Yes, always. They have dessert like an hour or so after dinner, and if they are still hungry right before bed, they can have something like a yogurt or a banana or a piece of cheese or something like that.

Yeah...that seems kinda claustrophobic and depressing. No windows, no sunlight, no space to move around, no room for "company" (i.e. mom to hang out with you for at least part of your work). My daughter does her work at the kitchen table with me nearby, or flopped on her belly on the living room floor sometimes, or sitting at the computer in the den (which opens into the living room), sometimes even outside at the patio table, but she'd hate being by herself in a tiny little closet/room like that, no matter how it was "improved."

Instead of having a big party where you invite a bunch of people, why not just let her pick one or two of her best friends and take them to dinner and a movie or to play laser tag or to play miniature golf and get ice cream, or to have a sleepover with makeovers or karaoke or something along those lines, instead of paying for lots of kids to go to some costly place or cramming them all in your house.

I'm just so glad there's going to BE a next book! I was ecstatic when I found that out :D But yeah I wish it would hurry up already lol.

Absolutely. We belong to a homeschool group, and in our homeschool group there are those who use a more classical method, there are the eclectic relaxed ones (like me), there are cyber schoolers, and there are even a couple of unschoolers, and our kids all hang out together when we have group get togethers for whatever reason (which is often). It has never actually come up in conversation with my daughter yet as to how other people choose to homeschool, but if/when it does I would have no problem telling her that there are many different ways to learn and that different families choose different things, and that that is one of the reasons I chose to homeschool her- so that I could teach her in the way *I* thought was best. And that other families do the same thing with their kids, so they can do what they think is best and what works best for them. No biggie.

LOL I am always accepting love! hehe. JR Ward has another coming out pretty soon, doesn't she?? I hate waiting so long in between good books! Sigh.

LOL Cindie! I knew I liked you, too! I'll forgive you your threesome since mine turned into a whole entire group affair haha. (But seriously: Yay another Diana Gabaldon fan!) :D

I was going to put "Would you accept string cheese?" thinking that was a pretty funny, random response. But then I paused and thought "Wait a minute, maybe string cheese in this context is some band I never heard of and then my answer wouldn't really be relevant." So. Uh. Is it? :D

Probably ABOUT 50 bucks on average. But if they wanted something bigger or we wanted to get them something special we thought they could use like say a bike or something, we'd spend more to get it for them. Then of course we spend money on whatever party or outing or celebration we're doing for them, too. I guess it varies!

Oh I agree with Charlaine Harris, and the Twilight books, too! And also the J.R. Ward Black Dagger Brotherhood books. Yum. You guys would like those if you like vampire books. Those and Laurel K. Hamilton books! Soooo no other Jamie, er, I mean, Diana Gabaldon fans here huh?

You could probably plan a pretty fun birthday event for "just X, Y, Z" lol. Or if he gets involved in a sport or boy scouts or 4H or any sort of club/activity like that where he could bring in invites, that might make him feel better about things. My daughter's 9th birthday was a little weird for her because it was her first birthday NOT being in public school, where she wasn't bringing in invitations to all the girls in her class. But we took her on a really special outing and she had a great time and didn't mind at all. But I think birthday party time is when this kind of thing might be most noticeable to a kid. If he doesn't otherwise seem distraught, I wouldn't worry about it or stress over it too much. It's not like all the kids are nice in public school or like they are even allowed to socialize much anyway (when my daughter was in public school, even from Kindergarten on, she was losing her recess all the time if she talked in the classroom when she wasn't supposed to, and they had to sit through "silent lunches" and there were very few girls from school that she EVER got together with outside of school anyway).

plain old water here, too :)

My homeschool group sometimes has co-op classes but we never assign "homework" or assignments to do outside of the co-op class. I'm glad for that, I like for us to do our own thing in our own way at home, participate in the classes and get togethers we want to participate in, and then choose for ourselves whether we want to leave the class behind when we leave the class, or put more work/research into something on our own because we were interested enough to.

