I find it annoyingly ironic in my family currently. Growing up we always had Thanksgiving with my father's family, and they always served the meal around 3pm. This was a very inconvenient meal time when my brother and I were young (and the only children on that side of the family) and also having to travel 1.5 hours each way. But tradition was tradition. Fast forward to when my kids were young. My aunt on my father's side always hosted Thanksgiving (an in, would not hear of anyone else hosting it), and she still always served the meal around 3pm. And now we live 2.5 hours away, and have special needs kids (who are the only grandchildren on that side of the family), and the meal time was horrible for us. But tradition was tradition. Fast forward to now. My grandfather is in a nursing home, and my aunt worries about him getting off his routine if he doesn't eat meals at standard times. So miraculously tradition is flexible enough to serve the meal at 12:30. 🙄

I've done cookie decorating. Have a supply of cookies, frosting, sprinkles, and sandwich bags to take cookies home in.

My oldest is only in 8th, but is taking a full load of high school courses this year and my favorite part about homeschooling him is how much time it gives him. My middle schooler is in public school, and it takes them sooooo much time to accomplish sooooo little. My 8th grader, on the other hand, can efficiently complete a full load of rigorous, advanced classes while participating in 14 hours of electives/extracurriculars a week including nature class, board game club, escape room class, comic book drawing, adventure sports, and being a teaching assistant in a Spanish class. We don't have to choose between academic rigor and a healthy, balanced lifestyle. As a corollary, I also think our activity-rich homeschooling is preparing him very well for the logistics of college. Every day doesn't look the same, so he has to learn how to schedule and balance his responsibilities. He doesn't have a class schedule forcing him to work on each subject for its designated hour each day, and instead is learning to schedule flexibly and creatively...a skill that will come in handy when he is trying to juggle classes, recitations, study groups, individual study time, language labs, clubs, office hours, chores, etc.

The big change has not hit my Duolingo yet. They did change the icons on my bottom bar a few days ago...but I still have both stories and leagues at this point. And they haven't done anything to the order of my Spanish levels. I've been pretty unmotivated lately anyway. I had been in diamond league forever, but then it started making me compete in semi-finals and finals just to stay in my current level. Plus, my family has had a miserable month, and feeling beaten down, I decided to just do as little as possible to maintain my streak, but allow myself to just freefall down through the leagues. My current streak is 2321 days, and I feel Duolingo doesn't do much to encourage those of us with long streaks. It gave me the little +365 badge, but I'm over six times that now. They didn't even throw confetti or anything when I hit the 2000 mark!

A play tent (which does not necessarily require sewing) A ball ramp similar to this one Homemade instruments A toy shopping cart A sandbox Sit and Spin Big wooden beads with a wooden "needle" like this Magnetic fishing A ball pounding toy like this one

hats, swords, flowers

Yes, my ADHD kiddos have a lot of trouble taking notes. So I have made that a major life skill that we start practicing early. Starting in upper elementary, I have them practicing filling in guided notes that I make that correspond to short educational YouTube videos. So, for example, I watch an Amoeba Sisters video on the immune system and take fairly simple notes on the most important topics, concepts and vocab. Then I write these up leaving out key words and phrases. I have the kiddo watch the video at 75% speed as they try to fill in the notes. As they practice I leave more and more of the notes for them to fill in, perhaps just giving a heading and the correct number of bullets underneath. Eventually, I just sit with them and we both take notes on a video, and then compare and contrast our notes so they can see what a more experienced notetaker might include.

Taking notes...preferably good notes, but initially any notes.

My kids were just assigned this article to read in their online class. Probably longer than you are looking for, but you could use a section. It doesn't have a ton of typos, but it is just clunky...very formulaic with clumsy sentence structure. My "favorite" sentence, that I made sure to discuss with my kids, was: "Fish people get in saltwater include Swordfish, Marlin, Tuna, and others." I had to reread it three times because my brain clung to "fish people" as the subject who were "getting in" saltwater...as "fish people" do. I had every person in my family read it, and each of us stumbled at the word "include" because it did not fit our mental model of the sentence thus far. Also, I'm not sure why swordfish, marlin and tuna are being treated as proper nouns...but that is just par for the course in that article. I also "liked": "However some kinds of fish can be taken with nets for bait and a few for food." It leaves me with an mental image of fishing with a rod and reel with a itty bitty net on the hook as bait. Spoiler alert, that is not how they meant it. 😄

And whatever math curriculum you choose, I would make sure to have your girls take a placement test. There is really no such thing as being "ahead" or "behind" - just finding a level of a resource that will be neither too easy nor too hard. One thing I might caution you against is unconsciously mimicking a lot of your formal teaching practices at home. You really don't need assessments. There is nothing wrong with hanging out on one topic for as long as necessary for a kiddo, or setting aside a concept for a couple months and working on something else. Unlike in a classroom, there is no reason to drag a student through a topic that they already thoroughly know - you can let them move at their own pace as fast or slow as they may be. Homeschooling is truly a unique situation that has a ton of advantages (and some disadvantages), but it can quickly become "school at home" if you don't consciously choose to think outside the box.

