Ancient Greek stuff we’ve used: 1) Hey Andrew - the first few books in this series are a nice intro. Gets the alphabet and sounds down well and eases into vocabulary and cases. This is Koine (biblical) Greek but I haven’t had an issue starting a kid off with this and then having them move into Attic Greek later on. The format is basically a black and white spiral bound workbook with big print and nice large blanks to write. 2) Elementary Greek - also Koine, moves a little faster than Hey Andrew. Nicely laid out with a short assignment each day and an optional quiz every 5th day. Gets into the noun cases earlier than Hey Andrew. 3) Athenaze - it’s where you want to end up if she sticks with it. This is a college Attic Greek text. There’s little hand holding for the instructor. There are pages and pages of translation, with a hilarious and engaging story of a Greek family and their lazy servant. I work alongside DD in this book, it’s difficult but she really enjoys it. We take our time and do every exercise. We’ve had to go back several chapters at times and review. Greek is hard. But we are getting it! This text has made DD adore the language. 4) Mastronarde - this is a second college text I picked up for reference for myself. It is much drier than Athenaze. I needed more background to be able to properly teach some of the more complicated stuff at the end of Athenaze. It helped me. I would never recommend giving it to an 11 year old though. Terribly dry. There is an excellent companion website to his book, though, and it’s all free. There are little matching games and printable drill sheets and stuff for each chapter.

He sounds like an awesome kid! For Greek, have you thought about maybe creating “fun” sentences to practice his translation skills? Heracles and Apollo did a lot of setting things free and throwing things when I was helping DS9 practice the grammar. Hey Andrew is solid but it can get very dry (and the sentences don’t always make sense, all the apostles, brothers, servants and gifts...) if he were a year or two older I’d suggest working through Athenaze doing the translations orally with him (maybe only 2-3 lines at a time) because the story is so engaging and he’d probably really have fun with it. But, it is a college text and the print is intimidatingly tiny!

For Greek, do you sit with him while he does the page? Does he like it/is he interested in it? If he’s not excited about it he’s going to drag his feet (and I’d consider dropping it till he’s older). If he is interested in it, maybe he just needs you to sit with him and help direct him?

My 9 year old studies Greek with Hey Andrew as well. He just does 1 page per day and it takes 5-10 minutes. (Maybe less if it’s just a matching exercise or something.) How many pages are you having him do? We’ve made great progress with just one quick page a day. He has retained a ton of vocabulary and seems to understand the cases. Maybe cut back how much you are assigning?

Your plans sound perfect to me. Enjoy the restful quiet. I am taking my kids to the library tomorrow morning to check out some new books for all of us! And I bought some strawberries and blueberries to make some sort of red, white, and blue dessert.

What age? Spelling bee prep materials do this pretty neatly. They also provide the definition and word origin for the word on the page. One we like is SpellPundit, founded by a brother/sister who were both Scripps finalists. They offer a free module if you would like to check it out. The “big name” in the field is Hexco. While DD has used quite a few Hexco products, she prefers the interface of SpellPundit.

Mine is certainly leaving cups of half drank coffee around the kitchen. I periodically sip from them throughout the day as I come across one. Old cold coffee. I love it. My husband finds this odd, a little gross, and hilarious.

It will be just our immediate family of 6. Christmas Eve - shrimp cocktail, meats and cheeses platter (is this charcuterie?), lasagna (the only time all year I make it from scratch, haha). Christmas cookies for dessert. Christmas Day breakfast - scrambled eggs, bacon, cinnamon rolls. I may have to rethink this since my egg allergic child doesn’t like cinnamon right now and I want him to have something special to eat like the rest of us. (Ie. not just bacon). Christmas Day dinner: our tradition for years has been Chinese food. Last year we went out to the most amazing restaurant. This year the restaurant is closed. I like the idea upthread of beef tenderloin. I’m going to go look at recipes for how to make that. What starch do you typically serve with that? I would probably make Swiss chard or spinach, too.

I am EXTREMELY laid back about meals with my kids. Generally, you don’t have to eat (or even try) what I make, but if you don’t want it, you need to get something else* yourself. I’m not making 35 different things. So for example, last night I made chicken breast, steamed broccoli and brown rice. DS9, DH, and I ate servings of each. DD12 ate chicken and broccoli, but didn’t want any rice. DS6, though he usually doesn’t mind chicken, wasn’t into it for some reason, so he took out some baby carrots and hummus from the fridge and ate that instead. A couple of the kids were hungry a bit later and had yogurt. One kid ate a brownie. *“something else” is extremely unregulated by me and is sometimes things like Honey Nut Cheerios or bread and butter.

We are going to be just us too. Not only did I pare it way down, I am just not cooking all of that. So we placed a prepared food order at Whole Foods. I think it is Turkey, stuffing, beans, and gravy maybe. I did order extra stuffing. And my DS9 and I are going to attempt to make a pie together.

I probably shouldn’t comment on this thread. But I’m going to dive in anyway. Warning: eating disorder talk ahead. At the height of my eating disorder, all I could think about was food. I’d plan out exactly what I was going to eat at what time for the following day. I’d follow food Instagrams. Recipe blogs. Eating disorder websites where people posted photos of their meals. When I think back on all that time I wasted obsessing over food, it makes me kind of sad. Now on the other side of the recovery process, I kind of see food as more like a tool. Like, I want to be healthy with strong bones to run around with my grandchildren someday, so I’m going to make sure to eat enough today and every day to accomplish that goal. It’s very utilitarian for me. There are foods I like more than others, but I don’t really care whether my protein at dinner is chicken, fish, tofu, whatever.

