One thing that I always put in stockings that is fun and useful is magazines. Everyone gets something different, son gets a surf or other hobby type mag, hubby gets something sports or science related, older DDs get a trashy gossip mag or fashion mag, younger DD gets a tween appropriate or ballet/ dance mag. The useful part is that after opening stocking stuff, they are occupied for a short time with their mags while I pop cinnamon rolls into the oven and when they are done cooking we all gather in the living room to open presents. Those mags buy me about 45 mins!

We are lightening up and for the next two weeks (really due to a heavy rehearsal schedule) we are just doing math and reading. I have taken one science and history 'week' and divided it two, giving her two weeks to complete 1 weeks worth of work...but I will let that go until after the new year if she doesn't get to it. Then we will have two weeks off.

I have a 12 yr old and agree that 1) scarves are popular, especially infinity scarves. and 2) get leggings and a longish top. Jeans are too hard, leggings are much more forgiving as far as fit goes.

I am following along here. My DD does not plan to go to a public high school, I want to ensure that she is prepared for college. I admit that, this being our first year of homeschooling, I feel that we are doing 'school at home' and I am having trouble breaking free of that WHILE still progressing in her education. I wish I could throw all of the curriculum out the window and just read, write and do math. I am a bit lost as to how to truly focus on getting her more independent while improving writing and critical thinking skills. Hopefully some of your wisdom will rub off on me. :-)

Thank you for the wonderful suggestions! I will research them all!

I can only address the nutritional aspect of it, but the brain requires fat to function, so that would explain why you see improvement with fish oil. In addition to fish oil think about where you can include more healthy fats in his diet. Kerrygold grass fed butter is easy to find for most, nuts (almonds, walnuts and brazil nuts are great), coconut oil for cooking, coconut milk in smoothies. Barleens makes a tasty Omega oil blend which is vegan and fruit flavored...you can eat it by the spoonful or add to smoothies.

We use OneNote to keep track of everything to be done. I map out a few months in advance. (start of school to Holiday break, the new year to spring break, spring break to summer) On the weekend I typically copy and past the week aheads work onto a word doc with boxes to be checked off as completed by DD. I file them when the week is over and the work is done. Because I copy and paste into a word doc for the next week I can tweak anything that needs to be tweaked. As in next week DD has a heavy rehearsal schedule, I can remove a few things and add to the following week to balance things out as needed.

I am in search of a great motivational book geared toward change. Particularly how to embrace change and push through the difficult aspects of change. I am help people to make big health related changes, diet, fitness etc. It can be overwhelming and I am looking for a good resource to help folks move through tough changes without giving up and reverting back to old bad habits. Any ideas would be much appreciated!

