Maybe ask her how long she'd like to do handwriting each day. While I personally don't think that K handwriting should take more than maybe 10 min/day, 3x/wk, that might send her into shock;) Maybe suggest that she set her timer for an amount of time that won't cause her and her child stress, and stop when it's done. 1 hour, maybe (though I still think that's waaay overkill, it's better than 1.5 hours!). How do you even grade handwriting?? Is this her first year homeschooling? She will probably find her groove over the next couple years. Maybe recommend The Three R's to help her see that it's okay to relax a bit in the younger grades :)

I'm tentatively planning to attend the Hartford convention. I know, I'm in Alabama, so what's up with that? My parents are in Connecticut, so I figured I could "kill two birds with one stone" by attending that one. I've heard some long-time conservative homeschoolers express a desire to support small, local conventions (pre-kerfluffle). Also, post-kerfluffle, I personally know a few people who were not very pleased with GHC. This may be factoring in, but I haven't heard anything lately.

Wally. The kids like it cause it sounds the same as "Wall-E." My other top favorite was "Magnus," but they didn't like it.

Really fancy here. We're having Ramen. :tongue_smilie:

It sounds like you are thinking of finishing out the school year with younger daughter in PR1, then starting the next school year with both of them in PR2? Then your 6-yr-old would be at least 6.5? Hmmm. Do watch the videos and see what you think. My DD was 6.5 when we started PR1, 7.5 when we started PR2. She reads well and has good handwriting, but I do think that she wouldn't have been ready for PR2 at 6.5. Now, if your DD will be 7 by then, perhaps it could work, either age naturally depending on her own skill level. I see what you saying, though. It would definitely feel harder having to teach the same lessons twice in 6 months! However, I'm inclined to think that if you keep them separate, given their age difference, you won't feel pressured if you end up needing to take your time with your younger one. I know *I* would start stressing if my well-laid plan was going awry ;) I don't think it's a bad idea, though. Check out the videos; consider your time frame, ages, and the children's abilities; if you think you can make it work, go for it! Just be careful to not pressure yourself or your daughter, or to hold your older daughter back if she's ready for more :)

:iagree: The bolded part has been my experience. If I don't drink enough water, I will get a tension headache by evening, without fail. If I don't start my day with a large cup of water, I will be really crabby within a few hours. It took me years to finally makes these connections. As for the amount, I'm not sure. Probably averaging 8 cups/day. I do know that 2-4 is not enough for me.

The schools here aren't starting till Wednesday. Maybe you could use their schedule? :) I feel your pain, though. Never thought I'd see the day when I was so HAPPY to be able to clean!!

Me! Well, yesterday and today :) I was dreading this week, knowing we'd HAVE to start school back, like it or not. Feeling frustrated because we're not as far in our books as this same time last year - and last year we had to do school a month longer than everyone else just to finish! Yikes. So this weekend I watched a month's worth of videos for Phonics Road. This morning I cleaned our school room (we often do school in the kitchen, then the school room turns into a disaster zone!). I'm going to try the loop schedule, too, though I think I need to look up more threads on it. At this point, I just took our normal weekly schedule and instead of marking "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday," I wrote "Loop 1, Loop 2, Loop 3." I know if I try to schedule specific times, I'll be off-track by the end of the first day. How neat that your SIL is going to make you a custom planner!

I think it's a good idea. I have a friend whose husband reads SOTW to their children at night. I'm having hard time squeezing it in myself, because the youngest kids are so darn noisy. I find that reading history during lunch works out decently. They are (in theory) busy eating (except for the noisy 3 year old who only eats under duress). But anyway, since I eat much faster than they do anyway, it works cause their hands and mouths are busy and their bodies are already confined to the seat. Now if I could just remember to actually get it out, we'd be much farther along in the book!!

Yeah... we could do that. She's doing fine with it. It's just me! lol! At least this got me thinking about school in a positive way, instead of dreading the end of vacation. I'm going to try watching a whole bunch of videos before Tuesday. Maybe that will help me a bit. I was just reading the loop schedule thread. Maybe I'll try that.

