I'd probably be more excited if my partner didn't work all this weekend and we could go.

For background, I'm a Pagan convert raised as a Lutheran (ELCA, the more liberal version). As my parents, my mother has become more conservative and, much to my mothers' dismay, my father has become an atheist. I'm married to a Jewish atheist somewhat fond of making zombie Jesus jokes, but mostly backs me in front of the children about being respectful of different religions. My mother is less than thrilled about my husband's religion or about how none of her children kept her faith in their adult years. We get along mostly by not talking about it. The kids have erratically attended my mother's ELCA church's Sunday school. My husband jokes that it'll give them something to rebel against. I want them to find their own way, religiously, and I also think knowing those Bible stories is important for understanding a lot of literature. They like the snacks, the crafts, the songs, the stories, and the finger plays. The five year old obviously doesn't get it. He'll come back telling a story about Jesus and call him Jack Frost the whole time. My eight year old, somewhat obsessed with Percy Jackson, worships the Greek gods, though how much of that is religious expression and how much of that is fantasy play, it's hard to tell. She has said a few disdainful things about Christians over the years, but it's rare and I always correct. My mother has never reported any problems at Sunday school. My mother asked me if she could sign the kids up for Vacation Bible School. She promised to pay and transport them. When the kids both said they wanted to go, I agreed. My mother has already paid for it. However, in the last week, my daughter has been hemming and hawing about the whole thing. Generally, once we've spent the money on an activity, I hold them to that commitment, but honestly, I worry about her being a jerk if I force her to go. Having attended this VBS, I suspect she will enjoy it: it's a lot of games, putting on plays, music, things she normally likes. Plus it's only three hour for five days. I'm really on the fence about whether to make her go. I've thought about contacting the church and explaining the situation: would that be really weird? My mother is a member, but we aren't. Should I make her go?

My eldest, who is 8 and finishing 3B, does it mostly independently. I don't teach it, really. The guide book does that well, as long as she does the labs. I check her work and help her if she gets stuck. For my kid, going through it once a week with an adult would be very doable.

I save content subjects for first grade. We do handwriting (HWOT), math (Righstart), and phonics work (Progressive Phonics) only.

Soror - Hip Hop Yoga sounds cool. How is it? I've tried dance movies previously, but I get very lost very quickly! Well, I started Couch 2 5K again. I did this a few years ago before I had my third, but regular exercise has not been part of my life since his birth. It's time to get back into the swing of it. I'm researching what I want to do about strength training, as I'm hoping to add that next month. Let me know if you have a favorite book/DVD/etc... There's no way I'm going to a gym: it's just not practical right now.

I'm not much of a legal thrillers fan. Probably the closest I ever get is some of Picoult's fluff. Speaking of which, I just finished The Girl with All the Gifts, and it's pretty much the most original zombie novel I've read in a while. I've just started A Walk in the Woods.

I'm loving hearing about what people are doing on their days off. I'm not ready to add any exercise in addition to c25K so far, but I definitely want to pick up a strength training habit after I have a good running habit going. I either use the (free) podcast when I'm running out and about or the (free) app on my kindle fire, as that's what I use to watch tv on the treadmill.

With my first, I was really uptight about tying shoes and had her learn as a preschooler. My current five year old cannot tie his shoes. My eight year old learned to put her hair in a very messy pony tail for swimming last year with a traditional hair tie, but this summer, I've become a hair bungee convert, and they are much easier for kids to use:I don't want to sound like an adbot, but I'm even teaching my five year old to use it. My eldest was an early reader. My five year old is pretty average for his age.

I just did the first day today. I finished couch to 5K before my third, but then stopped running during that pregnancy and haven't managed to pick up a regular exercise habit since. :o But, I'm determined to do a zombie 5K this fall! They haven't posted fall races on my park district website yet, but I can't wait to sign up, because that's probably the best form of accountability for me. I have allergies, too. I do do some running outside, but I use my treadmill a lot, and I feel justified in indulging in crappy tv (gonna work on the first season of Girls) while I run

For kindy kids, I like: George Vs George Founding Mothers Mumbet's Declaration of Independence Phyllis Sings Out Freedom Independent Dames Shh! We're Writing the Constitution Hanukkah at Valley Forge The Scarlet Stockings Spy John, Paul, George, and Ben They Called Her Molly Pitcher You Wouldn't Want to be an American Colonist You Wouldn't Want to be at the Boston Tea Party Sybil's Night Ride Watching this thread, as we will be going to Boston in August.

And same sex sleepovers don't mean there isn't anything sexual going on.... But I'm way too much of a helicopter parent for any of my kids to go on a sleepover with anyone other than grandma yet.

There seems to be a mythology craze in general among kids, and I blame Percy Jackson.

It's in FLL3, and depending on the age of your kid, you could skip FLL2 if you wanted, since FLL3 will review most of what's in FLL1 and FLL2.

We've on and off dabbled with Scratch, but typing is an important skill. I think revision is an important part of the writing process, and I think revision becomes torture when you have to rewrite your work to revise it. So, we started typing as soon as print skills were well-established, which for us was in first grade.

Ellen McHenry's The Elements. Science was such a flop this year, and I really think this will be a welcome change!

