Not with a 12 year old, but I work 2.5 days per week at a pretty demanding job, and for me the big shift was realizing that the days I'm at work are not going to work as homeschool days. After a lot of stress and frankly a little bit of anger at the person who in my mind was "supposed to" be doing school on those days, we just don't try to do school on the days I'm at work. Is there a way you can do school in the 4 days you are home? And if he misses fun things due to having to do school on what is a day off for the majority of the world, it might be a good time to point out that he can do his work while you are at work, and be able to play soccer on Saturday with the rest of the world, you know? BTW, the sitter thing is difficult. It sucks to be paying someone to hang out with your 12 year old who just isn't doing the work to check up. On the other hand, I'm not sure changing sitters will help. It is really hard to find a good sitter, much less sitter-tutor. Hope you figure out something to restore peace in your home... sounds like a lot on your plate.

While CC tends to do Henle really young, it was, as far as I understand, meant as a high-school-level, four-year course. So if Henle is overwhelming, you might try a different curriculum. Latin gets overwhelming for younger children when there are multiple parts of the mechanics that aren't totally solid yet, e.g. conjugating the verb, declining the noun, getting the vocabulary, getting the word order, then actually writing all that down. Spending more time getting automatic with the basics with simpler seat work, as is done in the curricula for younger kids, tends to help a lot. If you are committed to Henle, you can take him through each sentence step by step -- first vocab for each word in the sentence (complete entries for nouns and verbs, and for pronouns what case the pronoun takes, etc). Then take him through the verb noting the entire conjugation (e.g. laudo/laudare/laudavi/laudatus would be vocab, then for conjugation you would say first person present active indicative, then 'translate' what that means in normal English). The verb clues you in to the noun that is the subject, so then jump to that noun (remember you should already have the vocab done for this) and you state that it is singular/plural and what case. And so on. But this is a far more teacher driven approach than just sitting him down with a sentence to translate all at once using a grammar table, which is hard even for high school and college students.

We like the Candlewick Press Illiad by Gillian Cross.

They seem to have it in their heads that your job is to make it fun. Don't get me wrong, it's nice when it's fun, but at the end of the day your job is to make sure they learn what they need to know to be well educated adults, not to entertain them every day. Lots of moms get wrapped up in the idea that it's supposed to be entertaining, but if your kids are just rejecting everything then it's time to tell them what they are going to do (bored or not, having fun or not) and then do it. Once they are used to doing as you ask without complaining, you can go back to including more fun stuff. It can be helpful to have an outside observer go through what you're doing and your kids reactions if you are worried your kids might be right, or unsure of what needs to be covered (the other parent can help with this sometimes). Best, l

Rod and Staff does it as part of grade 1. They emphasize drilling until math facts are a no brainer. That said, they build up to this with manipulatives. The approach is fact familiies (e.g., addition family 3 is 0+3, 1+2, 2+1, 3+0). Very traditional, but my son really enjoys it. LMC

I agree with a lot of what has been said above -- if you have a fever, vomiting, or diarrhea, you get the day off. Otherwise, we start doing school. And sometimes, I'm wrong -- which is okay. We can always stop after starting, or do easy/fun subjects that require less consistent attention than math. LMC

Blending is usually a developmental skill rather than taught. There are methods for teaching blending, though. Check out Bearing Away from Sound Foundations, which is usually used for children with severe learning disabilities but could conceivably be used for your child. My advice would be, though, to give it a year and meanwhile if she is truely despirate, let her sound out the letters one by one, then you blend it for her slowly, then have her say it fast: e.g, Mom: okay, lets do this word, [point] Child: "buh" "aah" "tuh" Mom: Good, "baaatttt". Say it fast! Child: bat. Mom: good, next word [point]. At the end of the sentance, go back and read it to her so to model fluency. Best, LMC

We use Image of God for our young children but will likely switch to Faith and Life as they get older. We do bible verse memorization -- we live in a very protestant area so being able to rattle off bible verses is kind of de rigeur. We talk about saints, read little kid books about saints as they come around, etc. We do religious "stuff" around holidays (e.g., talk about Halloween as All Hallows Eve; make sure we do advent stuff during advent, continue Christmas through the Christmas season). They go to CCD where they use "Seeds" for the littles. For us it is less about doing religion class and just making sure it is something built into everyday life -- my kids know the sign of the cross because they make it multiple times during the day, not because they learned about it in "catechism class". Best, LMC

We tried it out and it is pretty enjoyable. My 5 year old seems to be getting a lot out of it, although some of it is over his head. I'm not committed enough at this point (as we are moving) to get materials together for the experiments. And once I regain my commitment, the screens will once again be banished from our household... so not a long term Science solution for our household. But good brain candy. LMC

Maybe try it out and see what happens? Probably won't be the end of the world in any case. Part of being in community with others is sometimes going along with things that might not be your first preference, giving it some time to work and, if after a while it really isn't working to then respectfully approach whoever is in charge of such things and let them know what is going on. LMCme

