Fortunately, it's not raining now so the kids have been playing outside with their cousins for the past half hour. Prior to that, we did school, letting her pick the order in which she wanted to do things, and she enjoyed her schoolwork today. We also played a game so we could finally start logging some minutes for the Million Minute Family Challenge. So today didn't turn out to be that bad. I even see a bit of sunshine now!

LOL cool. As it happens, I had bought the first two books (used) at once. That may come in handy now!

After we finished, my daughter said, "Wait, we're only going to do this once a week?! I want to do it every day! I like Fred!"

Er. Yes. Yes, I do think you are too hard on your kids. Grounding for a week for the basketball thing seems overly harsh to me (a consequence, yes, but a week's worth? Eh, too much IMHO, for something like that). My eyes kinda bugged out at the thing with the asking if they needed help, though. You didn't specify who to ask, he did as you told and "asked them," someone told him no, and that was that. So you punished him for a week because he didn't ask a specific person, when you didn't even tell him to? That's way over the top to me. Worst case scenario, you should have just asked your husband, "Can you use his help?" And if he said yes, told your kid, "They found something for you to do, go help," and if he said no, let it go.

Don't toss 'em! :) Peel off the paper wrappers, cut the crayons into short sections, mix the colors, and place them in foil-lined muffin tin cups. Place the muffin tin in a 250 degree oven. When the crayons just begin to melt, turn off the oven. Let the crayons cool in the oven. When they are cool, you'll have "colorful crayon rounds" for some fun coloring. Of course, you could always shave the broken crayons, too, and sprinkle them over pictures the child draws, place between waxed paper, cover with some newspaper and iron on low until the crayon shavings melt on the picture for a "stained glass" kind of design, as mentioned in one of the SOTW activities! But we've already done that one, and I think I'm going to try the "crayon rounds" thing, which came from a book I happened upon at a dollar store once, called "A Year Of Fun For Your Four Year-Old," which has some really cute ideas in it. Another my kids liked for a rainy day, by the way, is sprinkling a few drops of food coloring in different colors on a paper plate, then going outside in the rain long enough to let the rain spatter on the food coloring and mix the colors for some rainy day artwork.

You could always look up "preschool crafts" or "Kindergarten crafts" and find cute projects to add in. I agree with whoever mentioned Enchanted Learning. Homemade books are always a favorite over here...we've done "All About Me" books, "All About My Family" books, "My Backyard Nature" books, "Texture" books, etc. You can trace the child's body on a big roll of paper, then let them color and help you label it. You can do "My Favorite Things" or "What I Want To Be" picture or word collages from magazines, make posters together, start a "nature tank" (or table) and collect things on nature walks, etc. Those are all things we've enjoyed. I'm using Oak Meadow for K which is full of hands on activities and cute ideas, but it's not as academic as a lot of people would like for K, so it might not work for you. (Although I did decide to add on Funnix beginning reading lessons to our curriculum, too). But it still incorporates lots of fun ideas that could be added on, which you could probably find by just looking up Waldorf activities for young kids (not that it's true Waldorf, more Waldorf-inspired in the earliest years). K for us involves a Waldorf-inspired, seasonal approach to science, which is done through story and nature, an integrated approach to language and "social studies," which again is mainly through stories, fairy tales, drawings, etc, as is math. And they do uppercase letters of the alphabet in hands on ways such as drawing it in the dirt with a stick, walking its shape on the ground, forming it out of clay, looking for the shapes in nature, and so on and so forth, as well as drawing it as a picture that depicts a given letter. Their "First Book of Crafts" has great ideas in it. They've got "music and movement" with Wee Sing songs and fingerplays, they do little activities for following directions and spacial orientation and such. I really enjoy it. I add to that lots of outings and field trips and homeschool day programs, which we do as a family and with our homeschool group. Extra-curricular activities (currently just soccer and a sporadic homeschool wilderness club for him), fun and/or educational board games, computer games, TV shows, conversations and conversational games, read alouds, manipulatives, etc. What's he interested in? Follow his interests as much as you can, too!

I just peeked at your blog. Just wanted to say your days look like they are lots of fun! Maybe it's just a matter of getting used to a schedule. Maybe you need to re-evaluate if he's ready for, say, formal handwriting. My son is almost 6 and I just started a Waldorf-inspired, not overly academic Kindergarten with him, and he'd probably still tell you, "I don't like school" just because he wants to be able to do his own thing when he wants to do it. I figure he'll adjust. Your kids are adorable by the way!

Oh gosh, I don't know! I hope that everything gets taken care of quickly and that any sentimental items are okay at least! Sorry you are going through this!

Nakia, maybe you should start your own homeschool group, just like a social group for field trips, tours, social gatherings, etc, and see how that goes. Describe it as an inclusive kind of thing with members with different educational, religious, and life philosophies, and maybe you'll meet others who feel like they just don't fit in. Mine works out great. I'm secular/jewish, I have tattoos (my husband owns a tattoo shop), I'm a relaxed homeschooler, and I'm managing to share a group with unschoolers and classical schoolers, and the majority of them are Christian but it just doesn't come up because we're not there for religion, we're there for the field trip to the zoo, the day at the park, the board game day, the kickball day, the summer picnic, the walking club, the tour of the courthouse, and so on and so forth. Everyone is friendly, chatty, the kids play and have fun, nobody cares what somebody else's religion is, or what style of homeschooling they are into, or if they have tattoos (several of us do, a lot of us don't), etc... I love it. Would every single one of us get together outside of homeschool group events? No. But there are a couple we DO get together with outside of them, who we just clicked with, and that works fine for me. The others are friendly acquaintances who enjoy chatting when we're together in the group, with things in common because of homeschooling and parenting if nothing else, you know what I mean? Yes, there were one or two who inquired about our group, and didn't choose to join or stay and I think it was because they WERE looking for something more conservative or religious, and that was fine if that was what they wanted. Most though seemed really glad to have a mostly secular, social, accepting group. You may find other takers, too, even though it might take a while to get started.

