In addition to piano lessons,daily required personal fitness, drama, speech and debate, and a one week mission trip, DD will be: Finishing VT Algebra and moving on to VT Geometry Continuing Visual Link Spanish - going on to levels 2 & 3 Apologia Health (1/2 credit) Apologia Chemistry USH - not sure yet if I will be able to entice her to watch the Great Courses lectures with me or if she'll choose the no nonsense boring route and just read American Odyssey - either way she will do CT in USH for output WttW combined with some EiL units 1/2 credit elective TBD - she's kicked around the idea of accounting or sign language but hasn't decided yet

Standard disclaimer: My kids are fully vaxxed on schedule because I think it's smart thing to do. I learned about it and came to the conclusion that the benefits to both my kids and society as a whole far outweigh the small risks. But the above just floors me. Seat belt laws and building codes are part of privileges that we choose to engage in and they do not infringe on my personal body interior. Parks and Disneyland are public spaces open to all who can pay the fee with very specific laws about equal protection applying and I don't think laws saying "these people can come in but these people can't" are a slope we want to be on. But a government official telling me I have to allow them to inject my own or my child's body/privacy with whatever they tell me to or risk legal action ... no way. I think anti vaxxers are making a poor decision based on fear and sketchy science, but by golly they have the right to do so.

This DS has no idea what he wants to do after high school. He knows what he's good at and he knows what he's not good at, but so far he hasn't translated any of that into a career path. In addition to piano, guitar, drama, speech/debate, and a one week mission trip with our church, next year he will be: Finishing Precalc with Chalkdust Apologia Physics misc. modern lit units from EiL 1/2 credit Personal Finance with Dave Ramsey Music Theory at CC Some other elective at CC - probably something education or management or poli sci related 1/2 credit elective at home to be determined Personal Fitness at home to round out his PE credit

Neurotypical? If so, I expected my DD to suck it up and deal with it at that age. I told her I would support her in any way she needed, I would pray with her before, during, and after, we could celebrate her victory by getting ice cream or whatever, but the shots *would* be happening on x date and there would be no negotiating about it. Period. At 12 she was certainly old enough to deal with unpleasantness and fear and pain for 10 seconds without causing a scene because she's no longer a toddler.

We live surrounded by corn fields and in an old farm house with lots of access points and my dog kills any cats we try to keep around, so mice are a part of my existence. First, I would notify your cats that they are fired. Their entire purpose in life is to keep mice away and they have failed. 😉 Second, bait the traps wirh peanut butter wearing gloves and then waft a lighted match around the edges to take away your smell. Then set the traps and wait. You might have to wait a long time for the smell to go completely away and the mice to come near them. Once you catch the first mouse, it will be easy to catch the rest. For some reason, the more mouse-y the trap smells, the better they like it. Instead of mouse blood making it like a neon sign flashing "Instant Death Stay Away" it's like it makes it even more enticing. We've gone months without catching a mouse on a certain trap, and then once the first one goes, we don't even need to put any peanut butter on it and we can still catch several a day on that trap. And now I know for sure that no one on these boards will ever agree to come visit me at my infested house lol

Mine is an introvert but she does not like to work hard. Like, at all. She will read and play Legos with ferocity and energy but ask her to do her work neatly and she turns into a sloth and acts like I've asked her do the impossible. She does well at what she wants to do (science and history) but is lazy with what she doesn't want to do (language and math). Math - Continue MM, maybe some LoF Fractions and D&P as a fun supplement on Fridays Language - Hopefully finishing AAS, season 1 of AG, IEW SWI B, Wordly Wise, reading list to go with history, maybe a lit guide on Crispin History - SotW 2 Medieval with the 2nd grader, then reading Human Odyssey on her own, Trail Guide to World Geo, weekly summaries of HO Science - God's Design for the Physical World, Snap Circuits, Physics Discovery kit Misc - piano lessons, Artistic Pursuits, once a week PE class, Mind Benders, Building Thinking Skills, typing.com, helping me keep the baby occupied 🙂 Our speech and debate club also offers a juniors class every fall so she will do that again and prepare and give a couple speeches at our annual tournament.

