If I were to run a haunted house, it would just be presidential candidates lined up. An adult horror house.

So. Today on Facebook, someone I know posted a picture of bowls of onions with the caption, "It's that time of year again! Colds and flu are everywhere so I'm putting out the onions!" Followed by lots of encouraging comments. For those who may not have heard, the idea is that cut onions absorb toxins and you are less likely to get sick if you put them around your home. I believe this started during the plague years in England. My personal thought is that this is impossible. I mean, sure, if some bacteria are floating through the air and land on the onion they'll stay there. But what about the flu virus on my doorknob? It doesn't have the motility to up and fly to the onion. My understanding is that bacteria and viruses have very limited motility no matter where they are. I don't buy that an onion has some kind of magnetic attraction on them. I also don't buy the pictures of blackened onions as proof. They're rotting, proof that the bacteria are actually thriving on the onion, not being wiped out. I could Google this and find out if it's a real thing, of course, but I thought the responses here would be more amusing. Do you think it works?

Oh my gosh, guys. I must be hormonal because this thread is making me weepy. Thank you so much for all your help, all the practical input is just what I needed to hear. Thank you so, so much! Jean, I could kiss you. I know it feels weird, as you said, since this schedule is tailored to your child, but this is so helpful. Reading this makes me think we can really do CM successfully. This is how we felt about at least half the selections. Thank you so much for your perspective. I felt like if I didn't use these wonderful living books we were missing out on something and it never occurred to me that it could not not-living for us. Two last questions: Now that dd13 is in school, they are doing A LOT of expository writing. Much of it is trying to pull from them their own thoughts and conclusions about the literature (logic stage). When you narrate with older kids, do you prompt them that way or does it come naturally? How do you push them into higher level thinking? What about creative writing?

The upcoming election!

If you don't mind my following, I'd also like to know what a CM education looks like for 7th grade. :D

Again, thanks everyone for taking the time to reply. This has already helped immensely. I read one of CM's six volumes several years ago (I can't remember which one) and some blogs and was attracted to the method, but ultimately chose WTM. For context, this is our 9th year homeschooling, dc are 8th, 6th, 5th, 1st and kindergarten this year. Two years ago I decided to go for it and went with Ambleside, I think year 3. I think what I wanted was for it to be CM's SWB. I love the CM philosophy, but I'm not really sure how to DO the CM philosophy. I wanted book lists and schedules and AO provided that. There were many things I liked about it. We had always done copy work, narrations and dictations so that was a good fit. We'd also done the Holling C. Holling books and continued with those. I liked the extra reading, Shakespeare and poetry. I like short lessons for the younger kids, and nature study. I liked the pace; I felt like we had more time to explore topics we liked, watch documentaries and go for walks. What didn't work: The science books were okay, but the kids got bored with them and I wanted to do more experiments. Since we had already done several years of WTM, they'd already done animals and biomes. Math Mammoth was a bust and we quickly went back to Saxon and Khan Academy. Many of the reading selections were so dense and full of archaic language that they had trouble getting through them on their own. They ended up being read-alouds and I didn't have time for it. The Little Duke I remember in particular. Great story but hard to get through. I was nervous about the lack of spelling and grammar. The next year we did kind of half AO/half WTM. I did LLATL to fill the 'gap' I was worried about and we resumed Latin and Spelling Workout. But I kept hearing that if you want CM to work you can't do it halfway. So this year we went back to full WTM. Then, a few weeks ago my 8th grader got a spot in a classical charter school. The other kids are on waiting lists and will probably start there in middle school. Seeing the level of difficulty there I'm worried about preparing them for that. I want to trust the CM method to get them there and I don't want to do it 'wrong'. What I'm really looking for are people who do CM successfully, who can share their schedules and book lists, etc. I want TWTM for CM. :laugh:

I had a friend with a son named Ean. Her husband was Dan, and it was kind of a tribute. They joked if the next baby was a girl she would be Fan. He has to be 10 now, so this was before it was trending.

Thank you, thank you! You all have given me a lot to think about. I need to re-read this when I have more brain power than late at night. I'll be back with better questions. :)

I posted this on the Ambleside forums 20 minutes ago and haven't gotten a response. That would never happen here! :laugh: Anyway, I'm considering going all-out CM and have a couple concerns I was wondering if anyone could address. 1 - It's possible, even likely, that they will go into public school for high school and maybe even middle school. My oldest just started at a charter school. Because of this I need to be sure they'll be prepared and I'm a little worried about the grammar progression. Obviously if you continue through high school it's all covered, but if you only go through 7th or 8th grade, will they be behind? 2 - I've heard some criticism from other circles about the science books chosen by Ambleside. I have very little first hand knowledge but am interested to hear the thoughts of those here. I am a Christian but allow that an old earth is a possibility. I'd like to include modern scientific thought and I have heard that, for example, Madame How and Lady Why or the School of the Woods are older books and have some ideas in them that are now considered unscientific. We did purchase both books a few years ago but had a hard time getting into them because my kids found them wordy. They prefer a more clear, to the point, science book. But possibly we didn't give them enough time; we were in a co-op science class at the time and I didn't feel they needed both so we dropped the books after just a few weeks. Lastly, a question about how you do AO - there's so much reading assigned. Do you have your kids narrate everything they read? How do you gauge comprehension? What does the writing part of AO look like? Thanks for reading, I know this got long, and for any help you can give this newbie!

