The music video did not make me think that leggings were a good idea for guys lol. The leggings under shorts was not a big deal. But the red leggings at the end? Please, no. Just no.

I remember hearing of History Odyessy on this board and thought I'd researched it before, but maybe not. I'm looking at it right now and it may be a good fit. Maybe it overwhelmed me when I first viewed it (when ds was getting ready for first grade I looked up some secular materials) or maybe I'm confusing it with another curriculum. It might be a good fit now. I don't know what we'd start with in level one, though. Ancients or jump to Middle Ages based on grade. Probably would start with Ancients to go in order? So many of those grammar options look good to me. I now have the opposite problem LOL

Thank you! I had not heard of many of these things!

Math - Math Mammoth 3 & Two Plus Two series Science - T4L science/T4L's Science4Us (they have two sciences now). Maybe some offline stuff like our Human body kit. Grammar - Review The Sentence Family and ??? History - No idea. We're currently doing Elemental History which is geared for up to 2nd grade. Spanish - continue with GSWS and our Starter Spanish coloring workbook (might finish that this year) and get next workbook in series? Geography - Not sure. Maybe Evan Moor? Review what we have done this year in Elemental History (each week includes 2 states) Reading Comprehension - considering WWE or Evan Moor again, though not dead set on anything. Penmanship - still don't have a formal program and not sure if I need one. We made an agreement a few years ago that we would use secular materials. This really messes things up for Grammar and History. I don't know what to use. Rod and Staff and Story of the World do not fit the bill and I need some more suggestions. We use Time4Learning for language arts, but the pacing is weird for grammar and I've done a lot of that stuff offline. I like our Spectrum grammar workbook. Might just look for more materials like that. Also continue using Mad Libs.

Haven't read all the replies. Lulu has free phonogram cards on their website which is a start. I would add or tinker with them personally, but that's just me. I am a bit odd. I actually made my own cards with multiple resources. One of my favorite things is Doodling Dragons, the children's book, made by Logic of English. That would be great I think because it's a very simplified break down of the basic alphabet phonograms (including 3 sounds for A, etc.). On Elizabeth's site there are some charts that helped me immensely. I still refer to them sometimes. Knowing what sound was most or least frequently heard helped me know which sound to teach first/emphasize. So like when we discuss "ea" we cover them in this order -- ea as in bread, meat, steak. The "ea" in steak is not heard very often. Here is a direct link to the charts: http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/phonogramsoundch.html We also used charts I found online for blends and digraphs like this: http://blog.maketaketeach.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Chart-Blends-and-Digraphsblogpic.jpg Good luck. I agree to just start from the beginning. Sounds like she wasn't taught much?? Or not effectively

If it makes you feel better, I struggle with this on a regular basis and my son is older. He is 7 years old and lacks maturity in a lot of ways and also has difficulty with things I think a child his age should have mastered. It pains me sometimes when I read online about the chores parents assign their children younger than mine and I'm over here thinking, "your kid is doing that? Mine can't even put his jacket and shoes on correctly half the time!" Seriously, I labeled another pair of shoes recently. And today he had his fleece jacket on inside out. He fights me tooth and nail if I correct his pencil grip and reverts back to his incorrect grip. I tried to get him to use "the claw" writing tool today. He is so melodramatic! He told me it was like being kidnapped (lol). I'm still finishing reading The Explosive Child. I think that he is one. It's hard not to think about the kids his age or younger writing with the pencil correctly and doing cursive (I'm not sure when to start with him). He has a cousin one grade level above (but not quite 2 years older. He's just older than most in his grade due to cut off dates) and I catch myself comparing them. He's in some gifted program and reads several grade levels up above his own. I didn't ask, family just told us. I did an informal test for ds and he reads well for his age, but he's constantly forgetting phonics rules and not wanting to sound things out correctly so I'm going to go over the basics again. Today he was doing a chapter in math on shapes and he seemed to have forgotten basics. I really don't know if it's a learning problem or what, but his retention is horrible on many things and yet he's great at others. By the time they are college age (really before that) I'm sure no one is going to know/care about this stuff. We might not even remember ourselves lol. But it is frustrating. I know.

Great job!!!

Yes! This actually came up yesterday. Someone was telling me this in real life as we discussed baby clothing trends.

I agree for the most part. I do think that some colors such as pink were less common for men to wear during a period, even in spring. I distinctly remember when boys in school started deliberately wearing pink (pink polos, etc). I think I was in high school. I think this is around the time the phrase, "real men wear pink" was popular. I was not a fan of the pink trend. And I actually was good friends with a guy that sported a pink mohawk. No problem with that. I would not describe baby blue as feminine, but definitely could see if a man thought it was less manly because he associated it with babies? I think of certain shades of purple as kind of neutral (that sounds stupid, I know colors are just colors) because they are found on muscle cars and such. But I don't think many men would drive a pastel muscle car. Ds has rotated out several soft colored shirts for spring. We've done mint green, lavender and salmon. Dh has a shirt/tie combo that is a soft purple and some type of purple paisley for the tie. Looks nice.

That sounds more like an underhanded prank than a thing a friend would do. What the..?? I don't care if people wear them for sports or such, but just randomly it sounds odd. I think I'd rather my son wear a kilt than that. All I can think is how revealing leggings can be when worn as pants. I used to wear leggings as a little girl, but now only under a dress or around the house.

Yeah, a sales associate tried to make this suggestion to me when I realized they didn't have the spray bottle at Target. I told her I couldn't just move it into any spray bottle. I got ours at Wal-Mart.

My side of the family has a tendency to talk too much (just look at my post count). But when I need to manage my time better or the conversations are really unbalanced and I anticipate it happening, I may let the person (in my example, a sibling) know up front that I have to go soon so I can't talk long. They actually do the same to me sometimes and we are both just terrible at wrapping up calls lol. So for the phone call, don't answer if you think they will keep you on the phone all day. Let it go to voice mail. Then, reply via voice mail, email, or a phone call but let them know you can't talk long? My father talks too much, which wouldn't be so bad except that when someone else tries to talk he often zones out or abruptly ends the conversation/interjects leaving the other person annoyed. I was told as a kid that I "talk too much" and it really never did any good and just came out sounding very rude. As I've gotten older I do try to be more mindful of it, at least IRL. Perhaps to avoid getting her into story telling mode, at least with complete strangers' stories, you could ask direct questions about herself. Maybe she would love someone to do that but no one does so she comes up with any way to keep the conversation going.

I actually bought that hydrogen perioxide in a spray bottle recently due to this thread, but I was nervous to use it because of the warning be careful of it ruining surfaces. Probably sound dumb, but anything that ruins surfaces makes me go hmm how safe is this? We use Mrs. Meyer's cleaner and Method. I wonder how Mrs. Meyer's ranks.

Being bullied didn't really teach me coping skills (or it did? I don't know. But nothing worth wishing upon people). It just gave me something to reflect on later in life when I realized people that do it must be pretty unhappy and/or insecure.

I came here to get a link to the Jan. 25th update on the blog and see he's added yet another (Jan 27). Not sure if we are allowed to quote from another site so I'll just past the link. http://mustbethistalltoride.com

I wonder if the "bad" teacher comment actually meant strict/challenging? But bad? Nobody needs that, really. Edited: I did not mean to imply that homeschool teachers can't be challenging, etc. I just meant I wonder what people meant with that comment.

I went to public school. I did go to prom (I think my junior year. Junior/senior prom). It was pretty uneventful. Of course this is probably because my platonic guy friend was my date and he refused to dance. Anyway, don't some homeschoolers hold their own prom? Rotating classes had its perks, but there is also a sense of anxiety if you forget where you are supposed to go and when. I occasionally have nightmares where I am late to class and don't know where I am supposed to be going.

Interesting. I taught mountain as a schwa. I put "air" words in their own category (like fair on that chart above. http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/Resources/sound%20letter%20spell1.pdf ) Some of those words have not come up, but I have a tendency to say "cap tin" rather than "cap tehn." I would probably teach it as a schwa. Vinaigrette sounds like "uh" (schwa) to me when I say it. Not sure about others. I am noticing that there is some overlap in phonograms so I admit that while I did teach "ui" as a phonogram, some of those work with the "bu" or "gu" (LOE phonograms) as well. Build. Guide. I just noticed the ABC's and All Their Tricks puts "affair" on the AI page. But I have kept "air" separately. They list mountain and captain on the AI page under "unstressed." Ah, so many ways to categorize things I guess! One of our products is Genki phonics and they put "air" on its own page.

