Senior DS is doing a DE Intro to Business and it's an 8 week course instead of 16, which I was very worried about, but it's foing great and his professor has commented several times that she's impressed with his work, so that's definitely a hit for him! I wanted him to have time to dedicate to his DE course, so he's only doing Chalkdust Precalc and Apologia Physics and both of those are good. When his DE course is done he'll be doing a homemade Journalism course and Dave Ramsey's personal finance as well. 10th grade DD is enjoying all of hers so far. VT Geometry and Apologia Chemistry and WttW are too soon to tell, but were all a hit with both my older boys so I assume it will be for her too. She is loving Great Courses for US History and tells us all about what she's learning! She's also liking her homemade Intro to Architecture and Engineering. Visual Link Spanish is just ok.

Thankfully with a new baby this year most things are hits. We are making good progress and I'm only slightly overwhelmed most of the time so we're going to call that good 🙂 6th - DD surprisingly loves Analytical Grammar! She was worried it was "too hard" and she hates tests and it has weekly tests so she was sure she was going to hate it. But she is enjoying the challenge and it is really building her confidence for doing "harder" middle school work. Yay! Her history paragraphs are getting better too, and she likes reading Human Odyssey. She still makes silly errors in math, but MM6 is not as hard as she thought it would be. AAS is not her favorite but it gets the job done. She likes God's Design for Science and I don't hate it 😉 so that's a win too. 2nd - She is starting AAR 4 and is happy to be almost done with phonics. She says she doesn't like AAS but she does it happily every day so whatever. SotW is fun and so is Magic School Bus science and her narrations are hilarious! She is narrating to me and I'm scribing, then she copies them. Haven't started Easy Grammar yet but we will in a few weeks, so we'll see if she likes that. Starting a "new" subject tjat her older siblings do usually goes over well with her. MM2 is easy and painless at this point, we're almost ready to start carrying in addition so we'll see how that goes. All in all, I'm teally happy with our year so far! 🙂 Hope I didn't just jinx it ...

Yep 🙂 Even my high schoolers listen and enjoy it!

Super organized Google calendar Drink a lot of water throughout the day Read aloud to the kids at lunch every day If you started a thread about bad habits, my list would be longer 😉

Prayer, spoonfuls of Nutella, and remembering that even when they push me away and seem like they hate me, what they really want deep down is to be drawn closer and for me to really *see* them and try to connect with them anyway

No offense to SWB, but there's waaaaaay too much in Grammar for the WTM that the vast majority of people really don't need to know, IMO. I actually do think diagramming is important because it helps you see the structure of the sentence in a very visual way when it's a complex sentence that has a whole lot of words in it. We use Analytical Grammar in 6th-8th grade and it's just right - thorough, complete, plenty of practice, concise and to the point, easy to teach, easy to accelerate if needed, and best of all by the time you're done with it in 8th grade you know all you really need to know about grammar in order to be a good writer.

Yes!!! I do like teaching elementary science, but it's probably my 3rd fave. Ha! I wanted to poke my eyes out with a stick listening to C ... A ... T ... over and over and over again with every.single. CVC word until it sunk in LOL I'm glad some people like it and I agree that the end result is rewarding, but getting there is not so fun for me

I'm 45 and i don't have bangs. I also do not have a hairstyle at all, really - I just keep it in a ponytail or a braid down my back. I refuse to have one of those old lady hairstyles. I want to look like an old hippie with my gray colored braid someday LOL I think you'd look good with no bangs, but it looks nice the way it is too. If you do decide to grow it out, I'd invest in some clips or headbands or something to keep the in betweenish stage from driving you crazy!

To me rigor means encouraging that particular child to do challenging things based on where they as an individual are at developmentally and to think instead of just going through the motions. That applies to traditional subjects and life skills - across the board. And in elementary what rigor looks like specifically is a whole lot of reading aloud from really good books and a whole lot of playing and having time to act out the ideas and concepts they are exposed to in literature, history, and science.

Grammar because it's so logical and laid out and I'm a geek about diagramming and history because there is so much world history I had no idea about until we started homeschooling

K12's Human Odyssey (3 book series) is well written and engaging and we love it! We use it for 5th-7th, along with written paragraphs about some aspect of their reading and some geography stuff and maybe a project or two.

The most satisfying book I've read that no one else I know IRL has read is Til We Have Faces by CS Lewis. But I'm not sure it would have wide appeal. The best book I've read that I think almost everybody I know would like is called Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks. It's about a boy on the spectrum and his imaginary friend and it's told from the perspective of the imaginary friend. It is laugh out loud funny, poignant, and has a good message.

My dad acts like there were some support services when he got back from Vietnam, but mostly they were expected to suck it up and not talk about it much and get over it. Maybe that was just his perspective and the culture he was raised in and came back to though and there really was good institutional help in place at that time, I don't know. He has commented that the multiple tours that were/are common in Iraq and Afghanistan is asking way way way too much of our troops and would not have happened in Vietnam. I will say that I have been pleasantly surprised by how the VA is treating his heart problems that were likely caused by Agent Orange and he is pleased with his recent new hearing aids 🙂 I know there are lots of VA horror stories and I don't doubt any one of them, but his experience has been a good one, although he never used VA services until the 1990's, I believe. I think they asked him then if he wanted PTSD counseling at that point and he declined. I'm a pacifist, so I don't support war in general. But once my country has committed troops somewhere, it's my duty to support them no matter what I think about the policies that got us there. If we're going to ask men to die - and worse, kill - for us, then we need to be prepared to give them (and their families) e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. they need before, during, and if/when they return (and their families if they don't). That includes first responders, obviously.

I try not to get involved in political discussions on the boards and I still don't plan to on this thread 🙂 But this was comment brings up an issue that is near and dear to my heart, so I felt I wanted to pipe up. My dad had actual feces and urine thrown at him and people yelling "baby killer" at him when he came home from Vietnam. I'm not saying that Iraq/Afghan War vets are treated awesome and there are no issues, but I've never heard of that kind of treatment for American veterans of any other war except Vietnam.

This is what I did in my college stats class and it was The. Best. way to study!