Depending on where your child is at educationally, the CLE readers for their Reading series feature children who are generally well behaved, with some kids not behaving and then you can discuss what was wrong with the behavior. If you get the teachers manual for Reading 1 as well as the reader (I Wonder) it will guide you through having the discussions. The discussions are biblically based, so if you are not Christian it may not work all that well. Best, LMC

If the price for AAR is too much, consider Dancing Bears, published by Sound Foundations. It helped my DS a lot with reading more carefully and fluently. It is only to learn decoding and does teach common site words. You can see the entire book and flashcards at their website. It is O-G, so the phonemes learned are likely very similar to AAR and Montessauri. To warn you, as it looks a bit bland at first, it is lists of words to practice phonograms with a built in review on the list of words. Because they use a cursor (basically a business card sized piece of cardstock with a corner cut out that you drag accross the word to reveal it phoneme by phoneme), it allows you to control the pace and avoid the student rushing. We did 1-2 pages per day unless we came up to a story, which my son always wanted to read as soon as he saw it. If you are interested in a true reading curriculum (i.e., reading skills other than decoding), we like CLE Reading 1, but make sure you look at the previews to make sure that your child is going to be able to read at that level; Reading 1 is second term of first grade, after a decoding course. Best, LMC

I'm homeschooling a 5 year old, so the stakes are a lot lower, but I didn't do school for a good month or two before delivery and then started back probably 6-8 weeks after. And then went back slow. My only regret is that I didn't take off the last three months of pregnancy... I wasn't a great teacher and was a bear to deal with those last couple of months. LMC

Hi, First off, realize that with a 4 year old, you don't need to do anything formal. If you want to do something academic, I'd prioritize teaching phonics. At 4 years old, that could either be writing each letter on an index card and spending a few minutes per day learning the most common sounds they make (i.e., short vowel sounds only, hard c) or you could get a book (e.g. the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, one of the Dancing Bears books from Sound Foundations). If you want to add handwriting, you can either learn one of the most common handwriting types (Getty Dubay, D'Neilian, or Zaner Bloser) and teach it to your child by just writing the letters on some handwriting paper and letting him copy them, or by getting a workbook with one of those methods. If you want to add math, you can either DIY (counting, skip counting, money, clocks are common topics) or you can get a Kindergarden math program (Saxon K works for a 4 year old). If you want to do more of an enrichment type thing, check out Five in a Row. All in all, don't stress too much at this point! Have fun :) Best, LMC

We did Saxon Math K and Phonics every day. DS was very energetic at that age, so we did about 10 minutes of Phonics, during which he was allowed to fidget, wiggle, stand on his head, jump on the bed, and literally climb the walls as long as he could read while he was doing it. Saxon math he loved, but it couldn't be done while his toddler brother was about because toddlers + manipulatives = explosions. Other than that, we read aloud (I found Five in a Row helpful for figuring out what we could discuss as well as their book lists and sometimes activities, but we didn't do it religiously). We played. Our total "school" time was about 30 minutes per day. As far as whether he missed out, I feel like a lot of the stuff they do at preschool is a way to fill up time with academic-y things. Your kid is just fine with playing freely, moving freely, etc. Best, LMC

Thank you ladies for all the advice :)

The cursor is like an index card with the top left corner cut out. You glide it accross the page to reveal words left to right, and then move down to the next line. Early on in Dancing Bears, you use it to uncover one phoneme at a time, but at the point DS5 is at now, it's a word at a time in a smooth "reveal". We use it religiously when doing Dancing Bears per their recommendation, but during free reading he does what he likes. Best, LMC

I know there are worse problems to have, but I want to intervene on this posiively and early if possible and advisable. My 5yo is an excellent reader. He reads fluently, with great intonation, and sounds very conversational. However... he makes a lot of careless mistakes. By that, I mean he makes a lot of careless mistakes given his general reading level rather than that he makes a lot of careless mistakes for a 5 year old. For example, he can read "Mac and Dave rode into town quietly and looked for a restaurant." However, sometimes he might read that as "Mac and Dave had ridden into the town quietly..." Or, he might just move to the next sentence after the word "looked" and skip the last few words of the sentance. Once he has misread it, it is very hard to get him to go back and read anything other than what he just said, i.e. "try again" gets me whatever he just said rather than him realizing he might have made a mistake and slowing down to re-read. We use a cursor (his primary phonics program is Dancing Bears) and everything -- but he actually reads ahead under the cursor so that he can read a little faster and more fluently! The thing is, his comprehension is excellent. He sits and reads books for hours every day on his own. He loves reading. I'm also open to the more experienced moms telling me to just let it go! Any ideas on how to help him or whether to help him? Is he fine? Thanks, LMC

Maybe Dancing Bears? The serial stoly is a lot of fun (admittedly perhaps inappropriate for the youngest readers as there is a drunken horse and such... but if you're okay with that it is a lot of fun). You can preview the entire book on the Sound Foundations website. It is Orton Gillingham, open and go. LMC