Hm. Well. My daughter was in public school for second grade and most of third and she was never asked to write essays or to write in specific numbers of paragraphs in those grades, that I know of. (Though I think they did sometimes do journal writing). She is now doing the Oak Meadow fourth grade curriculum at age 9, and it has her keeping a daily journal. And it mentions that in third grade they "sometimes" did journal entries, not daily like they do this year. And this year was when we started reading about three, five and eight sentence paragraphs and she'd be encouraged to use those as she learned about them when she did some sort of book report or something. And this year was when it started saying mid year that she should begin proofreading her entries etc. So these were not things that were really introduced prior to fourth grade much. This seems soon enough for me. She doesn't love doing a lot of handwriting right now as it is- her hand gets tired/crampish- and I don't blame her because so does mine if *I* try to do much handwriting. Which I never do because 1) I can't even read my own poor handwriting haha and 2) seriously, who needs to?! In this day of computers and printers and emails it's probably more important for them to learn decent typing skills than it is for them to have to do a lot of writing by hand. (Which is not to say they shouldn't know HOW to write of course! -But in 2nd grade, x number of paragraph essays? Hardly!) And I don't make her do LONG journal entries. I'm not looking to make her miserable. As for creative writing, sometimes I'll do "word pool" type things with her and we'll sit down together and make up poems based on those word pool words, and we'll do that by hand. But if she wants to do some sort of story or some such, it's always on the computer. And sometimes (since she hasn't made it all the way through typing lessons yet and is still slow at it) she will just dictate to me and I will type it for her. Either way she's still being creative! I have no problem with that.

When my now 9 y/o was about 5 and starting to ask some hard questions about death, I did some looking around online to see if I could find any helpful information or tips. And I came across a site that I found to be full of some really, really helpful information. So here it is: http://www.buddhanet.net/r_talkcn.htm I'm sorry your family is going through those things, it's always so rough, especially with kids!

P.S. Here's what a relaxed day will look like in my house, today. After this post, I'm going to wake my 9 y/o up and give her breakfast. While she eats, I'll probably read aloud to her as she usually likes me to do. We just finished reading "Caught In The Act" from the Orphan Train series (for fun, after learning about it for social studies and wanting to explore the subject further; for the same reason, we also rented a documentary about it from Netflix and watched that recently). And we also just finished reading "The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe" (assigned reading from Oak Meadow). So today, we'll probably pick up where we left off in the "Little House on The Prairie" series, with "On The Banks Of Plum Creek" and read from that. Next week we'll start the last "assigned" book for this year's curriculum (we do a new one every three weeks and at the end she writes some sort of book report on it). After breakfast and brushing teeth, she will probably write in her daily journal. She does this in cursive, using proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization and so forth, recalling the events of yesterday and writing about them. She can illustrate the journal if she wants to (usually she does). She'll proof read it herself when she's done, and if she misses anything, I will point it out so she can fix it. If we happen to be learning about or focusing on something particular, like say 5 sentence paragraphs or dialog or adjectives or whatever, she'll try to use those things in her journal entry that day/week. She will take a quiz on the ten spelling words I gave her this week. She usually gets to choose how she wants to review them over the course of the week, and then she gets a "quiz" on Thursdays. Sometimes she reviews orally, sometimes she likes to write sentences. Yesterday she wrote the words on construction paper (using different colors), drew shapes and pictures around the words (she likes to try to make the shape or picture pertain to the word), cut the shapes out and taped them into her book. At this point we'll probably take a break, and I'll take a quick shower and get ready, because we have a scheduled outing at 11 A.M. I organized a "Community Helper A To Z" program for my homeschool group, and every month I find someone whose occupation starts with a specific letter of the alphabet and make arrangements to meet with them, and we learn more about what they do. Sometimes it's a tour, sometimes it's a talk, sometimes it's a demonstration or hands on participation or Q&A. Today we are meeting our "H is for Historian" person at the local Historical Society. They will, I imagine, talk about what a historian does, what the historical society does, and a bit about the history of our county. And there will be some collections for viewing, etc. We'll probably grab lunch somewhere afterward and then come home. I'll probably ask her to have a few minutes of silent reading time while I catch up on emails and stuff (she's currently reading "How To Train Your Dragon" to herself because she loved the movie). We'll then do a handful of practice problems for math. We're currently doing weights and measures, pounds and ounces. Today's practice will be via story problems. Yesterday's was more hands on, she gathered and weighed a bunch of things on our food scale, and wrote down the weights, and I picked a few of them that were over a pound and had her convert the weight into ounces only. I don't overwhelm her with practice problems. We talk about the concept, do some practice, move on, and revisit it again the next day and continue on with the weekly lesson. She'll have her typing lesson, which is something she had requested to do. She wants to be able to type like me, without looking. At this point she'll have free time to play on the computer or with her Nintendo DS or with her little brother or out in the backyard or do do arts and crafts or whatever she wants to do. When her friends are home from school, she'll go out and play and ride bikes with them. After dinner, we'll probably watch a show together from our DVR. It might be "Life" (similar to Planet Earth) or "America, The Story Of Us" (we watched episode 1 last night and may watch episode 2 tonight). Usually Thursday nights she has Girl Scouts but when she came home from last week's meeting, she informed me that her leader said they wouldn't be having Girl Scouts this week for some reason. So we'll be chilling at home tonight. That's about it! Yesterday she worked on a pretend time capsule for social studies (describing and illustrating what she'd put into it and why) and wrote a book report on The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe (in the form of creating a new ending for the book). The things we do on a given day vary; earlier in the week we talked and read about light years and how light travels across the universe for science, which has focused on astronomy lately. We don't do all subjects all days, we don't beat subjects to death, we don't pile on extra busywork, and somehow, in the end, it all works out. She's learning all the time, I figure! :)

