Try to ensure you're using your time efficiently, spacing things together so they flow well, and get things knocked over early. Also don't be afraid to do school outside typical school hours if it fits If it was me the schedule would look a little more like 7am, wake up. Kids do chores while you make breakfast. They get to play for 20 minutes before school 8am, Older two work in beast academy first thing while they're fresh and somewhat motivated. 4yo plays with a special schooltime toy or amuses himself while he's still fresh and happy to be alone. 9am, Weekly grammar work, and then both olders do their morning packets at the same time. 4yo gets dedicated mummy time, or kindergarten time, for the rest of the hour 10am, all three boys go out for a 'recess' or play break. 10:30am, Oldest plays with 4yo while you do AAS and reading with younger (you said this doesn't actually take the whole hour?) 11:00am Oldest does CC with you while younger goes back to playing with 4yo (these two time slots could, obviously, be swapped around or maybe even alternated each day to give both a chance at a 'long recess' 12:00am Serve lunch for the kids, and do your read alouds over the meal (this may mean delaying your own lunch or eating it quickly?) I think that covered everything in your schedule? That would have the bookwork finished by 12:30 or so, with a happier, played with 4yo and the afternoon free. It's the same amount of time spent on work, but distributed differently and somewhat more efficiently. About the early start, I personally found that the difference between starting at 8 or 9 was considerable, and so was the difference between starting with challenging subjects like math, and starting with less challenging ones like handwriting. Also, I am firmly in the 'bookwork finished by lunchtime' camp, if it's not done by lunch it doesn't get done here, but I am willing to begin school at breakfast time to achieve that. It's all about perspective of time rather than actual hours What constructive or useful activities happen between 7am and 9am? Usually not much, those end up being wasted hours because everyone is unfocused and just pottering around. Better to use those hours efficiently and have time to potter in the afternoon when we are free to relax or start projects without school looming ahead than to just have wasted time in the morning. My husband works 6-3 and feels the same, he much prefers getting straight into it in the morning than wasting time before work starts at 9 unable to do start anything useful. Would you rather have free, open ended time at 8am, or 2pm? Would you rather an hour in the morning and another hour in the afternoon, or two hours together in the afternoon? We choose the latter in both cases. We are not a get-up-at-5am family, I usually set my alarm for 7am, by which time the kids have been up playing quietly for a half hour, and have found we can get breakfast and chores and a little free play to wake up done in an hour once the kids are used to the routine. YMMV of course

I make complete major changes all at once, but only ever in ONE area at a time, too many different changes at once will fail, but big changes in one area generally work for me. So at one point I cut out all soda, energy drinks and sugary drinks from my diet completely, and also temporarily cut out alcohol completely. But during that time, any issues with my house, routine, anything else was put to the side for later, I focused only on the complete change in fluid consumption. Another time I lowered my portion sizes, worked on moving to wholegrain instead of white carbs again, and worked on eating a proper breakfast instead of skipping. But during that time, again, I tried to keep up any previous habits (like the drink one) but did not try to change anything else about my life, our school, anything. One area at a time, changed completely.

Five Times Five Is Not Ten might be worth looking at for memorizing facts. I haven't used it yet but I have used the one before it, two plus two is not five, for DDs addition facts. It's been great. I agree with building grit, but, honestly, it sounds like he already has plenty. We also go for longer math lessons, but being willing to spend an hour plugging away at basic addition/multiplication with only some distraction is pretty impressive in itself.

Different people and groups have different beliefs about tithing so there is no correct answer. DH believes it should go to the church and only the church, anything more should be an extra donation. I believe it should go to a charitable or worthy cause, I've seen too many churches mishandle funds, and prefer to anonymously give needed items or cash in a card to people in the local community in need. Since we believe the husband is the spiritual head of the household, but my husband also sees my heart on this issue, we give our tithe to the church most weeks but I am free to take from the tithe to give to very pressing needs when I see them. I think this is one of those issues where the intentions and motivations matter far more than exactly what you do. What He is looking at is your attitude towards Him and towards giving. We believe in tithing 10% and have done so even when unemployed and scraping things together. But even if there is a 'correct' answer, I don't think our tithes 'don't count' because we gave them to a person in need instead of a church or vice versa. Our heart attitude is right (I hope!) and that means more than specifically what actions we take in order to achieve that.

