Yes, it's possible; no, it's not legal.

My laundry mates and produces offspring all over the house. I find it everywhere. I may need to find a good exterminator. Home remedies aren't working.

Nope! I turned 38 last month and I'm in my 5th month of trying. Wish me luck! And congrats! :)

No, I will drink from whichever one I grab.

I see a few people recommended Saxon but I would not recommend Saxon at ALL for a child you say is "not at all mathy." I think MY eyes were bleeding just looking at the first lesson of Saxon 5/4 before I said heck no and found TT instead. My non-mathy child would have detested it, and I would have definitely had to give lots of help, which wouldn't have been my thing since I'm not very mathy either.

Maybe you have to tell them to do it, then stand there and wait. Tell them firmly "RIGHT NOW, please." Then stand there and watch to make sure they are getting started. Once you are satisfied that they are, move on to what you need to do, and then check back on them. ETA: Sure you COULD start imposing all sorts of "consequences" but that's also just going to add to the overall feelings of negativity and stress for all of you. It just seems easier, more positive, and less stressful to me to call people over as needed and ask them to do a particular thing, wait to make sure they are doing it, and then that's it, move on. No yelling, no nagging, no punishing, just sort of a "hey, it's time to help out with this or that now" approach. I guess it may not work for everyone. But it works for me and it's a lot more pleasant than handing the kids a list, them not doing it, me getting upset, punishing them, them forgetting again the next time and me getting upset and on and on and on and on....

Is there a reason you don't want it to be Teaching Textbooks? My daughter (who is not mathy either) started using Teaching Textbooks for 5th grade this year- in fact, she just finished the final quiz of the final disc today and is now done with math for the year! And it was fantastic. She likes math, she no longer feels math is "too hard" or that she isn't good at it, she's had fun with it, she GETS it, she's built up so much confidence, she does it 99 percent independently... AND she did wonderfully on the math portion of her standardized testing this year (so don't be scared of all the "it's not a good enough program/it's too behind the other math curricula" hype out there)! It's been a great math year for us and we're looking forward to continuing with TT6 in the fall.

We avoid this problem by avoiding assigned chores and charts altogether. Instead I pick and choose moments each day on no particular schedule where it seems like a good time to get things done, and then I call my kids over one by one and ask them to do a particular thing right then and there and to come let me know as soon as they are done with it. They will then disperse to do those things while I start something I need to do, and I will then give them another task or set them free as needed. It works out great for us that way. Very little stress.

Didn't read the whole thing but may I make a suggestion? Maybe you should start considering how to word things to her in a way that gives her less opportunity to lie. Instead of "Did you eat that candy" when you know she did, tell her "You should not have eaten that candy without permission. Please ask next time" or whatever. Of course she could still lie by protesting "I didn't" but maybe it would help some of the time. Also make a concerted effort to praise her when she tells the truth. I don't like lying either but some kids see it as a self preservation thing, I guess.

I think Old Spice smells really good! It's not an "old man" smell to me lol. Oh and I love their commercials- despite the fact that my 10 y/o daughter has memorized two of them and likes to recite them randomly and rapidly!

Thanks for the suggestions so far! I have suggested Jemima, Clementine, Josie and Tabitha to my husband and he shot them all down. Sigh. I also like Delilah but know from past conversations that he doesnt. He hasn't made any suggestions himself yet. :glare: I haven't had any others elicit a "love it!" reaction from me yet so not sure what else to suggest to him. It's so hard to come up with names we can agree on!

Ooh I like Jemima. I wonder if I can talk hubby into it. He never likes the same names I like though lol. Keep making suggestions, just in case. :D

Another homeschooling mom I know is giving away three kittens that her cat had. She posted their pictures on Facebook and I kinda fell in love with this one! (See pic below). I gave her a call and we are going to take that kitten. It's between 8 and 9 weeks old and we're going to pick it up next week. It's a female kitten. What name jumps out at you when you look at her? :)

That's ridiculously late! We usually invite people over about an hour before dinner is going to be served so we can sit and hang out and chat and whatnot. Within an hour (sometimes a bit less- I'd say 30-60 minutes) we eat dinner. If it was going to be longer than that, there would definitely be appetizers. I can't imagine making people wait til 8 PM to eat dinner under any circumstances!