My kids are much younger, so we haven't had a lot of conversations about relationships and intimacy, yet. My eldest knows that I had her a couple years before I married her father. She also has friends in similar circumstances, and we have many friends who never married their child's father. Once, when my eldest was a preschooler, she had a friend who told her she couldn't have been at our wedding, because you have to be married before you have kids, and we very firmly made it clear that there are many different ways to make a family, and many parents have kids before or outside of marriage, isn't diversity grand sort of way. We talked a lot before same sex marriage became legal in our state about how unfair it was that some people who loved each other could marry and some couldn't. By now, she knows how babies are made, and if she hasn't figured out that we didn't "wait" until marriage, she will. I sometimes fret about whether this whole "purity until marriage" thing will negatively affect her and try to shield her from it. I hope she knows that she was wanted, that she was as much of a blessing to us as the children we had after we married, as any child. So, I'm definitely on the more liberal side of the spectrum.

Progressive Phonics Bob Books Rightstart Handwriting without Tears We save a lot of subjects until reading and writing are well established.

Really?! Ugh! I paid full price, too.

For a kid who has worked through Beast Academy 4D or maybe 5A depending when it gets published, where would you recommend picking up in Singapore and what supplements would you use, with the goal of using Singapore to bridge from Beast to AoPS pre-algebra?

Adoraballz!!!

I think it is more of a reaction to his educational experiences as a very gifted introvert with hearing loss who got in trouble for working ahead in his school books during class and getting in trouble for not listening to the teacher. He doesn't remember a time not being able to read pretty much whatever he wanted and figuring things out from using a book. He sees others' involvement as wasting time. As a child, he would have been much better off being left alone with a lot of books, and I think he idealizes that. My eldest is somewhat similar to my husband: taught herself to read very young, an avid reader who was reading Little House on the Prairie independently in kindergarten, easily teaches herself mathematics with little help from me...but she needs more help with writing and she's extroverted enough to see being sent to her room alone all day with school work as punishment, not reprieve. He saw my involvement as less than his ideal, but it's really with my middle son where he's been unhappy about how school is going. He's a young five, and we do a little bit of phonics, math, and handwriting most days. It takes less than an hour. He can sound out simple words. He can add small sums with manipulatives and count to 100. He writes his name, but some of it's backwards and a weird mix of upper and lower case letters. To me, it seems obvious that he's just not like his sister or father, but he's doing fine and what we are doing is working okay for him. My husband is frustrated with his academic progress. He's frustrated with the time I spend on school with him: he thinks his middle child should be just picking this up. He's unconvinced that the gains he's made is anything but our middle child maturing, and he worries that something is wrong with him for maturing more slowly than his older sibling, especially if I'm spending time teaching him and he hasn't made more gains. We've had his eyes examined and talked to his doctor. The doctor and I feel like his development is within the boundaries of normal. I feel pretty criticized every time we talk about my middle's education, and his anxiety really stresses me out. My middle child and he don't have a good relationship, and I blame what I believe to be unrealistic expectations.

If you are parenting with a partner, are you the more traditional parent? My partner and I both want to homeschool. He gives me a pretty free hand with the children's education, but I know he would prefer unschooling until college. At the same time, he believes that the kids should be ahead of where the kids in the local (very well rated) public school are. For a lot of reasons, we do a more classical, structured approach. Lately, I've struggled with feeling unappreciated and failing what I consider to be somewhat unrealistic expectations. I've more or less accepted that he probably won't change his mind about his expectations or belief in the lack of adult involvement needed to accomplish those goals, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to live with as my youngest, who is a very hard-working, eager-to-please, musical child but doesn't share his older sister's mathematical and literary precocity, starts his school years. It seems in most relationships, the homeschooling parent is the more educationally liberal of the two. Anyone else in a similar circumstance? Any advice on reconciling different educational ideologies?

If you have a son in hip hop dance, what age did he start? What age do you think is the ideal age to start?

My eldest did Spelling Workout for a couple years. She enjoyed it, but she had virtually no retention. We switched to All about Spelling. It's pretty expensive, though I'll be able to reuse for subsequent children. Even though we're only partway through the first level, we're already re-mediating huge gaps in her phonics knowledge and I'm seeing this start to carry over into her writing. Specifically, she was missing a lot of phonemes. She taught herself to read at four, so the only phonics work we've ever done was through spelling, and spelling workout was not explicit enough for her. Unfortunately, she hates it. She finds it demoralizing to start back on level one, even though a significant amount of the work of level one is new to her. Even though she missed a lot of phonemes, she already has memorized many of the words in level one and resents spelling these simple words she knows by sight. As much as I'm happy to see her finally making some progress with her spelling, given the price and parent intensiveness of the program, I can't imagine sticking long-term with a program my eldest hates. Is there anyone else who has a strong reader who started All about Spelling "late"? Does it get better? I've been thinking about switching to Phonetic Zoo, especially as I have a rising kindy and could use more independent work for my eldest. Who has used Phonetic Zoo? Did you find good crossover from work for the program to their overall writing? How is retention? Has anyone switched from one to the other and could tell me how they compare?

When I feel burned out, we break. And then I remember how much the structure of school helps my kids' behavior, and then I'm ready to get back in the saddle. We do school more lightly in the summer, and only do open and go sort of activities, and only if there's nothing better to do. ;P