Definitely. As someone with PTSD I experience it constantly on one issue or another. Hoping someone else might be able to offer a better explanation as to how it works since mine is based on mental illness induced situations

Oh heck no. Winning the lotto would mean being able to afford all the awesome learning activities and stuff! and a housekeeper so I can teach better! Quitting work and travelling forever and paying for your kids so they dont have to work either is a great, amazing short term plan. But long term, you end up with entitled adults who have no connection to the real world, and their future children having parents with not as much money as you have, and no clue what a normal life and parenting looks like. My husband and I have talked about this, and while we would probably make lump sum purchases, we would try not to give them more than necessary day to day. The kids would finish school, but I'd likely encourage them to work part time for their own spending money (still a totally normal practice in my country). I'd pay for any extracurricular they wanted to do, but I wouldn't give them free reign of money for shopping and trips to the movies or anything, that's what their jobs/allowance are budgeted for. Since I'd have the money to spare I'd probably let them get the 'just because you want to learn' degree paid for by me, but then they would get jobs. We would definitely buy their first car, and probably buy them their first house, but we would have no intention of contributing to their general finances. Except for the freedom of being given a free house they would have to work and budget and earn their way like everyone else. I would buy books for my grandbabies, including homeschooling books if they chose to do that. I think that's about it. I would envision my kids having a typical middle class upbringing, even if we could afford more, with a healthy dose of 'look how good you have it' since I grew up in poverty and can't stand people who have no concept of being poor. In fact my husband and I would probably continue working ourselves in some capacity too. What that looks like would change, DH might go from his factory job to making wooden childrens toys and other things in his shed (which will be outfitted with many overly large machines I expect) and I'd be able to dedicate myself more fully to homeschooling and volunteering. But we would want our kids to see us modelling work and a healthy life.

I would stop her from looking if I could. Having said that, with enough practice and desire anyone can type in many ways. I wasn't taught to touch-type, i didn't have the motor skills and no one ever taught me beyond the first 12 keys. I now type over 80 wpm, and I believe I just about hit 100 wpm a number of years ago when I was typing more, with TWO FINGERS. I took slow, search for the letter, pointer finger method, and through constant computer use as a teenager on messengers, writing emails and doing assignments, have mastered it lol. I use my pinky for the shift button, and thats about it. I do NOT recommend it of course.... I wish I could type properly! But my point is, try your best to teach it correctly but, ultimately, with enough use, even someone who looks and types with two fingers can become very quick. It's one of those things where you'll find a way to do it and practice it often enough that it becomes natural for you. (and I no longer look, I've memorized the position of the keys in relation to the other keys, so I can go from one key to another and, so long as my keyboard is correctly lined up in front of me, I almost never miss, I don't think about it, it's muscle memory)

We intentionally avoid homeschool groups. I don't fit in with most of them. I've never fully adjusted to modern homeschoolers after my experiences being homeschooled as a kid, they're so different now to the families I grew up with! In my area they're all very natural, child led, unschooly, no-discipline types, so our rather strict, old fashioned, high responsibilities, early-education family gets a lot of stares. That's not to say they're all bad, there are some great groups out there, just not in my area! Give the ones you can access, if they welcome you, a go. One thing to keep in mind is that, once you hit upper elementary you find the people with the most time for homeschooling groups (outside of formal co-ops) are the unschooling families. Which is fine, more power to them, but if you are doing rigorous academics you may find it's not a great fit and that their timetables are too full for you to also complete your work. As a graduated homeschooler, let me say, socializing with other homeschoolers specifically is not important. Socializing is vital, you need to find outlets for your kids and trying to keep up with their school friends is great. But, knowing other homeschoolers is not a big deal. It's nice, and you'll find that they often come into your life in other ways, you don't need to join a special group for it. I had a core group of friends growing up and they all attended the local high school. I ended up getting involved with that friendship group from one of my longtime friends who I met during a short interval of school attendance in grade 6. I am still friends with many of them today, and our kids are friends, all stemming from one 6th grade friendship upkept by us both. I did have a lot of homeschooled friends, but I met them through a gaming club thing, through church, through a book club event I did, through an outside class I attended, through a homeschooling mailing list my mum subscribed to back in the days of yahoo groups, and through an online website for people who write poetry (which is where I met my homeschooled husband). Homeschoolers tend to gravitate towards each other anyway. But as a graduated homeschooler myself, now teaching my own kids, I have no intention of joining a homeschooling group at this point. I don't need them, and the ones around me at the moment don't want me, plus, I dislike planning activities during school hours which is when these groups do many of their things.

