If you have the funds, I would also suggest enrolling in Athena's lit classes. Several of our kids have taken these classes, and found them to be a good fit for discussing quality lit with other accelerated learners. ETA: Sacha started his first class there when he was 7, and is finishing up the last in their series this Spring. They have follow up lit class at OG3 after you finish the Athena's courses. I keep an excel file and a Goodreads list of our reading. I add books to the wishlist, as I come across recommendations, and then Goodreads notifies me when something on my wish list goes on sale. I've acquired a pretty extensive digital library this way (we live in small spaces, so cannot have a large physical library)..

We had a similar experience. My kid was being sent to the director's office regularly in preschool due to boredom. We ended up homeschooling as a result. Would they be more accommodating if you had some test scores to back up his giftedness? I agree that another grade skip may be your best option if you have to stay with the school. Another option would be to change schools and afterschool just the religious subjects. Big hugs and best wishes as you figure things out.

I have it, if you want to take a look. It's in our storage, but I can try to dig it up. :)

We use Plated and adore it. They have so many choices and the recipes are amazing. I have some free meals from Plated and Blue Apron if you want to try them. Just PM me.

For the bajillionth time, you can become obese without gluttony. Ever heard of medication side effects?

Cat, I feel an enormous duty to my family to do everything I can to remain healthy. That is the primary reason that I am undergoing bariatric surgery. I thought seriously about bariatric surgery 6 years ago -- met with a surgeon and everything. But, my husband and I both felt that I wasn't "sick" enough to risk it. And, of course, we thought that I'd give it another good old college try to lose weight on my own. Obviously, those efforts proved futile. Based on my experience with numerous weight loss attempts, and as evidenced by the statistics, my husband and I have now come to agree with my doctor that it is very unlikely that I will lose substantial weight without surgery. While I don't have serious co-morbidities right now, if I do nothing, it is likely that I will. (I was dx with PCOS/insulin resistance in my 20s, had 2 gestational diabetes pregnancies, and have been pre-diabetic since my last child, with very little improvement in my A1C on two, very expensive, anti-diabetes meds). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the trajectory of where my health is going, and I wouldn't wish diabetes on anyone. So, my husband and I now both feel that surgery is the right decision for our family. So, while no one is perfect in their dietary/lifestyle choices, I agree with you that he has an obligation to his spouse (and kids?) to do his part to be healthy. And, I think that she has a responsibility to be supportive in those efforts.

Why is every obese person eating junk? I eat 1000x healthier than my DH, who is thin. He regularly eats chips, ice cream, and fast food. I actually cannot imagine eating like he does. I'm the one who pushes to eat high quality food, mostly fruits and vegetables. Yet, I'm the glutton in your mind.

I have 5 Plated meals, if anyone wants to try them. They are my favorite by far. So many choices! :)

I doubt that I would be homeschooling had I not read TWTM.

I am with Arctic Mama and the numerous other people struggling with obesity. I am currently pre-op for bariatric surgery. I have been attending a 6 month class that Kaiser requires prior to surgery. We had about 30 people in my cohort at the beginning of class. There are 3 people who have lost substantial weight during the course of the class, such that they are no longer going to have surgery. They took the information in the course, applied it, and lost weight. We are all thrilled for them. The other 27 of us are still obese for a variety of known and unknown reasons -- some have medical conditions that make movement difficult, some take medications that put weight on them, some battle food addiction (which, like any other addiction, is a medical condition and not because of gluttony), some have extensive family histories of obesity (suggesting a genetic link), some combine many of these issues, and some struggle with obesity for unknown reasons. All of us will be required to make substantial changes to our lives forever post-op. We are well educated about the demands that will be placed on us after surgery. We are willing to do so because we have exhausted all other options. We have dieted, we have exercised, we have taken diet pills -- all to no avail. Things my doctors have said to me over the years: "There is still so much we don't know about obesity." "Monique, once you are morbidly obese, you have a 5% chance of ever not being morbidly obese without surgery." "We don't know exactly why bariatric surgery works. It may have something to do with changes in the gut microbiome." What they do know is that many patients basically wake up from surgery never needing diabetes and heart medications again. That makes no physiological sense whatsoever. These patients haven't even begun to lose any weight! How could these serious illnesses be ameliorated so rapidly? And, if bariatric surgery is really just surgical anorexia, why don't people continue to lose weight, as anorexics do? Why does it appear that these patients have reset their set points? (Patients typically lose for 12-24 months, and then it stops, and patients maintain around that new weight. People who couldn't lose weight when obese are suddenly able to do "the right things" to maintain, when those "right things" didn't work at their obese weight)? I mention all of this because it seems that several posters opining in this thread don't have a clue as to the medical state of obesity. Re the op, I have a much younger, much sexier husband. But, if he ever mentioned (even "kindly") that my body was no longer attractive to him, it would be the end of physical intimacy as we have known it. As others have said, that bell cannot be unrung.

