This is fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. I wonder...

Paint first! You have volunteer help that is a SIGN FROM THE HEAVENS! PAINT FIRST dangit!

Why is this place called "the hive" and whats with all the Bee-centric ranks and stuff anyway?

No and Yes. I put my kids needs (not their wants) first in 95% of everything that I do. I work hard to support them, I work hard to accommodate them and their needs. When I am home with them, I like to be with them so I simplified our lives long ago and keep possessions minimal so that it is easy to clean, care for and do upkeep. I batch cook, I teach the boys how to do stuff for themselves and I teach them to clean up after themselves. If their stuff gets left in the floor too often, then I will just donate/trash it. I rarely have to do that now that they know that I mean business. But then, I am a relatively healthy guy. If I needed something for my health, then I would rearrange my life to get it and sleep well at night. I can't keep my kids first if my health is bad, I cant care for them, support them or be there for them if I am ill or injured so I don't make a big deal out of caring for myself. I just do it and its apart of my schedule.

I don't have time to meet and socialize with people in real life about homeschool. Its on my agenda, for sure, but when we started it was kind of sudden and we just kept doing what we are doing. I have noticed that I am sinking a considerable amount of time into this forum (especially the archives of the Accelerated, Middle School/Logic Stage and High School boards) but its all for preparation for the Fall so I will chalk it up to an 'investment' I'll probably delete my account after the summer though, so that I'm not spending more time than needed on the internet.

We have been doing SOTW and I haven't made any special effort to add anything in I don't think it is especially lacking in anything. Maybe you could try browsing on Amazon to see which books on the list are most highly rated? That might help you narrow it down a bit. What is on the Audio CDs' exactly?

Spanish language childrens books from the library Pepper in as many "Spanish for Kids" type books and videos from the library as you can stand Watching (parts of) DVDs in Spanish Watching cartoons in Spanish

I just plain don't like coconut (sorry Kid!) and Chocolate seemed to run-of-the-mill, but it looked amazing, I voted for the pretzel-struessel one based on looks and flavor combo, but I'd probably eat the chocolate one.

4-6 will probably have more games and such. Probably a lot of 'free movement' allowed. Maybe some sort of intro and outro to the class that isn't fully dance-centric. 6-9 will probably have more actual lessons, practice and feedback. Probably not as much 'free movement' allowed

I would do multiple sessions of the daily lessons. I taught the boys water safety and how to swim when they were 2-4 years old and when they were old enough I put them into tri-weekly lessons and I still took them swimming on the off days as often as I could. Swimming is a vital skill in my book and worth investing in properly.

"Is there life after homeschooling?" Oh dear God, I hope so. Hopefully there is life during homeschooling also!

I didn't read the article but that is such a common sense conclusion I'm having a hard time imagining why it is 'news'. The majority of the world does not attend/receive first rate anything, and yet many people manage to avoid misery, despair and depression. ETA: Now that I've read the article, I'm a little disappointed in and embarrassed for NPR. That seems like one of the lame articles I'd expect to find on "Yahoo! News" not on NPR. Oh well.

I wouldn't think twice about taking the kids out with me, but then again I have been known to respond to nosey peoples passive aggressive inquiries by starting out: "Not that it concerns you but..." or "Its really none of your business, but since you asked..."

I'd have gotten rid of the dog on the first day my son made it clear that he wasn't going to be caring for it. I'd send Son a bill for all the crap that his neglected animal caused. I'd rehome/sell/give up/surrender the dog to who ever was willing to take it on a 1st come, 1st served basis and I wouldn't worry too much about it. That is just me though and I am not an animal lover.

I thought better of this post and removed it because it disclosed a little too much for my comfort.

Why not? I'll answer questions here also. Not much is happening in RL right now.

Hi Amy :seeya: Wow, its great to be near the end, huh? Congratulations on your impending graduation! When do you want to start your doctorate and what do you want to do with it? Has your eldest picked a major yet?

Are *YOU* a student at this time in your life? If so, please check in. I didn't realize that there might be other parent-students on the board, but I'd love to talk homeschooling logistics, courses, and anything else with any other college students who are also homeschooling. I'll go first. I'm Gil, Information Technology Major| I have just 2 semesters left--summer and Fall and then I graduate! I am the accidental homeschooler of two boys--Buddy(7) and Pal (6). This is our first year and we're calling it first grade.

HaHa! That is why I chose IT instead of CS, those project-classes can be really hard core and I have enough going on in my life right now without that special sort of stress. The IT projects are bad enough, the CS projects, well some of them look like they are designed for you to fail. Have you done the intro. to design class yet? I did it this Spring and it was a b!tch but my group did well. Is this a Jr. Project or a Sr. Project in your program? I didn't know that there were other college students on this board!

I tried it once. It was okay, I was able to keep track of where I was in the day...normally I keep my plans in my head, but writing them out helped. I am on this board more and more often because I don't really talk to many other parents in the Real World and certainly no other parents in my situation. By joining this community, I get feedback on everything from parenting, homeschool and future ideas. I think its neat how those threads appear (almost) everyday.