You people are so greedy!!! LOL just kidding. P.S. To the person who said she'd want more Harry books, that would have been my second choice! :)

I agree. It isn't automatically a "date" just because they are of the opposite sex and want to spend time together somewhere outside of the home. But even if it WAS a "date"- so what? That's a harmless normal part of growing up and being a teenager. They aren't asking for a bottle of rum and a key to the local motel. They want to go to the mall! Yep. I had boys who were just friends when I was a teen. My 9 year old daughter's best friend on our block is an 8 year old boy. I hope they will still be friends when they are teens. She's got friends who are boys, as well as friends who are girls, within our homeschool group. I don't see anything wrong with it and I don't expect that as soon as she hits puberty I'm going to suddenly forbid her from being friends with these boys or from spending time with them anywhere outside of my line of vision. Yes! This, too. I already "hold onto" my daughter by homeschooling her. I spend TONS of time with her. We do lots of things together and enjoy each other's company. But she enjoys spending time with her friends, too. I won't begrudge her time with her peers. That is a healthy, normal part of growing up, too. I don't think it's reasonable or realistic to expect that kids won't want to spend time with each other outside of their family lives. Me too. The thing is, I could see saying "My son wants to meet a girl at the mall, but I don't know if he's responsible enough, he tends to be kind of immature, he got in trouble recently for stealing, there have been reports of violence at that mall, I have reason to think he'd take off with an adult stranger, last time he lied to me and went somewhere he wasn't supposed to," or something along those lines, something that is a real REASON to not want your teen going there without you. But to just say "No way! Not with a girl!" or "No way! Not without my monitoring his every move!"... that just kind of boggles my mind, really. It screams of being distrustful and extremely controlling. I would worry that kids who have THAT tight of a leash kept on them would end up being rebellious, resentful, or doing some really stupid things when they are, say, 18 and finally out of the house or at college because they never had much freedom when they were a bit younger to do the normal things that teens do. Anyway. Just my perspective. Obviously some of us will just have to agree to disagree :D

:iagree:

