I don't know where to ask this question, because I feel like my non-homeschooling friends would just shrug it off as a "kids have to learn to be away from you" issue, but it's not really a homeschooling question because it involves sending my child to school... So please be kind to me here! Dc3 is 4 yo and started preschool at our church last month. My older two kids both attended there, we know the preschool intimately since we're a small church and dh is the associate pastor at our church, so we know for a fact that the school is excellent, a TON of fun, and that her teacher is great. According to her teacher, she gets along well with other kids, pays attention, and has a great time. She comes home with fun crafts and talking about her friends and everything they did. But she hates going. Not the actual parting from me at the door issue, but she tells me all the time how she doesn't want to go because she hates being away from me. How it's the worst thing ever to have to be apart from me and how she just hates it, despite how fun preschool is. She's resisted going for the last three straight weeks (she goes 3 hrs a day, 3X / week). Any thoughts? Would you just insist she keep going? I really would like that time as "down time" and to work with my older kids, but my heart breaks for her every time she says that being away from me is the worst thing ever. :( FWIW, up until this situation, I would've said she was outgoing, adventurous, feisty, and fearless. I'm not sure what's going on with her at this point though. She's been acting out a ton at home the last few months, but that was even before preschool started.

Look up handbrake. :) Works like a charm.

I would ask if there's ANY language that you or a family member has any experience with. Because it's so much easier to learn a language when you can do it together - speak together, watch a foreign movie together, etc. I think any language is useful in the sense that it grows your brain in new and incredible ways (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_multilingualism), so I tend to be a fan of choosing whatever language you will most likely be able to actually stick with and stay motivated with. Beyond that: *Knowing Chinese, Japanese, or Russian would help with a lot of STEM fields, because modern technical papers are still written in those languages. * Knowing German, Italian, French, etc. would help with reading historic technical papers in STEM field, because most of them were written in these languages. * I love ASL, but feel like it's much harder to find resources that are kid-friendly once you get beyond the basic vocabulary videos that are geared towards kids. A spoken language, on the other hand, can be learned through movies, audiobooks, news, music, etc. * Sometimes, any cultural or heritage or outside sort of connection can be very motivating for learning a language. If someone is super interested in Greek Mythology and Homer's stuff, for instance, he might study Greek and love it. If someone is super into Biblical stuff, they might choose Hebrew and Greek.

I agree with everyone and would let him go. When my oldest was 5, I remember teaching him to multiply in Singapore, and he spent an hour doing the next 20 lessons. I found him in bed the next morning with a times table. So I bought a 97cent calculator and showed him its "magic." lol. Did he need to practice some "math facts" after that? Of course. Did he understand, abstractly, the idea of multiplication? Absolutely. FWIW, I doubt that he could get a superficial understanding of anything he takes from AoPS. If he ends up doing that work (and doing it well), I think it would be safe to say he has a deep understanding of the content, and you don't need to worry about letting him fly through the material.

I play both. I think which you should get depends on how serious they are about the guitar right now. You'll get a lot of mileage with a uke and you really can start playing "real" songs after just one or two lessons. That's a huge perk for kids. You'll learn to read chord charts, you'll learn strumming patterns, you'll learn lots of good stuff that will translate into playing guitar. But if what she wants is to make real progress towards guitar RIGHT NOW, then she might just prefer to go with guitar. Based on my children, it would lead to far more frustration than it would be worth (ukes are just smaller, easier to handle, and easier for them to get their fingers on those little four strings instead of stretching out to get all six at times), but YMMV.

Ha ha. This just popped up in my facebook feed from a few years ago. DS8 had *just* turned five and was doing a short reading lesson. The sentence in his book was "Lox the fox was hungry." He sat there staring at it for almost a minute while I did my best to just wait patiently before I suggested he just start *trying* to sound things out. At which point he looked at me and said "Luchs der Fuchs war hungrig." And then he smiled at me.

See we have them, and my kids do NOT love them. They get distracted or excited about something else and bump it, or a baby runs through the room in a flash and by the time I catch her she's swiped her hand across the entire table, and the kids end up crying that three hours' worth of work got destroyed in two seconds. :(

I get that! And I should probably not use four kids as an excuse when others have more and somehow manage, huh? :)

Oh I agree! I'm just not sure I'm willing to work at the hip right now. (That sounds lazy, huh?) Four kids just sometimes means that I don't do all that I'd like to do. But sometimes, bike riding is more important than math! :)

Nope. I know what they're doing and how well, and our state doesn't require it so I see no reason to. I'll introduce it at some point in the future, but I don't know when.

Fun! I definitely need to check some of these out for my 8 yo!

Fun! I definitely need to check some of these out for my 8 yo!

I've been pretty excited! I'm just not sure when to start since my girl who is at that level isn't reading as well as I think she might need to for it... Thought maybe I'd wait for 2B and then get both at once, and hope that she's reading better by then! lol.

