Cool, we REALLY loved Oak Meadow for fourth grade last year! I'm looking forward to starting OM5 with my daughter next month, and starting OMK with my son! :) If you take a peek at my blog (see sig line) in the left sidebar somewhere, there's a link to click to see how we broke the 4th grade curriculum down into a daily schedule, and I included some pictures of some of the work we did and so on, if you want to check it out. :)

For bananas, we have like a chain thing with a hook on each end that hangs down from one of our upper kitchen cabinet handles. We hook the top on the handle, and the dangling end gets hooked through the banana stems. We keep tomatoes in the fridge.

My anti-homeschooling relative was an aunt (who was a schoolteacher for many years). She gave me her reasons why she didn't care for the idea of homeschooling. I gave her my reasons why I thought homeschooling was the way to go. In the end, what I had to say to her was: "I understand that you don't agree with the idea of homeschooling, and I don't expect to change your mind, but I hope that you will respect and support my decision anyway." And she said that of course she would, and that she thought I would make a good teacher, and that if there was anything she could do to help, that I should let her know.

In my case, we school 5 days a week, following Oak Meadow's 36 week curriculum. We spend as much time as we need to spend on each lesson covering the material, without tons of busywork, and it averages to 3 hours a day. Give or take, depending on what we're doing (hands on projects take a bit longer for instance). Outside of OM and our school year, we still do plenty of other educational things, usually informally, so hours of schoolwork and hours of learning are not the same thing, IMHO :)

If it was me, I'd keep her home this year and do K VERY informally. Nothing forced... no you have to draw this specific picture, you have to learn to fully read by the end of the year, you have to write these sentences out... I'd do hands on, creative, fun educational things that we enjoyed doing together. 1st is time enough to start the more formal things you are describing (in my opinion) and one of the reasons I couldn't stand the public school Kindergarten my daughter went to was because of how much they pushed long days of academics with extremely little play or social or creative time for all those five year olds. I think you should read the book 'Better Late Than Early' by the Moores. Even if in the end you don't agree with it or do it their way, you might just find some food for thought and a middle ground.

I would love to!! I do think about this now and then! I hope to talk my husband into it one day! :D

Isn't it funny that no matter how old you get, and no matter how long you've been raising your own children, you can still get nervous telling your parents about decisions you are making? lol. I'm glad it went pretty well! I remember being pretty nervous to tell my family, and very relieved when I got mostly good responses. I told my mother in an email haha. I laid out the plan, all my reasons and so on, so she could see it all and take it all in BEFORE giving some kneejerk verbal response. When we did talk, she said she wasn't against it, she didn't really know much about it, and mostly she asked about socialization, too. I made my husband tell his mother. I thought she'd be more negative, but she wasn't. She was actually pretty cool about it, too, and just wanted to know basically how we would know how/what to teach her. The rest of his family was totally understanding of our reasons and didn't think it was a bad idea. My older sister simply said she knows people who have homeschooled and turned out just fine and doesn't have any feelings on it one way or the other and good luck, let me know what I can do to help (she's a librarian). My two brothers were both "oh cool," like they couldn't care less either way and never would have said anything against it to begin with. That left my schoolteacher aunt. She told me she's not for homeschooling in general (and, ironically, gave me some reasons that were the same reasons I'd list for WANTING to homeschool). But she also said she'd respect and support our decision either way and that I should let her know if she could help and that she did think I'd make a good teacher. So, it went well! I did find that having already joined a homeschool meetup group where I knew I'd get support, even if I hadn't gotten much of it from my family, did help. But my family was pretty cool overall!

I homeschooled my daughter for the end of third grade and all of fourth, and we averaged about three hours a day for school. Sometimes a little more if we were doing some hands on project. Sometimes a little less.

My four year old likes: Connect Four The Grinch Sing Your Heart Out game (I want to get him a few Dr. Seuss games actually) Uno Moo Candyland, Chutes & Ladders, Hi-Ho Cherry-O and will also enjoy playing things like Monopoly, Jr. even though we have to help him significantly as he can't read or add money or anything like that yet.

My 9 y/o likes National Geographic Kids and American Girl Magazine. My little guy likes Disney & Me, and Your Big Backyard.

My daughter was like this at 8. I found that sitting with her and keeping her company and helping her keep on track made it go faster. She got somewhat better at 9. Though she still tends to dawdle in general.

Not sure if you have boys or girls, but for fourth grade, my daughter and I just read through "The Care & Keeping Of You, The Body Book For Girls" and one called (I think) "The Feelings Book, The Care & Keeping Of Your Emotions." Both were by American Girl Library. Other than that, "health" involved age appropriate discussion and conversation as things came up, proper hygiene, a section on nutrition for science and so on. And we also went on a tour of an ambulance co and saw a first aid slide show and a paramedic talked to our group, I guess that could be Health, too. I didn't really think anything else all that formal was necessary in regard to like a specific curriculum or anything.