I'm relatively early in the homeschooling journey, so take what I write with a grain of salt, but my take is that learning to read early is not harmful unless it is a huge drain on time or energy. I taught my 3 year old the sounds of letters (only much later did he learn their names) and when he was able to blend easily worked with him on that. We did phonics for 10 minutes a day starting when he was four or so. I was responsive to his reaction to it, and we changed approaches a few times, but insisted that we spent that 10 minutes a day on it. Sometimes he didn't like it. Sometimes we did work with him jumping on the bed or literally climbing a wall. Sometimes he outright refused and I told him he had to anyway. And some days, when he got something, he didn't want to stop and we just kept going after our ten minutes were up. Now he can read. And he loves reading. All of which is to say that while I realize the current theory is that if they don't love every step of the process they might develop "bad associations" and "be turned off from reading", I don't think this is true. I think that mastery is a true pleasure, and that that requires regular practice. One of the most important lessons we can teach our young children is that steady work, even if you don't "like" it, pays off with a joy you couldn't have had if you didn't do that regular, steady work. I think this virtue (which some call industry) is very worthwhile in itself. All of that said, I think it is important if you are teaching your child phonics early that you still read aloud a lot without forcing him to try to read any words. Most reading skills have nothing to do with phonics. Best, LMC

I'm also interested -- we are just finishing up the licensing process, so hopefully it will work out. We had some good discussions with our social workers during the process. What they basically said was that they don't care if we homeschool our own kids, but the foster children would, of course, be going to school. Which makes a lot of sense. I'd be interested in hearing any BTDT, though :) Best, LMC

I'm just starting out, but was having the same conversations with my husband as you are having now not too long ago, and we're now doing K with my 5 year old. I looked at a bunch of math programs, did Saxon K as a K4 option, which my son loved although he wasn't developmentally ready for some of the learning goals. Saxon K was very manipulative based and totally scripted, which was great when I was starting out. Eventually, though, we realized that Saxon K wasn't a great fit for the family, since with all the manipulatives I'd have to get him alone when his two younger brothers were asleep (toddlers are brutal with manipulatives). Also, when he didn't do well on one of the assesments, I never knew quite what I was supposed to do; it so spiral-ly that it was a bit bewildering to go back and figure out how to get one skill that was missed. So, he learned a lot but we had to move on. Now we are using Rod and Staff 1 for K. I added manipulatives, but it is very scripted, no nonsense, and not too many moving parts. When he doesn't get something, it's pretty straightforward to figure out where what he missed is and make it up.Definately not as sexy as many of the programs described above, but I think if you are anxious about teaching math this one might be a good fit. I'd also say that, while I'm glad we spent time on phonics at 4 years old, we probably could have done without the math. I felt like a lot of what we were doing were things that if you just waited a year wouldn't need to be taught at all -- the kid would just know them. So, if I had it to do again, I wouldn't start math until this year. And it may be that next year I say the same thing, that we could have held off until first grade! Best, LMC

We liked Five in a Row, and did that (rather than Before FIAR) at 4 years old. It was a lot of fun, and there was enough selection with activites and discussions that if I didn't have time or energy, we could keep it low key and still have 'done school', but if there was time and energy and excitement we could Pinterest and have a full day of activites planned. The other thing we did at 4 was phonics and math. Math I think, in retrospect, could have been left undone. Phonics I'm glad we did because now (5 year old) he's a completely independent reader and will occupy himself, and often his brothers, with reading. Best, LMC

I think the Ordinary Parent's Guide is a great book. We wound up switching from it becuase my son leveled out on it, but I think if we had just let things percolate it would have worked fine. It is a single volume, use for multiple years/kids, nonconsumable, and very easy to implement. We wound up using Dancing Bears, which is 3 books for the series and is from the UK -- although it is printed on demand in the states. It's also a great program. But if I was overseas I would have probably just stuck with OPGTR! Best, LMC

I agree that a rule based phonics program might not be appropriate developmentally for a 4 year old... if the goal is to have him reading fluently and well, you could try something like Dancing Bears (which is light on rules) at a rate of 1 page per day to start, then go faster as he gets into the serial story which he might really enjoy if that was what drew him along in 100EZ lessons. They are light on rules, mostly focusing on building progressively more complex phonemes and new blends. Think of it as an immersion language course where the language he is learning is written English. Make sure you preview the serial to see if it is right for your family, though. It is hilarious, but does involve a horse getting drunk on oat beer and such. The entire text is available as a free preview online so you can read the entire story. All that said, it is list heavy, but again you just pace how much you're reading and realize that his primary reading instruction isn't coming from there but from the other reading you and he are doing. At some point he will want to learn some rules, but that will be more like 6 years old, by which point he may already be reading fluently. If that happens, he can learn the rules as part of his spelling program.