Hehe, I still think the 'want longer lasting sex?' billboards, in huge red letters over a yellow background, for the company that sells treatment for premature ejaculation, still wins. There was no way to drive by those billboards with a child of reading age and not have to explain them, and they were EVERYWHERE. At one point (pre readers) there was one on the street outside out house (we were living on the side of a major road) Were those in America too? Or was that an Aussie thing? They did eventually, after at least a couple of years of this, get forced into blanking out the word sex, and now most of the billboards are gone, but we still have (rather funny) radio ads. I guess I look at things differently. We're quite conservative, but I don't consider ignorance to be a good thing. I'd probably be kind of glad the child found that page because it would give me a totally unawkward lead-in to a conversation about what they are. There's no good way to introduce that topic in a casual, no pressure way. Bringing it up artificially is ALWAYS awkward. So talking about it because she found some in a book isnt a bad idea. And I'd like to introduce the concept/conversation before she finds one at a friends house. I wouldn't go so far as to buy her one, that's not our families values, but at 14 I'd welcome the chance to introduce the topic and discuss such things in a way that came up naturally rather than being contrived. Of course, I totally get everyones point that this was inappropriate. The fact it might be fortunate for my theoretical 14yo girl, doesn't mean it's ok for my theoretical 8yo son lol. I've never ever seen toys in a mixed catalogue like that. I think our advertising laws here might be different though. We can have billboards, but we can't have pictures of toys lol.

I put under 6 because we stagger for busses here, one school is 9-2:50, another is 9:10-3:00, a third 8:50-2:45 and variations thereafter This is in australia, school running 9-3 or close to it is pretty standard everywhere.

The thing with that sort of winning is, if you put the whole amount into a high interest bank account, the interest earnings per year are insane! DH and I have talked about this, he would never let me spend from the original sum, it goes into an account and we spend the interest each month lol. Honestly, all I want is my dream house paid off, free and clear. The money that would free up from rent/mortgage payments would be a sufficient boost in income to give us a pretty great standard of living. and the security of having a guaranteed roof over our heads, even in unemployment, would be awesome. I can't buy a ticket, but my best friend, who's american, has bought one and promises to buy me a house if he wins lol. So, I'm all good! I've got the daydreaming about winning thing by proxy going on here! The dream if I won a billion though? I've always wanted since I was a teen to set up a mini farm/ranch thing to turn into a therapy camp. I'd get my proper psychologist degree, and take different groups of kids for therapy camps, from autistic kids to abuse victims to physically disabled kids to foster respite kids. I know how much going on camps for blind kids helped me in my teen years, and I know how much support groups for abuse helped at times, and how much just doing something real, with your hands, away from the normal environment, especially for city kids, helps, even now. So, that's the pipedream if I ever got rich. https://www.facebook.com/lifeofdad/photos/a.434607921426.227352.299622516426/10153758011156427/?type=3- This poor guy...

