I've read: In bed before going to sleep, at the kitchen table while eating my lunch, while in the bath, while in the bathroom, while sitting in a waiting area somewhere waiting for one of my kids to finish one of their extra-curricular activities, while the kids were otherwise occupied with playing, instead of watching TV/being on the computer/doing the laundry (cough) haha... I agree, there's always time to MAKE time to read! :)

*I* LOVE that book! The Pigeon books are SO funny!

It wouldn't be so terribly far-fetched to throw the phrase "stockholm syndrome" out there, would it? :P

Maybe? My son is 5 and not officially starting K until the fall but they would never hold his interest and I don't think he'd get anything much out of them. The ones I've used I'd consider more for 2-4th (and my daughter and I have even continued reading a few into 5th), but who knows, your K'er might be a bit older than mine and/or might have more of an interest/attention span/ability to retain this kind of thing than mine does.

I haven't read all the responses, but when I read about "deschooling" it said you should give your child ONE MONTH per YEAR OF SCHOOL to "deschool." If your son was in, say, 5th grade- he needs five months of "deschooling." Not two weeks (or whatever it's been since you pulled him out). Honestly... can you just take the rest of the year "off" and by "off" I mean you "do school" in hands on, fun, creative ways... find out what he likes, what he's interested in, and then go with it! Maybe like a unit study type of approach... get books on that subject, videos on that subject, see if you can build something/make a craft/a recipe etc on that subject, go on a field trip based on that subject, sign up for an extracurricular class on that subject and so on. Let it take as long as it takes, whether that's an hour or a month, then go on to the next thing he wants. In the meanwhile, bond. Develop your relationship. Talk. Laugh. Read together if he likes reading/being read to. Watch movies together. Play games together. Go for walks, do things around the house, ask questions, answer questions. Play. I think maybe he needs a little more time. And if, during that time, you want to look into testing, or whatever you think he might need, go for it. But right now... math (or whatever) isn't going anywhere. Let it be hands on, real life, practical applications- forget about worksheets and textbooks for a while.

Maybe you should ask him to read a few of John Taylor Gatto's articles and books. He was a teacher and has lots of things to say about the public school system that should make anybody want to homeschool :D Try: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling or Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling ^I just LOVE the title of that one. Weapons of Mass Instruction. That's great! :D Gatto has some articles online, too. You could google his name and "article" and see what comes up. Or maybe a John Holt book: "Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better." In the meanwhile, google "benefits of homeschooling," spend some time reading through the many articles that will come up, and then save some that you think might speak to your husband and show them to him. Some people have success convincing their spouses by getting them to compromise: Agree to at least TRY it/do it on a trial basis. Good luck!

My son makes up words like that, too, when he's trying to rhyme. I don't ever say "that's not a word," we just keep on making up rhyme sounds, and I tell him he's doing a good job rhyming. I agree, that can even help them get the idea.

I'm sure you did! And I hope I didn't come across like I was trying to guilt trip you. Actually, I was just thinking of the sense *I* have had MY whole life of being no good at math. It's a really hard thing to get rid of once you've labeled yourself that way or somebody else has made you feel that way.

I just bring it up a lot in conversation to reinforce it (when I can remember to do so). My son is 5 and still sometimes forgets, but he's getting there, and I'm sure he'll have it down pat sometime this year :P I'll do things like "Oh, we have to make a right now" while driving. "It's time to turn left." "Here, you need mittens on...give me your right hand" (as I take his right hand and help him with the mitten). "Good job, now give me your left" (as I hold my hand out toward his left hand). As he's getting his shoes on: "Oh, good job, you put your right shoe on. Now put your left shoe on." "Let's shake hands... no, you shake hands with your right hand, that one is your left..." And so on. Sometimes we'll play games. We'll stand up and I'll stand next to him so my right is his right and so on and I'll give direction as I model them. "Kick your right leg. Good, wave your left hand. Step to the right. Now kick your left leg." The Hokey Pokey is good, too :D

NYC, she's doing awesome! I'm so impressed that she did those at 8 with you doing nothing more than going through the examples with her. Mine continues to need SOME guidance while writing her sentences, although I think she's doing pretty well overall!

No, but there are at least 2 or 3 moms on here that I do know or have met in real life. I still just act like my normal self and post the same whacky things I otherwise would have. I think they still like me. LOL.