I have homeschooled my 4 kids from the beginning. They are now 1st - 8th grades. Grammar - who cares? Okay, that is a bit hyperbolic, but really, do you think that if you read to them and help them learn to express themselves through writing that they will honestly end up taking the SAT not knowing intuitively how to speak grammatically? Obviously there are some nit-picky "grammar" points that are arbitrary (don't put a period after Ms even through Mr. and Mrs. do get one), but a lot of those are going to come up naturally over the years in the course of life, and there is absolutely no reason they need to know them in elementary. With my kids, I don't view formal grammar as an everyday subject. - Sometime in early elementary I teach my kids the basic parts of speech - using Brian Cleary books or Grammar-Land (a few text or audiobook that teaches through a story). Through writing and copywork they learn about capitalization and ending punctuation, and gradually we start adding some commas and other internal sentence punctuation. - In middle elementary we go through Michael Clay Thomspon's Grammar Island which is a very deep, conceptual look at what makes a sentence, told through story. We refine capitalization and punctuation through their writing. - In upper elementary I add in a Daily Grams workbook, but only do the sections that seem interesting or that they need work on. This starts to teach some of the arbitrary rules and higher level definitions ("adverbial clause" or "possessive adverb"). - I kept waiting for the time it felt necessary for my oldest to go through a more formal grammar curriculum, but it never came. He is a native speaker who has listened to and read a lot of books - he knows grammar. We cover the really unusual cases when they come up in his writing, but he gets a deeper understanding through studying the grammar of a world language. Writing - I cannot recommend highly enough Susan Wise Bauer's lectures on teaching writing. I re-listen to those frequently. That said, we use Writing with Ease (Susan's writing curriculum) in early elementary, then spend a couple years using Evan-Moor's Text Based Writing to practice and move from paragraphs to short essays. Then transition to Writing with Skill. We also use Lantern English classes to give them, and me, an outside perspective. Spelling - All about spelling. Math - We love Math Mammoth. But Singapore, Math U See, Beast Academy, Miquon, etc are all good programs if they click with a child and parent. Have you considered a literature rich program that would offer some structure, while leaving you with a lot of flexibility as you settle into homeschooling? Perhaps something like Build Your Library?

Middle of January - all his books are half price for a week. You can get on his mailing list to be notified.

He doesn't really have regular and advanced classes...though he does label them that way. His "regular" books are elementary level. His "advanced" books are supposedly middle and/or high school level, but I find them perfect for upper elementary and middle school, and would find them very light for high school. That said, yes, he incorporates real experiments into all of his elementary and upper level courses. There are also a lot of demonstration activities (he has a lab activity each week), but about once per unit there is a true experiment. For example, in Elementary Life Science, the students experiment to see if temperature effects diffusion through a membrane. Students put tea bags in hot, room temperature and cold water. They then put each tea bag on a separate paper towel for a certain length of time. Afterwards, they measure the size of the tea stains on the paper towels. It is discussed that the independent variable is the water temperature, and the dependent variable is the stain size. Mr. Q offers lab sheets are various difficulty levels, so that even young elementary students can start by recording their "guess". By 5th grade he has them filling out a lab sheet that is rudimentary, but contains all necessary sections (hypothesis, variables, materials, procedure, conclusion, etc). The great thing is that Mr. Q Elementary Life Science is completely free, so anyone can evaluate it fully before buying any other levels...and the other levels go on a very good sale once a year.

My oldest was in therapy last year, and I think the therapist started "graduating" him / encouraging him to be done very prematurely. We had started therapy when he was having a really rough time and was not coping well with increased responsibilities. In fact, he was about 12.5 at the time, and the therapist agreed that his maturity and responsibility were at a young elementary level. Not surprising due to his autism and mental health challenges, but definitely an impediment in his life. After about 6 months, the therapist had taken the tack of reassuring Peter that he was "fine" the way he was, and at home DH and I had taken the approach of locking down temptations like Fort Knox and instituting near 100% supervision so that Peter could function. On the surface, Peter seemed to be in a much better place, but that was almost entirely due to external structures - he was no more accepting of his responsibilities than he had been...he was still perfectly willing to lie and cheat to get out of "work" (even tasks like brushing his own teeth), but we just weren't giving him any opportunities. I thought, now that the acute problems were temporarily under control, that we were in a perfect position to start tackling more underlying issues. The therapist thought thing were peachy keen and Peter didn't need therapy any more. Sigh. That was at the end of last school year, and we are still looking for a more suitable therapist for Peter...who has once again started spiraling down because his special needs really do require long-term professional help, and will not be cured in 12 sessions.

