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ccolopy

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Posts posted by ccolopy

  1. DS has a group of friends that he sees several times per week. Three are boys that he's known for about four years and met through baseball. DH and one of the other fathers have coached together, so the four boys have mostly played on the same teams. The fifth boy is homeschooled and we met him at the library last fall. He doesn't live very close to us, but he comes over every Friday afternoon to do a science lab with DS, then stays for the evening to hang out with the other boys. DS has some other kids he considers friends from baseball and soccer, but these four boys are his real friends. He's having a birthday party next weekend and will be inviting 12 boys, including two cousins.

     

    DD hasn't had it quite as easy with friends, but she does have a few. She has a best friend who is homeschooled, but lives almost an hour away. They really click, so we make an effort to get the girls together every second weekend or so. She also gets along great with my nieces and a few girls from dance, so she has a friend or cousin over most weekends.

     

    At your son's age, DS had a bunch of "friends" that he never saw outside of school. DD had a few girls from the neighborhood who've since moved away. Their real friends at that age were their cousins, and birthdays were family events.

  2. Yep. Silly mom here. One morning a few weeks ago, I got up at 7, dressed, made coffee, wrote out DS's checklist for the day, got DD's books ready and started some laundry. When 8 o'clock came around and DH hadn't come down to get ready for work, I put two and two together and realized that it was Sunday. :blush:

  3. Whether it's too much or not will depend on your kids, but I would think that any more than 3 hours would be pushing it for a 2nd grader and 6 hours would be my limit for 5th grade. Mine are in 3rd and 6th right now and we do each subject daily, but we don't hit every part of English every day.

     

    DD 3rd does English (grammar, vocab, writing, literature), history, science, math and French with me every morning. This takes about 3 hours. After lunch, she does spelling, handwriting and geography on her own, which takes 30-45 minutes. She reads for 30 minutes and is finished by 2. ~4 hours total, including reading.

     

    DS 6th does Arabic, math, science and history in the morning, then English and French with me after lunch. He finishes before 3, but has a little assigned reading after that. ~6 hours, including reading.

  4. My DS is almost 12 and I could leave him home every day for 3-4 hours, no problem. I probably would have been okay with it around 10 1/2 or 11.

     

    Eight hours is a different story. DS was supposed to stay home from 9-5 every day for a week while DD and I were away, but he got lonely and ended up going to work with DH on Thursday and Friday. I would hold off on that until he's old enough to walk or take a bus somewhere to break up his day. Maybe 13, probably 14.

  5. My DS is almost 12 and I consider him to be a mature and motivated student for his age, but he would not be able to take a list of assignments for the week and have them completed on time. We do a daily list of assignments, with a marking of where he should be by lunch. I don't think you need to sit by his side the entire time he works, but setting him up with a morning's worth of work and checking that it's been completed before you break for lunch might be a good compromise.

  6. Typically band instruments started at about 5th grade (10/11) and not earlier as before that that they won't be big enough to handle the instrument or have the lung capacity. That's the case with brass and woodwinds anyway.

    This has been our experience as well. DD just started playing the flute and is the youngest student that her teacher has ever taught. DS started trumpet last year at 10.

  7. For Ancients, my DS used a combination of the three Dorothy Mills books that BFamily mentioned (Ancient World, Romans, Greeks), two of the World in Ancient Times books (China and Early Human), Famous Men of Greece and Rome, several encyclopedias, some ancient literature and historical fiction. He read through SOTW the previous summer for a quick overview.

  8. At the recreational level, basketball is pretty safe. Most of the injuries I've seen have been knee and ankle injuries in competitive players. Baseball can also be very safe at that age, depending on the position and with proper equipment.

     

    Flag football isn't bad either. DS plays with boys who almost all play tackle, but he's keeps up and doesn't mind not playing "real" football. My DH went to college on a football scholarship, and he's also completely against DS playing.

     

    Track, cross-country and swimming are good options as well.

  9. I evaluate my children's work. Math problems have to be 100% correct - if they are not, they will have to correct them. But I do not assign any grades for daily work.

    If an assignment is not done to my satisfaction, they have to redo it. But that can be accomplished completely without "grades".

    This is what I do. DS does receive grades in his online classes, and I grade a final exam for each math course, but I don't think the grades make any difference to him.

     

    I don't plan to do a certain amount of work per day, so the only "homework" my kids have is a little assigned reading.

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