Congratulations!

I'd participate, but what information I gave would depend on what more I learned. For example, one reason, but not the only one, that we home school is the school we started in ended their gifted program. So I wouldn't mind the school knowing that if they want to keep gifted students, they need to offer appropriate academics. If I found out the study was going to be an awesome one involving longitudinal studies in a variety of locations, if be more forthcoming because I think it would help the homeschooling world and the world in general to have more data on what methodologies work best in which settings and such

My two oldest are 17 months apart but would be two grade apart in formal school: 1st and pre K. We start off the day together with read-alouds that include history, grammar, health, geography, literature, Bible, etc (not all every day). This probably takes 30 minutes to an hour depending on how well we are concentrating, whether we are in a rush, etc. I expect more from my first grader in terms of memorizing poems, answering questions, but they both participate, and the toddler occasionally does as well. Then one child goes off to play and entertain the two year old while I do skill subjects with the other, then switch. With my December birthday five year old, we do a reading lesson, a handwriting lesson, and a math lesson. I wouldn't demand all that every day (and even "all that" takes 30 minutes or less) except that it cuts down on sibling rivalry and helps things feel equitable. This kid was very handwriting/craft averse back over the summer and he still doesn't love crafts or coloring, but making it a daily expectation has helped him gain enough skill to have more confidence, which means it's now his favorite of the three activities.

In your case, I think I'd try to go, if I could reasonably enjoy it and not feel guilty/worrying about money while I was there. I'd try hard to see if I could find someone to watch the kids one or two more days. It's about honoring a friend and reconnecting with loved ones, even if you won't get to spend much time with the friend.

Thanks everyone for helping me understand. I feel bad that I posted last night, then fell asleep,then have been busy today, but it seems I'm not the only one wondering about this. I'm glad! My interpretation is that since people have different definitions, some involving the spiritual/supernatural, some involving a spectrum of sensitivity, it's not surprising I was having a hard time intuiting the definition from context. I would say I'm empathetic in that I can easily imagine how others are feeling and sympathize with that, but I don't take it on as part of my emotion (though being around lots of negativity brings me down, of course), so I don't fit anyone's definition of empath.

I often see people online refer to themselves or their children as "empaths." When I first saw this, I assumed it referred to those who were naturally very empathetic, noticing people's emotions perhaps too easily, but the more I see it, the more I think they are referring to something more. Are these people likely referring to a kind of esp? I don't want to offend, but I can't remember ever hearing this term used by people in my real-life circle and am very curious whether it's a difference in terminology or in how we understand the world.

In college, a group of us were invited to a friend's "Sunday dinner" at his grandmother's. This was in rural South Carolina, and he told us it was easy to get to. "Just take the first left after the Little Cricket and it'll be the big house on the right." We didn't think this was enough information, but he assured us it was. Cell reception was really spotty, so it was hard for us to reach him to complain that Little Cricket, which we'd never heard of before, was a very well established chain of gas stations in that immediate area. The only things we saw driving were houses, churches, and Little Crickets. Once we finally found the right one, it turned out his grandmother's house was very easy to find.

Sorry, I meant the non-phonics leveled readers are terrible. The ones with titles like "Batman's Amazing Adventures" that don't even tell a good story because they have some weird word-count thing they are going for. I like all the decodable books you mentioned and we use them ourselves, very similarly to how you describe. I should have been clearer.

Yeah, I think one of the phrases my kids will joke about when they are grown is "if you can't find a way to play nicely with it, I'm taking it away!" If it helps boost your morale, my husband and his three brothers were often at each other's throats as kids, physically fighting even, and they are very close now. Even he and his older brother who barely tolerated each other as teens chose to live together for a time as adults in a property they bought jointly.

Yeah, I hate the "leveled readers" for the most part. They are just demoralizing for a long time, then a phonics-learner is all of a sudden past them. Elephant and Piggie and the Fly Guy books are pretty good early readers after the phonics basics are down. Most of the others feel like someone took mediocre books and removed any interesting words from them.

One thing that you will likely discover whatever program you use is that you will learn some rules you didn't know about, and therefore there are fewer words that must be memorized than you thought. For example, I had no idea that there is a simple rule about when "c" says "k" and when it says "s," but after I learned it, I realized that I had invited it at some point, or possibly been taught it as a small child and forgotten the rule but, of course, remembered how to use it. Whatever program you use, I recommend reading ahead to see if you find any surprises like this yourself.

Welcome! It sounds like y'all are having fun and will have a great year next year as well.

I posted on your pre k/k thread, but I'd be interested in testing out beginning handwriting, provided it seems like a good fit and all that.

I'd be interested. I have a five year old I'm easing into the world of handwriting. I also have a six year old who's past the "beginning handwriting" stage by most measures. I'd love to look at anything you have and use it/review it and give feedback if it looks like it would help our learning.