I consider myself a "relaxed homeschooler." I have a 9 year old daughter who I am homeschooling for fourth grade this year. We use the Oak Meadow curriculum, as I mentioned in the other thread. I chose it because it allows for a lot more creative, hands on activities, ESPECIALLY in the younger years, but even continuing into the older grades- it's not dry textbook stuff, it's not worksheets, they don't give "tests," and we really enjoy that curriculum here. I supplement very minimally- I like to do some extra times tables review for one, but then again I try to mostly let her do that in fun ways like playing free math games online. We do typing lessons, but then again, that was at her request. I don't start going "Well I need to pile on extra math, and supplement with a second writing program, and she needs to learn a foreign language and she needs to do 'copywork' and so on and so forth"... ugh, no. I'd make her crazy and likely myself crazy, too.* *Disclaimer: If these things are working for your family, great. I'm not trying to put down anyone's parenting or schooling choices! But when you're in a situation where the mother is miserable and the kids hate school- like this situation- not great. Then you really have to start evaluating what's important and what's not. And IMHO tons of worksheets and Latin (for example) are just not. Enjoying your time together and enjoying learning and having plenty of time to explore your own interests and for kids to just be kids and play- that's important (to me). We do not spend more than 2 to 3 hours a day on our 4th grade curriculum stuff (if we're doing a particular project like when we did colonial times crafts and stuff, then it might be more like 3 hours. If there isn't a specific project going on, it's more like 2 hours). And I'll break it up and give her time to play and do her own thing in between. We don't live life around school. We do school around life. We do lots of fun outings and activities and field trips and whatnot. If something fun or interesting comes up or is going on, we have no problem whatsoever dropping school and going to do that. We get back to the school stuff eventually. Occasionally I'll skip something or shorten it or modify it. Occasionally I'll extend it or add something onto it, if we're enjoying it. Sometimes we'll fit it in on the weekend or in the evening. In the end, we cover most of it. I am confident that learning happens in other ways aside from curriculum stuff. It happens when I read stories for fun, when we sit down to watch "Planet Earth" together, when we play a game of Monopoly and she gets to be the banker, when we run errands together, when we go on nature walks, when she attends library programs, it happens in so many different ways. We all have our stressful days, that is normal, of course! I am not saying every day of my life is perfect, by any means. But for the most part, we really enjoy homeschooling and the way we live our lives and it usually is not stressful and no-one is miserable and we're having fun and I wish everyone could say that about their days in general. It really does make me sad when I see people post about how they are miserable and stressed and want to quit and their kids hate being homeschooled and so on. I just think, it doesn't have to be that way! By the way, I didn't have to do standardized testing with my daughter this year (I live in PA and we only have to do it in 3rd, 5th and 8th grades) but I had her take the 4th grade level CAT from Seton this year anyway ("for fun"- she actually liked taking it and I put zero pressure on her) just because I wanted an idea of where she stands, if she's doing okay despite my relaxed attitude and lack of rigor so to speak when it comes to academics. And she scored just fine. She's on target for her grade level. With the 50th percentile being exactly average, she was in the 63rd percentile- meaning she did as well as or better than 63% of students who took that test nationwide. So she's fine. She's not behind. She's on target with where she's "supposed" to be. She's certainly better off than her public school peers around here since they consistently score "below average" on their standardized tests in my local districts. As she gets older and it starts becoming clearer what direction she wants to go in life, I'll help her focus on the things she needs to focus on to make that happen. But in these young elementary school years- we want the emphasis to be on enjoying learning and enjoying childhood, not trying to cram as much knowledge as I possibly can into her while in the meanwhile she's becoming miserable and I'm becoming miserable. That's not how I would ever want to go through my days. Okay I'm going to stop rambling- I really really hope I didn't offend anyone (I keep re-reading this to see if I sounded too know it all or if I was judging other people's choices too much and I really hope not!)- I don't want this to seem like I am saying that people who do the more "classical education" thing are all making bad choices or NOT enjoying learning or NOT enjoying childhood or anything like that; this is a response to a specific person who it apparently ISN'T working for and I just wanted to let you know that doing it a different way or having a different attitude about homeschooling can "work" too! It is worth exploring and you can probably be confident that you won't ruin your kid's lives or put them behind without chance of catching up by doing so- like I said, after more than a year of homeschooling this way, my daughter is doing fine- I can SEE that she's learning, and she's on target with where she should be per her test scores :) So yeah try easing up a little, having more fun, asking your kids what they want to do and learn and try, do things in a creative way rather than a textbook way, and see what happens. You might be pleasantly surprised!

It does sound like you need a break from formal academic stuff. End your official school year now. For the rest of this year, like others have said, make learning casual and fun. Watch educational shows together, play games together, read books together, ask them what they want to learn about, do crafts, explore nature, just enjoy each other's company and have fun. Your kids will learn. They can't NOT learn, they learn all the time :) Next year, you might want to re-evaluate what sort of curriculum you are using. Personally, I highly HIGHLY recommend Oak Meadow. It's not dry, textbookish and full of worksheets and busywork. It's more hands on and fun. But it is still a thorough curriculum! You might even want to check out the Oak Meadow "social group" on this forum, and check out their website and their philosophy etc. I always feel so bad for people who are finding homeschooling stressful (on a regular basis anyway, we're all stressed now and then!)- homeschooling should be fun. Nobody should be miserable- not the kids, not you. And take some time for yourself, too, to do things YOU enjoy. Good luck, I hope things improve for you! P.S. Oak Meadow is secular but you can easily add in your own religious elements.

I've always written it as "homeschool" - one word. And I will continue to do so.

Who would your author be? Okay I know that was a creepy way to put it haha. Or, for those of you going "huh?" because you don't read Stephen King :P If you had one favorite author at your beck and call and could get them to churn out your favorite books for you, because you just can't get enough of them or wanted to see a sequel or whatever, who would the author be, and which books would they be? Me, I'd love to have Diana Gabaldon writing Outlander books for me one after another so I could get my Jamie fix :D (Anyone else love those books as much as I do)? So, what about you guys?

This just sounds like such a lack of trust in the kids, I don't really get it, I guess. Unless they've given you reason to distrust them, hanging out with a member of the opposite sex is not evil. And either is the mall. I don't know lol. Maybe it's just me. But I don't see the big problem with letting a couple of teenagers spend time together in the mall (or a bowling alley or a roller rink or a video arcade or at the playground or at my house or whatever the case may be)!

Wow- my only son is just 4 years old so I guess I can't say for sure until I'm IN that situation but my initial thought was yes (and I see I am the only one lol). I used to go hang out at the mall with friends in the game room and stuff when I was like 13 and 14. So if I had a 15 year old who wanted to go (especially if I thought he was a pretty responsible/mature 15 year old who I could trust to hang out, play some video games, get a smoothie, walk around, whatever) and not get himself into trouble, then sure, I would let him hang out with a girl at the mall. I think. :)