I adore my therapist. I have been seeing him for a bit more than a year now. I do most of the talking, but he never hesitates to butt in and push back against things I say if he feels the need. He asks a lot of questions: "Does it have to be like that?", "Does that add or eliminate stress in your life?", "Do you feel like he could do better if he wanted to?", etc. He doesn't give me "homework" per se, but he ends almost every session saying something like, "If I were you, I would think more deeply about XYZ. Try to figure out how you would feel is ABC happened, and how you might react." If I bring up that topic at the next session, he is of course open to discussing my thoughts, but if I don't bring it up, then neither does he. Because I am in an ongoing, toxic situation, sometimes I come to sessions with a pressing topic to discuss, like a murky decision I need to make. Other times we talk about things I am thinking or feeling. And sometimes, I don't even know what I am thinking or feeling, and we just talk about the events that have been happening and he listens for patterns (and I assume how I am talking about events) and tries to help me gain perspective.

Yeah, I did notice that. I meant to say either DE calc based physics or that book. Since Peter already has an algebra-based physics credit, is a strong math student, and will be taking Calc in 9th grade, I don't see any reason for him to take any more alg-based physics courses. If he takes physics again, it will be calc-based.

Google Calendar was a complete bust for me. I hate that in the monthly view it doesn't wrap text, but rather cuts off most of the information that I need to know at a glance. That was a deal breaker...I refuse to click into an appointment every time I need to see all the basic details (who, what, when, where). So, as in most things, I reinvented the wheel. We have a shared digital calendar in Google Sheets. It is formatted just like a paper monthly calendar. Each day has a small cell at the top with the date number and then a large space (with text wrapping!) where we can write appointments, etc. Plus, we can use color coding (text, border, and cell) to mark either days or events in any way that is important to us.

I agree completely. Even at MIT, the general "lab" classes were pretty pointless. You didn't really learn useful lab skills until you worked as an ungrad research assistant in the professors' labs doing actual experiments to study actual research questions. Thanks - I will definitely look into those. That is the type of lab that Peter would find interesting and challenging...and a type of "lab" work that is very much used in the "real world". The whole "lab science" designation feels fairly absurd because from elementary level on I have made all my kids' science classes focus on the bolded. We have used a lot of Mr. Q science classes because right from the beginning he has kids doing real experiments - making hypotheses, assigning independent and dependent variables, gathering data, seeing if results are repeatable, accounting for error, etc. Realistically, many of the standard high school "labs" are glorified demonstrations more than true scientific experiments. Since Peter is far more interested in the physics side of science, I am going to look into courses in that vein that I could offer with labs. Either Calc based physics or the Matter and Interactions book you mentioned. I also thought of Rocketry - that could involve fun labs. Or Optics and Acoustics. Or Robotics. Thanks.

Peter is in 8th grade, and is currently taking the online Edmentum class Advanced Chemistry (prepping for the AP test, though he is opting not to take it) through his virtual school. It is labeled as "with lab", but they are almost all virtual labs. Last year, he took a high school level Physics course with a lot of labs. When he started the virtual school, he tested out of their physics class (with a very high score), but that class will just show up on that transcript as "passed", not with a grade or the "with lab" designation. Next year he is going to do an Advanced Biology class at home with lots of physical labs. So that means that at the end of 9th grade, he will have: Physics - 1 credit (with "pass" grade) Advanced Chemistry with labs - 1 credit (with mostly virtual labs) Advanced Biology with labs - 1 credit Peter is very much a STEM kiddo (considering majoring in math), and will probably want to take science every year. (I am not convinced he will want to take any AP tests.) He likes physics a lot, but won't want to take another course that goes through the same ramp/spring/circuit labs at home that he did last year. I've considered suggesting he dual enroll Calc based Physics after he takes Calculus next year. Are there other sciences that he could take as "lab sciences"? Is there an online physics class that focuses more on computer simulation labs (this would be very much up his alley)? Is there a compelling reason for him to take a chemistry class with more real "lab" labs (probably dual enrolled) if that is not an area he is super interested in? Realistically, if he ends up with lots of high level STEM classes and dual enrollment, will colleges really care what/how many classes are labeled "with lab"? Thanks

My eyesight is pretty bad; I have been wearing glasses since I was 5. I put them on when I wake up unless I am jumping right in the shower. I take them off as I lay my head on my pillow. I do get a bit nauseous and develop a headache if I strain my eyes right after taking off my glasses. So, I do non-vision-intensive tasks, like making my bed or changing diapers, first thing in the morning without glasses because my eyes haven't adapted to them yet. But even small vision-intensive tasks, like reading a short email on my phone, will hurt my eyes if I recently took off my glasses.

