I think the angel idea is a good one, but if you can, I'd also talk to the dad sometime to get his thoughts for handling things going forward and encourage him to let you know if anything comes up. Discussions of parents seems to come up a lot in our Sunday School, so the issue is likely to arise from time to time.

In that situation, I'd give a heads-up to the dad so he's aware, and I'd also encourage the kids to make several cards if they like. If some kids are making them for grandma or their kind next door neighbor in addition to mom, it won't put all the focus on moms in a way that would be uncomfortable. I generally do that kind of thing because in the Sunday School class I taught pre pandemic, there were kids with various family make-ups, living situations, etc. I also tried to remind my own children's teachers if things like "hey, my husband is deployed right now. They might be easily upset on father's day, and please be careful what you say on Memorial Day and Veteran's Day.

All my kids are too young, but I'm happy for the rest of y'all as well as for the general health of the country and beating this plague.

Like others have noted, the problem is if kids are expected to be involved in the selling. When kids sell popcorn or cookies or gift wrap or whatever, they are instructed to promote their product, to tell how tasty or beautiful or useful it is. If kids are being encouraged to sing the praises of alcohol in any way, that's inappropriate.

We've been using them this past year as worthwhile busy work. The main purposes I have for them and the other worksheets I put in our "independent work" packets each week are to have something for one child to do while I'm working with another and to help them build executive function skills. They are good reinforcement and not miserable for the kids to do. We aren't going to use them next year because we'll be meeting these goals in other ways, but I may get them in future years at some point.

What officers are told during training, at least in this area, is that pulling people over for low-level offenses is sometimes the only way to get them for something high-value. The Oklahoma City Bomber was caught by an officer pulling him over for having no licence plate. Many officers certainly look for suspicious cars, then find something wrong so that they can pull them over. One foolish individual pulled over a car, then made up a reason when he realized there were lots of drugs in the car. The drug dealer walked free because the judge knew the officer would not have been able to see that the tires were bald before pulling him over. If the officer had been more clever, he could have said the car had crossed the center line and the judge would have accepted it even if untrue, which is why we need dash cams and body cams. Generally the police in my area have busy times and down times. There are no quotas for tickets, but they are expected to have a certain number of actions taken during any time period. If there are no reports to write or calls to go on, they have to find something to do, which can be check on an old empty building or find someone to pull over.

Dh is a police officer in a large department with better than state standard training, but he wants it increased tremendously. Also, they get little to no training about some very important things, like laws and the importance of preserving constitutional rights, and lots of training about how every interaction is likely to be dangerous for the police officer so they must be constantly vigilant. As his wife and as a person, clearly I want officers to stay safe, but I wonder if that method of keeping them on edge doesn't cause officers to escalate and make things more dangerous.

I like what others have said, so I won't say too much. I just am popping in to say that, since you said you are a secular homeschooler, you may want to look carefully at the Bookshark science. From what I understand, it's more "neutral" than "secular," which generally means it omits information about evolution/age of the earth. Depending on the science being covered, that could be a glaring omission or not. I'm just relaying what I've heard, so if anyone has any first hand knowledge, please listen to them rather than me on this!

I'm reacting as a parent with younger kids, thinking it would be fun to get them involved in something like that when they are older. It seems slightly long to me, but the real issue would be the time of day. Everything else happens between 10am and 6pm on a weekend day. Blocking off that much time during prime activity hours (most) every Saturday would prevent my kids from doing much else. I get it with older kids who have found their friends and this is what they do together, but with younger teens, I'd be worried about putting so much emphasis on one activity that would make it difficult to make friends outside that activity.

I'll say "pooh" to the idea of books being twaddle. While I try to make sure that my kids don't totally live off a diet of formulaic writing, I counter it by encouraging variety rather than banning anything. If he starts reading tons of the My America series, I'd find out from him some of the historical periods our characters he was most interested in and get a couple of related books to offer.

Regarding the stigma of gifted vs precocious: I was surprised to notice recently that in some older writing about child development, "precocious" seemed to have a mildly to moderately negative connotation. I wish I had noted the source, but it seemed to be used for kids who were a little showy/mouthy. Nowadays, however, I agree with folks above. Precocious means early developing, not necessarily gifted, and can be a socially safer way to phrase things.

Plant dissections can be a good way to do dissections without the gross factor, and you can do various flowers and seeds you find in your yard. More fun with a microscope, probably, but also cool with a magnifying glass.

This seems like an odd situation, and the solution is likely state-specific. Can you reach out to parents in your neighborhood to see if they know the school's hours and who the best contacts are? I know schools around here have some interesting logistics due to the pandemic. If you decide to homeschool, people here on this board can give advice, but it's a pretty intense commitment. I understand being very frustrated with the local schools, but if that's your only reason to homeschool, it might not be enough of a motivation to get you through the hard times.

Not exactly an answer to your question, but I'm having my daughter, who is a fantastic reader, read Anne of Green Gables aloud with me. I want to be sure that as she's learning more and more vocabulary through her reading, she's practicing saying those words aloud as well, and Anne certainly uses a wider vocabulary than is typical, while still being interesting for an 8 year old. I think many of us who were prodigious readers as children have stories of being completely surprised, and even embarrassed, by how words are actually pronounces, and I want to avoid that as much as possible for my kids.

If you aren't opposed to screen learning, my kid that age loves iCivics. She's getting a lot about the fact that different parts of government do different jobs and serve as checks and balances to each other, what rights are in the Bill of Rights and what kinds of situations are affected by those rights, differences between local, state, and federal government, etc. She'll still need a full civics/government course before she leaves our house, but since we study more history and geography, this rounds it out. Getting a basic middle school or even 9th grade civics textbook and occasionally reading and discussing it together might be another way.

