I brush with toothpaste. Then I floss. Then I usually give one more brushover with just a wet toothbrush/water and rinse.

Yep! My daughter went through a few months of "I like homeschooling, but I miss my friends." But it hasn't come up in a long time. It's a normal transitional thing but she will be fine, and you have nothing to feel guilty about. Let her call her friends and invite them for playdates, make sure she's in some sort of situation where she can be around other kids, and just give her a little time to get used to the new changes. My daughter was always a very sociable kid. We joined a homeschool group and go on plenty of field trips. My daughter is in Girl Scouts and we signed up for the homeschool bowling league and we do plenty of summer activities and we did 4H for a while and so on. This fall she'll be going back to Girl Scouts, she'll either be attending gymnastics or martial arts classes, we go to library programs, in the winter/spring we may join the homeschool bowling league again, and we'll continue group get togethers and field trips. After school, she plays with neighborhood friends. She's happy!

I know EXACTLY what you mean. I have three. And lately I've been thinking I would love to have one more. I'm 37 and I'm starting to feel like I don't have much time left to have that choice be mine. That it will be too late soon. But the choice already ISN'T mine because my husband said no. He doesn't want any more kids. He feels we have enough, that he doesn't want to "start over," that it's just getting easier to do things and to have people watch the kids if we want to go out and whatever. And I'm like who cares about that?! A child is only so young that you have to worry about that kind of thing for such a very small percentage of his or her life (and yours!) It makes me really sad. And kind of mad- like who is he to deny me a child if I want one?! Why should his desire not to have another child trump mine TO have one? Why would he fight me on that if it's important to me? What's THAT BAD about having kids and being a dad?! I know he'd love any new addition as much as he loves his other kids, so why act like it's such a horrible thing? I resent that he's taking the choice away from me, and I feel like he doesn't really get it, because he can father kids til he's an old man. Women, on the other hand, have a window of opportunity, and it is pretty heart rending when you feel yours slipping away. Sigh. I have to try to content myself with the fact that my littlest is still only 4- I get to keep him home with me and homeschool and enjoy all of his childhood. And it IS kind of nice that he's getting a bit more independent, more well-behaved, a better listener, no more diapers, no more trunks full of strollers and portacribs every time we go somewhere, no more totally sleepless nights, we can be more spontaneous and do more things. I'm trying to "look on the bright side." But still I don't know if I'll ever entirely get over not being "allowed" to have one more baby. That is a very hard thing to take. I can't stand it myself. I'm honestly not sure how to fully come to terms with it. So I really do feel for you.

Thanks for all the replies! I'm glad to hear so many positive comments about it. I'm looking forward to checking it out!

I had posted recently that I planned on going back to Weight Watchers next week, as I've always found it to be a safe, effective, healthy and sensible weight loss plan. I never heard of TOPS but somehow my mom came across it and sent me some links with info, reviews, meeting locations and so on, and it sounds good to me! Best of all, it's WAY cheaper than WW! WW often has a registration fee and then it costs like $14.00 a week per person. Well, TOPS is a not for profit program that costs only $26.00 per YEAR and then $1.00 a week dues. And if a spouse or family member joins with you, they pay only half! WAY cheaper than WW! I found out there's a meeting near me Thursday mornings, so instead of going to WW next Tuesday morning like I had planned, I'm going to go check out this TOPS meeting on Thursday morning instead! I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with this program and if you want to give me your thoughts on it?? Or, if you just want to check it out yourself, here's the website! http://www.tops.org/TOPSInformation/AboutTOPS.aspx

My first thought was "neither," too. Sorry! I love meat but I just can't bring myself to eat baby animals. I vote chicken or steak lol.

No, I would understand, and it would not offend me.

She IS out of her mind. What a loon. Tell her to go put a "community bench" in front of her own house.

No. We did not get any flu shots last year, swine flu or otherwise, and we will not be getting any flu shots this year, either.

I'm using Oak Meadow Kindergarten this year. I am REALLY looking forward to it, I adore Oak Meadow and its whole philosophy: Details, schedule sample, etc, here: http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/125979.html

A school year is a pretty long time, anyway. He might say now he only wants to do W and X, but that doesn't meant that a few months from now something he reads or watches or plays or comes across won't get him interested in Y and Z, too. It will be fun and interesting seeing how things develop, I'm sure!

