I find the "we need more laws" rhetoric ridiculous. We already have laws - it was already illegal for this shooter to possess a gun as he was dishonorably discharged from the air force. With over 300 MILLION guns in the United States, we need a way to remove weapons from criminals, before imposing additional requirements on law abiding citizens. Latest reports are that it was an armed neighbor who shot and wounded the shooter. Who would your additional laws hurt - the guy already breaking the law, or the one who stopped him? I'm all for laws that will reduce criminals' access to weapons, and I would start by finding out how this shooter gained access to his weapons and find ways to prohibit a tradgedy by like this from happening in the future. But having seen the hoops that my FIL (a law abiding veteran) went through to try to purchase a gun in NY with no success, I'm not willing to give up my guns, my means of protection, until the criminals are unarmed. And for the record - AR does NOT stand for Assault Rifle. It stands for Armalite, the company who originally manufactured the AR-15. The AR-15 is a semi-automatic (not automatic) weapon just like most pistols.

Can I add New Hampshire to your list? I've homeschooled in NH for 5 years, and haven't met an a Evangelical Protestant Christian homeschooler, either.

I just want to reassure you about formal night on Disney cruises. We have now done 3 - 7 day cruises (Eastern Caribbean, Southern Caribbean, and Alaska) with them and the range of clothing choices varies greatly. Some people dress to the hilt and use it for formal family photographs. Most do not - we're the middle of the road - I generally wear khakis and a knit shirt for both formal and semi-formal nights. DH and the boys wear dress pants with a button down shirt for formal night and a polo for semi-formal. Everyone wears sneakers as I refuse to pack dress shoes and you can't see under the table anyway. If anything, over the last 3 years, the clothing choices I've seen have been less and less dressy. We haven't been on a cruise during Halloween so I'm no help with that. Have fun!

No advice. Just know that you are not alone. I could have written most of these posts about DS who just turned 11.

DP

I've bought Adidas, Tek Gear, and Nike for my boys. All 3 seem to hold up well, with Adidas low cuts being my favorite. I try to get them when Kohls has them buy 1, 1 50% off and I have a 30% of coupon. I rarely throw them out because of holes - it's usually lost socks or they start looking ratty.

We're in the middle of building a custom home right now, and our builder is NOTHING like what you are describing. We've made several decisions he has disagreed with, but all he says is "have you considered X" or "most people choose Y, are you sure that's what you want?" Once we confirm the decision, he has NEVER been sneaky about changing anything. I'm sorry that you are going through this. I hope your GC can get it resolved.

The article appears to assume that the schools located in wealthier neighborhoods are "better" leading to higher test scores. I argue that it's not the quality of the school that determines test scores, rather it's the parents' resources (time and money) which makes a difference. I live in a wealthy neighborhood where the school is ranked a 10 on Great Schools. That's laughable. My son's 1st grade teacher was mediocre, at best. Within 4 days, she sent letters home using the wrong there/their and spelling clothespin as closepin and, literally, taught the children to twiddle their thumbs. We pulled to homeschool, but from talking to parents who kept their children at the school, homework abounds and most parents after and/or summer school their children. Parents pay for tutoring when their child is struggling or know someone who can help. Almost all children attend private pre-schools. It's not about hoarding resources, parents are helping their children. The point I'm making is that children of educated, well-off parents have the ability to rise above a poor school experience and their test scores have less to do with the school, and more to do with parents. Poor, uneducated parents don't have that luxury. When faced with a poor teacher or a prolonged illness (even flu) that causes them to miss school, it's not as easy for them to recover.

A month ago I received a Grand Jury Duty Summons and my initial request for excusal was denied. I was going to have to serve 12 days and I had no idea what to do with my boys. At 9 and 11, they are too young to stay by themselves all day and too old for drop in daycare. I would have paid well to have someone ensure they weren't on their iPads or watching tv all day, and schoolwork would have been a bonus. I would have preferred, also, if the care was in my home. Luckily, my second request where I literally begged to be excused was granted. I think there are plenty of times people would consider using a home-school sub. I know I would.