Well, I am a pretty relaxed homeschooler using a hands-on type of curriculum that isn't ridiculously time consuming- we can be done with school within three hours or less a day. And I don't feel like I have to adhere to a rigid timeframe or schedule- we kind of go with the flow. We might get it all done in the morning one day, and not even start until after lunch the next. We might do some in the morning one day then take a break to do things we need to do and then wrap things up in the evening. I have a 5 year old (who's been quite a demanding child from the day he was born, insofar as my time and energy go) and I just do my best to keep him busy with things that interest him as he's not ready for school yet- it's easier this year. The older he gets, the easier he gets. My girls are older, so they help with household chores. And I don't even TRY to keep my house immaculate, we do general straightening up regularly and I keep up with the things like dishes and laundry as best I can and have the family pitch in, and when we're having company we all run around like lunatics cleaning up but I don't expect that the house will always be spotless and picture perfect. I try to run some of my errands on my husband's day off so I don't always have to take the kids with me- or I make him come too and we do it as a family... I usually wake up earlier than everyone else does and my "me time" is in the morning at my computer with my coffee... and at night when I read in bed or watch TV a bit after the kids are settled... and odd moments in between when they're busily playing together... I just fit it in. I don't know, somehow it just works out! Things kind of fall into place. And maybe I'm just not bothered much because I chose this- like my daughter was in public school til third grade and I chose to pull her out and I've been so much more happy/relaxed homeschooling than I was when she went to public school! So even though homeschooling has its challenging moments, I still remember all too well how much worse it was when she was in public school and she was gone all day and I had to enforce homework at the end of a tiring day and everything we did was done with the bus and school schedule in mind: ("Hurry up and get up! You'll miss the bus! Hurry, get the bus! See you later! Hmm I can't go far, I have to be home for the bus..gotta make the bus... oh hi, yes, I know you're tired and you've been at school all day but you have this hour's worth of homework and I have to make you do it, no, not now, I have to do dinner, well, you can play a little but not long, it's a school night, did you study for your test, did you lay out your clothes, get to bed, it's a school night...." over and over and over. Ugh. What a monotonous, dreary life those school days consisted of!)

Isn't that terrible? I tried a while back to volunteer to be like a mentor at an organization for pregnant and parenting teens (because I WAS one once upon a time and really thought I could help) and they refused me because I'm not Christian. Even though the "job" I'd have been doing would have had nothing to do with religion, it would have just had to do with parenting- like parenting type classes and mentoring. She actually told me, "Maybe you can find something more in line with your Jewish heritage" or some such. I'm SURE that's EXACTLY what Jesus would have said. "This woman wants to help, but she's Jewish, so send her away." :rolleyes: Riiiiight. As it turns out, the only organizations for this type of thing are doing it for religious reasons- which is fine with me, I just wanted to help and it didn't matter to me if the people I was working alongside were Christian- but apparently they didn't feel the same way about me. It's a shame. I hope you find something!

I've never read it.

We've had group parties where everyone brings some sort of snack or dish, we'll do valentine's day related crafts, exchange valentines, and play some games. Last year we played "pin the heart on cupid's arrow" (with stuff I printed from online), find the construction paper hearts (which we'd hidden, the kids had to see who could find the most), guess how many (pink and red) jellybeans are in the container, whoever gets closest gets to take it home, and so on.

Just to throw it out there- I went to a private Catholic school one year in 10th grade despite the fact that our family was not Catholic/Christian, because my mother thought it would be a "better" school than the public school. Yeah right! Drug deals at lunch period, smoking in the bathroom, hiking up the little plaid skirts as far as you could get away with, bullying, and everything you would want to avoid in a public "secular" school were happening there in that religious school, too.