I would tell my daughter to tell her friend that she is not allowed to cut or otherwise deface or destroy ANYTHING of hers or ANYTHING in the house again without implicit permission from you under your strict orders and to tell her that "my mom said if she finds anything like this again, we will not be allowed to play together in my house anymore." Then, follow through. If it happens again, the kid is not allowed in your house anymore.

I can remember trying something like that one time when I was about 12 or so (I'm 38 now) with my brothers... only because I'd heard/read that if you held your breath until you passed out it wouldn't matter because you'd just start breathing again once you passed out or something stupid like that, so we thought it might be "fun" to try to choke each other until we passed out and then let go and start breathing again. However, we never got that far, we got too scared. Thank goodness. Kids do some really stupid things huh? I will mention this to 10 y/o dd in case any of her friends get something dumb like this in their heads!

Most of the time we stayed out of trouble, but there were a couple of times where we'd sneak out in the middle of the night to go riding bikes around town or some such (I'd be horrified if my kid did that)!

But my daughter finally wrote her own imitation sentences after the models ALL on her own... ENTIRELY on her own... with no help from me whatsoever!! No handholding, prompting, suggesting, helping her get started... she just did it all by herself. And although it only took until the next to last lesson/practice of the whole book, when I told her what a good job she was doing with writing them all on her own and how I knew she could do it, I heard her say: "I hate to admit it, but this is kind of fun." Really. She said that. lol. (She did just fine with everything else in the workbook, it was only the "write your own sentence" where she'd get hung up. Some of the sentences are just so long and she would just constantly look at them as a whole and get overwhelmed with trying to write her own imitation that copied the model but finally- finally!- she has learned to just look at each sentence a part at a time and write something similar- all by herself)!

We made our own candles and tin can lanterns. We made our own paper and walnut shell ink. We buried items in the backyard for a few weeks and later dug them up to see which had decomposed/started decomposing and which hadn't changed. We made a multi-media forest mural and a simple worm bin. We did various things out of clay and made our own butter, hardtack and johnnycakes. Did various nature crafts. Stuff like that.

There are SO many different things that can be counted! My 10 y/o daughter takes a weekly Judo class at the Y as an ongoing thing (she used to take gymnastics for a while prior to that). She occasionally went to a once a month homeschool P.E. class at the Y. She participated in a winter homeschool bowling league. She takes swim lessons every summer. She plays the Wii and Wii Fit, she puts on music and dances around to it, she sometimes borrows kid's exercise or dance or yoga or whatever videos from the library and does them at her leisure. Sometimes we go for walks together. She is also active just in play. She runs around with her friends, rides her scooter, rides her bike, swims for fun in nice weather, plays at the playground, or sometimes at indoor play places and so on.

I'd posted this in another thread so I'm just copying and pasting for you lol: --- We love Teaching Textbooks over here. This review I wrote: http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/124221.html explains why. And if that's not enough, check out this post: http://welltrainedmind.com/forums/sh...s+standardized Hope this helps. :) Nance

No, but if we're carrying stuff outside to eat on the patio and they ask what they can do to help I might ask them to bring something or other out to place on the table (the bowl of salad, the ketchup, whatever). And if they start helping to clear the table afterward, well, I'm not going to complain. :D

Well, I'm one of the more relaxed homeschoolers here I think but we have been finishing 5th grade work lately in about 4 hours a day, and I like for all of us to have plenty of time to do our own thing, explore our own interests, have fun, for the kids to just "be kids" etc. I would definitely not want schoolwork going that long/late here on a regular basis, although once in a while if we have to play catchup because we had extra field trips and whatnot in a given week, I'm fine with that. But regularly finishing around 4 and doing "homework" in the evening? No, I would not want a schedule like that. (As for "that's what kids do," that's what kids do when they don't have a choice lol).

We love Teaching Textbooks over here. This review I wrote: http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/124221.html explains why. And if that's not enough, check out this post: http://welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=259625&highlight=teaching+textbooks+standardized Hope this helps. :)

Oh, of course! I'm not saying that people wouldn't want to incorporate other things they enjoy or shouldn't make replacements as desired (I use TT math instead of OM math at this point for instance because I like it better; I checked out SCFES because it sounded interesting). I was just curious why some of you felt that open-ended/creative topics meant there wasn't enough instruction as I do feel there is writing instruction included, too. (I do know what you're saying though! I'm not suggesting that people wouldn't or shouldn't prefer/use other methods that work for them)!