You don't have the poll option I'd have chosen: We don't have a pool but wish we did. :D

I don't know if you want to go this route, but there's a book called "Talking Pictures, A Parents' Guide to Using Movies to Discuss Ethics, Values, and Everyday Problems with Children," which uses movies as springboards for discussion pertaining to various topics and ideas for different age groups, including a section for teens. Topics under the teen section are Family Life; Social Life and Friends; Coming of Age; Sex and Romance; Values, Morals and Ethics; Prejudice and Diversity; Death and Disability; Divorce and Single Parents; Drugs and Alcohol; Paranormal and the Unknown... and then each of those topics has like five different movies in that category, and each one comes with a list of discussion questions and pointers.

We will be using OM6 and OMK! :)

But then what will you do when she's a senior? Call her a 12th grader doing college level work? (I don't mean that in a snarky way at all by the way!!) Do you worry that when she gets to be that much older she's going to consider herself a 16 year old senior anyway and not want to "repeat" or extend 12th grade once she feels like she's "done"? That's kind of what I meant when I said that I felt like if I was going to do it, this would be the time, because once she gets to the teen years, I don't think she'd be as likely to tolerate the idea as well. None of my family would have a problem with my decision, I don't think. They wouldn't see it as her being "left back," I am pretty sure they would all understand. Like I said, if she'd been born one day later she'd be in a lower grade anyway. They know that. She could continue to be in all of the same extra curricular activities she is currently in with the same kids she is currently in them with. In Girl Scouts she'd continue moving on with the group she's in now, and nothing else is grade dependent. So I don't necessarily agree that once you start out in a "grade system" you have to stay on that track or it would cause problems with things like that. As for moving half pace, while I would do the "official" 6th grade curriculum over a two year period (which is heavy on reading and writing), I would also supplement with other things in the meanwhile so it wouldn't be like two ridiculously light years followed by being overwhelmed in 7th grade.

So are flashers in trench coats. Just saying. LOL.

Can you see any negatives to doing that, that I may not be thinking of? My daughter is 10. She started out in public school K when she was still just four years old as the youngest child in her class, as her birthday was on the cutoff date for our district- which was October 1st at the time. The following school year, the district ended up pushing the cutoff date back to September 1st as it turned out. So one day later and my daughter would have been finishing up fourth grade right now rather than fifth, and going into fifth this fall rather than sixth. (We didn't start homeschooling until she was in third grade). While she's done pretty well overall, I did think this year that she may have done a bit better with some of her writing assignments insofar as what she got out of them, how independent she was with them, etc., if she had had that extra year under her belt, but, still, it went well enough and that isn't my main issue. The truth is, I'm looking way ahead to when she graduates from school- whether that ends up being homeschool or going back to public school for high school only time will tell. But when she graduates, if she keeps advancing through the grades now, she'll still be 16 when she starts 12th grade. 17 when she graduates. What if she wants to travel, move out, go away to college, or whatever when she is done with school... I have no idea what she'll want to do, but I keep coming back to that whatever it is she's going to do, maybe I'll feel more secure with it if she's 18, not 17. Maybe she'll do better with it if she has an extra year of age and maturity under her belt. So my husband and I have been toying with the idea of stretching 6th grade out over a two year period. Just basically taking my 6th grade curriculum for this coming fall and instead of doing a lesson in one week, doing it in two, and then supplementing with some other things to round our day out. I can see some pros to doing this, but are there cons, too? (I don't think my daughter will be terribly upset by the idea or anything so that's not a major consideration or anything). I just feel like if I'm going to do something like this, it needs to be now, this year, because I think that as we get into later years she'll be less willing than she'd be now. UPDATE IN POST 52/PAGE 6; EMAILED OAK MEADOW DIRECTLY ABOUT THIS AND GOT A RESPONSE. :)

That wins... that is sooooo funny! :lol: I read it aloud to my husband and he was cracking up, too. Love!

I personally don't have a "passion for kilts"- other than the association with Jamie from Outlander. Yum. Yep total crush on a book character here! hehe.

I'm in the middle of three books right now: "The Fifth Sacred Thing" by StarHawk which I started last week and haven't finished yet- almost done though! The latest in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward (vampire erotica)- I had started it before The Fifth Sacred Thing but put it aside when I got that, because The Fifth Sacred Thing is an interlibrary loan book and I own the other one. And the Free Range Kids book by Lenore Skenazy which I'm still reading here and there in spare moments. Together, my daughter and I just finished The Long Winter and I will be starting "The Return of the Indian" today as a read aloud with the kids as we read the first in the series a while back and I just came across the second at a used book sale the other day.

I have a page of good quotes related to education/homeschooling on my blog if you want to take a peek. Click the link in my sig then see the sidebar to the left- under the "misc" heading there is a link that says quotes.

Oak Meadow. :001_wub: I'm really looking forward to giving it another try with my son this fall- he hadn't been ready for it when I tried last September.

I agree. When I was looking for TT6 I posted a WTB and bumped it a bunch of times to keep it in the first page or two. For a long time, nobody responded. During that time, two or three times I'd see someone then list it on the FS boards- but of course, by the time I saw it there, someone else had already jumped on it. :P

That's hilarious lol. Batteries not included! Too funny! And yes I do write this stuff down- I've had an ongoing wordpad document since my now 10 y/o daughter was about 3 years old writing down all of the funny things she (and now my son, too) said. Every now and then I look back and laugh- there were so many priceless gems I'd have forgotten all about if I hadn't been writing them down! :)

We don't normally allow eating in the living room, but we made an exception the other day and let my 5 y/o son eat lunch at his little play table in the living room. My husband told him to make sure he ate over his plate/the table because the carpet can't be easily cleaned. My son looked at him and said, "You can look to save money with Oxiclean, you know!" While we blinked in surprise, he proceeded to add: "Oxiclean is stronger than regular!" "Regular what?" My husband asked, while I just started laughing. "I don't know." Yep. He probably watches too much TV.

