Just got an Email that Oak Meadow is having their spring sale this month, by the way! :)

Really? A perfect stranger? You know, I can't help wondering how this thread would have gone if instead of the OP posting it, it had been that other mother. If she was a member here and said, "There I was, having a bad day, and some complete stranger stepped in, right in front of me, to put in her two cents and discipline my child...." I bet we'd be seeing WAY more of the "What nerve! I would have told her off!" types of posts by way of response than we're seeing here.

Well, after all of that, she came downstairs, and I said to her something like, "So, you know about 9/11 and what happened with the World Trade Center, right?" as my prelude to the conversation. And she said: "I already know. I watched the whole thing with Daddy last night." Er. Okay! So I was sleeping, and they were up watching it. She hadn't known who bin Laden was or that he was behind it but she did know about 9/11 and the towers and now she's seen the whole president's speech and everything. Which I have yet to see. I'll have to see if I can find it online! I found out on facebook this morning. Crazy.

If you check out my blog (see link in signature), it's a day to day account of how our days go, some pics, etc. There are also links on the sidebar to the left that have more detailed reviews (including of Oak Meadow), sample schedules (of how we took a weekly OM lesson and broke it down into a daily one), a link that shows some of the more interesting activities and assignments we've done, standardized test results, and so on. This year for 5th grade school takes us 3-4 hours a day, and that's with a little bit of supplementing. Like, we do extra reading every day, we added on "Sentence Composing For Elementary School" to see how we'd like it (and usually do a lesson per day of that), we decided on a different math curriculum as I'd already mentioned. But just Oak Meadow could easily be done within 3 hours a day most of the time at this stage of things. I'd be happy to try to answer any other questions, I really do love the whole OM philosophy and creativity and so on!

Yep!

Add me to the RELAX! SHE'S ONLY 5!!! group. :) She doesn't need drills and worksheets. It should be fun, especially at this stage. You should both be enjoying it and enjoying each other. She's got an entire lifetime ahead of her for more formal learning, for paying attention, and so on. Right now her world is just too big to be narrowed down to a worksheet or a drill or keeping her attention off of the squirrels.

:iagree:

Look, if I was in that woman's situation, I'd have been mortified. Sometimes we're just not at our best, sometimes our children are just not at our best, and there could be a million and one reasons for that. If my kid was having an off day or an off moment and I was feeling upset about it and saying something to him, and then there's some strange woman I never met in my life standing in line with her own children who are apparently NOT having an off day or an off moment and she decided to discipline my child... Wow. I'd be feeling all sorts of mortified. Like great here's this woman who thinks she knows how to parent better than I do, who apparently sees me as a useless parent who needs someone to step in and parent for her, who thinks she's got the key to what my child needs in regard to discipline all figured out- AND SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW US! I don't care how good her intentions were (and I'm sure they were meant to be good), I'd be insulted, embarrassed, and I would have gone home and lost days of sleep thinking back over "Why did I let her do that, should I have said something, are my parenting skills really that bad, are hers really that good, who did she think she was" and so on and so forth. Doing something like that is NOT a way to help, it just comes across as "I'm a better parent than you, so let me show you how you OUGHT to be doing this parenting thing!" rather than helpful.

At the end of June, 2011 my daughter was not quite 9 months old and we moved out of New York to Pennsylvania. She was just a baby when the 9/11 attacks occurred. The rest of us were horrified of course. We'd just moved out of NY, my uncle worked right near the WTC and we couldn't get in touch with him at first and he had seen firsthand people jumping out of windows and so on. A friend I worked with before I moved away, her father was never found. I have a brother in the military. It definitely felt personal to us, all of it. But my daughter was so young that of course it didn't affect HER. She's since heard snippets on 9/11 anniversaries and such so she does know that some bad people crashed planes into the towers and that people died but that's pretty much as far as it ever went. Now I'm going to need to give her more of an explanation because people will be talking about it all over. I need to give her enough of the facts of who, what, why but without it being too "horrifying" for a 10 year old girl. Just trying to figure out that balance, you know what I mean? So, :bigear:

A little over two years officially. I pulled my daughter out of public school in March of her third grade year, homeschooled her for the rest of that year, all of fourth, and now we're nearly done with 5th. My 5 y/o son has been home with me right from the beginning and has never gone to preschool etc, but we're not doing formal "school" with him yet.