Seriously?? I'm confused. I just read through every single post there. People were friendly, responded, joked around, explained the board rules, made suggestions for what else you could do if you didn't really want to post to this forum, asked about you coming back, encouraged you to give posting here a try, that you might like it.... In short, I am utterly baffled as to what you read or got out of that thread that would make you "sad" or would give you the impression that you'd intruded, or that people were saying "we're not playing with you." You were the one who said "I have no interest in posting here/chatting with you all...." I don't understand where you are coming from or what could possibly have offended you. I really don't.

I was going to suggest Home Depot and Lowe's, too. They both have the free workshops for kids, I think every other Saturday morning. It's free! They provide the supplies, tools, instructions and everything. They have someone on hand to help out if need be. The kids get a cute little apron with iron on patches for every workshop they participate in. My kids really enjoy those.

There seem to be some good ideas here: http://www.education.com/activity/preschool/math/ Just google "preschool math activities" and you'll find lots more!

LOL well I'm sure we all are! It's just a bit of harmless teasing and joking around.

She just turned 5? She's very young. I wouldn't force a 5 year old to sit down with math worksheets or any such thing if she didn't want to do it, I'd rather do hands on, creative, fun things at that age. That, and read lots of books to her :) I'm not even sure why you're bothering to force the issue anyway if you plan to send her to school next month, and in the meanwhile the two of you just seem frustrated by trying to do school at home. Can't you just enjoy her and play with her for this last month before school starts?

Yep, me too!

LOL Cindie... my husband continues to tease. He says "Well, one cool thing about you at least, is you have a husband who is a tattoo artist." I guess I could tell him: Yeah, but I also have a RED minivan! So there! :tongue_smilie:

Recipes aside, in the younger kids' room at the art camp my kids attended for a couple of days, they had this big basin thing filled with uncooked rice and it had different measuring toys and scoops and funnels and shovels and so on inside it for the kids to play with the rice- it was a big hit :D

I love our homeschool group. We do lots of field trips, park days, host various "classes" (for fun) at each other's houses from time to time, have occasional mom's night out events, go on various tours, and so on. It's fun! We don't have co-op classes in the sense of "We meet every Tuesday and this one teaches math for three hours and that one does science and kids must do homework" kind of thing, I wouldn't want to bother with that. But some of the moms (or dads!) will offer occasional one time classes for fun that might be: a creative writing workshop, an archery demonstration, a puppeteering class, a "gold rush" class that talked about different gems and minerals and the had it set up so the kids could pan for gold, and so on. It helps the kids meet other homeschooled kids, it gives me the chance to get together with other homeschool moms, and it gives us people to hang around with while doing tours and field trips- which really is more fun in most cases than just going alone with your own kids.

We visited there two summers ago. We rented a condo. We only did the beach once and the kids weren't big on it, they don't like waves. We did enjoy the condo's pool though lol. I don't know if he'd consider himself too old for it or not, but they have this pirate adventure thing nearby that your son might like, my daughter loved it! They'll dress the kids up like pirates, give them fake tattoos, take them for a ride on the pirate ship, show them a treasure map and tell them they're going to find a treasure. And then some other pirate comes up in this little motorized raft thingie with a pirate flag and the kids have to defend the treasure with water cannons and whatnot....at the end, they open the treasure chest and hand out little prizes to the kids...they played Limbo with them.... it was a lot of fun, we did it a couple of years ago! http://www.piratesoflewesexpeditions.com/ If you're interested enough, I'm sure I can attach some pictures from when we went, let me know. :)

Ha! Not a bad idea!

That's very good! He should submit it somewhere. My daughter had a few poems published in Secular Homeschooling Magazine and was ecstatic to get her $5.00 check and to see her poem in print!

Public Gardens Zoos and wildlife centers Museums Parks and playgrounds Historical Buildings and places Lakes and pools Tours- factory tours, supermarket tours, library tours, behind the scenes tours at fast food places, 911 center tours, fire house tours, an airport tour, a pretzel factory tour, whatever tours we can set up. Caves Coal mines Pumpkin Patches aquarium walking trails/nature trails berry picking farms bowling alley/homeschool bowling league miniature golf fairs and festivals amusement parks Animal shelter parades maple sugaring Indoor gym/playplaces ...we love field trips and outings. We do as many as we can! We also organized a "Community Helper" program for our homeschool group, where each month we meet a different "community helper/worker" and learn more about what they do- it could be tours, demonstrations, hands on activities, Q&A sessions, talks, slideshows- it depends on the person. But in this way, we met with an Architect (met us at a community building and showed the kids his computer program and blueprints and had them build with blocks/legos), a Banker (gave a tour of the bank), a Charity (we got to help out), a Dietician at a local hospital, an EMT/Paramedic (did a first aid slideshow, showed the kids the equipment, ambulances, etc), a pet groomer (demonstrated on her own dog), and a historian so far. We also sometimes do things at each other's houses... someone will come up with a fun activity or creative thing or class that they or their spouse are good at/knowledgeable about, and invite others to participate. So we've done things like archery, puppeteering, fossils/gems/goldpanning, poetry workshops, science experiments, and more in this way, at each other's houses.