I sent my daughter to Kindergarten. It was a full academic day of lots of deskwork, nothing like the fun Kindergarten I remembered. She was frequently losing the meager 15 minutes of recess the kids got for "talking too much," yet these kids had "silent lunches" and almost no recess. And they were expected, at age 5, to just sit at a desk all day. I sent her on to 1st grade, because that's what people do. It was more of the same, with lots of lost recesses, only this teacher also gave her a "demerit" for talking too much (she came home one day, looked at me, started SOBBING and said: "I got a demerit, Mommy. And I don't know what that is, but it's BAD!"). Said teacher also gave her an "F"- yes an "F" in 1st grade! for math one period. Why? Not because she didn't know the work. She did. Because she had some incompletes for A) being sick, B) being on vacation, and C) taking her time with the pictures when they were told to show illustrations for their work and not finishing on time. In the case of A and B, the teacher didn't have time to let her make it up in class and wouldn't send it home. You know, in case I cheated and did it for her or something. I sent her on to 2nd grade, because that's what people do. It was okay- her teacher was very nice. No more losing recesses for talking too much- at 7 she was more able to keep still and quiet than she had been at 5. But they were ridiculously long days, she'd come home with like an hour of homework at LEAST and had like no time to just be a kid. And she'd tell me about a few instances of things kids had said or done on the playground or on the bus, which weren't all that appropriate, and I was thinking Really?! They're, like, 7 and 8 years old! I sent her on to 3rd grade, because that's what people do. Again, she had a super nice teacher. But now came the standardized testing year and that was ALL the school focused on. To the point where the kids were so stressed out and nervous about it- my daughter had stomach aches nearly every single day. She was nervous. She thought she was going to "fail." It didn't matter how often I explained to her that the test was really more for the teacher than it was for the students and so on. I finally just had enough. I happened to know of a family or two who homeschooled (we were in the same stay-at-home-mom's group together when my younger son was a baby and toddler) and I just started reading about it. I read everything I could online, then read some books, then talked to the moms I knew who homeschooled, joined their meetup group, started talking my husband into it... ...and finally toward the end of third grade, in March of that year, I pulled her out of public school, began homeschooling, and never looked back. My only regret is not doing it all along. We are now more relaxed, have more fun, less stress, have bonded more together, get to do so many more hands on things and outings out there in the real world that we never had time for, read more books, do more projects, etc. We get sick less, don't need to revolve our entire day and life around a bus or school bell schedule, don't need to get "permission" every time we want to do something as a family on a weekday, and so on. We feel a lot more FREE! My husband gets more time with the kids which was hard before due to his work schedule (he works from like 1 PM to 8 or 9 or 10 PM and every Saturday). And I get to worry less about the middle school "socialization" my daughter might have been subjected to- downright scary if you think about it! I love homeschooling. And while I wish I'd never sent my daughter to public school to begin with, she's home with me now. And at least my son gets to stay home right from the beginning; he's 5 and has not been to preschool and will not be going to public school. ETA: Oh I almost forgot to add- considering how much emphasis the school put on standardized testing, our school is not a very good one, and when the results came out in the paper the last couple of years for how they did compared to the state average on those tests- they were, in almost all cases, below state average.

I'm sure he will get the hang of it within the next few months and he'll be rhyming before you know it. Just keep throwing rhymes at him in play... keep rhyming pairs of words and encouraging him to join in... correct him without making a big deal out of it... I think that's when my son started rhyming. sometimes he'd get it "right," other times he'd throw out a word that started with the same letter but didn't rhyme... he'll get the hang of it though. I wouldn't worry about it yet.

Yes, they can. On the TT website, on the FAQ section, it says: Can I use your program for more than one child? A. Absolutely. These programs are reusable and can be used with more than one student in the same year. For instructions on how to setup multiple students please call 866-867-6284 or email us at customerservice@teachingtextbooks.com. The gradebook is accessed via the CD.

I would definitely slow down/back off/make things more fun and light-hearted... play games, talk, use manipulatives, sing songs (like the skip counting songs mentioned, like marching around the room banging on some toy drums while you do it...have FUN). I would make extra, doubly sure I never "lost it" like that with him again, because the VERY last thing you want to do is give him a sense of "I'm stupid, I'm no good at math," because when a kid has that sense it can last FOREVER. And Mommy getting really frustrated can give exactly that sense. If you do continue with whatever curriculum you are doing, you need to know your own warning signs of when you are getting frustrated/impatient and BEFORE it gets to the point where he might sense that, you need to say in a positive, light-hearted manner, "Okay, I think we did enough of this for today, want to play a game?" Or something to keep things moving in a positive direction. He's still really young, and I'm kind of in the relaxed/gentle approach camp for the really young ones and think there's much to be said for the "Better Late Than Early" approach and so on. So, yeah, maybe just ease up some.

