Congrats!!! I haven't had twins, but I agree with the others about just scaling back your plans! When I was pregnant with #3, I had complications and spent 5 months on complete bedrest. My kids were 2nd/3rd grade and Kindergarten and they survived! We read alot of books and my oldest did a few workbooks for math and that was about it! But having my kids home with me was wonderful. Even though my oldest was only 8, she could make a peanut butter sandwich, or put a load of laundry into the dryer or fetch the mail from the box at the end of the driveway, etc. TOG isn't a bad idea because (I think!) it's literature-based and you can always read while lying on the couch! I'd just do that and some math, and call it a school year! Your oldest is only 9 and even grammar can be put on the backburner for a little while. You mentioned something about the possibility of being tired as you enter that last trimester and I'm wondering if you know of a homeschooled preteen or teen who'd be willing to come over to your home for a few hours each week and play with the kids while you rest. Perhaps there's someone in the neighborhood, your homeschool group, church, etc., who'd be able to do this for you.

Minimus Latin is secular....and available at Rainbow Resource. I think you can also find samples online.

I'm so sorry for your loss! :crying: :grouphug:

William & Mary is extremely liberal, albeit it's a terrific college. A very good liberal arts school with more of a "traditional feel" would be the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. I believe there are around 4,000 students. Easier to get into than W&M also. Are you only considering public colleges? Randolph-Macon College in Ashland is another good liberal arts college with around 1500 students, but it's pricey!!

Homeschooled my oldest through 12th grade (she took dual enrollment classes at the community college during her junior and senior years). Currently homeschooling an upcoming 10th grader with no plans to stop! Will probably homeschool #3 through high school as well (he'll probably do the dual enrollment / community college 'thing', too). Not sure about our youngest! I'll cross that bridge when I get to it!

I'm so sorry for your loss!!! :grouphug:

He doesn't now, but 15 years ago, when he started his own company, he worked for 3 years delivering pizzas for Dominos at nights and on weekends. He made pretty good money (I think it averaged out to about $15 an hour, including tips). And he brought home pizza just about every night that he worked if he helped to close (they always have 'pizza errors' ... i.e., someone orders sausage and they accidentally make it with ground beef. They don't throw away the pies; they put them in a warmer and the drivers and other employees can take them home at the end of the night).

Hokie, Hokie, Hokie, Hi! :D Sorry....I'm biased! Virginia Tech is a great school!!! It's H-U-G-E, but awesome!! Our best friends in the world -- we were best man / maid of honor for their wedding, and they shared the same honor for us -- have two children, both at Virginia Tech. Their kids love it...absolutely love it. In addition to the monetary difference in out-of-state tuition, it's also harder for out-of-state students to get into Tech because (I believe) 70% of their student body must be from Virginia. So those who are applying from out-of-state are facing greater competition, and therefore need higher SAT scores, etc. Btw .... I have an engineering friend who graduated from Clemson and LOVED it, so be sure to make a visit! How exciting for your son!!! Enjoy the visits...and apply to every school he likes. You never know what will be offered until the acceptance letters come in. If the offer is good, then he's free to accept or decline and all it cost was the application fee. It's worth a try!

Yep!! Finally! 1st Grader (Afterschooling) First Language Lessons 1-2 Handwriting Without Tears My Printing Book Explode the Code 1-2-3 Alpha Phonics Math-U-See Alpha Swimming & Little League Baseball 5th Grader Sonlight Core 5 Readers Handwriting Without Tears Can Do Cursive Fix It Grammar Phonetic Zoo Spelling Level B IEW Student Writing Intensive Level B English from the Roots Up Volume 1 Biology w/ Heath's Life Science Teaching Textbooks Math 6 Life of Fred Fractions Van Loon's The Story of Mankind Minimus Latin Red Herrings Mysteries Artistic Pursuits 4-6 Book 1 Piano Lessons Tae Kwon Do 10th Grader (w/ special needs) Sonlight Core Alt 7 Readers DK History: The Definitive Visual Guide Phonetic Zoo Spelling Level B IEW Student Writing Intensive Level B English from the Roots Up Volume 1 Biology w/ Milliken Kingdom of Life Guides Teaching Textbooks Geometry Cambridge Latin I & II Red Herrings Mysteries Artistic Pursuits Junior High Books 1 & 2 Little League Baseball & Special Olympics Basketball