As a Jew who was born on May 1st, and born and raised in New York, I appreciate that there's a Holocaust Remembrance Day- -and that bin Laden finally got what was coming to him.

I have a friend who says something like, "In lieu of gifts, please consider a donation to ______" (charity of her choice) whenever she hosts a gift-giving occasion.

My daughter and I are nearly finished with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban- we're a tad bit behind. We hope to finish today. Then we will be starting "The Safe Zone, A Kid's Guide To Personal Safety." My daughter is 10 1/2 and just starting to get more freedom this spring in regard to venturing off our block with some of the other neighborhood kids, so I think this is important (in conjunction with the Judo classes she takes and the conversations/roleplaying activities we sometimes do). As for me, I've finished "Unwind" by Neal Shusterman, which I really liked, and I'm now reading the latest Black Dagger Brotherhood book by J.R. Ward- "Lover Unleashed." Ah, good old vampire erotica! :D

So those of you who have kids who are old enough to hear the talk going on in your home or neighborhood and require some sort of summary or explanation.... ...what will you say to them? How will you explain/sum it up? Wondering what I'm going to tell my 10 y/o daughter today before she starts hearing all the neighborhood kids talking about Osama being dead.

And it happened on my birthday. Yay! :D

Despite this thread not going quite how you wanted it to- I'm celebrating with you! I'm glad he's dead. And no amount of holier-than-thou-ing is going to make me feel guilty for feeling glad about it, either.

Ugh. Yes. :iagree:

I would have considered that crossing a line. I would not want someone else, especially someone I didn't even know, attempting to discipline my children no matter how stressed I was, and I can see how it might have made that woman feel even worse- like "Does this stranger think she's a better parent than me, or why can someone else get my kid to do something I can't" or whatever. I do think it would have been nice to say something light-hearted to her- "Tough age sometimes isn't it? We've all been there," but I wouldn't have tried to address the kid like that and wouldn't have wanted someone doing that to me.

I do a lot of running to activities and waiting too but I like having that time to sit and read or play games on my phone in between watching lol. I do still have a 5 y/o so not the same situation, but I homeschool my 10 y/o, I interact with my 5 y/o, I read aloud to both of them, we watch educational shows together or play games together, I keep the house and laundry under control, errands and various kid's activities and so on. We are active in my homeschool group so I'm always planning different field trips, tours, playdates, outings and so on and try to do those things kind of frequently. I like to write, so I keep up my blog and sometimes write articles, reviews, etc. It does sound like you are kind of lonely for adult company/friendship so maybe you should try to join a meetup group or an activity or take a class or something (when someone else can watch the kids for you perhaps) where you can meet people who have similar interests to yours if you aren't finding that in say a homeschool group setting, like a hobby type thing, and see if you can make a friend or two of your own, or couple friends that you and hubby can invite over for a casual get together and see how it goes, or reach out to someone that you don't know so well yet and invite them for coffee or lunch.

So? How did date night go??

Oak Meadow. I loved Oak Meadow for 4th grade and 5th grade so we're continuing with it for 6th. We'll be doing Teaching Textbooks math again because it was such a huge hit here this past year and very successful for us. We may do that 4X a week and Life of Fred 1X a week. We'll also be adding on a couple of other things- Meet The Masters for Art and a free online health curriculum for example, but Oak Meadow is our main thing for English/Language Arts/Science/Social Studies. There's lots of integration, hands on stuff, non-textbookish material, interesting choices of discussion and writing assignments and reading material... we really like it.

