I voted "No Way, I'm outta here", but then my house is about 2 miles from Galveston Bay and we're usually a mandatory evacuation area anyway....

We started our school year 6/1 and finished our first quarter last week. We're having a Not Back To School Pool party today and taking this week off. :party:

My ds12 did fine in Horizons 6 and is having a hard time in Horizons Pre-Algebra. Of course, YMMV, but I wouldn't skip 6....

FWIW, we've had a hamster break its leg. We took it to the vet and she said there was not much they could do. The hamster seemed OK and was moving eating and drinking. We took it home and it lived another 1.5 years. Of course that hamster appeared to be indestructible. She also survived not one, but two, trips to the cat's mouth...

No, but I've gotten an email from a "friend" that was so hateful i threw up - three times. A dear friend came over and she and my husband sat with me for a couple of hours. Then I went to bed. :grouphug: I hope the fallout is less than you anticipate.:grouphug:

because I have not, but I can imagine circumstances where I might...:o

We school year round so we take the entire first week of public school off. The first day, we have some friends coming over to swim and hang out.

I voted other: Desktop for (paid) work; laptop for home management, school and play.

I work at home and can set my own hours, mostly. I work almost 25 hours a week and have for years. Our schedule looks like this: 8 - 9 mom works 9 - 10:30 mom works, kids do independent school 10:30-11:30 we all have some active time 11:30-3 lunch and school with mom 3-4 mom works, more active time for the boys 4-5 mom still works and independent work for ds12 5-6 school with mom 6-7 chores for all (this is when I cook and grade) It makes for a long day but I feel like everybody gets the attention they need. The boys have breaks during the day. Ds12 does about 5 hours of work a day and ds8 does 4. They also have 2 hours of required physical activity a day (they both do better when I enforce this). I work for 4.5, exercise for 1, and teach 4. The rest of my time is spent on cooking, grading, and, sometimes, housework. Though in all honesty, my house is usually pretty messy. Something had to give and that was what we chose...

I'm a big fan of Artistic Pursuits, here...

I've lived in south Texas my entire life and this is the worst I can remember. The pool is hot; It's hot inside, and it's hot at night. I can not wait for this to be over....

Ds8 has been playing cello for 1.5 years ( I've been his only teacher) and I tried to follow Suzuki principles, but there is just not much info out there and it was pretty frustrating. It's all covered in their training and i couldn't find many materials Had there been a nearby Suzuki cello teacher, I would have signed him up in a heartbeat. He's playing well enough now and will be joining the local youth orchestra beginners this year but I think we could have save a lot of stress and many tears if we'd done it differently...YMMV!

This is awesome. I'd been toying with getting ds12 a telescope but wasn't sure the interest is there. I'll start with 1 and 2 above and if he's still interested, I'll feel much better about #3 AND have an idea how to go about it. Thanks!

No way! But not out of concern for the school or teachers. I'd just rather not deal with the ps masses. If it didn't bother me to be around the crowds of poorly supervised kids, I'd take your friends attitude of it's a public park - they can't make me leave.

I use red ink because it's easier to see. They can't correct what they don't know is wrong. I think reasonable expectations and requirements do more to support a child's sense of self than what color marks I use and what shape they are when I note mistakes ....

I let my kids spend their money on pretty much whatever they want (as long as it's allowed in the house) I give them allowance so they can learn to manage money, and they have to make the choices (and live with the consequences) in order to learn. I might suggest that "That seems like a lot to pay for what you get..." but beyond that, it's their money and their decision. Better to mess it up now with $10 a week than later with a credit card....

BTDT. Does not feel good!:grouphug::grouphug:

We do 4 days a week because my work schedule requires it. I go in to the office on Thursdays and my in-laws keep the boys. My older son has a list of independent assignments for each week and he sometimes works on things from that list on Thursday but I don't assign our regular work that day. It is sometimes hard to "get it all done" but I don't hesitate to skip assignments in math or grammar if the boys have mastered that topic or to double up by doing 1/2 of 2 different assignments some days. Josh's Iowa test scores just came back and he's clearly not hurting from the missed assignments. HTH!

but you will never stop working and I wouldn't do it if I could avoid it. I work 25 hours a week - most of them at home. I also only have 2 kids who are 8 and 12 (though I've worked at home since they were 1 and 5) the thing that affects me most is that I work All. The. Time. I'm either doing paid work, or school work, or house work - and it doesn't feel like I do any of it very well. When I do take breaks (OK, so I don't work all the time - it just feels like it) it's because I'm too tired to do anything else not because things are done. Even with working that much, I feel as though things are mostly managed but not completely. I worry that I'm short-changing my kids because I'm always tired and more than occasionally irritable. So, yes, it can work but, like everything, with a price. :sad:

I plan by the unit. (We take 2 weeks on most "TOG weeks" so I do this 2 maybe 3 times a year. Also, I use HST+ for my planning I print the assignment pages and student activity pages for each week. I also read the unit introduction as well as the intro for each week at this time. I go through them 1 week at a time and list the books I want to use. I also note how long we will use them I figure out what my library has and order the rest of the books. I create a new Lesson Plan in HST+ for the unit and add assignments for the reading. (The sequence number is the TOG week and I use the custom field for UG, LG, All, or D) Then I go back through all the pages and add writing, mapwork, lapbooks, and any other assignments. I also print lapbooks, maps, and student activity pages at this time. All paperwork goes in a hanging file folder for each week in the school crate on my desk. In the photo you can see we're about to start week 19 and then will move to Unit 3 of year 2. Then as each week comes up, I can submit whichever assignments fit for that time period. I may decide to leave something out because of time constraints. I schedule the stuff for ds8 but ds12's assignments all go on Saturday. That lets him do the scheduling himself. I've been using TOG like this for 1.5 years and really like it.

I'll second this PSA. A few weeks ago, we missed some middle of the night calls because all of the phone ringers upstairs were off. Turns out my FIL had had a heart attack. He called an ambulance and was taken to the hospital. My MIL has alzheimers and was unable to help in any way. She did go to the hospital with him. When we woke up we had messages on the machine that he was calling an ambulance, but we had no idea if the ambulance had come, what had happened or where they might have gone. The calls came in at 2 am and it was noon before we could find them. Everything worked out OK but missing those calls caused everyone more stress than needed. We make sure the bedside phone ringer is on every night now.

We've done HWT until now but he's ready to learn cursive. We're giving Horizons a try because he liked how it looked. With my older son, we switched to Italic for cursive after 2 years of HWT cursive - that didn't take.

I want mine to memorize at least the more common ones because he has trouble finding them. He knows what they do but often can't pick them out very quickly. A quick list to run through (like the FLL helping verbs list that we use ALL the time) would be a great help until he internalizes the preposition concept better....

I have an office that is used for school and my paid-work. I spend most of the day in there and don't know what I'd do without it!

We had it for about 6 months. We only had 1 game at a time and there was much argument over who got to pick the next game. That's what finally led me to cancel it. If I could get it and not tell the kids, I'd resubscribe in a heart beat. :blush: