Sorry, removed - posted in the wrong place!

At-home: Starting Beast 4b Continuing MCT Island Level & maybe moving from ETC into a real spelling program(?) Lego Simple & Motorized Machines, supplemented with monthly nature studies Human Odyssey: Ancient History, supplemented with the Story of Science and related literature, art projects, etc. Computer-based options: Creativity Express, Code.org or Scratch*, Rosetta Stone or Duolingo Spanish* * We haven't decided which is the best fit for her yet Outside classes: Yamaha group music lessons (3rd year) Glee (1st year) Lit & Writing for 3rd-5th graders (1st outside academic class) Karate (3rd year)

Sending prayers and good wishes! I have 3 mo twins. I hope it's something as simple as anemia for you - the iron supplements kick in fast! Even with a very healthy pregnancy, I ended up pretty couch bound by the end. My husband picked up a lot of slack the last few months with house things, I definitely thought of school in terms of essentials and child-directed interests, and my older kids did reasonably well with taking direction, cuddles and attention from the couch. A big thing for me was making everything I could accessible for the olders, from the school checklist for DD8 to bins of food in pantry and fridge I prepped with my husband's help each weekend (breakfast, snack, and sandwich stuff). The food bins still simplify things! Friends helped with getting DD to a few activities, I cut down on those some... And my mom came out to help by week 34, which was huge. You'll get through through this! I'm amazed by how we keep figuring things out - because we have to!

Do you need to do the first volume of BFSU before the second? I hear such wonderful things, but doubt my ability to spend much time on it with DD with everything else in life and school... FWIW, we're having a fun science year just reading, notebooking and talking through books in the Scientists in the Field series, with some video supplementation. I have no idea where we'll go from here though!

Just need a place to celebrate, so far making our homeschool day "harder" is actually making life much easier! I admit it, I really don't feel like doing school with DD8 after dinner - I just want to get kids in bed and be done! But when we do it, I feel like I'm seeing the fun, sweet sides of her personality that get a little lost when we're not one-on-one, when she's bickering with her younger brother, I'm distracted with other kids, etc. I'm enjoying the time with her, and somehow that seems to spill into her attitude (or my perception of it) the next day. I kind of thought she might object to the late school time, or to the slight increase in workload... But she's loving it! Maybe partly because it goes with more one-on-one time, partly because it means getting to go to bed a little later than her brother, which feels like a privilege. She's even taking my correction of things like her grammar in stride! Correcting and working through math is much easier when I'm more consistent, daily v. every couple of days... And the conversations around science and the MBTP lit unit are pretty fun - interactions I've missed with all the baby busyness. Starting the day's work the night before also means she can get herself started whenever the next morning, so I'm able to relax about her tendency to start slow in the morning...

I've been feeling very ambivalent about homeschooling, probably mostly because of the newborn twins - wow, tiredness! After some introspection, I think it's mostly about not getting much time to really enjoy it with older DD anymore and some nervousness that we're not doing enough in LA. So it's mostly a schedule switch, trying to find 45 ish minutes each night when my husband is home, to go over the day's math and get her going on the next day's LA, where we'll be trying MBTP lit units for the first time, starting with Little House in the Big Woods. DD8 Switching to: MBTP 8-10 lit units Already: Grammar Island and other great books Beast Academy 3C and on Scientists in the Field monthly units with note booking American Girl history units with lapbooking Odds and ends like art, coding, Spanish DS4 Adding: Kidable monthly seasonal crafts Trying out Reading Eggs Already: Great picture books, with seasonal theme, living math, etc. Lots of Lego time *Eventually* try to add in HWT and then c-rod activities

Congrats! I hope it's possible, because I'm due with twin girls this next month or so! I have an 8yo daughter and 4yo son. I've been encouraged so far that I can help the 8yo get through much of her stuff in just a few hours with checklists and check-in's, and even now there's lots of her bringing the book or notebook to me while I rest on the couch, so we can talk through challenges or what she's read. I was planning on being super mellow with the 4yo, but he's requesting more things like he sees his sister doing - that is taking a little extra energy and creativity I hadn't anticipated... Beyond that, we are simplifying activities a bit for a few months, and I'm not doing the driving to them at all for the first month or so. I anticipate one week totally off, another "light," and then back at it since we're part of a charter. I will have another adult helping that first month or so as well, and we always do afternoon quiet times for all, giving me a consistent chance to rest a bit...

Thanks, Coco and Merry, great thoughts and encouragement! I'll definitely adjust as needed - I'm hoping to have a few weeks before the twins arrive to get some momentum, tweak some and then of course will adjust as needed even more when they arrive! I know my tendency is to over-plan ahead of time, but then I'm usually ok with controlled chaos in the actual moment :)

This is helping me think through basic, realistic flow/goals for this time in particular, because of course she will still need me for some stuff throughout the day... (1) Discuss science or history reading, writing she's done (2) Review math work (3) Teach in one area (math, grammar, writing...)

Yes, math is always taught before she attempts problems, with further teaching as we review work together. LA is so broad, there are pieces she can just "do," other pieces we'll continue to do together - BW read alouds and discussion, weekly writing assignments, reading through MCT Grammar Island before she starts Practice Island... My hope is to include many of these pieces in the conference time, so not just the day's work, but sometimes prepping her for the next day's work.

Thank you, bookending is a great reminder! Her first things are always the pretty simple, get 'er done work, but it would still make sense to start with some connection and encouragement, going over the plan for the day!

I probably need to remind myself that not getting to it every, every day is ok - 3x a week for everything but math would be a good goal!

Maybe there's another name people use to describe this kind of time - please let me know! Basically we're shifting into a little more assigned, independent work this year - where before it was mostly skills stuff like typing and handwriting that she did independently, plus math which we'd need to review together later, this year I'm assigning more reading, too, like history and science. It's 50% because she can now, 50% because twins are arriving sometime in the next 6 weeks! So my thought is that while of course I can give her quick direction, re-direction, support, during the day, I'd like to spend a good 30m-ish at the end of each day (when twins are sleeping or her dad is home) talking through her reading, writing, and math. I'd like it to feel like good, encouraging connection time, while also being effective academically, and was wondering if anyone has ideas on how to accomplish this! My starter thoughts were that we could focus on discussion of reading first, then move to things where there might be more "correction" involved like math... And that I need to let her explain a tricky problem that she figured out to me first, so we don't just focus on the negative! I think we need to be at the kitchen table v. just cuddling on the couch... I wish she liked tea, something like that, a little tradition making it cozier, might be nice...

Sorry, Right hand, left hand. There's no straight history reading that goes along with the literature? Could you just add a little of that in with a good history encyclopedia, etc.? Sorry, I'm not much help since I'm not using BookShark!

I thought your last question was a great one, basically what are your goals in having your child start notebooking. I don't have BookShark expertise, but I'm trying some notebooking this year for output, for both science and writing, where on the RH page I put a few more traditional comprehension/review questions that hopefully help encourage her to read for detail and notice the structure of the writing and argumentation, and then the LH page will have a more creative/divergent thinking prompt... Well, for science anyway. Writing will be more of a pre-writing and then draft writing split. History will be lapbooking, and a mix of traditional and creative prompts for those elements. I just don't feel like I'll have time to narrate every thing she reads - we'll look at and discuss what she's written at our end of day conference time. And DD likes having some written things to look back on, esp. if they're colorful and visual, which I'll encourage her to make these... Literature is where I am going to stick more with discussion - I want to keep the cuddly feeling going for a while longer :). There will probably be a monthly writing project a la BW related to what we're reading!