A true child predator would probably be more likely to want to chat to a child in a chat room than to send letters to their house, and having children's bikes and slides and toys and chalk drawings visible in your yard is probably much more of an "advertisement" than requesting a penpal on a homeschool board is in regard to people knowing your address, if you think about it! But email is also a good idea if you are reluctant to give your address out. Good luck, my daughter loves having penpals, but she's almost 10.

My daughter is a pretty good speller. For 4th grade we took a basic 4th grade list and reviewed in creative ways. For 5th grade, rather than assigning specific spelling words for review, I'm going to focus more on vocab than spelling, then just pay attention to words she spells wrong in her writing assignments for L.A. and Social Studies, and then assign THOSE words to be reviewed in creative ways. You probably don't need an extra "spelling curriculum" at all, especially with a natural speller, in my opinion.

I agree with Merry- when he's writing a rough draft, it's not important whether he punctuates correctly, spells words correctly, etc. It's important to get his thoughts down on paper. Once he's done that, he should proofread his paper and make corrections. After he's had a chance to make his OWN corrections, then I'd go over what he has and at that point you can help him with words that are still spelled wrong, grammar, etc. In regard to spelling review, in general, what if you make a note of his spelling errors over the course of a given week. Make a list, for yourself, I mean. At the end of the week, if the list is long, shorten it to the ones that would be most commonly used or that are most commonly misspelled or whatever and get, say, a final list of 10 words together. The following week, review those 10 words with him in fun, creative ways. Let him write them on the sidewalk with chalk. Let him draw them in the dirt with a stick. Let him trace them in a tray of salt with his fingers. Pass a ball back and forth to him while you take turns chanting the letters of the word aloud. My daughter also liked doing spelling review in ways such as making a "small town map" and naming the buildings and streets after spelling words, making a "windsock" out of a paper plate and crepe paper streamers and writing the spelling words on the streamers, writing the word with a big bubble letter for the first letter of the word and then decorating or coloring that letter, etc.

You lasted longer than I did with Saxon. I bought it... and never even got started with it! I use an older version of the Oak Meadow curriculum (which I LOVE). It had its own built in math curriculum through 4th grade but back then it recommended Saxon Math for 5th. So this summer I started planning out my daughter's fifth grade year for this fall, and I opened the Saxon book and started reading through its Intro, and then through Lesson 1 (which is just review of course) and that was enough for me to know there was no way I was going to use Saxon. It seemed way too long, way too dry and boring, way more complicated than it needed to be, and I could very easily see both my daughter and myself becoming downright miserable and dreading math if we were to use that curriculum. So, we're not going to use it. I purchased Teaching Textbooks Math 5 instead (which my daughter is downright excited about using and I'm downright relieved such a thing exists, since I'm not that mathy myself) and we'll see how that goes! (I since learned that the current version of Oak Meadow now uses their own math instead of Saxon even in the middle school years, but we both already got excited for TT and had purchased it by the time I learned that). Anyway, to answer your question about "when should we throw in the towel....?" NOW! There is no sense in sticking with something you both hate, IMHO.

How about a blog or website with, say, creative homeschool and craft ideas and whatnot?

Read "the unschooling handbook, How to Use the Whole World As Your Child's Classroom" by Mary Griffith. It offers great insight, reassurance, further resources, examples of peoples' unschooling days and how they apply things, and it's got sections on "Reading and Writing," "Math and Problem-Solving," "Science," and other subjects that I think you'll find really helpful and insightful!