Ok I just saw this. I would consider how important it was for my kids to play with theirs. If it was important, then I would juggle my schedule a little. Swap out one of my previous week "off" days (you said you do 4 days) and turn their off day into one of the PS off days. Or have the kids meet up sometime that doesn't interfere with school. Meet in the afternoon, do school in the morning. Or whatever. Our schedule gets so thrown off when we do things like co-op because it's a huge time suck but we do it mostly for the socialization. If they are good friends and you want the socialization, juggle. Maybe the moms want to see you, too.

Unless you told them that your children are ahead or advanced, I would never assume that is why they are rolling their eyes. I would think they are rolling their eyes because they think, "big deal. You don't finish the textbook/workbook/etc. What's gonna happen?"

I wonder why they put "very" on the list? I mean, the "y" sound at the end is found in lots of words (happy, baby). What is unique about very? As for "buy" LOE teaches a phonogram "bu" (silent u) to explain some words like build. And they also have "gu" for words like "guest" and "guess." I added those to our flash cards. I personally taught "ai" as having two sounds. "ai" as in "braid" and short e as in "said" and "again." If memory serves, those are the only two weird ones. (edited: other weird ones for ai included against, aisle, and plaid. Thank you, The ABC's and All Their Tricks) I added some other weird ones to other cards as well. Here are some charts I used to help make our cards: http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/Resources/letter%20sound%20read%20new%202011.pdf http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/Resources/sound%20letter%20spell1.pdf Those charts have been so useful. I think user Elizabeth B runs the page.

Ds learned the vowels based on the letters "AEIOU" (sometimes Y) and phonograms. I don't even think I got around to telling him the singing thing because I learned that later. But I may end up bringing that up (either with him or dd later). Less obvious examples of vowel sounds are in our book Doodling Dragons and I made my own flashcards with examples so "i" will include "onion" (y sound) and I've taught that "happy" makes an "e" sound where the y is. We mainly just went through phonogram cards. We didn't play with our mouths for each letter of the alphabet. Humming and singing are different to me and I would matter of factly correct a child if that was an obstacle. But obviously if whatever you do/did works for you, then by all means continue. I'm not here to change what you do. I'm merely citing my own personal go-to rule of thumb for the OP or any other posters to do with as they please. I would probably teach "work" as /wor/ /k/. http://www.thephonicspage.org/Phonics%20Lsns/Resources/letter%20sound%20read%20new%202011.pdf Like "word" on the chart. If I didn't choose to teach it that way, I would teach it as /w/ /or/ /k/ with "or" being an R-controlled phoneme. I don't care if that's right or wrong to you. Really, it's okay if you think it's wrong. We have homemade tiles (based on AAS) that represent phonemes, but I have never made him write his own like with the forward slash. Based on your posts I'd say we spent very little time on syllables compared to you. Most of what you post about would not even come up for debate here. You probably won't see posts by me about IPA anything.

Based on this thread, I'd say there can't be many real sight words. We own a Sight Word Bingo game, but really, most of those are a joke. What they actually are is, "high frequency words." I think the terms get used interchangeably and should not.

You know more than me on these typics. Half of what you say is Greek to me. I'm just trying to understand and explain things on a simple (to me) level with the goal to communicate it to my child. I don't imagine I will ever be discussing syllabic anything. I don't even know what you're talking about and will have to google that to follow along. But with the singing example, it seemed like a fairly easy thing to demonstrate to a child vs. all this talk about air flow.

Ok. Well, in my mind it's obvious. If I were standing in front of an auditorium and had to belt out a sound, I would be hard pressed to do, "zzzzz" and be heard. I think most people could agree that in singing, "Do Re Me Fa So La Ti" you hear the second letter carry the note. Take away the vowel and it's nothing to belt out. If this still is not easily understood, I'm sorry. The example of "help" and "hlp" on the link I thought summed up the main gist.