Totally anticlimactic. We're in New Hampshire and it was only about 60-65% and I wasn't expecting fireworks, but if I didn't know it was happening, I would have missed it. The kids were bored of the whole pinhole viewer in about 30 seconds and the chickens continued hunting bugs instead of roosting. Disappointing. Luckily, we are pretty close to totality for 2024 and the boys will still be school age, so we've promised them a road trip.

We were going to do nothing. Then DH felt badly and made pinhole viewers with the kids and showed me how to use the binoculars to (try to) project the eclipse. He'll be at work. It'll be in the mid 80's with only about 75% coverage, so we'll be doing it from the pool deck. Big question is whether our chickens will go in to roost.

My boys (ages 9 and 11) both have done ballet for about 3 1/2 years now. It all started when older DS saw a performance of the Nutcracker and wanted to do it. They've now done 3 Nutcracrackers - last one as party boys and toy soldiers. There are no boys classes where they attend, but there are about 7 or 8 boys total at the studio. Neither boy has ever mentioned being teased about dance. However, both boys are in many other activities (gymnastics, piano, triathlon, etc) and Have a tendency to compartmentalize their ativities, so I'm not sure who even knows they dance. I've definitely heard more about them being homeschooled than about them dancing. Maybe its location dependent - we live in New Hampshire.

No charter here, so I've had to pay for each of these programs so no bias on cost. My boys tried Prima Latina (with videos) about 3 or 4 years ago and they hated it. They would whine and complain and it just wasn't going done. I put it down to being a little advanced for a 1st grader and kindergartener and we switched over to Song School Latin 1 followed by SSL2 (both with videos) which they did without complaint, even looking forward to the videos to see what would happen to Simon the monkey next. Once we completed those, we tried Prima Latina again since they were a little older (3rd and 4th grade) and I had the program on hand. They STILL hated it. We've now moved on to Latin for Children A without the videos because I found the LFC video samples annoying. To be honest, I think the 2 programs are relatively comparable in content. We went the Song School route because it got done and the kids didn't complain about doing it. If I could get one program free and not the other, that would be enough reason to use it.

We are currently in the middle of building a house for my in laws about 10 minutes from our house. I completely agree that trying to do this long distance would be much harder. Lots of decisions that have to be made that it's like having a second job. Unexpected expenses come up constantly so make sure you have a 10% contingency in the budget minimum. My biggest regret, however, was settling on a plan so that my architect costs down and we could start building. If we had spent more time planning with the builder and architect up front, we probably could have built what we wanted a lot cheaper.

What about getting him a used iPhone and disabling data (under settings there is a way to turn off data). We just bought older DS who turns 11 this week a smart phone now that he is at the gym 4 days / 12 hours a week. A smart phone had the same $20 access fee as a dumb phone and, as a homeschooler, he is already different from his teammates (who all have smartphones), so I thought this was the best solution. I just told him that he needed our explicit permission to turn on the data.

I schedule school work for 180 days plus Stanfords and field trips. We start the school year when public school does and go full days until the boys finish those 180 days. Once they finish, they start the next year by doing 1 1/2 to 2 days worth of work per week over the summer so they start the year about 18-20 days ahead and can take days off during the school year and finish earlier than the public schools.

DS is only on day 8 of 5th grade but seems to be at 4.5 to 5 per day including foreign language.

My son gets a rash like that (especially on his inner thighs) whenever he swims in water where the ph is too high or low. Taking a shower when getting out of the water and immediately changing out of the wet swimsuit helps.

Thank-you Farrar and Ellie for reminding me that science is cyclical. For some reason I was thinking that way about history but not science. And I'm sure that the terms the book is using weren't helping - I think I did see the phrase "empirical evidence", but there were silly, little things like calling a flowering plant an angiosperm. I never learned that. What I do like about the books is that each chapter is short (2 pages), begins by asking a question, then explains the answer and then seemed to give examples with hands on experiments / demonstrations. It doesn't integrate the sciences like the next generation science standards suggest but I know now to put in additional effort to tie it all together (thanks Farrar!) Alice - I think you're right and I appreciate hearing about your experience. I did try modeling today. I was asked in the car while I was driving and had no access to (my friend) the Internet: "Mom, tell me more about D-day." My full extent of knowledge was "isn't that when the Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy?" To which he asked - "did they use bombs and what did it have to do with Paris?" After my moment of panic, I suggested we look it up when we got home - which we did. I will say the K12 history books do have great photos. It must have been "war" day, though, because that's when he started peppering me with questions about Syria. I'm glad they're asking questions, but, boy, is it getting tough.