Hey I wanted to post one more time to this thread to tell you about a book called: "the unschooling handbook, How to Use the whole World As Your Child's Classroom" by Mary Griffith. It's got chapters on: What is Unschooling and How Can It Possibly Work Resources: Finding What You Need TV or not TV (and Other Questions of Technology) How Can You Tell They're Learning? Reading and Writing Math and Problem Solving Science History The Arts Changes As Kids Grow Older Practical Considerations Coping With Doubts and Challenges I think you'll find it full of good information! Since "Math" is one of the topics of concern, here are a couple of quotations from the math chapter of the book: "The more determinedly "un" unschooling families favor an approach to math that emphasizes conceptual understanding over simple rote memorization and manipulation of formulas. We make that choice on the assumption that our children will learn basic math facts and computation skills through their everyday activities. This often means that they learn those basic arithmetic operations at later ages than traditionally occurs in schools, but it also means that when they do, they learn more quickly and easily. Because they not only see the real-world applications, but participate in them directly, math skills are not abstract and arbitrary lessons but real, working tools." "Based on our math experience in school, most of us tend to think of learning mathematics as a rigidly sequential, progressive process. We assume that we cannot learn any "higher" mathematics- whatever that may be- until we have mastered all of the "basics." Most of us get so bogged down in those basics somewhere in junior high or high school that we never get beyond the purely computational. But mathematics is so much more: pattern recognition, sorting, measurement, logic, problem-solving, probability, statistics, topology, and much more. If we let ourselves begin to look at it all, it's hard to avoid seeing math everywhere. And almost anything we do involves math in one way or another." "The big advantage to such a laid-back approach to math is that you can back off on pushing those basic skills and let your kids get comfortable and familiar with all the quietly math-related material all around them. Especially with kids who've had bad experiences with math in school, it usually pays to let them come to math on their own instead of dragging them, kicking and screaming all the way." It talks about how games of all kinds are a great way for kids to become comfortable with numbers, it talks about various manipulatives, and includes a bunch of excerpts of unschooling parents talking about their own personal experiences. And each chapter provides a list of more resources. I'd definitely recommend it to you, to help get some perspective on this year of more of an "unschool" education. While I never went the whole unschool route as of yet myself, I did gain valuable perspective and insight and a more relaxed approach to homeschooling in general by reading books like these, and carefully chose the curriculum I DID select to be one that is as hands-on and creative as possible rather than very dry and textbookish. Anyway! I'd LOVE to hear about how your year goes! You should blog about it!! :D

Good post. Besides, I'd worry if I'm all "Don't look! It's rude to stare!" it would make them learn to sort of "see through" people with disabilities rather than becoming somewhat accustomed to seeing them like anyone else and learning to treat them as any regular person. Which they can't do, I don't think, if I'm sending out "just avert your eyes!" vibes to them (which is probably how kids would interpret "don't stare!")

Nature is harsh. It is today (watching lions rip apart a baby gazelle or some such on one of the more modern nature shows -for example- is pretty sad, too) and I imagine it was just as harsh back in the dinosaurs' day. As I have to remind my daughter about any type of predator when we watch those types of shows, "Well, they can't just go to the supermarket like we can. It's sad seeing that animal die... but wouldn't it be sad seeing a lion (or whatever) starve to death, too?" The dinosaur shows sound interesting to me, I'll have to look for them.

Interesting. We use the Internet for most of our research. We do also take out library books but normally they are ones that are titled for us already through our curriculum or SOTW or whatever... then I just go online on my library's website, request it, and they call me when they have it up front for me. If my daughter wants a certain type of book for herself for fun she might ask where she can find them and they'll give her the shelf number or whatever and we'll go find it. But that's about the extent of it. They might have taught her some library skills in public school as she was there from K up through most of third grade before coming out to homeschool. That was only about a year and a half ago and since then I have not specifically addressed any library skills and haven't planned to.

No, I would leave that up to them. I, too, have to provide "music" as a required subject, but that can be done in other ways than playing an instrument. For instance, last year, for 4th grade, we read a mini bio on a different composer each week, and then listened to samples of that composer's music on Youtube, among other things.

This does vary from kid to kid. But I've always said that "the terrible twos" are just practice for having a three year old. Three is tough! LOL. With that said, my son was a tough baby, too. He never (and I mean never) napped for anything longer than just moments of dozing, he never (and I mean never) slept through the night til past his first birthday, and even that first time was just a fluke (I probably cursed myself with the "Ben Slept Through The Night!" cake I ordered. Yes. Really. I did!), because at 15 months of age, he was still waking up (and wanting to nurse back to sleep) anywhere from 7 to 10 times a night. He was frequently cranky, except when he was nursing. He was a seriously grumpy baby lol. God, I was so exhausted back then!

No! My daughter was thrilled to death when I pulled her out of public school in third grade. We have so much fun homeschooling, and so much more time for things WE want to do, and I think it brings us closer. I don't see them resenting it. Unless maybe they got to high school age and wanted to go to high school and i refused to let them or something, I guess I could see a kid resenting that.

I do not think of the word "handicapped" as being offensive. Nor do I think of the word "retarded" as being offensive (coming from the mother of a daughter who has had mild to moderate retardation her whole life). And regardless of what word or phrase people are using, it's intent that counts, as far as I am concerned, rather than which word happens to be PC at the moment. (Which I confess I can't keep up with either, I'm often surprised to hear what offends people). Making jokes about retarded people licking windows and riding a short bus is just nasty, ignorant, potentially hurtful, and offensive. That bugs me, too! As does calling someone a "retard" in a way that's meant to be an insult. But people just don't think.