Poetry or Short Story workshop Book Club Movie Discussion Group Kickball Board Games Wii/Rock Band/Karaoke etc Arts and Crafts "Walking Club" (various walking and bike trails)

If it's a big, spacious, deep, jacuzzi tub (like the kind I only occasionally get to use in a hotel room), I'm all for it! If it's in my plain old bathtub at home- nah. I'll pass.

Well. I've always thought, since I was young, that I wanted to be: A teacher A writer A mom I'm definitely a mom- and now, because of homeschooling, I'm a teacher, too. As for writing- I've always written creatively, for fun, but once I started homeschooling, I got inspired to write and submit a few articles to a homeschooling magazine and ended up getting published a few times! Granted it barely paid anything but still- I was published and it was the first time I'd ever been inspired to try :)

:iagree:

There are Waldorf and Waldorf-inspired curricula implement "circle time." The newer versions of Oak Meadow K have "circle time" (I have an older version that didn't do/refer to "circle time" but if I had the newer one, yep, we'd likely be doing "circle time"). It's just a time to sit and do songs and nursery rhymes and such.

Thanks, Angela! I think I will do that (hole punch everything and keep it in a binder). I just finished printing out the last of it! Thanks for sharing details of your timeline/schedule, too. I'm looking forward to getting to it and finding out what ends up working for us!

EVERY time? You ARE a risk taker. I only take the paper bags off my kid's heads on alternate Wednesdays of the month! :lol:

bump :)

My 10 y/o currently does Girl Scouts and Judo weekly. She does a library book club like every three weeks. She'll be joining a Homeschool Bowling League that only runs for 10 weeks, starting in Feb. My 5 y/o will also be doing the Homeschool Bowling League in the spring, and we just registered him for teeball (which will start around the time bowling ends, just about). They both did an 8 week indoor soccer league at the Y which is over now, so some things are just temporary/come in spurts. In the summer, they do art camp classes and swimming lessons, usually. We do field trips and get togethers with our (non-academic) homeschool group. We have family and friends and neighbors the kids get together with. I do feel like they get plenty of socialization.

You know, you could always try the medication for a few months and see if it helps. Say, a three month trial period. If it does, keep it up. If it doesn't, you can always stop. I think a lot of parents are hesitant to try ADD medication at first, they sort of see it as "failing" in some way. Or that it will turn their children into "zombies." But you know, some kids just really do NEED it. My oldest daughter (now 19) was in first grade when she first started taking ADD medication. Her teachers were pushing for it as she wasn't focusing at ALL in school, and I resisted for a while because I had this mental vision of it totally changing her personality, of kids who sat like drooling zombies in front of a TV with blank stares, that if only the teachers tried harder and if I tried harder, she wouldn't need to be "medicated," but finally I just gave in and said we'd give it a try. It was a GOOD decision. She did SO much better. She was able to focus, which helped her do better in school (and get in less trouble at school). That, in turn, made her feel happier. And it made me feel less stressed. And other than not being very hungry around lunchtime (which she made up for at dinnertime), there were no side effects. And she certainly wasn't a "zombie"- it was just something she needed. It made her more pleasant to be around, which made people respond to her better, which made her happier... it worked. When she was about 16, I said to her pediatrician, "do you think we can try taking her off the meds and see what happens? She's been on them since she was 6" and he said "sure, give it a try if you want"- and I took her off, and while there was a very SLIGHT change in behavior in regard to how focused she would be and how well she'd listen in class and so on, it was nothing major and after an adjustment period, she did fine overall. She no longer needed the meds and has been off them since. But I have NO regrets over giving them to her when she DID need them.

We use Oak Meadow, and they start in 3rd grade.

No, none of that, but my kids are pretty spread out in age and the two older ones at least are very helpful when it comes to keeping the house reasonably straightened up and organized.

Yeah, four and five and six year olds just take everything in stride. They're very matter of fact about it and it's pretty abstract to them. I find it MUCH easier to just answer their questions right from the beginning and then build on it as they come back for clarification/more information/wanting to process it at an older age and just have it be a continuing education thing that they knew the basics about right from the very beginning... ...I find that SO much easier than the thought of having to talk about it with a pre-teen or teen from step one, where they ARE more likely to take it more personally or be dramatic about it or grossed out about it or embarrassed about it or whatever. That just seems so much more awkward, at that stage!