Maybe they use the phrase "dance" the way some of you guys use "tea"... you know, wink, wink, nudge, nudge... In that case... naked. :D Or... I guess it could just mean "dress formal" but who knows, I've never heard/seen the word "penthouse" used in that context.

Ah, yes. It's gotten me to look at things through my children's eyes and have more, well, wonder again. It's gotten me to start writing again- I ended up submitting some articles (to a homeschooling magazine) and getting published- something I never had the motivation to even try in the past. I definitely learn (or, in some cases, re-learn) alongside my daughter and have just as much fun doing some of our hands on projects and activities as she does. I've become a more involved parent and do more things with the kids, now that we have so much more time and togetherness (and not just of the sort that comes at the end of the day when we're all tired). I, too, read more for pleasure- on my own and with the kids. I've done more community service type projects than I used to in the past, because I want to do them with the kids/have the kids experience that kind of thing.

There are some really cool ones here: http://refineddesigner.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/fun-creative-superbowl-snacks/ Scroll down a little bit and check out the "Greatest Snack Food Stadium Ever Built"- how cool is that?! This is not as good a picture but it does explain how to make a "snack stadium" http://www.sporkorfoon.com/spork_or_a_foon/2010/02/the-ultimate-super-bowl-snack-the-holy-taco-football-stadium.html (Oh, actually, I just found out you can google "How to make a snack stadium" and you'll get lots of sites depicting pictures and instructions!) :D

My 5 y/o usually does one thing at a time. He did gymnastics once a week for a couple of months. He currently does homeschool PE (along with his sister) at the Y once a month. Next month, we will start a homeschool bowling league which will run for 10 weeks (again, he and his sister will both do that). That will be once a week. In the spring he'll be starting tee-ball for the first time. Here and there, there might be a little overlap, but for the most part it's 1-2X a week, usually once. My daughter (age 10) does a bit more. She goes to Girl Scouts once a week over the school year. She does Judo once a week at the Y, ongoing. She will do the homeschool bowling as I said, which will be once a week, but only for ten weeks. And she does a library book club, but that only meets once like every three weeks. With that said, I agree with the others- there IS no "right way" or "right" amount of activities- it should be whatever makes you and your children feel happy and content! That might be a week's worth of activities. That might be one activity a week. That might be NO scheduled activities.

Somewhere in each lesson in the English/US History syllabus it lets you know what you're doing that week that will require supplies. Like in lesson 1, on the last page of the lesson, it has an "extra credit" project listed, which is to "make your own compass" and then it says "you will need..." and tells you what you'll need. Toward the end of Lesson 2, it gives instructions for a "Making A Sailboat" activity and tells you there what you will need... It's usually at the end of the social studies lessons that it tells you what project you might be doing and what you will need. So I would just look ahead a week or so and make note of what you'd need in the coming week or two. Or flip through a bunch of lessons at once taking notes on what you might need and get it in advance if that's easier for you. The end of each social studies lesson is also where they provide titles for "Extra Reading." I've gotten into the habit of looking ahead a week or so for that, too, and then ordering titles online at my library or through ILL. Actually, in the beginning of the syllabus there's an "Outline for Social Studies Curriculum" and it lists what each lesson is about and provides titles right there for optional/supplemental reading for each lesson. Almost every lesson provides suggestions for extra/optional reading, and many give quite a few choices. We do really like the science curriculum. My daughter loves it. This year, it's mostly reading a short lesson in the syllabus (and occasionally the teachers' guide will list a few optional/supplemental reading titles) and then some sort of activity which often involves a bit of writing, discussion, and/or doing some drawings, and sometimes involves some fun hands-on activities. We've read about things that decompose and don't and then buried items in the backyard to later dig up and examine for changes. We started and maintained (for a little while) a simple worm bin (we had a choice of that or a compost pile). We've made a big, multi-media forest mural. We've made our own bird feeder, drawn food web and food chain and animal pictures, chose an area to do a "biome observation project," etc. There are other similar projects coming up, too; we're only halfway through the curriculum. Again, like the other stuff, it's not very textbookish, the lessons are short, there are no worksheets or tests or anything like that- but what they DO give, they also give you "activities" that lead to interesting discussion, interesting writing assignments, fun projects and so on. I honestly think my daughter learns more this way than she would if she were doing something more textbookish- that if it seemed dull or monotonous or overly technical, she'd put it out of her head as soon as we were finished with it, and not retain a lot of it, you know what I mean?