I have six, all very large and very visible. Well technically I have seven. My first tattoo on a whim, with gf's on Canada Day - is now covered up by one of my tattoos. I got my first when I was 18. I got it covered up when I was 30 and have been getting more since that time. I still have a few more I want.

Go to a professional piercing shop.

I wouldn't have said anything. I have two very very dear friends who both are pretty radical unschoolers. From knowing them so well, I'd guess that A) the parent already is aware of the childs' inability to use scissors (in which case, she either is working on that already, or she has decided that its not that big of a deal) and/or B ) she's upset that the teacher has mentioned this situation to her friend but not to her. That said, my unschoolish friends and I just don't talk much about the details of our schooling. We've been friends since long before we were homeschoolers. So I just don't touch it. It's not up to me to judge or assume things about her kids or her parenting based on her style of educating her kids.

Love this. A lot.

"I need more time!!!" Keeps ringing in my ears (head?). My two are still young enough that I'm not feeling the time panic, so I DO want to start implementing SOME changes in the present moment, so that I am not also begging for more time when they are in high school. Part of that, for me, is letting go. Letting go of what other people think that children should be doing or ought to be doing. Letting go of this pressure I've been putting onto myself, more and more with each passing week it seems. Teaching from a state of rest. I think of ALL of the things I read in these "CiRCE Threads" recently, that is sticking in the forefront of my brain every day. My partner is NOT a literary kinda guy. He's very tech-minded, he works in a mining engineering firm. I, on the flip side, am a voracious reader (well I was, til I started bogging myself down with educational material reading lol). I am a lover of the written word, and raising children who can at the very least APPRECIATE literature of any sort, is of utmost importance to me in my homeschooling. Something my partner and I are working towards is a sense of balance. He and I have some very different strengths that, if we work together, can only benefit the kids. In the very present moment, trying to balance our homeschool a little better - trying to honour ALL of the various parts that make up our family, that is our goal. This actually means that we may move slightly off of the "strictly classical" path. We may relax a little more, may let go of a few subject areas in the short term. But hopefully, if our plan works out, it will reignite the joy and passion in our homeschool. And hopefully if all parts of our whole are honoured and tended to, we will ALL teach from a state of rest. Beyond that, any other changes seem incredibly scary to me lol. Just the act of letting go of the desire to live up to some curriculum writers' ideas of what we need to 'do'? That's hard enough. Holy heck, I'm totally rambling. I'm going to end it here haha.

OP you have fully articulated what I have been struggling with after reading through those threads. I find them inspiring, but overwhelming. I have decided to just stop thinking about them and just let the info sit in my brain for a while.

This is us. I only have two so we switch between each child - ie: DS starts his LoE first, when we complete a lesson then it's DDs turn for LoE. Then DS comes back for math, dd gets a break. We work for as long as they are able to focus. Some days we get a ton of work done, others not so much. After lunch we usually do history, science, and reading all together. Its impossible for us to set time requirements or even lesson requirements. Some days they just aren't into it - and we declare class dismissed for the day.

FWIW, my 8 yr old and 5.5 yr old both really enjoy Jot It Down. There are some really fun ideas in there :)

Confession: I woke up today not at all in the mood to teach. I have brought in a supply teacher named Miss Frizzle. We are marathoning that and River Monsters today and calling it a science intensive.

We keep our breakfasts and lunches simple, and my kids are grazers so they like to keep meals simple and just snack when they are hungry throughout the day. We're usually done by 2 or 2:30 with our lessons which leaves me enough time to pull a meal together (if I'm not burnt out or exhausted) - but we LOVE our Crock Pot here. It's been our saving grace here on the more chaotic days, or if we have errands or appointments after our lessons. Toss the ingredients in before we start lessons in the morning, it's ready to go by dinner time. :)

Barring death, it's not an option here either. I was deeply opposed to public education for my kids when they were babies - and then I found myself as a low income single mom of a baby and toddler and had no supports and no idea how to make that work out. So they went to PS. I was still unhappy about that but I saw no way to make homeschooling happen. But as soon as we were in a position where homeschooling did become a reasonable option, I pulled them. And having had them in that system for a couple of years and seeing what it did to them, they will never go back barring any extreme life circumstances. I know from experience that sometimes stuff happens. But I don't ever want to do that to them again.

We love HH here. We have the full box set of books and watch the BBC show at least every day. I have a 5 and 8 yr old, and both love it. We've even been able to read from the HH books as we're working our way through SOTW, they talk about a lot of similar things. And it gives my 8 yr old a fun way to connect a lot of what we're learning - he's at the age where if it's gross and inappropriate he loves it haha. He, my 8 yr old, even started up a discussion about WW2 at the breakfast table a few days ago, asking why it really happened. He said he knew that countries have friends sometimes, and if someone goes after a friend then you have to go and help your friend out. I asked him where he had heard that idea from, and he said "well...horrible histories talks about that". And it led us down a long rabbit trail for most of the day. We also have all of the science and maths books, but they are still a bit over my kids' understanding right now. I have been thoroughly enjoying them though. :)

With my 5 yr old, I get a LOT of use out of everything that comes in the full curriculum set. I pull all of it out at each lesson. I think you could get by with the teachers manual, student workbook, and the gamecards. We use the bookface and cursive gamecards with every lesson.