My kids have used Khan as their primary for the last couple years, but we supplement with CLE and LoF and whatever else when I feel like it's not enough. Basically, I tell them to do 30-40 minutes per day, based on their grade. Then I keep track of their progress. As long as they're progressing roughly 3% per week, they're on track to finish the grade level by the end of the year. If they fall below that we either try something else for a while or I have them do extra (sometimes the 40 minutes gets eaten up watching videos that they've already seen or staring into space). I have a good idea of how it's going because I usually am called in to help at least once per day.

I think I voted wrong, because I forgot about sports. Still, I spend far less than $900 per year, per student. That would give me $4500/year. Oh, the things I could do.. My spending varies greatly by year. Some years I've gotten by on less that $100 per kid, but most years, not including extracurriculars, it's about $250 each. For perspective, my district will reimburse curriculum costs up to $188 per student. That's a far cry from the $8000 per year they spend on ps kids, but it's something.

YOU ARE MOVING TO LONDON!!! That right there is enough of an educational experience to cover several months of school. Imagine the college essays.. "My days as an ex-pat"… Put on some Magic School Bus or Schoolhouse Rock or something and go pack. Don't even worry about school. Have fun and keep us all posted!

A couple of my kids sleep with their eyes half open, although not all the time. I think it's weird, but they're medically sound.

"Do you have a dental crown?" No, I have an ordinary crown. But I only wear it on weekends.

I'm an introvert and I have six kids. :laugh: I find, generally, that while introverts require time alone, they also enjoy spending time with a select and small group of people. That's true for me, and my family is most of my select group. I do get up early to have an hour or two to myself in the morning, and I find that I really need to be shut in my room by around 9:00 at night - I start to get cranky. It's a balance. My kids love to go on errands with me one at a time, and I often struggle with that because I'd rather go alone. It's been very good for me to stay really in tune with how I'm doing so I can spend that time with them when I'm able and save my alone time for when I really need it. 45 minutes of silent reading after lunch have been fantastic, too.

I don't want to scare you off, but getting mine out was almost unbearable. I don't know exactly what was going on down there but at one point the OB clipped something onto something.. It was horrible. But he wasn't my normal guy and it may have been him.

This is us. DH always said he would go get snipped when we were sure we were done, but when it came down to it he just really didn't want to. He has his reasons, and we can criticize them, but they're his. I could certainly pull the "I've done it all" card and if I pushed him, he'd go do it, but that feels wrong. Women want so much autonomy over their bodies, I think we need to give men the same. However, I've also said I won't do anymore hormonal birth control, and my last IUD was very uncomfortable (I eventually had it removed to stop the cramping). So we're using the Fertility Awareness Method, which means more abstinence than we'd like but seems to be the best option at this point. I know there are critics, but it's at least 96% effective and for us another pregnancy wouldn't be devastating, although it's not desired.

I think you're dealing with two separate issues - getting your kids to do their chores and teaching them good citizenship, for lack of a better word. I second Jean in Newcastle, your kids are very young. Give them chores and consequences and teach them about being a family and taking care of their things, but do them separately. After many years of pep talks and good books and praise heaped on praise, my older kids now are beginning to understand the 'whys' of doing things. They're 13 and 11. "I've tried explaining the reasons as to why they need to clean, pick up after themselves, etc. I've tried doing charts. I've tried explaining that it hurts my feelings when they expect me to do all the clean up after them. I've given up and told them it's up to them. I've tried consequences such as - if you don't put x away, you can't use it." They may not be able to grasp the reasons yet - that takes time and maturity. Charts are good. But to the bolded - they aren't responsible for your feelings and shouldn't be made to feel that they are. And they're probably not capable of managing household chores on their own. I'm not criticizing, I know how hard it can be! They'll get it.

I go through Seton (setontesting.com) and do the CAT online, but they have several options.

I would focus on hitting the big areas once per day - language, math, science or history, and only make a goal of 30 minutes for each. R&S, handwriting, spelling, phonics and any other reading counts as language, CLE for math and either SOTW or BFSU. If you can get that 90 minutes done, you can feel like you've hit your goal for the day. Then anything else you do is extra.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Probably not one to finish in a day or two, but very good.

All true, and yet we do have control over many aspects of our bodies. I think thought is more like movement, which is often voluntary, but not always.

Well, I finally started the book! So far I agree with those who said there's nothing explicit. The infanticide scene wasn't at all violent, just sad and I don't have any issue with it. For those who asked, yes, we've discussed polygamy and she knows what concubines are. My issue so far with the book is that sex is, if not a major theme, a frequent element. Passages like this: "This child of the slave, who was not more than sixteen, he saw now with fresh lust, for as he grew old and inform and heavy with flesh he seemed to desire more and more women who were slight and young, even to childhood, so that there was no slaking his lust." are frequent. I don't have an issue so much with it being in the book, but that it doesn't seem appropriate for her age. We've dealt with these types of things pretty factually so far, and I think the characterization makes it more intimate. Her reaction is likely to be discomfort and a dislike of the book, and I think that's a shame. I wish they could be reading Dickens or Austen or any of a dozen really good books. Still, I don't intend to say anything to the teacher. I don't need to be 'that parent'. :closedeyes:

To the first, people on the internet most certainly can add to the crap pile. Salt in the wound. To the second, if you believe all those wonderful things can protect a person from depression and anxiety, to the point of being suicidal, I think you must never have suffered from either, or known anyone well who has. All the fame and money in the world, even a loving family, aren't enough sometimes to pull a person from a deep depression. Neither of these statements are directed at Lamar Odom himself - I don't know much about him or his story.

:grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug: I'm so sorry.