It doesn't look like any of the bathroom books there I was hoping to find the specific book, childhood memories and all, thanks anyway :D

This is a very long shot, I know. When I was a kid I had this book.... I think it may have been one of my mothers books, maybe from the 60s-80s It was full of logic puzzles and brain teasers. It wasn't a cheapie newsagents book, it was a decent size, maybe 150 pages? The style sort of reminds me of the brown paper school book, I hate mathematics type thing, it was a book meant to be read through, which is what has me thinking of it. The cover was yellow, the letters were bubble style, maybe white with coloured patterns? There might have been a trivia fact on the cover about birthdays. There may have also been some rather politically incorrect or no-longer-acceptable puzzles, including one about a suicide cult and where to stand in the circle to be the last man standing lol (gotta love the 70s) Really wishing I could remember the book because I used to spend hours reading it and puzzling stuff out. It was quite well done. Probably no one here will remember some random brain teaser book but it's worth a shot.

How do you guage how many to assign per year, per month, per week? Obviously, to a point it will be 'when you finish book x, start book y'. But do you plan out a tentative reading list for the year of what you'd like to cover? How many books do you plan for in the various grades? Do you estimate by page number, and if so how many pages can your kids read in, say, an hour (and how old are they). My family didn't use living books at all when we homeschooled, but I plan to take a CM approach to the content subjects with my kids and I'm kinda starting from scratch. I'd like to plan out some unit studies for next year, but I have no idea whether a list of 10 books might take 5 reading hours or 20 reading hours. And looking ahead, wondering if this is a viable plan for the higher grades, I'd love to hear some ballpark estimates to see what content/how many books could perhaps be covered in a year. Of course this will vary widely, I'm just looking for some ballpark numbers to get an idea what to expect.

I think I understand some of the cultural divide here now Where I live, you don't need to go to college to experience diversity. It surrounds us constantly. Our country prides itself on it's multiculturalism. We are conservative white Christians, but my kids have been to chinese new year events, buddhist festivals, aborigional events, african markets. They eat foods from many cultures frequently, we cook from them frequently. We select books from the library from a broad range of backgrounds. Immigrants tend to congregate in certain areas here, so one suburb is so predominantly Chinese that the signs and advertising are in Chinese with no English at all, my kids are quite familiar with that area because my husband worked there for a couple of years. At that time we lived in a suburb known for it's islander and Samoan populations, fascinating people. At the moment DH is in a factory with two englishmen and a whole heap of Taiwanese employees. At other times he's been surrounded by Germans and Vietnamese. When we go shopping we see people in all forms of cultural dress everywhere, every single time we go out, from monks to women in full niqab, traditional indian dress to african dress. There are always cultural events on somewhere, the museum just finished an exibit on oriental history and they are currently hosting an international art display. We often go out at unusual times, like going to the beach in the late evening, and find ourselves surrounded by Muslim and African families with children who tend to do the same. I go to fresh fruit and veg markets which are predominantly patronised by immigrant families of all descriptions. About the only culture under-represented here are the various European countries, but even then, in the past two years we have been to a scottish festival, an irish festival, and a german festival So, it would never occur to me that I need to go to university to experience different religions and cultures. That's been a part of my upbringing from toddlerhood, and will be a part of my children's. That's just the culture in our country as a whole, we love exploring all sorts of different things from different countries, and there's so much available here to see and do.

Half'n'Half Animals and Thinker Doodles from the critical thinking company Does Building Thinking Skills count as not reading/math focused?

I wouldn't drop her back to k math, so if you move to abeka I'd go to their 1st book not their k book But, I'd be more inclined to just stretch the lessons over two days in cle. We spend about 20 minutes a day on math here, so if it's an easy set of lessons we might do half a dozen pages. On a tricky lesson we might do two

I like his answers. Check out his other videos, especially the one about the difference between the UK, Great britain and England. And the one about vatican city explained. He even has a video about pluto Pluto is a planet because.... uh.... well it's just so gosh darn cute!