I see you have a curriculum plan, but if he's really interested, some actual military field manuals might be interesting for a keen fifth grader, or maybe older if he continues to be interested. I'm assuming you could buy them online or at a military surplus store. My husband says they are fairly accessable.

I was thinking about what kind of study on homeschoolers world be interesting to me and possibly possible. A longitudinal study that relied on surveys. At the beginning and at several points over the next years, parents would fill out a form indicating how important various things are to then as a family: solid math foundation, character development, opportunity to create a custom education, etc. It would be a pretty long list. Parents would also choose the 3 most influential in their decision to homeschool and the 3 they are planning on concentrating on this year. Parents would be asked which methodologies they plan to use and how much time they expect to spend on each. In the middle of the school year and again at the end, they would be asked how much time they and their children are spending on various activities, both those directly school and those that might impact learning in other ways. They would be also be asked to evaluate the school year so far: of the primary goals for the year, are you happy with the progress? Have you introduced new primary goals? In these areas considered core skills, how is your child doing? At the end of the year, also ask about plans for the next year, and continue to follow kids who enter public/private school. I'm not sure if enough useful data would be collected to make this worth anyone taking on, but I'm interested in seeing a cross section of homeschooling: what goals do people have, how do they plan to get there, and how effective do they think these methods are? What tends to change over the course of one year or several? Are people more likely to be successful if they pick one method and stick to it faithfully, or if they carefully adjust everything to fit their needs or their children's needs? How do priorities tend to change over the years?

I grew up conservative Presbyterian. The denomination has gotten angrier since my Grandparents' generation. It changed from being defined by what they stood for to being defined by what they stood against. Hyper-Calvinism has also been a problem. My husband and I tried to stay since our families had been part of it for a couple hundred years, but we just couldn't. Now we're Methodist. It's not perfect, but there's lots I admire, it's close to our house, and they point us and our children towards Jesus and how to serve him.

Completely different conservative denomination for me, but the same thing happened at my alma mater. I wouldn't suggest it to my kids anyway, but now I wouldn't suggest it to anyone.

In college I worked at a conference/campground in the NC mountains, mostly in the front office. The director of one camp would put in complaints like " there's a snake in the creek" and I would have to forward that on to maintenance. The maintenance guy and I had a bit of a code for bogus complaints, but that one put him over the top.

As I understand it, our local high school takes attendance, but it can be met by a list of things: turning in an assignment counts, participating in a Zoom counts, sending an email saying "help, I'm having tech issues" and following whatever instructions are then given counts. Other things, too, but I don't remember what. They just want to see engagement.

I'm all for learning lots at young ages. Teaching things to my kids is one major way I bond with them. But I'd put the worksheets away. Count things in your real life activities. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the more an activity looks like school, the more educational it is. However, when you have your three year old "help" you sort laundry, you can teach so much. You can, of course, practice counting. You can talk about bigger and smaller, more and less. Matching socks is fantastic, practicing a number of different skills. The child experiences a variety of textures and gets in some done and gross motor work. Additionally, the child feels like a helper, like they contribute to the family. How many worksheets and bits of carefully planned educational activity would you have to do to match that? Worksheets have their place, and when they are fun for you and kiddo, that's a great activity. There are lots of hours in the day, and five-ten minutes practicing pencil skills and feeling like a big kid can be interesting and valuable, but try to find ways to bring your child alongside you, to talk with you and "help" you. You'll be surprised how much they learn that way.

If it helps at all, last year I had a very smart but very 5 year old boy. He was not reading or writing yet (his sister who is close in age had been at 3, so I had to be careful not to make comparisons) but was great with math. My goals for the year were mostly about developing "soft skills" like not quitting in frustration if his letters were wobbly or he lost a game, in addition to continuing to plug away at reading. We used Math Mammoth 1 for math. This was very easy for him, but my main purpose for it was to get him used to writing down answers and doing work without (too much) complaint. We used The Good and the Beautiful handwriting. I wouldn't use their other products because I disagree with their philosophy about what is good and beautiful in literature, but their handwriting throws in "fun things" like mazes that really do build up handwriting skills. We used ProgressivePhonics.com as our main reading program. We did First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind orally together with big sister. We skipped the writing portions. We did Story of the World together also. Science was basically unschooled. We read some interesting books, raised chickens, had a garden, built marble runs, went to the science museum, and watched lots of shows like Wild Kratts. My kids have learned tons from this approach. That kid is now doing great in Beast Academy. We're taking a relaxed pace, but he finished 2B Thursday. His reading has taken off considerably this year, and he's matured tremendously as well. Now he's talking his 4 year old brother through frustration, helping him not melt down upon losing games. It's very sweet to see. I strongly encourage a focus on "soft skills" in these early years. (As an illustration of how the needed skills are different for each kid, my daughter primarily needed to develop a willingness to speak up about problems, while I had to teach my son to give teachers a chance to notice things on their own before jumping in).

This one has been pooping in the potty about half the time recently and usually running to me as soon as his diaper is spoiled most of the rest of the time, so I think he's ready. He's still refusing to join the world of the vocal, though. This would be easier if he would talk.

This is the fourth and last child. Big sister was first and ridiculously easy. The others have been a couple weeks of misery followed by a month of needing to always have spare pants near at hand, then things being fairly normal. I'm hoping it goes that well, but not really looking forward to finding out.