Honestly, it wouldn't have bothered me when I was eight, either. Nor is my son bothered by straight-up comments; it just doesn't phase him and isn't an issue. The problem comes when parents and others (directly or indirectly) make the weight an embarrassing issue and tiptoe around the obvious facts because, on some level, they feel we are embarrassed by ourselves. Neither my son nor I are embarrassed by our weight, and it is offensive to suggest that we should be/would be embarrassed by someone pointing out something obvious about our physical features - as if there was something shameful about those features. We accept ourselves as we are. You know what really sticks with kids? Ideas and suggestions that our weight is so very awful that it cannot be spoken of. And yes, the swing set will break when it's limits are exceeded (whatever those limits may be), and that is a danger to the little girl.

I like this! I think I'll add some historical reading in judiciously from this and incorporate some of this into my own methods!

I bought a beginning handwriting book and started with that. Yup - making o's over and over and then progressing to letters, then to words, and then to sentences. Took a few years, and it was harder when she was older (we just started in mid-fourth grade un-doing the half-done/half-baked job the public school did of teaching handwriting), but it just took practice, practice, pracrtice. Seriously; we worked as new handwriters do for 3 years. Her handwriting (cursive) is not Catholic school beautiful, but it is legible and neat now.

But it is the truth, and the most straightforward way to address the problem. Every kid gets to the point where they are too big for play equipment, whether it is a 10 year old on a 2 year olds rocking horse, or a teen on a child's bike, or a heavier kid on equipment meant for a lighter child. I am as fat as a house, and I don't think it is insulting and I wouldn't be insulted at plain language. I disagree with you.

I've got a 120-pound 9 year old who is really big all around, and I am fat, and I don't get any negative/superiority vibe off the OP at all. She didn't comment on why the kid was heavy, just that she was. She's got a practical problem that needs solving because a kid is too heavy for her set. Period.

If it were a normal-weight teenager on your set and had the same effect on the set, you would say something because of safety concerns and because of the fact it would break your set, not because you didn't want the person on the set. Same issue here; you are concerned for safety and damage to the set, so you need to say "Sweetie, I'm afraid you'll have to get off the swing set because it is going to break and hurt you if it falls on you. I know you like to play on it, but we all get to a point where we outgrow the swing." That's it. No need to spend your hard-earned cash to modify the set for another neighbor, and no need to talk to the mom; just a matter-of-fact with the little girl should solve your issue.

Depends on the malady. The Minnesota Twins (it wasn't studying the ball team, just comparing twins raised in different environments, LOL!) shed quite a bit of lights of some maladies that are mostly hereditary and some which are mainly environmental, and I was actually quite surprised by the outcomes.

Yes, exactly. They are not the same and are not equivalent.

I second this. I would add to this list: a plant kit to grow plants and do simple activities like look at light effects, a model of the solar system to build, some atom models to play around with, a simple inclined plane to study projectile motion, build electrical circuits to light up light bulbs. My son will be in 4th grade next year, and we are doing mainly interest-led science, with a few basic things that I think he should be familiar with to set him on a more formal course starting in 5th grade.

You don't convince them; assuming they are of sound mind, they have the right to make their own medical calls and live with the consequences. He might not be all that crazy, you know. In my experience, the medical establishment has a habit of medicalizing every trivial thing, pushing unnecessary medications and procedures that sometimes are as bad as the malady, practicing defensive medicine, and not listening to the wishes of the patient. Perhaps your FIL has had experiences like mine and distrusts the medical community.

Ohhhh!

My does not like math (she does well in it, but does not like it), and she loves LOF. I am not sure how much value it adds to our day, but she loves it.

For all the reasons Ellie mentioned, legible handwriting is important. I don't think it needs to be beautiful or perfect, but it does need to be legible. I think a formal handwriting program with is the easiest way to do that, and nips poor penmanship habits in the bud. My daughter attended public school through 5th grade, and trying to fix her poor penmanship habits at that late age was torture for both of us. I am teaching my son formal handwriting in third grade, and I have no bad habits to break with him, so it is much easier on both of us. I think if he practices formal handwriting a few minutes per day, by the time he has to crank out paragraphs and compositions in 5th grade he won't have to think about letter formation, he can concentrate on honing the skill you are teaching instead. Much like basketball players don't think about how to dribble and can instead concentrate on where their opponents are on the court. For all the flap about computers replacing pens (and that flap has been going on for years now), everyone I know still carries and uses a pen, so it is important.