I am a nutritional therapist and I second the suggestion that you find a naturopath if possible. I would highly suggest that you examine your diet and keep a journal for a few days to determine whether you are having trouble digesting fats or trouble digesting certain foods/food sensitivities. Write down everything that you eat and drink, what time it was consumed and note how you feel....if you feel energized, write it down along with the time, if you feel run down/stomach ache etc also write it down along with the time. This will help you identify what foods your body is not handling well. Here are a few additional thoughts and suggestions based on your post. I am leery of vegan diets because our bodies need protein and fat. I can be done in a vegan way but requires serious diligence and most tend to start relying on way too many grains to keep their calories up. This doesn't happen to everyone, but it is a common trap. To boost gut health, fermented foods are great, a wide variety consumed daily would be best. There are a million things that can be fermented, naturally with only sea salt and filtered water. Do some research. Once you start consuming some you will develop a taste for it and crave it. Also a high quality probiotic, therapeutic strength, would be beneficial. Be sure to consume plenty of fiber, veggies are your colon's best friend ( and important for those probiotics). Also support the gut by cutting out as much processed foods and sugar as possible. Drink plenty of water. Liver and gallbladder go hand in hand. Do you have your gallbladder? If so you may just need to stimulate your bile. If not look into adding some bile salts to your diet, it is a supplement that is taken with every meal that contains fat. Gallbladder issues - If one is not consuming a good amount of fat ( low fat diet, or vegan) sometimes the bile gets a bit too viscous and stops flowing properly. There are many ways to stimulate bile production and flow. Supplements (do a bit of research) or through whole foods. Beets for one are the GB's best friend. Spend a little time googling foods and help the GB function. Liver on the other hand would be a different approach...while acknowledging the the GB function does rely on the liver to make bile, so this is another reason to keep a food journal to help you determine whether you are having trouble digesting fats. Liver issues tend to be related to being overloaded with toxins and sugar. Both are hard on the liver, it has many jobs and when it is burdened with a toxic load and a diet high in refined sugars/carbs it will have trouble. To support the liver, beets are good,( keep that bile production up) as is a simple detox (not extreme, you can feel horrible going thru a detox if your liver is not operating well) cut out sugars, grains, refined foods, alcohol, caffeine, dairy and processed foods. Give it a couple weeks and then slowly reintroduce new food categories. Reintro of foods should be painfully slow....pick a food, say dairy. Include a small amount with breakfast, if no reaction, include a larger portion and again at dinner. Go back to the detox protocol for 3 days watching for a delayed reaction. If none move on to the next food, this will help you to identify hard to digest foods and food sensitivities.

We used to brew beer and wine, if you can find a new shop you may be able to find what you need. The trouble (in my view) with a bucket batch is that it is an awful lot to prep, store and eventually refrigerate. Not to mention it is potentially a big loss should something go wrong. If you are new to fermenting I would highly suggest investing in some Fido jars. They are the easiest and most straightforward way to ferment. The rubber ring about the seal allows for off gassing and does not need to be burped and are less likely to form mold/kahm yeast.

So my primary questions really are; 1) what are the foundational skills that one needs to focus on in middle school? and 2) are we missing something in that regard?

7th grade. She is leaning towards French but I wanted us to really get settled before adding that in!

On another thread, that I did not want to hijack, Lori D said the following "One of the best things I heard about planning for high school was from Mary Schofield, who spoke at a homeschool conference I attended years back, about how middle school is crucial for making sure you have all the foundations solid, and only IF there is an area your student is advanced in and ready for it, do you move forward and do just that area at high school level in middle school." We are in our 3rd month of homeschooling. I am feeling a bit uncertain about our progress in the most crucial areas. It is all feeling a bit too easy. She typically will have something lingering on the weekend to finish, not a lot, but I am allowing her to budget her time. School stops at about 2:30 daily to prepare for ballet. Math- 1 Thinkwell lesson daily Lightning Lit and Comp- (right now just reading Tom Sawyer, per the curric.) Vocab- 10 words (classic lit) and definitions per week, test on Fridays Reading- one classic for Lit (Tom S.), one book of choice, 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens (first two, 1 chap per day ea. , 7 Habits 1 chap per week) Commonplace Notebook- (one quote per week), Human Odyssey- 1 unit per week, Elemental Science- 1 unit and one experiment per week, Cosmos show 1-2 per week. PE- ballet So my question is what are we missing or not focusing enough on? I do not necessarily want to add more, I just want to make sure that we focus enough time and energy on the important foundational things and not busy work. We simply do not have time for busy work, due to ballet commitments...which is what brought us to HSing in the firs place. She is an extremely bright girl, was in advanced/seminar classes and I do not want to short change her! I would love some feedback!

Thank you very much for the explanation!

This is a noobie question for sure, but....I believe that one can test per subject, per grade? Is this correct or is it just one massive test that students begin taking in 11th grade through 12th to try to get the best score possible? How does one ensure that their kiddo is learning all that they need to in order to perform well on these tests? I am starting to map out high school courses for my kiddo and I am curious how to best lay it all out!

I agree with 2KnowWisdom, that is precisely what I was going to say. Also yes, buy organic!