My oldest suggested that I homeschool my grandchildren...so that's an intriguing idea, to say the least! Not that I'm having any grandchildren anytime soon, that is! ;)

I have a high school diploma only. I started working full-time when I was 17. I completed 30 credits toward an AA degree at the community college, but never finished. Then I moved 4 hours away from home and met my hubby and then started having kids! I've homeschooled for 15 years and my oldest just graduated last month. There are times when I regret not having gone to college, or completed my degree, but....it hasn't really affected my ability to homeschool. I've learned soooo much while homeschooling!! I've taught myself math through Precalculus (I only made it through Algebra I in high school) and I've even studied several years of Latin, along with my children! I have learned along with my children, which is a great experience! :)

My kids love this! They sing it around the house, too! :lol:

I've never spanked my kids. They're 18, 15, 9 and 7. I'm of a like mind with the other poster (Satori, I think it was). I also raised my children using attachment parenting techniques (family bed, positive discipline, extended breastfeeding, etc.). I was extremely active in LaLeche League when my children were babies (I'm a retired Leader and co-led a group for almost 15 years). Of course, now that my youngest is 7, the attachment phase is pretty much over! No more nurslings or children in the bed...just one hubby! :) I've always tried to view my children as individuals and I treat them as such. They need to be guided and praised when they do good things, and when they would misbehave, we'd use natural consequences (i.e., if you don't wear a coat on a chilly day, you're going to be cold....or if you spill the pitcher of juice, you'll clean it up and make more....if you refuse to share the toy, then it's taken away and the *toy* is placed in time-out until you agree to play nicely, etc.). It's certainly taught me to think very creatively over the years, that's for sure! ;) I really don't have any issues, now that my half of my children are teenagers! My oldest has been a community college student for two years. We haven't had issues with drugs, smoking, drinking, etc....she has a boyfriend and they're quite serious, but he's a polite young man and treats my daughter with respect. So I'm happy with how she turned out, now that she's an adult.

Nope.

We bought a fireproof safebox at Walmart and that's where we keep our papers. Our will is in there...titles for the cars, the kids' birth certificates and social security cards, etc. It's very handy!

I'm trying to remember what we used for curriculum for the first few grades! I remember we used Alpha Phonics for reading, which was all oral -- no writing involved. We used Explode the Code also and I think it was basically "circle the sound", etc. He may have had to write single letters for that one. We rounded it out with Handwriting Without Tears, which he did write himself. For math, we used Math-U-See and I would fill in the numbers for the first level or so, and then he was able to write the numbers himself as time went by. We used Sonlight for everything else, which was a lot of reading aloud and he would read the readers to me. Around 3rd or 4th grade, he would dictate stories and the like to me and I would type them on the computer and print them out and he'd put them into a notebook. By 5th or 6th grade, he was typing his own stories. I didn't have him write papers by hand until 7th or 8th grade. We're planning on working on cursive this year because he wants to take the SAT exam next year and I know he'll need to improve his handwriting by then to make it legible! IEW is a great writing program and I highly recommend it!! I wish I'd started it earlier with my son! They utilize checklists and revisions for writing, working up to full papers. http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/index.php?q=catalog/writing

This is great advice! My oldest son (also an Aspie) also did his work orally until around 3rd or 4th grade. He had some fine motor delays, as well as a language delay, and all the oral work actually improved his verbal and conversational skills. He didn't being writing papers (multiple paragraphs) until middle school.

My youngest is in public school, but we "afterschool" in math & language arts. It was mutually agreed upon, at our last IEP meeting, that we're going to have her repeat 1st grade. She's doing "okay" academically, but she's definitely not ready for 2nd grade! By having her repeat 1st grade (which she only attended for 3 months, since we were homeschooling for the past year), she can spend 75% of her day in a mainstream classroom. If we were to send her on to 2nd grade, she'd spend very little time in a regular class (less than 15 minutes!). My daughter is very social and she really, really needs to be with verbal children (she has a language delay, but all the other students in her autism class are non-verbal or have extremely limited vocabularies). For afterschooling, she'll be using Math-U-See Alpha, Handwriting Without Tears My Printing Book, First Language Lessons 1-2, Explode the Code 1-2-3, and Alpha Phonics.