I have an anxious, gifted, ADHD kiddo. For him, we have to do a combo of assignments and time. It I say "work on math for 45 minutes", he takes forever to "figure out" what math needs to be done (How about the next lesson?!?!), then at least half the time using Desmos to graph an equation only dubiously related to the lesson, and gets almost nothing accomplished at all. OTOH, if I say "complete lesson 3.4 and the problems", he frets that it is going to take too long. And when he is stressed, his work quantity and quality plummet. This strategy leads to a lot of lying and arguments about me assigning too much. So, instead, I say "spend an hour working on lesson 3.4 and the problems then come see me; I expect you should be able to finish the whole thing". This works because 1) I purposefully assign what I expect to be 45 minutes of work and I give him an hour to work on it, 2) I plant the expectation that he can finish, and he knows he will have to face me afterwards to explain himself if he doesn't, but 3) he also knows that if he shows me he was working diligently most of the hour, then he can be done for the day and pick it back up next time. One thing we did was set up a camera that he can optionally work in view of. He sees that as his insurance - if he says he worked hard, and I am dubious based on how little he accomplished, then he can pull up the camera footage to prove it to me. I view the camera as an accountability buddy for him.

That is similar to what I was thinking, but I was considering just rolling Epic Poetry into the rest of the literature and giving that a full credit. Then giving one full credit of composition for his Roy Speed class. So he would end up with: World Literature (BYL) - 1 World History (BYL) - 1 Biology (BYL) - 1 World Religion (BYL) - .5 Advanced Composition (Roy Speed) - 1 Calculus (Derek Owens) - 1 Spanish Conversation and Diction (DE) - 1 Art (BYL + two other drawing classes) - 1

Thanks for the review. How did you handle high school credits?

My advanced 8th grader is contemplating learning and pedagogy and curricula. He isn't 100% against what he is doing this year, but he feels (and I agree) that it is a lot of busywork and not a lot of depth. It is challenging in a "memorize all the details and regurgitate them on long multiple choice tests" way, but not really in a "teach him how to think and learn" kind of way. For context, he is currently using Edmentum online classes through a virtual flex school. He is taking English 8 (his least favorite subject), Advanced US History (which is boring, but forcing him to learn to write analysis papers...though not actually teaching him how to do so), Advanced Chemistry (which is easy, and a bit boring, but he enjoys), and Pre-Calc (which he is blasting through and learning almost nothing from). He is also taking a very high level Spanish 5 class with me and various tutors. For next year I am considering Build Your Library 10. He would also take Derek Owens Calc and Roy Speed's Logical Communication (and therefore do little of the writing in BYL). Spanish would be a mix of at home and a dual enrollment class. Can anyone share experiences with BYL 10 (or other high school levels other than 9 which I have heard bad things about)? Thanks

One of my favorite parts about Math Mammoth is how versatile it is. I've had some kids who had to do every problem on every page, and other kids who cruised through only doing minimal problems in sections that they understood well. That allows me to customize the rigor, and tailor it to each child's strengths and weaknesses. I can supplement with living books, SM challenging word problems, BA, Zaccaro books, Miquon, Hands on Equations, etc. I guess I really like Math Mammoth as a spine. If I take each child through Math Mammoth (at their own pacing doing as much or as little as they need to achieve deep, conceptual understanding and algorithmic proficiency), then I know they are building a really solid foundation. And that really, truly would be enough to give them a solid, rigorous math education. But since that is so open-and-go and requires so little of my attention, then I can focus on the icing on the math cake - the enrichment and extra challenge, which in my experience need to be implemented more carefully. For example, my most mathy child, who is taking pre-calc as an 8th grader, never thrived in BA or AOPS as a primary math curriculum. He always needed to deep dive into a challenge for a while, and then retreat back to tried and true Math Mammoth when he started to get overwhelmed and needed time to mull over the challenging material. Whenever we tried to switch entirely to a discovery/puzzley curriculum, he would burn out, start to dislike math, and end up needed extended math breaks to regroup...at which point I would steer him back to Math Mammoth which was exactly what he needed.