Oh, how I love this thread! :)

I'm just looking to get extra idea on handicraft sorts of stuff that my older two kiddos can work on. They like art, and they like making stuff, and they spend many hours cutting and taping and coloring and glueing cardboard. But sometimes I think they might like crafts that their father doesn't just view as barely recycled trash. :) So currently we have: ** Lots of general craft supplies (glitter, glue, scissors, construction paper, stickers, stamps, thick water color paper, good markers/pencils, variety of paints, cotton balls, popsicle sticks, etc.) ** Perler beads ** Rainbow loom ** Old school wooden loom (Melissa & Doug variety) ** Leatherworking (caveat: we have it because we tried and couldn't do it. Even my husband had a hard time punching through the leather with my oldest, so we returned everything we'd gotten that was unopened). Things we've considered are: ** Strickliesel / Strickgabel ** Beading ** Felt dolls I feel like there must be more good crafty ideas out for this age, but can't think of them to save my life. We tried crochet, but it didn't go well. Maybe we could try again? I'd love to do some basic sewing stuff, but I'm not creative enough to come up with simple ideas. And I have four kids, so I'd really like some crafts that I could get them started on, and then they could just use to keep hands busy during audiobooks and such when they currently like to complain that they're the only kids in the universe who don't have fidget-spinners. :) Seriously - they like to craft, but my 6 yo in particular will quit anything that's "too hard" so I need to find something engaging and new without being TOO stretching, kwim?

My 3/4 year old (almost 4... bday is in a week) would do more with me if she had more of me. As it is, she has two two older sibs and one younger. So she gets about 20 minutes of focused time where we do however much math she wants to do (I usually end up cutting her off at 10 min), a short reading lesson (I cut her off at about half a lesson here, too), and then some cutting/pasting sheets, because she loves to cut and paste. Otherwise, she just tags along with read alongs with the other kids and play a lot with her 2 and 6 yo sisters. For my older kids, usually around the time they are 4.5 / 5, their desire for "real" work amps up, and we start doing more formal math, reading, and writing like Singapore and Spalding (but still < 1 hr a day total - maybe 30ish min?), and more audiobooks that they can listen to on their own with headphones, so that everyone can listen to something age and interest appropriate.

Good to know. I was concerned we were going to have to buy four if we wanted them to be able to wrestle (one for the wheels maybe and one for whatever else you want your robot to be able to do - all doubled to make two full robots), and I really didn't want to spend that much on them (though they'd still be cheaper than a boost or wedo! lol). We'd rather get a few and focus on those for a year or two while continuing to save for the mindstorm. Thanks so much!

One more question for you: Do you find that one is generally enough to do a lot with? I've seen a lot of projects online that end up using two or more, and my son would very much like to build battle bots with them and have them "fight" each other, so I'm not sure how many to buy.

Wow that's quite the collection!! Thanks! :)

Yes, these sound so great! My son is so excited about them already and is already designing his own BattleBots in anticipation of getting these. :) Thank you so much for letting me know about them!!

Could you tell me more about these please? I've never heard of them, but they look great!! How long have you used them? And do you find you still move on to the mindstorm eventually, or do you stick with these? Does it have to be corded to run your own programs? (That wasn't 100% clear from the site.)

Does anybody here have extensive experience with one or more of these that they'd like to share? DS8 decided a year ago to start saving for a Mindstorm, but they are mighty expensive. He has enough at this point for either a Boost or a WeDo and I'm leaning towards getting one of those, but we don't have a tablet or device compatible with the boost app requirements and DH is concerned the WeDo won't keep him engaged for very long to continue to engage and challenge (since most of the plans are geared towards ages 6-9, according to online sources). I've been told he's too young for a Mindstorm right now, though, which is another reason I'm leaning towards WeDo (or boost if we could find an inexpensive tablet that meets the requirements). For reference purposes, he did great at a WeDo camp this summer and built the Millenium Falcoln (1300 pieces, rec ages 9-14) independently about a year and a half ago at the age of 6.5 and he has a number of power function parts already that he likes to use to make cars and such. I'd love to hear thoughts from the hive! :)

Are your kids open to other languages? I count even light "fluffy" fiction as "school" if it's in another language. lol.

These are such great ideas. I tend to forget that I shouldn't necc expect my kiddo to write well even if he's reading advanced and complex stuff. Writing is just hard for him. He works so hard, and yet it's slow and painful for him to write out even 2-3 sentences (and takes him at least 30 minutes). Recently, I've been having him do it anyway because I've just had my hands full with three younger siblings, but this thread has been a great reminder to me that it's ok if he can't write well yet. Yesterday I sat down and did a reading log project with him (he likes to keep track of the books he finishes, and we found a really fun reading log program that has dozens of different ideas for projects he can do to interact with the book a bit at the end, and he really enjoys them) and it was so great for both of us. When the pressure of writing is off, he just thinks so much better. Part of me wishes he could just do it on his own, but then I remind myself that 8 is still so young... I'm ok with him staying little for just a little longer... lol.

And this is a major reason we're on this board. My oldest only just turned 8, and I've finally figured out not to talk about our struggles with friends, and instead take most of my questions to you all or our trusted psychologist we've seen for the last four years, though most of my friends are either unaware that we see her or think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill to continue seeing her. Oh well! lol. :)