For what it's worth, I think the Van Cleeve books are close to useless. I bought them in hopes of using them with my daughter, but the experiments were simplistic and didn't teach much about any particular unified scientific principle. I think they are popular with homeschools because they are simple, but that doesn't mean they're good. This year for my 6th grade daughter, I put together my own biology curriculum, drawing readings from texts I own, the internet, and a few encyclopedias; I also called on videos and Bozeman Science. For experiments, I drew off my own teaching materials and online resources from University of Utah Genetics and elsewhere. I also have a lot of science equipment and specimens that I've collected, and drew heavily off a $20 DNA kit I bought off Amazon. Man, it was exhausting; but, oh, it was good, LOL! Then I found Ellen McHenry's website and ordered her botany curriculum because I was so exhausted I couldn't go on anymore! I added a few slides on plants, living plants, a plant flower dissection, and a few photosynthesis experiments and we had a ball; it's been awesome! Go check out her website; she has free stuff, as well as curriculum for bio and chem. It is meaningful and complete and can cover a wide range of ages (from about 4th grade - 8th grade). So far, it's the only purchased science curriculum I've found that I am satisfied with. Best of all is that most kids can do it independently. Anyway, I plan to use McHenry's stuff next year for chemistry, along with some ACS stuff, and of course, my own favorite science projects ('cause I just can't seem to keep my dang hands off the darned science!) ETA: I always called them "lab activities" unless they were actual experiments where my daughter had to draw a hypothesis and challenge the hypothesis. But otherwise, just "activities". Activities get no lab write-ups. In fact, in elementary school, I think quality lab write-ups are beyond the scope of what can reasonably be expected of a elementary student.

We love this book and are using it as our spine for these time periods.

I can see where all sorts of configurations for history would work well, depending on the kid and what they had already done with history. I am a bit uncomfortable with basically skimming through history and not going very deep, but my kid had no world history and I wanted her to have some background on world affairs from historical beginnings to the end, as well as an internal timeline of history, before she hit high school. We are taking deeper side trips into certain things (like Greek mythology, Roman culture, and the plague), but mostly, we are in overview mode. The plan for American history is to take side trips at the appropriate time in history, and we are using Hakim's History of the US for that; I have the study guide that accompanies it and it has lots of potential activities to flesh out the reading. We're still on medieval, so we're just getting to Viking explorers, so I'm not sure how this will look in practice, but we're giving it a try. I hope it does not become to disjointed and "jumping around" to do this; if it does, we'll have to re-group and look at the early American era in one chunk, rather than as each event occurs, but we'll see. It means a *lot* of history, but my daughter loves history and she particularly likes reading history, so hopefully this pans out.

I would say something, but not directly, nor would I tell her she is making a bad choice because it's really not my decision to make or to judge. That's not to say I wouldn't have concerns (I also see the red flags you do, and potentially dangerous ones at that). I would say something in a very indirect way by asking questions and by trying to lead her into making her own more careful and wiser decisions. If she refused to be lead, refused to entertain the questions, or disagreed, I would not say any more.

Can you tell me more about the bolded? Are these supplements instead the full-on AoPS curricula you're referring to? More stuff on certain topics, in order to enrich the current curriculum? How does that work if/when the currently curriculum uses an entirely different style? This may be an option for my daughter; I'll have to look into it.

We're kind of history-heavy here, so I'm not sure that's what you would be looking for. My daughter (now finishing up 6th grade in homeschool) came from public school and I felt I had a lot of holes to fill in, so she works pretty hard at doing that and preparing herself for high school. So, our history plan is 4 years of world history crammed into 3 years (so roughly, 7 months each of ancient, medieval, early modern, recent modern). During this time, we also plan to take side trips into major events in American history at the appropriate time in our history cycle. So finishing up this 6th grade year, we have now moved into medieval history. We are skimming American in middle school because they buried the kids in early American history in elementary, so she is pretty competent with that. I also did a separate year of world geography this year, and will do a separate year of American geography next year.

My daughter has been doing conversational French for 4 years now and has just moved to a more formal French program with grammar (she has a private tutor for that). We just started Latin this year also and it is the priority in our homeschool, and we are both very much enjoying it and it's also going well. Any reason you don't want to do both at once?

It depends on the nature of the job. If it involved teaching aspects of a religion I didn't agree with or wasn't knowledgeable of, I would not. But an administrative job, yeah. Anyway, I say go interview for it and be prepared for, but do not expect, discrimination. Worst case scenario is that it's a practice interview for a future job.

No, it's not "Where do you go to church", but more like "What denomination are you?". I've gotten that one.

You could get financial POA perhaps. But just be aware that if she is lucid enough, she may be angry and cut ties with you (at least temporarily) for doing such a thing. A tough call, no question.

In college, I worked for a survey company for a few years. It was a nice company to work for and I loved chatting to people, LOL! But I would hate selling anything and wouldn't last 5 minutes if the job was sales.

Your oldest must have been in my oldest's 5th grade class! These are one of many reasons we pulled her out to homeschool.