The review in question doesn't bother me at all. (Then again, you might say that some of my posts/reviews of things like Oak Meadow or Teaching Textbooks sound like an infommercial these days lol). I also don't think it's a big deal if someone joined this board just to post their glowing review of something they've tried and loved. We all joined for some reason. Some people join just to buy or sell something. Some people join just to ask a question about one particular thing. This forum comes up very easily when people do searches online so it wouldn't be all that hard to see someone was asking a question about it and decide they love the product enough to offer their input and join because of that. Maybe after that they would have looked around some, liked what they saw and stayed. But after being called "creepy" because of their first post? (Which I really don't even get, because it was a relevant post, about homeschool curriculum on a homeschool board- I mean, it wasn't like they showed up going "I see you were asking about modest bathing suits, I love those, can I see a picture of your kids using theirs?"). I'd guess they probably wouldn't want to stay now.

When my daughter's room starts looking like a disaster area, I have learned that telling her to clean it is not really effective. It's not that she purposely wants to disobey or anything. It's that she doesn't really yet know how to make effective use of her time, and she's easily distracted, and she gets overwhelmed and/or doesn't know where to start, etc. Rather than punishing her for that, I've found that if I pick a time where I can go up there with her and either help her out a little bit (I mean, why not- she's always helping me with all the other areas around the house and work is so much more pleasant in general when people pitch in and help each other) and/or at least direct her... "Okay, put those barbies in the toybox. Done with that? Okay, dirty clothes out in the hall please, you can take them down with you when you're done. Put those books in your book bin now." Things like that. Things actually get accomplished that way... much more effectively and in way less time than if I'd just told her "go do it." Nobody gets punished. I know there are those of you who will say "Well how will she ever learn etc etc etc"... all I can say is that I'm just confident that she will. *I* believe that this kind of thing will resolve itself as she gets older, more mature etc automatically and that it's not worth making a "you must do this or you will never learn as long as you live!!!!" stand when she's ten. Works for us.

I suggest you read this thread: http://welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=259625 I'm a huge fan of Teaching Textbooks, and I started that thread I just linked you to after I got my daughter's standardized test results back for this year and wanted to show how well she did on the math portion of the test after a year of Teaching Textbooks. Plenty of other people in that thread chimed in to say how well their kids had done, too. Check it out. :)

Lora, those are fantastic scores! Thanks for sharing them here! :)

Can you move over? I need a bit more room for my air mattress! (No intentions of teaching Latin over here)!

Cool... and just to let people know, I got it for my 10 y/o daughter a few months ago even though I wasn't sure if she might be just a bit too old... I figured if she wasn't interested, I could always keep it for my 5 y/o son. But as it turns out, my 10 y/o daughter LOVES getting Little Passports (and my 5 y/o son wouldn't really be too interested yet). I've got a review of it and some pics etc on my blog if anyone wants more info, just click on the link in my sig, then see the sidebar to the left for the Reviews section. :)

Wow... no, you were not wrong, but if I were you, I would have not welcomed/invited/told her about our plans at all, period. She'd be disinvited, not included, we would have nothing to do with her. No way, no how.

Beats me, no-one around here will take them that early. There's a karate place that will take kids starting at 6, and at the judo class my daughter takes at the Y, it's for ages 7 or 8 and up, I think. And sensei said he loves it when they start even older, like 12 or even into their teens, when they're more likely to be committed lol. He also said he loves when he gets former gymnasts, so like someone else said, gymnastics might be a really good start!

Childhood. That was definitely my main reason. I felt like she and I were both missing out on her childhood while she was in public school. Because of the amount of time she was there, the amount of homework she brought home from the youngest age on (and instead of enjoying my time with her late in the day, I had to play enforcer for the school while were were both tired and just wanted to relax or have fun), how boring and academic even Kindergarten had become, the fact that her K and 1st grade teachers in public school were taking her recess away frequently as punishment for talking too much in the classroom, but expecting her to sit at a desk all day long, the fact that every single day- even our time at home- had to revolve around school- bus schedules and homework and studying and forms and notes and phone calls and school shopping and "go to bed, it's a schoolnight," "no we can't, it's a schoolday" - all of it. I got so sick of it. This led me to research homeschooling, which led me to also read about all the other benefits- how much better it could be academically and so on. And it has gone very well. And that first year I homeschooled, my mother sent me the newspaper clipping regarding standardized testing in our area and how HORRIBLE all the local schools had done- pretty much below state average across the board- and that was when I REALLY felt like, "Okay, I'm probably NOT going to screw her up because of this... I really don't think I can do worse than these schools are doing." I've never looked back. I'll never send my son to school the way I did my daughter in those younger years. And I DO feel like we've taken my kids' childhoods back. :)

Beth, she hasn't yet. We've used Oak Meadow for 4th and 5th (we're in our last couple of weeks of 5th now) and we've been reading them together all along. We will most likely do it in 6th, too, then re-evaluate the following year. She COULD read them on her own now- she's a good reader and likes to read- but we kind of enjoy reading them together, and like I said, it helps me help her with or to better evaluate her writing assignments and see what she's taking away from the books and so on.

Maybe she just isn't ready? Five is very young. You could just stop and try again in six months or a year. Maybe just for a bit of perspective you might want to check out "Better Late Than Early" by the Moores (not saying you'd wait that long but maybe it would make you feel more comfortable with waiting a little while longer). To me, it's not really worth the stress or frustration for parent OR child at such a young age, to force something that they aren't interested in/enjoying/isn't going well etc.