For those saying college is about learning and education, why is college somehow 'superior' to all the resources we have available freely? Many colleges now offer their classes for free with no credit, you can take a class without spending any money! There's textbooks and articles and all sorts of resources to study. With the Internet, we have more access to education than ever before. If I want to learn, I'll go learn, and I've studied a number of the humanities topics at college-level depth. But, if I going to spend tens of thousands of dollars, it's not going to be for something I have access to for free. I don't need a certificate proving my education to myself. I am quite confident in my own study. I am just fine with my studies of psychology and sociology for example being entirely unrecognised. What I need is a certificate proving to an employer what I have studied. So when I pay money it'll be for something that gets me work. Why does educating ones self require college, and classes that cost thousands of dollars, if education is the only goal?

My in laws do it, even during dinner. I think that negates the whole 'sit together at the table as a family' thing and I consider it incredibly rude. Food habits aside, when you're sharing a meal with someone you should be present mentally with those people.

What are school hours? The states hours or the hours the child competes school If the latter, what constitutes school? Without careful wording the law could end up requiring a parent to, say, be present while a child reads a book before bed because they selected one of their assigned literature books. Normal students are not supervised during homework, is there a provision for homeschool ' homework'? What is present? Actively attentive? In the room? In the building? Homeschooling high school generally looks fairly independent, I don't think many parents are sitting with their child for 6 to 8 hours daily, and in many cases a teenage student might do independent work while a parent is away at work, so for that reason alone, nope. But really, the definition of ' school hours' and 'present' need to be more clearly defined before real debate can happen ETA: Female, over 18

I find threads like this fascinating. Americans talk about the college experience, and becoming well rounded, and how essential this experience is. But a large portion of even the first world doesn't have anything comparable to this. When you go to university here, you study subjects related to your major, and that's it. There's none of these liberal art extras. If you go to study computer science, then that's what you do, there's no history or psychology or physical education or literature classes forced on you. But the same is true of high school, if you want to go into STEM you don't take history in high school, if you want to go into humanities you don't take science (or perhaps just take one). And you only take a foreign language if you actually like learning a foreign language. When I read the high school forums no one is talking about home ec or woodshop or bookkeeping or visual art or music for their high school years. But here, you begin selecting your own subjects in Year 9, and Year 10 is the last year you're forced to take anything other than math and English, you choose your own subjects for 11/12, including what level of math you want to do (and those two years are the only two which count for university entry) Our unis don't have anything like the entry requirements yours do. As such, university is about getting a degree and training to get a job. Only the really rich kids see it differently. A lot of universities are becoming more hands on and getting more practical work happening (since they have the time to I suppose, because that's all they're doing, and employers are pushing for it) so that when you leave uni you have a pretty alright chance of getting a job in your field. And, in turn, university isn't considered to be for everyone. We have lots of other well respected options, and some fields prefer those options to uni because theyre considered more practical. High schools dont do dual enrollment with uni here, but they will do dual enrollment with the TAFE, which is kind of like a trade school, and that's a popular option. I'm not saying the american model is bad necessarily. But I find the differences fascinating. It never occurred to me that higher education was about anything other than job training until I began talking to more Americans. It's just not really the case in our country unless you have a lot of money and require a uni degree as a 'status' thing. And when an american friend started tearing into me once because I was discussing the fact our kids may not go to uni, I realized they had no concept that the US is (i think, except maybe canada?) the only english speaking country with this model of college, and they just could not grasp what I was trying to tell them uni is like here, so my culturally normal statements sounded crazy to them from their culture, especially the one where I said university via correspondence was a great option and probably preferable for our kids. (distance education for university and TAFE is very, very common here, in fact I know more people personally who did that than who actually attended campus, I am unusual among my family/friends for having spent a year on campus for my certificate)

My impression is that mental activity is as important as physical (which is why playing a board game is counted even though its sedentary) So us work from home mums might be alright! lol. As long as our work is mentally engaging, which mine isn't. Oops.

The full 8 sets are now available as an app by the way, they still need to be bought but they're a lot more affordable than the hard copy books, something like $80 for the lot maybe? Can't remember offhand

Yup! Mine had some points where she stalled out in reading but outright refused to repeat anything, ever. We ended up using 100EZ, ETC and the I See Sam readers in combination to give her enough practice without repetition. The I See Sam readers were definitely a huge help, and funny little stories while offering slow steady practice and progression