I need ideas on how to make HO work for us. It is dry and boring, the lessons are not that concise and I appear to be missing an online element, which I assume is thru K12. Other's have provided companion reading lists to go along with HO, but being a new homeschooler, I am not quite sure how to structure the addition of reading historical fiction along with the lessons. I don't see how we would get through enough of the HO book if we were also adding in more reading. Can someone paint me a picture? At this point it is just a grind through it curriculum for us. DD 12 and I both dislike it immensely. HELP!

I think you should address why you are so tired in the afternoon? I am going to guess a diet that is perhaps too high in refined carbs (bagel, toast, cereal) and too low in protein and fat, or too much caffeine? Can you consider if your breakfast/lunch habits may be triggering the tiredness that you are feeling? It just doesn't sound optimum.

I am almost 47 and the last couple years my periods have gradually gotten worse and worse. At the peak, last April, i was alone in a hotel room and panicked thinking this CAN'T be cramps! I must be dying, I almost called 911. I decided I needed to calm down, drew a hot bath (at 3 am) and promptly barfed into the toilet. Worst period ever! Then I read that cramps can be a symptom of mineral deficiency, which is pretty common, but exercise depletes even further...and I had been running a lot. When I got home from that trip I bought some liq minerals and have seen a tremendous improvement. At the start of my period I also take extra magnesium, that helps in particular. Edited to add that I had previously had a pap and discussed my cramps with my Dr and she said they were normal and that unless they were a serious disruption in my life to hang in there.

Kareni...did your dd read all of those books?!

Lori D thanks for the heads up on tough books coming our way. I think that we will keep reading together to help us through harder works, until she is ready to spread her wings and take off on her own with a classic. EndOfOrdinary and Hunter, that you for the link, that is a awesome list! To all who suggested adding in movies. I plan to do that this winter with Shakespeare. We are fortunate to be attending A Midsummer Night's Dream ballet in the spring, so we are going to start by reading a kid friendly book first to get the gist, then read the play together, watch the movie and top it of with the ballet...I can't wait! . I am choosing to do that with Shakespeare because it works easily for this first one and will be fun. I may do it with a few of the classics if I can put it together once or twice a year. I guess it would be wise to keep an eye open for theater productions in the future.

I can't thank you all enough for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences! I will re-read this post many times in the near future, I am certain. The approach that we took today was to sit and read it together, DD with my iPhone in her hand for quick word look ups as well as the LL book also for quick reference. She pre-read some of the words to expect in the two chapters that we read so when we hit them she instantly told me the meanings. That was helpful to us both. She needed to look up about 5 words (in the span of two chapters) in the dictionary, and we got thru both chapters in about 30-40 minutes. Except this time we paused to laugh at the silliness of the story and the characters. All in all a VAST improvement over her reading to me. I did most of the reading, and we shared the character lines, she would read one and I would read the other. It was fun and we both enjoyed it. There were several times when she was a bit lost as to what was going on in the story and I had to explain, but she was not the least bit frustrated or stressed, we just had fun reading together. Thank you for telling me that this is a harder classic ( just breathe momma, breathe) AND that it is ok to skip one when it just doesn't resonate. I think we found a way to make this one work! PS I bought her a kindle years ago because she was reading ahead of her level but wanted the definition of each word she did not know. I thought it was brilliant. She hated it and still does. I have no idea why!

Thanks for the great feedback, Tibbie your post is especially helpful. Thanks!

Thank you RootAnn. I will read through that link.

Frankly Paige,I struggle with pronunciations and comprehension myself! As of now she is reading it to me as I work in the kitchen making lunch and she has to frequently pause to look up words.Yesterday it took us nearly 40 minutes to get thru a chapter. I am fine with sticking to this if this is the preferred way to learn to read the classics. If there is another way I would love to know! Audible looks good too...much easier for sure, but not sure she will get as much out of it. Or on the other hand perhaps she would get more out of it without the constant stopping to look things up.