty sure we're God's sea monkeys. My theory - excuse me, "untested hypothesis I pulled put of my butt" (though I feel fine using the term theory as I am in no way talking about scientific inquiry) - used to exasperate my priest. I'm just like that.

My eldest daughter needed them (she had tooth positioning that caused bite issues), but I opted to wait until she had all of her molars. She got them when she was 15 and they were off at 16. If we'd done it earlier, they would likely have been on for several years. I opted not to have her jaw broken to correct the (purely cosmetic) slight "family overbite". The MF surgeon told me I was a bad mother. :mad: My feeling is that my children can make cosmetic alterations when they are adults and can reasonably assess the risk and make a decision. If it's something that will affect their health, we will try to weigh the risks or action vs those of inaction and make what we feel is the best decision.

I don't think you can blame the decline of thinking skills on a single group. You may not agree with their arguments (and I don't) but they're not the ones drooling in front of reality tv (or even programming it). Or, wait... Maybe reality tv and the rest of the drivel is part of some group's conspiracy to turn us all into idiots so they can take over the world. ( where IS that tinfoil hat smilie?? :D)

I think MD laws are easy. You send a form and either review with the county or with an umbrella group. There are no attendance, testing or approval requirements. And there are lots of very active groups in the metro area (particularly Montgomery and PG counties). State of being is pretty comparable in NoVA and the MD metro area, too, as far as I can tell. ;) I would *definitely* go for close to work, all other things being relatively equal. Commuting on either side of the beltway is not fun. (Think LA rush hour.)

Me, too.

It's hit or miss for me. This year was great. Last year, not so much. Sometimes, the ages of sellers' last children just mesh with the ages of my children. And then I get all frenzied! :willy_nilly: :lol:

I don't think religious belief and science are mutually exclusive. I do think religious belief is bad science, just like philosophy is bad science. But the philosophy greats were also often great scientists. I have no doubt that many of our contemporary great scientists hold deep faith as well. The different areas simply ask and seek to answer different questions about what is around us. I totally agree that the abysmal state of science education has very little to do with Creationism (taught as science), which would apply to so few students, it really just isn't an issue (in the broad discussion of education). (and, frankly, evolution is such a small bit of general science education, I think it could be skipped altogether and still not have much effect on the net quality of science education) My thought is that, like history, science is taught in so broad and shallow a manner that it is completely disjointed and disconnected. One more reason we were drawn to Classical education: coherence

That. And I'm right there with you. My almost 8yos use their harnesses because they haven't outgrown them. They only use the regular seatbelt (sitting in their boosters) around our tiny town, where the speed limit it 25 throughout. I know someone whose infants rode around in an unsecured "phone book" type booster with an adult seatbelt because "the harnesses bother them". I think the price of proper restraint is what bothered the parents. I was really angry the day we went to do a pickup instead of them, and were stopped twice (once each way) at a carseat checkpoint. WE were fine (because our children's parents are neurotic paramedics - former, in my case), but I wished they had been snagged before something terrible and irreversible might have happened to their children.

Ummmm... How on earth is that "fine"?!?! I honestly have no idea what kind of force it takes to rip curtain rods from the walls - and my living room curtains now hang askew on brackets bent at a 45 degree angle by my own toddlers (who are now nearly 8) climbing the walls... Still.not.fine - but however easy or difficult, it was deliberate. Willful destruction as an activity - breaking, dumping or wrenching fixtures from walls - is never ok. Ever.

I think *conceptually* a five year old can understand "show me, don't tell me". But five year olds don't have terrific impulse control, so I would expect to have him fall down, repeatedly. It's probably wise to find and preplan some coping techniques that you can redirect him toward when the factors that lead to this behaviour fall into place, and then be vigilant in catching him before he starts into the behavior. So, something like "when you feel like X, you think you need to do Y, but that's not the right thing to do (which he recognizes) and so we're going to try to remind you to do Z when we see you heading that way". And then, before he gets to the behavior, "I think I see you heading toward Y. Let's take a step back and think about what is the right thing to do here." Reactive behaviors are hard to stop, even when we're rational adults who can see they're destructive. It takes a lot of conscious effort to stop before we react in our old (undesirable) pattern and make a better decision, at least until that becomes the habit. Know what I mean? Adults stumble. We should expect kids to stumble, too, while they learn tools to help them avoid hitting the same obstacle every time. :grouphug: It's hard, this parenting thing.

Seriously? I'm sitting out on the dark porch and I'm reading down - chuckle, giggle - and then "DON'T BLINK" ???!???!?! Now I'm all creeped out. And I think I heard a rustle... oops!

I feel like something went extinct with that publication... Something that was placed on the endangered list in the course of that school's language arts classes. Poor, poor kittens. :crying:

Snort. So... Homeschoolers don't even know the definition of socialized? :lol: New t-shirt slogan: socialization We don't know the meaning of the word!

Never fear, kilts and Ryan Gosling made appearances, though we could not come up with Ryan with a cupcake. That was sad. :(

Why? Is only catching a minute or less clip of news verboten now? I love that my iPhone has learned kerfuffle. I only have to type k-e-r-f and it finishes for me. Gooooood iPhone. Pat pat.

Yep, the Hive converted me. I order them on Amazon (I'll blame that habit on the Hive, too :D)

My 11 yo whipped through grammar, writing, vocabulary and logic this morning. And she seemed to enjoy it. Meanwhile, her brothers sat there <not> doing their 1/2 page of spelling and grammar review. I sat behind them and did grading. And then I had to run out to a meeting, which no one showed for... So I ran some errands, came home, and found one of the boys at the dining room table <not> doing math, and the other one upstairs in the school room, in the dark, <not> doing math with a graphing calculator. :glare: (The girl child was happily reading after finishing a very "fun" algebra lesson) The rest of their week is not looking too good on the leisure front.

I have paper covered tubes on the school table. In the school room. Stocked with Black Warriors that i sharpened myself. Sunday. They all had weird, random writing implements this morning. :glare: I tried giving them color coded mechanical pencils last year, both to avoid pencil sharpening field trips (in rotation with drink and bathroom field trips) and so I'd know whose pencil it was lying around... Nope. They.just.disappear. Poof!

The man chair in my living room was purchased at the suggestion of my midwife, when I had horrible back pain that kept me up all night. Didn't work. The chiropractor took care of it in one visit. The ghastly plaid chair and a half recliner - the kind of upholstery to which dog hair attaches like Velcro - remains in my living room, 12 years later. The dog thinks the back is her personal urban tree limb, on which she spends her day lounging while looking out the window for "prey" to bark at. I hate that chair. It's awful. I am out voted in the man chair debate by the husband and the dog.