Actually, I am in the process of reworking our schedule. We currently do the 3Rs daily and we do Spanish about 4 days a week but only as often as we can get to it but I want to prevent burn out. Both the weather and my schedule is changing also, so I want to make better use of our time and prevent burn out. Like, really, really, prevent burn out. For me and for them I'm thinking of making a daily A and B schedule so that we vary the intensity of each subject we do. We are doing 4 basic subjects: Math, Reading (history via SOTW), Writing and Spanish. We are going to pull back from doing 7 day work weeks to 6 day weeks as I now work 16 hours on Wednesday and on that day If I can both feed and find my kids, I will consider myself a successful parent. The boys have to do a min of 1 hour of free reading everyday, 7 days a week. This is non-negotiable. I keep them in supply of fresh books, they read and log them. But I'm going to alternate what we do on the other days and cap them at 3hrs of table work because I want them outdoors more this summer. A day: Math + History centric Reading (SoTW) + Spanish B day: Spanish, Writing and Topic-of-Choice Reading C day: free day. Do their free reading and stay out of trouble. Sun ----- Mon ----- Tue ----- Wed ----- Thu ----- Fri --- Sat A B A C B A B Each week the boys have to produce a 1 page report/summary of something that they are learning in their Topic reading. My hope is that I will find some sort of pattern to their current skills in writing, grammar, spelling and in the fall I'll be able to make some informed decision about what to get for them. The goal is NOT perfection, but to get a good idea of their level in this particular subject as writing is their weakness. I may also alternate weeks so that Even weeks are 6 days and Odd weeks are 4, but I'm still playing with the ideas. I want to maximize our outdoor time and keep them active. We want to start running as a family and we like to go biking and swimming, the weather is now perfect for these activities.

I found it easier to enforce a wake up time than go to sleep times. I stopped bothering with putting them to bed when they turn 6yo. At 6, they aren't 'babies' any more and are on their way to being 'big kids' so in recognition of that, they can stay up as late as they want but they have to be up by X:00am (usually 6am, but it varies with my schedule) without any exceptions because I have to be gone by Y:00am. I always tell them what time they have to get up and tell them how much time they'll have to sleep. Provided that the house is clean, I don't bother with them going to sleep once they are ready to sleep. They are a lot better about being responsible about when to sleep now that they are over the 'power trip' of staying up however late they want.

So, the boys and I have been talking about this and I'm trying to get them refocus and slow down a little bit. They had been speeding through an Algebra textbook but I talked to them about their current Math Mission (Finish all of Math Mammoth Materials--aka "8th grade") and we had a talk about finishing what you start, not giving up and not being distracted etc... Together, we have come up with some tentative goals for carrying us through to the end of the summer. 0) Finish their current math stuff (MM6, ARME6, SSM, KtA) 1) make their own Math Guide* 2) Get as many Math Supplements/Challenge books through the library as possible (Penrose, Zacarro, Borac, etc), read and work through (some of) them. 3) Focus on Mental Math and do daily practice. 4) Math Mammoth 7ab + Algebra1ab worksheets with guidance from me + some math books to help them when needed. 5) Unified Modern Mathematics Course 1 I'm going to try and steer them into more problem solving type work, so I've been on the library site requesting/reserving books from Zacarro and others. I really want them to turn their attention towards using what they know to work more interesting problems, not just dashing ahead...so I'm thinking that a rehash of elementary math using out-of-the-box resources will be beneficial to them. MY BIG PROJECT: is to create a sort of 'workbook' out of UMMC1 for them to use when the time comes. I had thought about just jumping in, but it will be too much for them right now. They can't handle the dense textbook format + separate book for writing out answers just yet. Plus going through the books with a fine toothed comb will help me prepare to guide/assist them more readily. (Yay! Maybe this can be one way for me to "help" my kids--adapting materials to their abilities!) Whenever we get through items 0-4 on that list, we'll begin doing UMM and a formal course in Algebra 1, the boys picked a textbook that they like so I will probably be writing a workbook for that also--cutting down on the problems, condensing as needed and adding in challenging problems from other books and of course making sure that they will have enough room...Plus, I can build in the spiral review that I want my kids to have for Algebra 1. They seem to get it already, but I want to be sure that we are really and truly rock solid on the fundamentals of Algebra! We won't be starting for several more months, but Pal insists that he wants to do Geometry so does anyone know if Saxon Algebra 1 and 2 would be a good idea for him? Don't those books have Geometry written into the Scope and Sequence of Algebra? *Math Guide: A book of notes, examples, explanations, summaries, and definitions that is written and assembled by the student that is meant to serve as a reference to lower level math/arithmetic and the making of which provides a comprehensive review of lower level math. The idea is that this will take weeks (if not months) to do and will allow us to check for any cracks in their foundation while we slowly add in more.