I’m not sure of the ages of your kids, but maybe a longer term project would inspire them. You could make toiletry bags for homeless people (leave them in your car until your quarantine is over before handing them out), make menus and place cards/research recipes/work on decorating for Thanksgiving, write letters to new Congress people from your state, walk around outside with trash bags collecting trash to “beautify” the neighborhood... My kids like having a “project” to focus them. Maybe yours might too.

Is Physical Science Oak Meadow 8? I’ve done several years of Oak Meadow middle school science with my oldest and one thing that they are WONDERFUL at is writing the experiments to the students. They really break down the directions into bite size pieces so the kids know what to do and expect. I’d think that after the first couple weeks your child might be able to do the hands on part on his own (maybe with the sibling as a lab partner). Don’t worry if you don’t get to all the projects either. There are so many of them and so many different ways Oak Meadow presents info.

Accelerated 11 year old - one on one. As far as we can get in an hour or so. I can give her a few problems to do and get up for a few minutes but she works best with me by her side and having someone to bounce ideas off of as she goes through the lesson. 9 year old/4th grade: we’re using Math Mammoth. He does 3 pages a day and likes to read the directions and try it himself, then have me check it. I think my explanations are too wordy for him and he just likes to get right into it. 6 year old K/1: Singapore. I teach the lesson and he does the workbook. We’re just bouncing along slowly as learning to read is taking 99 percent of this kid’s effort right now.

There are some at SnorgTees. DD has a few. You have to sift through a lot of random tshirts but there are some very funny science ones.

Haha, it’s just cheese pizza. Gave it a fun name for my kids 😉

We’re doing an election unit study. Serving Bipartisan Pizza, haha. And leftover carrot cake from a bday last week!

I am recovering from an eating disorder and it’s in my chart that I will be weighed backwards, they don’t tell me the number, and the dr is to only discuss my weight if it’s a medical issue (I.e., my weight drops in a way that looks like I am not eating according to my meal plan needs). I wonder if you could ask your provider to put something like that in your chart as well?

I run early in the morning. I’m a morning person though, and I love it. I’d be totally ok with one of my kids starting at 645 though. I’d probably get up at 5 and exercise from 515 to 615, shower and get ready to help him at 645. That schedule would delight me, haha.

It didn’t work for my kid either. My oldest kid prefers a list of assignments. When they are done, they are done. They like the possibility of working quickly and getting done early, or opting for a shorter lunch, or whatever. Plus as they get more independent I think it’s hard to manage. I give DD11 an assignment and I may be in another room teaching one of my younger DSs. I need to be able for her to move from thing to thing independently.

Build Your Library has some neat unit studies available. A Harry Potter one, a prehistory one, and a Christmas one (though I think the Christmas one is for younger kids).

Yum. I want your dinner! Just slice it up and you’re good. if you want to use the bones and any leftover meat, this soup recipe is super quick and calls for rotisserie chicken. https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/chicken-soup-with-rice-232605

Does anyone have a home carpet cleaner model they like and could recommend? i have never, ever cleaned my carpets in 10 years of living here. I’ll go hide now.

Just make sure to give yourself some grace too. It’s hard in the moment, I know. would your kids enjoy playing “restaurant” and ordering a snack in Russian and being served by Mom, the silly waiter? And then Vice versa?

The passive, mind a million miles away stuff drives me crazy too. I warn you that this may get worse before it gets better. I have a wider age range than you, so I apologize if some of these ideas aren’t exactly relevant to your situation. A few things that have helped us: Hair: Daily shower, they comb hair in shower, routine is to come to me for a check after shower (while hair is still wet) to confirm hair is thoroughly combed. Hair combing is tied to the daily shower and it’s easier for me to deal with detangling if it’s already wet. My oldest is 11 and still needs help sometimes. Jam jar: I can so see this scenario happening in my house with one of my kids. I can see myself getting increasingly frustrated and the pressure on the kid going up and up and up to just. Find. The. Word. What I usually do is find a reason to leave the room for 1-5 minutes. Bathroom trip, checking for a package, changing baby’s diaper, need a hoodie, etc. It defuses the situation. About 75 percent of the time when I come back, they’ve found the word. (Sometimes they yell it at me while I’m in the other room, in fact...) If not, I might drop it, “forgetting” where we were, maybe holding up the butter next, or the chocolate spread, or whatever else. But I’d also find a way for them to come across that word later in the day, maybe asking another child to get the jam for my bread, or if they wanted me to buy jam at the grocery store or something. Passive disengagement with schoolwork: i kind of think some of this is brain fog. We eat a lot of snacks during math and extra sleep helps a lot around here. In any case, I know how much generally I want to get through and if it is a slow day, it’s a slow day. I try not to let it get under my skin too much. (Exceptions for situations where I genuinely miscalculate how much is reasonable of course, or if the child is very engaged but obviously having trouble.) but if it’s going to take you 25 minutes to graph a line because all your points have to be perfect circles and your line needs to go through the exact center of each, and you need a pretty border down the side of your page, that is okay. But it’s also not fair to cut back on the assignment either. It’s time management and it’s a life skill.