Thank-you all for your replies. It's been a little over a week since I originally posted this and after reading everyone's replies and looking through the books more, I've started to feel a little better. To clarify, older DS has already started 5th grade this summer, and I'm looking at material we will need for his 6th grade year which starts in under a year. I think the material I've picked will fit the kids learning style and they will do well with it, it's just that I will have to learn the material and prep will require more effort by me. I have an MBA and a JD, I "should" be able to learn and teach middle school, right? For history - it's the K12 middle school Human Odyssey books (vol 1 and 2) so "on grade level".. I picked up the K12 teacher and student guides to go along with them and will use them as a guideline for timing and comprehension. If all goes well with the middle school books, we would do American Odyssey in 8th. All the books seem do-able and my rising 4th grader (history and science lover) loved the American Odyssey book and begged me to read him more when he had a WW2 question and I wanted to see if he liked the book. My only concern here is that my history knowledge is abysmal and his questions are becoming more advanced. I think I just need to admit that I don't have all the answers and teach him to research the answers. Maybe that's a good thing? My lack of science knowledge was my bigger worry. DH has his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry and worked for years in a lab. He thought it was funny that I didn't know middle school science - until he looked through the actual textbooks. That's when he realized that he didn't learn some of the material until college. We both still like the feel of the program, though, and think the boys will do well with it. Both test well in science on the Stanfords and need a more challenging program. So DH and I have come up with a game plan - I will read the textbook with the boys and he will do labs and answer any questions that I don't know the answer to. He spent hours coming up with a supplies list from HomeScienceTools.com and seems excited to do this with the boys. Fingers crossed that it works out. I think my struggle will be having to transition from teaching things I already know well to things I don't know completely or well. It was bound to happen, I just didn't think it would happen so soon.

So far we've liked Song School Latin 1 and 2 followed by Latin for Children A. The boys hated Prima Latina.

Im feeling a little overwhelmed and I'm hoping some of you veteran homeschooling moms can share some words of wisdom. We school year round with a reduced load during summer so older DS just finished his 4th year of homeschooling (4th grade) and has started 5th grade. Some of the curriculum we have been using is winding to an end and I thought this summer would be a great opportunity to start looking at what I'm planning on using for the middle school years - specifically K12 world and American history, Pearson Concepts and Challenges in Science, and Foerster Algebra. Since I need them within the year, I purchased used copies so that I could look them over and see if they would fit. Foerster seems incremental, similar to Math Mammoth, so I'm not worried about math. But history and science have me concerned. I don't doubt that I can lead the boys through them, but it's going to take a lot more preparation and effort. The books look great - very thorough and will fit the boys' schooling style. But they are SO much more advanced than when I was in middle school. I don't know if it's because my public education was poor or are expectations that much higher now than they were 30 years ago? I don't remember seeing some of this science material until high school, if at all. And history just seems so much more detailed than what I learned. I know I have DH to help me, especially with science as he has a science background, but I'm just feeling a little inadequate. I didn't think I would start feeling like this until high school.

I â¤ï¸ my Roomba. It's amazing how much cat fur it picks up even when the room looks perfectly clean.

This thread could be about my older DS who will be 11 in August and his little brother who just turned 9. Constant bickering, nothing nice to say about one another, little one "ankle biting," and older retaliating. The nice thing about gymnastics (older is a gymnast) is that it makes a nice threat when he is truly horrendous. Missing practice usually means an improvement in behavior for a couple weeks. Usually I find that it is enough to just separate them, sending worse behaved child to their room or to sit on the ottoman until they can be a nice person.

Why didn't I think of any of these ideas? They're all great, and now I just have to choose. We're the last night of the train so the idea of some cold salads - pasta and/or potato with pulled pork, sloppy joe or deli sandwiches might be best so that they have some leftovers. Dessert is a given - homemade chocolate chip cookies. Thanks again for everyone's help! Jenn