Language - Continue AAR and AAS and HWT - Maybe start some Easy Grammar - for writing she will narrate to me about science and history and I will scribe it and she will copy it Math - Continue MM and XtraMath History - SotW 2 Medieval with booklist for buddy reading with me and some on her own Science - misc Magic School bus videos and kits (Earth Sci & Physical Sci related topics) Artistic Pursuits Book of music activities with rhythm sticks and a xylophone Once a week PE class She will also have a very important course titled "Help Mom entertain the baby while she does school with your siblings" 🙃

I searched Rainbow resource hen we did moderns and came up with a picture book about 9/11. It's pretty good. We read a chapter book called Behind Enemy Lines about the Middle East wars. And I think the I Survived series has one about Katrina. Since we lived through the last 25 years, a lot of it comes up just through conversation, and we cover it that way for elementary. Once they get to middle school the History of US covers up through Obama.

Standard disclaimer: My kids are all fully vaxxed on schedule because it's the smartest thing to do in my opinion. I have a difficult time understanding people who choose not to vax if their kids are not immuno-compromised, as it seems to be a decision based on very shaky unscientific fear. However ... I will say that some of the opinions I've seen expressed (here in this thread and elsewhere) about what to do about the anti vaxxers are just as perplexing to me - namely that we should be finding ways to give shots to their kids anyway because they are too stupid to do it themselves. I guess the argument goes that they would be potentially saving lives by making sure everyone is protected so trampling on someone else's rights serves what they see as a greater good. But the anti vaxxers think the same exact same thing except in reverse - it's ok for them to not get a shot and trample on someone else's rights by potentially making someone sick in order to serve what they see as a greater good. Do people actually think that giving the government the power to inject things into your kids without your consent is a perfectly reasonable response? I think getting vaccines is a good idea, but I came to that conclusion with my own thinking and decided with my own free will to accept that potentially life saving medical care on behalf of my kids. How can I deny that same privilege to others? They have the right to make their own decisions too, even if I think it's a poor one.

And don't forget ... they're young. They have immature brains, so naturally they are going to like immature stories. It doesn't mean they can't/won't appreciate better stories, but Lego stories are cool when you're 7 and 10! They just are. Since you are reading quality stuff with them every day, as their brains mature they will naturally develop more of a taste for that more sophisticated language and gravitate towards it. No worries!

We do K12 Our Human Story paired with those same exact Great Courses lectures and it's great! I do not assign a lot of writing, just 1 research paper on a topic of their choice but I require them to take notes on the lectures. This helps with retention and also practices note taking skills. We discuss after watching. They do more writing in their English classes, but I don't require much output for history.

I think your book club idea is fantastic, but I just wanted to say not to be too worried if your kids still like twaddle. My DD was perfectly capable of reading and understanding The Hobbit out loud with me but chose those stupid *&^^*#^#&%* rainbow fairy books with pictures in them every. single. time. we went to the library for years. She still checks them out periodically, but she also reads Harry Potter and Eragon and other more age appropriate books in her free time. I wouldn't worry about it. I also choose to read twaddle a lot in my spare time, even though I'm capable of reading Dante's Inferno for my high schoolers' literature class 🙂

In middle school I expect them to be able to read harder stuff and be able to talk about it with me, whether it's history or literature or science or whatever . Discussion before middle school has been pointless for my kids ... I ask what I think is an interesting question and I get a blank stare and crickets. But in middle school they start to analyze a little more. We hit grammar and writing pretty hard in middle school. I don't expect them to be a pro at essay writing by the end of 8th grade, but I do expect them to be able to give a good attempt at 5 paragraphs that are all more or less about the same topic and have at least a little bit of analysis instead of straight fact reporting. We do Analytical Grammar in 6th-8th and are pretty much done with grammar by the end of middle school. I make sure they've done a wide variety of stuff by the end of 8th grade - some cooking and some coding and some logic and some art and and some music and some career exploration - because in high school they tend to gravitate more towards their passion and that can get one sided and I'd like them to be well rounded.

Info on what skills are appropriate for kids to know when ... IOW, how do I know if my curriculum is on target or if it's behind or if it's ahead? How much variation is developmentally appropriate vs when do I need to be concerned they need extra help? And how do I really know they understand a particular concept and aren't just applying a trick or a formula? This is even hard for me with my 1st grader doing MM. It's my understanding that it's a very conceptual program and I think she gets the concept I've presented with the book ... but then I see her filling in the answers on the page according to a pattern instead of really looking at each problem and I wonder if she really understands or if she's just figuring out an easy way to finish the page or maybe it's just way too easy for her and I should move faster. How do I know? The best math workshop I attended was with Tom Clark from Video Text the year before I began to hs. I don't remember exactly what he said, but whatever it was it sold me on VT 😂 I remember it was something about how if they remember the concept then they don't have to rely on tricks and tips and how knowing the "whys" of math was more important than knowing the "whats". And he gave a few examples that I had never learned in school (why we invert and multiply with fractions and why dividing by 0 isn't really impossible it's just meaningless) and I remember thinking if I'd had math taught to me that way I might not hate it.