Do you have any smartphone/Alexa type devices that could accidentally have an alarm going off that is set to sound like that? If it's a movable device or one you have multiples of, that could explain the motion. Or an alarm or speaker system set up in multiple rooms?

I don't know if this is any help, but my cousin dropped out of a math PhD program. She liked the classes and loved the undergrad teaching she did, but as she advanced in the program, her advisor wanted her to do less teaching and more research. She hated the research end of things, or at least she hated her advisor's project that she was required to work on. She now works developing curriculum and tutoring, which she's happy with, but I think she wishes she'd known more of what to look for going in ask that she had found a better fit. I hope you are able to help your child get a few mental pictures of what it could be like so that he can search out the one he really wants.

My goal is to insist on at least once a week, but I also require it if anyone enters the chicken coop or just gets horribly messy. Anyone requesting to bathe before 8 pm also gets to do so, unless they've already bathed that day. Some weeks that means they get 4-5 baths each, frequently it's just the one. We all smell and look fine, except sometimes my 5 year old's hair sometimes doesn't get washed even though the rest of him does. I think he may have gone a month once when I was distracted by pregnancy and the birth of the baby, and it was obviously in need of a washing, but not worse than a teenager after two days would be. There are times in baby-hood that require lots of baths, but that's the only time any of my kids have ever smelled at all. I'm sure we'll enter the world of more frequent bathing in a few years when kids start hitting puberty.

Good to know it is actually a "thing." I was worried that the store had been out of most things and that was what was left. I couldn't think of a polite way to ask "did you make this on purpose?"

I went to a Baptist church in Russia while I lived there, and many of the members were significantly poor, especially by American standards. They were gracious and invited me to after church lunches and occasionally into their homes, and sometimes the food was delicious and sometimes it was less so. Really soupy mashed potatoes with cut-up hot dogs mixed in, topped with ketchup was a memorable meal. I had to get good at eating the right amount. If I accidentally cleaned my plate, seconds were generally forced upon me, but neither did I want to be seen as disliking or wasting the food. My husband's pickiness was very strong, and still is although now it is tempered by the rationality of an adult, and he doesn't feel hunger in the same way most people do, so he would have starved as a child under the "old school rules." Because of this, I try hard not to make food a battle ground for our kids, but I'm also trying hard to instill manners and an understanding that typically, food is emotional for the preparer as well as the eater, and due consideration should be given to both.

This is part of why I'm nervous about this. My husband was a picky eater and cringes when he remembers asking his friend's parents "can I just make a peanut butter sandwich instead?" at supper. At the time, he thought he was being polite by offering to do it himself. His family is much more likely to ignore deadlines and assume exceptions will be made. Remarkably, not only are people usually accommodating, they are often very happy to be so.

I'm curious how others handle this, especially teaching kids if and when it is acceptable to ask for exceptions to rules. My parents always taught us that it is rude to ask for special treatment, to the extent that they wouldn't dream of asking for broccoli to be substituted for fries if that wasn't explicitly allowed by the menu. I understand, of course, not wanting to be "that guy" who seems to think the world should bend to their whims, but I also realize that opportunities can be lost if, for example, you only have two years of experience so you don't apply for the perfect job requesting three years of experience, for example. My six year old recently asked the librarian if she could sit in on her five year old brother's book club (we were going to be in the next room) as long as she sat quietly and watched. The librarian seemed happy to allow this, but I was a little uncomfortable and don't know if it was because of my upbringing or whether this was over the line. (For background, this was a group of five and six year olds, it wasn't full, and her brother liked the idea, but she is signed up for the six to nine year old group that meets a different day.) How do you decide, and teach your kids to understand, when to ask for exceptions when to not?

I went through a geography workbook orally with my little kids earlier in the year. They like maps and so loved talking about them with me, and it helped me to remember to hit on a variety of topics (plateau just hadn't come up in our daily life observations, for example). If you are worried your kids have missed something that might be on a standardized test, you could flip through a workbook and talk over the pages containing those aspects/concepts you aren't sure they know.

Can you have him walk to karate instead of driving him? Tell him that he has x months to learn to drive, and then rides stop unless you were going that way anyway? If that would motivate him or at least not make your life harder, then you could implement a rule like "the lesson ends when you snap at me three times." Good luck, though. I remember learning to drive being so stressful and my mom trying to have a relaxing tone, but I could hear the stress in her voice, which felt like judgement to my stressed-out self. We were both trying to be cool, calm, and kind, but neither one of us was fully successful. I'm sure I did my own share of hissing.

I think the cub scout popcorn mom said that she uses the "show and sell" days popcorn to make sure that every kid who puts in some effort gets at least to the first prize level. She mentioned she took some from her kid specifically since he has to go with her to every show and sell and so racks up a lot that way. I think that's okay, especially when the benefiting scout is young, but I'd be upset for this to be taken from my kid without a "thank you" being given to my child.

Is hedgehog a typo or a tradition I don't know about?