Have used both, like Essentials much better :)

I'm toying with an idea. Help me work through it? I LOVE Phonics Road. I really do. But I'm having a really hard time getting everything done. With PR, I need to sit with DD for the whole lesson, up to an hour long. Now, I'm her teacher and I do believe that her teacher needs to be actually teaching!! I was just wondering if I might be able to switch curricula around a bit so it's just a tad more self-directed. Here's what I would need (what Phonics Road covers): Spelling - She's an average/good speller. Not advanced, but not struggling at all. She often surprises me by knowing how to spell new Phonics Road words because, she says, "I've seen it in books." She reads for a couple hours every night for fun. I would like something that will teach phonics/spelling rules with daily practice and a spelling list, but that doesn't require massive amounts of teaching time. Phonics - She's in 2nd grade. So... what would she need? It'd be nice if this and spelling were the same book! Handwriting - I think I'd get HWT cursive. She has lovely fine motor skills and is eager to learn cursive. Grammar and Composition - She's started learning the basics about nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and verbs. What are my options here? I remember looking at Growing with Grammar a couple years, before I decided on PR. Thoughts? I haven't obsessed over the choices in these areas, because we've always used Phonics Road. Please toss some ideas my way! (I'm open to ideas on using PR more effectively, too, if anyone has some. I just feel so distracted with three younger boys running around the house. I need to be teaching them preschool and kindergarten and that's hardly getting done at all.)

I have been babysitting a little boy (full time) for 2 years now. I can tell you honestly: it makes things harder. This boy and his family are a great fit for us. He and my boys LOVE each other like brothers. Meaning, they hate it when they aren't together and they fight like dogs when they are together! We all love him and he loves us and his parents are awesome. In addition to teaching him preschool, teaching my son kindergarten, and teaching my daughter 2nd grade, I also do additional work 7-10 hours/week and I'm trying to get through some online schooling for myself. All this to say that my perspective might be different if I wasn't a stressed out single mom :) If you decide to try it, plan to take a little time off from school to adjust, just like you would if you had a new baby yourself. If I didn't NEED the money (like if I'd still be able to pay the mortgage without it), I wouldn't do it. At the same time, I'm very thankful that I CAN do this job and homeschool at the same time.

EVERY MEAL, EVERY DAY. "What do you want for lunch, I mean breakfast? Come sit down, supper's ready! I mean, LUNCH! No, you don't need a snack, I'm about to make lunch, I MEAN SUPPER!" It's no wonder my 3 year old can't get it right either. Yep. :lol: Yesterday my daughter stepped on some piece of food and I told her to go wash her foot in the toilet. Um... :001_huh: Right, yeah, cause that's totally normal. "I meant TUB, PLEASE USE THE TUB!!!!"

I find that the main Signing Time song* can be used for just about anything :) "There's singing time and dancing time and laughing time and playing time, and now it is our favorite time: potty time!" lol :) I've used it! (Also, cleaning time, eating time, sleeping time...) *The pictures used for this video are really dumb, as per typical youtube videos, but it's the only one I can find.

Well... on a personal level, I can't imagine it'd be any more annoying than adjusting to these constant Facebook changes! We'd all gripe and complain for the first year, some would continue griping for a few years, but we'd all adjust and be just fine. That said, I don't see how it's worth it. So what if it changes from year to year? Is anyone really bothered by that?

