My boys have far fewer than 14 pairs of pants. They have 3-4 pairs of jeans, 1-2 pairs of khakis and a pair of dress pants. They wear shorts or pajama pants around the house. 14 does sound like a reasonable number of shirts.

Stub.

My first Wordless Wednesday. :001_smile:

I call my in-laws by their first names. My husband calls my mother by her first name and my father "Mr. Lastname" or "Sir." :D

We have a babysitter come every Saturday night and we rotate between taking each of the boys out for a special night with Mom and Dad, and going out alone. So, every fourth Saturday is date night. We usually go shopping and out to a late dinner, or go to dinner early and then to a movie. Now that my oldest can keep an eye on his brothers for a short time during the day, we also like to go on quick "day dates" for lunch, coffee or just for a drive.

I just started a new blog a few weeks ago. It's a little rough, but here's Week 1.

I stay out of the way of my oldest son's art, but he prefers art books written for adult beginners to children's books. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is his current favorite.

I'm on the fence about signing my oldest up... he's not the competitive type, but I think it could be a good stretch/push for him. :001_unsure:

Ash is probably the easiest character from Pokemon. Definitely a costume you can make yourself. My oldest thinks he's too old to dress up this year, but the younger boys are talking about being a racecar driver and an army man.

Curriculum: Singapore Math, Writing Tales, Story of the World, Alex et Zoé Other: Internet, library, IKEA, coffee

Something about putting human anomalies on display?

It sounds to me like you've gotten as much out of WWE as you're going to get right now, and Writing Tales is fantastic, so I wouldn't feel bad about switching. That's not curriculum hopping, it's moving on. My 4th grader is about halfway through WT2 and my 3rd grader is just starting WT1. I would probably start with WT1 in your situation. I think the shorter stories in WT1 are great for a natural writer, where the focus can be on improving the quality of the writing, not just on getting it done. You'll probably want to speed through or skip some grammar sections, and he'll get through each level in less than 30 weeks. I love WT so much that I'd want to get as much time out of it as possible. :)

Thanks! My 3rd grader will be spending 3-4 hours, so 5-6 hours for my 4th grader should be about right to start out with. Heather

If there's a book that I really want to be able to discuss, I either read it aloud or read it before them. I don't pre-read books because of content - there's no way I could keep up if I tried. Heather

Thank you all! I can see now that I'm looking at this from the wrong angle - I was looking out from a "school" perspective instead of looking in from the rest of his life. I'm sure that doesn't make much sense to anyone but me. :D Ruth - Last year, I moved art and music to his free time because I knew he'd do those on his own. I never thought to do that with academic subjects, but it'll be interesting to see whether he ever opens the German books he so desperately needed. ;) For now, I'm thinking of limiting each subject to about an hour and the full school day to six to see how it goes. He practices piano for an hour every day and has outside activities three nights per week, but that should still give him a couple hours to cause trouble. Thanks again! Heather

My oldest is in 4th grade this year, but we've taken an extended summer break and we'll actually be starting school tomorrow. He's always been more ambitious than I am when it comes to academics, but this year I think he's taking on too much. We worked out a general plan together over the summer and sat down yesterday to block out the first few weeks. It just looks like too much. He's using mostly middle school materials, so the amount of time per subject is definitely increasing, and he's adamant about starting a second foreign language and studying American history alongside SOTW. If I plan everything out at "full-speed" I can't see how he will be able to get it done in less that 7-8 hours per day, including reading. How much time is reasonable at this age/level? How do you limit the amount of time spent? Per subject or per day? Thanks so much, I've already learned a lot from reading these boards. :) Heather