Aw. :grouphug: You're definitely not a failure. Nor are you being rejected. This isn't about you at all! This is about some unknown adventure to him and I'm assuming about what other kids in the area do. My daughter went to public school from K-3 and she would tell him: 1) There are "silent lunches, we weren't allowed to talk in there," and 2) "We only got 10-15 minutes a day at the playground," and 3) "We had to sit at a desk alllllllll day long," and 4) "You can do art and math at home, too." You might just have to tell him, "We don't go to public school, but homeschooling is still real school. We don't have a lunchroom or our own playground, but we can take a picnic lunch sometimes and go to the playground near here. And we can do art and math right here at home. And lots of other fun, cool things that we couldn't do if you were gone all day sitting at a desk in a classroom. Plus, I would miss you!" :) With all that said- I DEFINITELY think you should rework a simpler (and hopefully somewhat fun) routine. Keep it basic, keep it as interest-led as you can, keep it hands on/creative if you can, and have fun with it. He's only 5. It really IS okay to be more relaxed and even less academic at that age if that works best for you guys at this stage and to read, let him do the math and art he wants to do and keep the rest interest-led. It doesn't have to take lots of time a day either. You'll find your rhythm! ETA: P.S. A cute book that he might be able to identify with is called "I Am Learning All The Time" (identify with in that the main character is 5 y/o and homeschooled- it's very unschooly, actually- but has friends that go to public school- it remains positive when contrasting the two lifestyles, not critical at all, but he might like that there's a picture book with a homeschooled character like him)! And I agree that if you can find some sort of social homeschool group to do things with now and then, that might be a good idea too.

Yes!

With your husband's hours and your kids in school, you're still going to have to do all the cooking, cleaning and errands. I don't think homeschooling is going to make you so much more "busy" than you already are at this stage of the game (and why can't that be up to you, anyway, how "busy" you are willing to be, if you are going to be the one taking responsibility for it?) Your kids are SO young that they don't need much of that anyway. Even if you choose to do a more formal/academic Kindergarten program with your 5 y/o, it REALLY shouldn't take more than an hour or so a day depending on what you're going with, and the others don't need anything formal at all. Even if you sent your 5 y/o to Kindergarten- you're still going to be home parenting the younger ones, right? Sooo.... instead of doing an hour or so of work with your K student each day, you're going to have to make it to the bus in the morning and to the bus in the afternoon (taking the younger ones with you each time), you're going to have to oversee school-enforced homework (and yes, they do give homework starting in K) only instead of doing it on your terms and your time and such, you're going to have to enforce it at the end of a long day when you and your child are both tired. And there will be parent-teacher conferences and school shopping and school fundraisers and forms to sign and more strict bedtime routines because "it's a school night" and aall sorts of things that will be more time-consuming and irritating than you might think. (Been there, done that, since I didn't pull my daughter out of school to begin homeschooling til toward the end of her third grade year- we've now been homeschooling just over two years and I SWEAR homeschooling is WAY less stressful for me than dealing with public school was!) Perhaps you could also tell him that the fact that he DOES work so much makes it even more important to you and the kids that they get as much time with YOU as possible, instead of spending all day in school, and having limited time with mom AND limited time with dad. Anyway, my husband works from 1 PM til 8 or 9 or 10 PM depending on the day and how busy he is. And he works every Saturday. He's off Sundays and Mondays. So now that we homeschool, my daughter gets more time with him since she can at least see him in the mornings and on Mondays when he's off. We only have dinner together two nights a week but we deal with it. Sometimes I can leave the kids with him and go shopping or something in the morning, or we all go, but lots of times I just do it later and bring them with me. Once in a while I might ask my husband to help with a particular craft or project that I think he'd be good at or enjoy but I do the vast majority of the schooling. Anyway, I agree with you. Adding on K won't be all that much. If you guys want to let the kids stay up later to see him, go for it! You can be more flexible that way when you're homeschooling. Good luck with everything!