I've never tried AAR, but we use Foundations and I can't say enough about that program - I'm a complete fangirl lol. My daughter loves our LoE lessons, and some weeks she's on fire and wants to do a couple of lessons a week, and other times she needs to move slower. It's really easy to pace your student in whatever way is best for them. And it's a REALLY fun curriculum, we all end up having a blast when we do our lessons.

My friend (also a homeschooler) and I are going! Driving down there from Northern Ontario. Will be a long trip but a fun girls weekend. I haven't gone into the US in a long time!

THIS. I was scrolling through responses before I posted this one myself. I saw you did it first so I just yelled YES!!! At my screen and hit the quote button. I would make not only the point soror stated, but I'd also say things to the effect that "I don't feel the need to test as I work with my child every day and know precisely where his level is, I don't need to utilize group teaching methods to teach a single child (or two or five, wahtever the case may be)." This kind of thing would make me question my friendship with the person. However, if otherwise you have lots in common, or a lot of activities in common, I'd just not engage and let her think what she wants. Usually those that attack the strongest do so because they are insecure of their OWN choices. Their judgment says a lot more about them than it does about me, so I try to just disengage from people like that. I have friends who school RADICALLY different than I do. We just choose to not discuss the details of our homeschool days lol. But we're great friends otherwise so it's worth the eggshell-walking.

It's a quick and simple read, but "Have Fun. Learn Stuff. Grow." was the one that made me think "hey I can do this", back when the kids were babies. Also, The Unprocessed Child was an interesting read but pretty far to the radical unschooling side. I ended up getting far more practical and useable advice from WTM. I think because I ended up putting my kids into school for a while, reading anything too unschooly was overwhelming and scary at first. And made me feel like I had broken my kids by putting them into the school system. So I don't go with those to parents thinking of taking kids out of traditional schooling.

I'm going to follow along here. I find it tough to find Canuck-friendly classical resources. However, have you looked at the Tree of Life bookstore's online site? AWESOME stuff there. Some secular, most christian-centered, but still a lot of goodies on there. I think it's treeoflifeathome.com

My ex-h got all of the horrible books for ds from amazon.ca for a pretty decent price. Sometimes, shipping to Canada can be outrageous (or unavailable completely). Thank god amazon.ca has much of what I end up wanting.

I've only been homeschooling sicne the end of September, but no way do I regret it. What I do regret is putting them in public school to begin with. Some days I feel so awful about it that I feel physically beaten down. In a short amount of time, my two kids are thriving and blossoming into the amazing, bright, articulate, and HILARIOUS kids that they were before they went to school. We have hard days, exhausting days, and stressful days - but never has a day gone by when one of us hasn't said out loud "man, i'm so glad we can homeschool now". I can honestly say that looking back at a life full of questionable choices, and regrets (big and small), this will be the one thing I will always know was the best choice I have ever made for my kids. And for our whole family.

I ordered the complete set for Foundations. Out of what we did get, I think what *I* think is necessary to have: -teachers manual -student workboook -tactile cards (either manuscript or cursive depending on which one you're using for your handwriting); We love these! I like the game cards now that my son is close to the end of Level A because he uses them to spell when his hands are tired from the physical writing. But I wouldn't say they are necessary. And if you did want to use smaller cards, I think these could be easily made at home. The whiteboard is small, for what my son is now writing out. Doodling Dragons is nice for my youngest, but not at all necessary IMO

Buy them. My ex got the kids for Xmas am 80 book set of Horrible... Books. A lot are still ahead of my kids understanding. But they love them. After our SOTW reading my son will ask what's in Awesome Egyptians that matches lol I have even been enjoying reading the math ones.

No confusion at all, LoE does a great job in having kids match cursive to manuscript/bookface. My son had printing that was truly illegible - in just half of Foundations A his cursive writing is beautiful. The handwriting portions of each lesson are separate from the phonemic awareness and reading portions and I think that helps them keep from mixing up their letters or getting confused.

I am using Foundations with my kids. My 8yr old is using it at a pretty quick pace, as he's a struggling reader coming out of PS. He is just blasting through it right now, I suspect we'll be done all three levels by the end of summer. My 5yr old has never had any formal reading lessons up to now. She also came out of PS kindy, but was only learning how to print her letters, no phonics or reading of any sort yet. Both are using only cursive, and it's going AMAZINGLY well. My 5 yr old, we're moving a bit slowly and just trying to figure out what pace/schedule works best for her. But she loves this book - and her cursive is actually not too bad. I just spent a couple of days of lengthy detailed emails with Denise Eide talking about how best to implement this with my 5yr old brand new reading student. SO if you have any concerns or "how will we implement this?" kind of questions, just use the contact form on the LoE website. When I was deciding (between the same two curriculum choices as you are choosing between), she was unbelievable in helping me out. I am really happy with how this curric is working for both my kids. It's so comprehensive, PACKED with fun add-on activities and ways to challenge or assist the student depending on their needs, and the customer service is the best I've encountered yet.

We just watched that last weekend. My son was constantly saying things like "hey that's like when we read about pyramids in story of the world eh mom?" And here I was thinking he wasn't paying attention during history haha