Oh yes, we did that for DD when she had a regular dental visit before the fillings. She got really nervous for some reason, so we had her go with her dad the next time and she was fine! Sadly, I do not inspire bravery in my children! I'm too much of a scaredy-cat myself :tongue_smilie:

My son will be 4 in a couple months. He's not sensitive for pain, but he does have real highs and lows emotionally! He had a cavity in a molar and between the two front teeth. Our regular dentist said we needed all of them filled. The ped. dentist felt that if we were very vigilant, we could hopefully keep the front cavities from getting worse. He was able to fill the back molar with nitrous oxide and no numbing. Thankfully, DS did spectacularly well that morning! Now, DD had some fillings in January (at age 6.5). SHE is the sensitive one. She needed lots of numbing, as one of her cavities was pretty big (it formed in a permanent molar before the tooth was even all the way through the skin. Her gums were trapping everything against the chewing surface!). She had nitrous oxide, too. She was very scared, but stayed still. She was shaking the whole time, she said. Poor thing. I had to tell her many times that she WAS very brave, but she did what needed to be done even though she was scared! Realizing that all kids are different, I do feel that there can be an advantage to parents not being there, assuming the dental/medical team is really good with kids. Children look to their parents for comfort, but they also look to them to "rescue" them from fearful things. Sometimes (again, I know this is not the same for all children) when mama isn't around, children are able to make themselves be brave in a way that they don't when mama IS there. I'm just saying that in my experience as both child and parent, it's not always a bad thing for parents to not be around. I hope you can find a good solution where your child can be relatively comfortable. I know it's hard!

Yes to many of the above. "I'll knock you into next week" was popular. My uncle told us, "See my finger, see my thumb, see my fist - you'd better run!" We thought it was quite funny! I remember the stories best, though :) At the bottom of our hill, there was a drain pipe where a tiny stream went under the road. When I was very small, my grandma had me convinced that it was a deep hole full of mean skunks, raccoons, foxes, and who knows what else. I got older and brave enough to peek into this deep canyon... and it was about a foot and a half at the deepest part of the gentle slope. No crazed animals in sight! Every night the ice cream truck would drive by right at bedtime. Well, my parents were smart. While other kids were begging their parents incessantly for ice cream, they told us that the "jingle truck" was checking to make sure the children were in bed. "See those kids across the street? He's telling them they'd better get to bed!" So when we heard the jingle every night, we'd RUN to bed. He always came around a second time and if you weren't in bed by THEN... ohhh boy!!!! Those OTHER kids sure got in trouble! Then there was the time our dad was putting up walls in the basement to make a schoolroom. One day he told us that he'd dozed off down there and when he woke up, there were teeny little reindeer only about 6" tall! We were pretty skeptical at this point, as you might imagine. But you never know, so we went down there and sat really quietly for a few minutes before we decided this was pretty unlikely :) I passed on the tradition to my own children. When "stay away from the pond cause you could drown and there are snapping turtles and poisonous snakes" didn't work, I decided to try "stay away because there's a pond monster who eats kids that get too close." I figured it's not TOO far from the truth ;) It worked! I had to come clean to my 5 year old, though, when he was afraid to sleep next to his window at night, for fear of monsters. Oops! He's recovered now!

Oh goodness, they are ADORABLE! What type of dog is Diesel? I WANT ONE OF HIM!!!! (Okay, I have a dog, but still!)

Catholics, no. Anyone not baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yes. Protestants who were baptized in the name of the Trinity, sometimes, it depends on the priest/bishop. That's the short answer. :) (I don't have a long answer!)

We had the same tradition and only 2 kids! It made me crazy, especially because it was practically the only day of the year that we had a big family breakfast! But I grew to love it over the years and now subject my children to the same torture. :lol:

Disclaimer: I don't have an iPad! But I wondered if he might also be able to have the main screen show only a limited number of options, at least while she's getting used to it? That way she wouldn't feel too overwhelmed by trying to look at a dozen things. I don't know if you can set up the iPad like that. I'm just thinking of a computer screen where you could have icons for just a few favorite programs. The rest are available, but you'd never even have to look at them if you didn't want to.

I am not Orthodox, but I've been exploring the church for about a year. I enjoyed this article just the other day. You might like to stop by the Orthodox social group here on the WTM. They are a great help! ETA: I was typing while Happyhomemama posted! You are doubly invited! :D

Congratulations!!! That is awesome and most definitely brag-worthy! :D Way to go!