I make huge heart shaped sugar cookies for everybody with my special frosting and their names piped on the top for dessert. I was sooooo relieved not to have to do the public school Valentines thing anymore!!!!!!! DH and I usually brew some tEa and that's about the extent of our celebrations 🙃

Depends on what season of life you're talking about. Right now when I have 3 teens they take turns taking care of dishes after each meal and the 10 year old sweeps the floor once a day after supper. When they were younger and it was all on me, I did the dishes once a day after supper when DH was around to wrangle kids and my floor cleaning strategy was the dog 😁

Both DS's are stereotypical teen boy rooms - a disaster area. DD's is very organized and neat. All 3 have been great about helping clean up the rest of the house, but need to be asked first. It would never occur to any of them in a bazillion years to do it on their own! Lol

I have never heard of this, thank you!

We use both Human Odyssey and History of US during 5th -8th. We use the first couple of volumes of Human Odyssey for 5th and 6th and cover roughly up to the exploration of the Americas. Then in 7th and 8th we switch to History of US. But the 3rd volume of HO is really good too. They are both really good series (not just a dry textbook) and both series include primary sources.

I cried many many tears over my 8th grade DS's writing and told my husband in bed at night that I was ruining him. He was very resistant to IEW even though I felt he really needed the organization/structure of that program to guide him. So I was sneaky and watched the TWSS videos and pretended it was so I could use the program with his younger sisters (which I did that too) but in actuality I was also crafting writing assignments for him centered around subjects that really interested him and stirred his passion. 😎 I told him we were using Literary Lesson from the Lord of the Rings for his 9th grade English program, which was very exciting to his 14 year old self. I told him the curriculum was kind of too easy for him because his abilities were higher than that (a little flattery never hurt anybody) and so I wanted to beef up the writing assignments to challenge him more. To my ultra-competitive DS, this was music to his ears and definitely got his buy in. The writing assignments I assigned followed the IEW units but were about the extra literary units in LLftLotR (details from Tolkien's life, how Tolkien used etymology/language, how characters compare to other classic epic heroes, etc., Arthurian legends, etc.). Some were about more straight fact type writing as in a report. Others required a little more analysis and opinion and a thesis so more like formal essay. After that his writing improved and he was willing to do Windows to the World, which really really really helped his writing improve. Fast forward to this year and he's a junior and he just wrote an essay on Beowulf that made me cry. Happy tears this time, because it was so much better than anything I could have imagined he would ever write when he was in 8th grade and I was in despair about what to do next. All that to say, don't underestimate the power of a few years worth of maturity. 🙂

My first guess is some kind of mechanical engineering technology. I know several kids who are more "hands on" than theoretical and the heavy math component of engineering would have ground them to a powder but are thriving in their polytechnic classes at university. My other thought was some kind of trade. Welding or a mechanic or something like that. I know most people on this board are steering their kids away from trades, but they are good solid jobs that take a lot of skill and know how and can be very satisfying to people who are wired that way. And they can lead to owning your own business, which is very appealing to a lot of "hands on" people.

I do a full credit of USH and a half credit of Government. That's what is typical here in IN and I want my kids' transcripts to be comparable to other IN kids when it comes to college admissions. I also require a full credit of world history and a full credit of some other type of social science/history, but that's my own personal requirements, not from the state.

Anybody? Please?

Lasagna or Pioneer Woman's chicken casserole are easy to make 2 of (1 for us, 1 for the family of the new baby) plus they freeze well so the mom can put it in the freezer til a day it's needed. Any kind of soup or chili that can be reheated a little at a time. I have also been known to send local pizza place certificates.

IME, most teen/tween girls struggle with feeling accepted no matter where they go to school. I'm not saying she should or should not go to this school, just that going is not going to solve her issue of not feeling accepted. I would definitely talk with her and explore her desires to go with her so that she feels heard and let her know that you take her concerns seriously. But I would be leery about sending a 13 year old kid to school just because they think they'll have more friends there. Middle schoolers are not typically well known for their acceptance and trouble free friendships 😉