I gave ours a $20.00 Starbucks gift card at the end of therapy with a nice "thank you" card.

I blame it all on Guitar Hero! :D Our 9 year old LOVES classic rock!!! He loves Ozzy ... AC/DC ... Zeppelin .. Rush. It's a hoot! It's a flashback for me and a "newly discovered band" for him! We were at my brother's house for a picnic last year. "Slow Ride" came on the radio and my son cried, "This is my favorite Foghat song!" My brother turned to him and said, "You're 8! You shouldn't have a favorite Foghat song!" ;)

It depends on if that's what they want to do. My oldest tried public school in 9th grade (after being homeschooled since birth). She completed one semester and said she'd had enough! She ended up taking her placement tests at the community college in the spring of that year and passing with flying colors. So she started taking 2 classes per semester there. She just graduated last month and she's halfway to her AA degree! She'll return to the cc in the fall. My 15 year old son has NO desire to go to public school! None what so ever. He wants to homeschool through 12th grade and then either go to the cc or go straight to a 4yr college. My 9 year old may or may not decide to go to high school. I can see him deciding to stay home, but then...he may want to go to high school. His two older siblings will be gone, and his youngest sister already attends public school. He may be bored and lonely, being the only child at home during the day! I'll let him make that decision for himself...probably during his 8th grade year....so he has another 3-4 years to decide! My 7 year old is already in public school. She has special needs. We plan on keeping her in public school through elementary. Not sure about sending her to middle school (I've heard horror stories about the middle school here!!!) and high school will be yet another decision to make. But we have several years before we get to that bridge! :)

Best: Singapore Math Math-U-See Explode the Code Alpha Phonics Sing, Spell, Read & Write Handwriting Without Tears Sonlight (not secular, but it's not hard to replace a few books we choose not to use) Worst: Saxon Math -- the upper grade levels aren't bad but it's just overkill for younger ones!

Every year, I attend our state's homeschool convention (which is tomorrow, btw!! Yippee!!!). I sometimes attend the seminars, but not very often. It has to really pertain to a specific issue for me to go. I usually just buy a shopping pass. And I don't buy everything at the convention. I've usually bought 80% of my materials prior to the convention. That way, I'm looking for only a few items at the convention, so it's not overwhelming. Usually, it's a matter of having narrowed my list down to 3 or 4 options and then making the final selection there, when I can view everything first hand. (For instance, tomorrow I'm looking for a chemistry curriculum for my 15 year old. I have 2 or 3 choices in mind but I want to see them first before making a decision). For the past 4 years or so, I've attended a local used curriculum sale, which is great!!! I can pick up something, spur of the moment, and not spend a great deal of money on it. And, now that my children are growing older, I have curriculum of my own to sell.

hsmamainva : HomeSchoolingMamaInVirginia :)

My youngest is in public school. She's in a regular 1st grade class for everything but math. During math time, she heads to an autism class for K-3rd graders. Her autism teacher uses Singapore Math with her. I happened to mention that we were using the Earlybird series at home last year, during our 1st IEP meeting, and her eyes lit up! She loves Singapore Math but the school uses something else -- I don't remember what. So she said that if I supplied the books, she'd be happy to use it instead. It's written into my daughter's IEP, too. I'll be picking up the next level of Singapore at our homeschool convention tomorrow and taking it to her teacher on Monday, along with the teacher's guides, so she can write up lesson plans over the summer. If you can use MUS at home, that would be terrific. You could also ask at your next IEP meeting if they would be willing to use MUS with your son instead of whatever math curriculum they're using in school. If it's written into his IEP, it shouldn't be a problem. (Of course, every state is different, but it's worth a shot. You can print out the scope and sequence for each MUS level on their website and ask the school to compare it with the Everyday Math program). Hope this helps a little!