Thank you for this. It appears to work even if you're not currently active too! There are also numerous lectures for $1.37, and several full-length courses for $9.95 and $14.95 (including several from board favorite, Professor Vandiver), available even without an active Audible membership. This is what I ended up getting for $20! Title/Author Apply Credits You Pay American Originals: Helen Keller by Patrick N. Allitt $0.00 $0.00 The Birth of Television by Edward T. O'Donnell $0.00 $0.00 The Manhattan Project by Edward T. O'Donnell $0.00 $0.00 Isaac Newton: The Dawn of Classical Physics by Steven Pollack $1.37 $1.37 Quantum Mechanics by Steven Gimble $1.37 $1.37 Leaving the Oceans: The Rise of Plants on Land by Robert Hazen $0.00 $0.00 Medically Enhanced Humans by Steven Gimbel $0.00 $0.00 Understanding Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo by Steven Pollock $0.00 $0.00 Origins of the Oceans by Robert Hazen $0.00 $0.00 How to Understand and Manage Your Emotions by Jason M. Satterfield $0.00 $0.00 Mind over Matter: Cognition in Everyday Life by Jason M Satterfield $1.37 $1.37 Otto von Bismarck by Jonathan Steinberg $1.37 $1.37 Science and the Supernatural by Steven Novella $0.00 $0.00 Charles Darwin by Jonathan Steinberg $1.37 $1.37 The Early Years of Ramses the Great by Bob Brier $0.00 $0.00 A Historical Tour of London by Robert Bucholz $0.00 $0.00 Understanding the Flaws and Fabrications of Memory by Steven Novella $0.00 $0.00 Jane Austen's Lady Susan by Emily Allen $1.37 $1.37 Sneferu, The Pyramid Builder by Bob Brier $0.00 $0.00 Balzac, The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Emily Allen $1.37 $1.37 How Artificial Languages Work by John McWhorter $0.00 $0.00 Dialects and the Fallacy of Blackboard Grammar by John McWhorter $0.00 $0.00 Cervantes's Don Quixote by Grant L. Voth $1.37 $1.37 Time Travel, Tunneling, Tennis, and Tea by Richard Wolfson $0.00 $0.00 Aztecs and the Roots of Mexican Cooking by Ken Albala $0.00 $0.00 Why Does Spacetime Curve? by Richard Wolfson $0.00 $0.00 Colonial Cookery in North America by Ken Albala $0.00 $0.00 The Art of Effective Communications by Clinton Longenecker $0.00 $0.00 The Trial of Socrates by Rufus Fears $0.00 $0.00 Leonidas at Thermopylae by Rufus Fears $1.37 $1.37 Romeo and Juliet: Words, Words, Words by Marc C. Conner $1.37 $1.37 The Life of a Word, from Birth to Death by Anne Curzan $0.00 $0.00 Wicked Cool - The Irreverence of Slang by Anne Curzan $0.00 $0.00 Selling a Kidney by Timothy Taylor $0.00 $0.00 Mao by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius $1.37 $1.37 Surprises in the Ancestry of Old English by John McWhorter $0.00 $0.00 How the Words of Modern English Emerged by John McWhorter $0.00 $0.00 Stalin by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius $0.00 $0.00 Targeting a Market Segment by Michael Roberto $1.37 $1.37 Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground by Grant L. Voth $1.37 $1.37 How Addiction Hijacks the Brain by Thad A. Polk $0.00 $0.00 The Tyranny of George III by Rufus Fears $0.00 $0.00 What the Constitution Says by Rufus Fears $1.37 $1.37 Shakespeare's Theater and Stagecraft by Marc C. Conner $1.37 $1.37 Total $20.55