I looked at Atelier once after reading about it here and thought it sounded great but ridiculously expensive for "just" an art curriculum. Then I also read about Meet The Masters...looked at that...and thought THAT sounded great, too, AND more reasonably priced! And not only that but if you sign up for homeschoolbuyersco-op.org (which I just found out about yesterday and if you don't already know about it, you should! LOL), they currently have a deal where you can buy it for half the price! So I bought it yesterday and plan to start using it next year with my daughter. Just to throw it out there in case you are interested in looking into it :) Insofar as scheduling goes- I don't think you have to worry about teaching a second grader to type yet but if you do want to, you can get him something like Sponge Bob typing, or Typing Instructor for Kids Platinum, and just let him do it on his free time for fun. Likewise, you can throw some educational games in a computer "folder" for him, which you save as his name, and let him play it for fun on his free time as a reward for doing well with school or just for fun or however you want to do it. I don't think you have to do those things as "subjects" during your school hours per se. I also don't think you need anything very structured for music yet, if you don't want to/don't have time to. Listening to classical music (and other music of his choice), perhaps occasionally you might have chance to attend a live musical performance, perhaps you have some "toy" instruments, that's all good. For 4th grade, I used the site makingmusicfun with my daughter to do the "meet the composer" section- you read a mini bio and then listen to them on Youtube- and this year we're doing the "meet the orchestra" section and learning about different instruments... and we do that once a week on a Friday. Next year, in 6th grade, we're going to sign her up for guitar lessons. I'm going to have her take typing lessons (again) over the summer. Art will have a scheduled time slot for us next year for using MTM. But "computer time" never does, that's just on their free time. Just do whatever works for you guys!

No problem. And I was just peeking at your blog (you take some great pics btw!) I will spend some more time looking at it :)

I've tried to teach my kids that with regards to their bedrooms, particularly after I had to spend hours helping clean and organize it because it had reached the point where it should have been condemned heh. We'd clean, organize, declutter, find a spot for each thing, talk about how "you can keep it this way, if you would only put this thing back in its spot when you're done with it, before taking something else out" or "if you'd only spend five minutes doing a quick straightening up before bed, and not let it get to this point...." But it never works for more than a few days. It always goes back to looking like it ought to be condemned. Particularly with my 10 y/o. She's just messy and disorganized in general! (That, and she likes to play with more than one thing at a time) :) And my 5 y/o...forget it, he's like a little tornado sometimes. He'd want to take everything out and wouldn't be so eager to put it all back where it belonged, so I'd be doing it... I do honestly adore the look of the room though! :D

Great, thanks for that link! I will check it out! And thanks for the above tip on mounting on bigger paper and putting in an album (so you mean that you holepunch the background paper to go into the binder, as opposed to hole punching their actual work, right?) One more question... once you guys print out all these packets of information, what do you do with it? Right now I just have it paperclipped into bundles by artist... would you holepunch this stuff and start a binder for it? ETA: Another question, one of the first things on the art supply list is "Prang Original Tempera Paint 3/4 oz. - 6 color set" - er, what do they mean by "original?" Looking on that Dick Blick website, they have: Prang Dry Tempera Cakes This compact tempera cake set incorporates a paint brush and water wells for mixing and cleaning. It includes nine fabulous colors that are ready to use, and the easy-to-store plastic tray makes cleanup and storage a snap. Prang Ready-To-Use Tempera Paint Ready-to-use, it won't settle or separate in squeeze and paint bottles. It never needs stirring. It gives rich opaque matte coverage, and mixes with other temperas. Non-toxic, water-soluble. Neither of which seems to be exactly what is mentioned on the art supply list... but will any squeeze bottle of tempera paint work? (they don't mean the dry cakes right??)

Congrats!! :)

Oh, I agree with you! I'm sure everyone will use their discretion and not humiliate their kids or do anything totally evil for posterity's sake, but still manage to chronicle some of their not-so-great moments of the week if they think they're able, in whatever way they're able. I do mean for this to be fun and to show a balance of what real life's like while homeschooling (as opposed to ONLY the bright, shiny stuff), but not of course to upset older kids further by posting things that might embarrass them. I don't expect my 10 year old will have cause to cry this coming week. But my 5 y/o will, without a doubt. And a house that might have been nice and neat on a given morning will look like I never, ever clean it later that afternoon. And there will be tons of clutter in the background on the counters as we do schoolwork at the kitchen table. And there might be a bored look on my daughter's face while she does vocab. Or somebody might spill something all over the place. Or the cat might poop in the hall. Or the fridge might look way sparser than it should because you procrastinated on food shopping. And so on and so forth. Be creative. Have fun with it. Be honest at your discretion, but I certainly don't mean for anyone to humiliate herself or her family. :)

Honestly? My daughter was only about 5 or 6 when we had "the talk." She asked, I read her a book geared toward children about it- very matter of fact but in words a child could easily understand- I think the one I read her was by Dr. Ruth- and she said, "Thanks for telling me about where babies come from, Mommy!" and that was that. Periodically since then (she's now 10) she's asked if she could read the book again, and I say "sure" and let her read it. If she asks questions, I answer them. It hasn't really come up with my son, who is now 5. He did ask me once if I ate him when he was in my belly (haha) and then he wanted to know how he got out. But we haven't really had any further discussion yet. ETA: I do definitely think it's WAY past time for your son to have all the details- ones that he gets from you (with the aid of books if you are more comfortable that way), because who knows what he's hearing from other kids in the neighborhood.

I totally skipped the chicken mummy project. I still don't feel any guilt over that. LOL.

It does, thanks again! :)

Thanks, Lesley! That's a good idea... how often do you find 40 percent off coupons for Michael's??

It shouldn't take long just to start something basic, then you can tweak it as you go and learn/feel your way. :)

Don't worry. It's much more likely that NOBODY will scrub the toilets. Sigh. There. I said it. lol.