I think that I do, but I don't have the benefit of implementing it with more than one child, or for many years over different developmental periods. So, I am reserving judgment, and didn't vote.

Btw, Athena's uses this free, online, bio textbook. https://www.ck12.org/book/CK-12-Biology-Concepts/ I plan to enroll Sacha in that class next year, but wanted to have Miller Levine as a supplement, in case we want to dig deeper into a topic. Another, inexpensive option is Holt Biology: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0030672147/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used Some other resources include: Online Biology Book: http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/biobooktoc.html Interactive Bio Review: http://www.classzone.com/books/hs/ca/sc/bio_07/interactive_review/bio_intrev.html Cells alive: https://www.cellsalive.com/

Also, this might help you/us: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/484602-miller-levine-bio-dragonfly-vs-macaw/

I am crazier than you -- I plan to use Miller Levine with a 4th grader next year, so following and giving you a bump! :)

Sacha, struggling to carry a [small] pumpkin back from the pumpkin patch yesterday: "Now I understand how Atlas felt, carrying the sky on his shoulders!" ETA pics: https://www.facebook.com/monique.b.labarre/posts/10155150128473261?pnref=story

We are doing SOTW4 right now, and, even putting aside the horrific aspects of modern warfare, it just doesn't seem all that interesting for a Ker. I mean, today we did the Suez Canal, and battles between Bolivia, Peru, and Chile over mining rights in the desert. The day before that it was about the Japanese Meiji Restoration. It's just not all that entertaining, to be honest.

I must admit that I went to my first homeschool convention over the summer. We only went because it was at the Great Wolf Lodge, and the kids wanted to go again. I didn't get much, if anything out of it, no doubt in large part because of this board. I probably belong to 10-15 FB groups for homeschoolers. Occasionally, I will save a post, but I get the best advice here. So, while I'm most definitely an accidental homeschooler, and outsource numerous subjects already, I count this board as my most trusted homeschooling resource. And I mention it to most every other homeschooler who asks for advice. This place would not be the same without the wisdom of the oldschoolers. Curriculum recs may come and go, but I've learned so much more than that here about homeschooling and parenting.

In California, I think much of the change has come from the amount of charter school $$$. $3000/year per kid really can buy a lot of cool experiences. I don't see much in the way of DIY or heated convos about pedagogy in my neck of the woods.

Thank you!

I just got some Plated meals if anybody wants some. They are worth $72, and are my fav.

Enjoy! http://oakmeadow.com/news/2017/08/30/new-course-for-parents-foundations-in-social-justice/?utm_source=Indigenous+Peoples+Day+Oct+2017&utm_campaign=Indigenous+Peoples+Day+Oct+2017&utm_medium=email

Agree re the amount of packaging. Some of the services have recyclable materials that you can use, if that is a concern for you. For us, the issue is not cooking; it's meal planning. Neither of us wants to spend the time planning meals and buying all the fiddly little ingredients -- especially because we don't have a lot of space to store ingredients that we will hardly ever use. I love that everything comes premeasured in just the right amount. It is pricey, but perfect for us.

We had this for dinner tonight with Plated, and it was amazing! I love Indian food, and it is normally a very labor-intensive cuisine. But, my husband made this in about 40 minutes (yes, he cooks!). It was so good! https://www.plated.com/menus/2017-10-01/recipes/indian-butter-chicken-with-naan

I don't. The instructor used to teach at OG3; he is a native speaker.