Aw, thank you. You're one of about 3-7 people who look at it each day these days then haha.

She's almost 11 and yesterday evening she actually got teary because she couldn't go outside as it was raining. She started saying that she was tired of being cooped up in the house, and she was bored, and she's done everything there is to do in this house, she was really upset. There had been three days in a row of being indoors and/or activities being canceled due to rain. We were under flood warnings all of yesterday, it's been really nasty here. She turned down every suggestion I made until finally I grabbed her by the hand, pulled her into the living room, and said, "I know what you're going to do. You're going to have a dance party. Music and exercise will make you feel better!" I started moving all the furniture back out of the way, had her turn on a music channel on TV, let my three nephews who live just a few houses away come over, and let the kids move around like maniacs and pretended not to notice most of the time when they jumped on the furniture. A while later, she said, "You were right, I do feel better." Great...but I had also assured her, "And don't worry, we're leaving the house tomorrow, we have a homeschool day program to go to and that will be fun." But uh yeah now that I see that our county has multiple school closings, multiple road closings, and is still under flood watch- and yes, it's still raining- I'm not driving an hour and 25 minutes each way to that program I intended to take the kids to. I have a feeling she is going to be so upset when she hears about this. :(

Aw. I wish you lived close enough to join mine!

SO glad to hear that!! :grouphug:

LOL love the smiley!

Ah, yes, and I wish I would have also thought to recommend this site...it's a FANTASTIC resource and very supportive of and knowledgeable about pretty much any breastfeeding issue!

I've used Oak Meadow for 4th grade and 5th grade, and I'm currently doing it for 6th grade with my daughter and Kindergarten for my son. I very much like it but don't really feel "qualified" to determine whether it would be good for a child with disabilities, especially knowing nothing, really, about that child...I would suggest calling Oak Meadow as they have great customer service and seeing what they think? If you want to just see more about what it's like in general, I do have quite a bit about it on my blog. If you click on the link to my blog in my signature line, it brings you to my most recent entries (day to day of our homeschool). But if you look on the sidebar to the left of my blog, you'll see various links. There will be a review of Oak Meadow under the Reviews section, and under the "Schedule Samples" section you can see what a given week was like using OMK, OM4, and OM5, including some pics. Hope this helps!

Awesome! :hurray::seeya::party::willy_nilly::coolgleamA: :hat:

I wouldn't call that a mistake. It's okay to hold or nurse your baby to sleep. I am not a fan of letting a baby, especially say one and under, CIO, and I would never let a baby/toddler/child of any age cry alone for two hours. That's way too long. Have you tried reading the No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley? She has one for infants and one for toddlers and I HIGHLY recommend reading them. Again, try the books I mentioned. My son was the same way- and in his case I dealt with it until he was like 15 months old, at which point I decided to night wean him. There were a rough few nights, don't get me wrong. But I did not leave him crying alone, I just roughed it and got extremely little sleep and soothed/patted him back to sleep. At least he knew I was there, even though I wouldn't give him what he wanted. I then gradually daytime weaned him from there, finishing by 19 months. If you are ready to do the night weaning prior to that, I do think that book will help a lot!

As far as I know, yes, you can buy things like their craft and recorder books separately. Their math/science/english/social studies tends to be all integrated in one or two books in the earlier years, but the stuff about crafts, and recorder, and clay fun etc. can be sold separately. Nance, who loves OM. :D

I don't personally agree with this. I started using SOTW1 with my daughter the summer after 3rd grade (which is when we started homeschooling), and I did it in the summers just for fun, three summers in a row. We are now continuing to use it over this school year in conjunction with Oak Meadow 6 since OM6 focuses on ancients anyway (Oak Meadow has been our main curriculum all along). In MY opinion, SOTW is too advanced for most K-2nd graders. I personally think it's perfect for around 3rd grade on and that my daughter who is nearly 11 continues to get much out of it. Is the mapwork very easy? Yes. Is the coloring page easy? Yes. But the text itself seems to continue to be great for her age, and the supplemental reading books listed in the AG are for a good variety of ages. Some are just picture books, others remain good for my daughter's age. And the hands on activities and projects vary, too. Some are simpler, some are a little more detailed, she enjoys them all. I have pics of many of those activities and a review here, if you are interested: http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/124469.html As for Oak Meadow, we've used OM4, OM5, and as for OM 6, we are using it now. We're only in our first week of it, but if you have any specific questions about it, I'd be happy to try to answer. Mine is an older version of the curriculum, so may be SOME differences in mine and a more current version, but I'm sure the ideas are all the same. OM is very integrated, so if you decide you want to do OM6 History, it is combined with OM6 English. Just as an example for you, I will try to describe Lesson 1 for you. Lesson 1 pertains to "The Stone Age." Vocabulary words pertain to the stone age (mammoth, bola, prehistoric, etc). Spelling suggests you either use your vocabulary words as spelling words, or use words that are misspelled in the child's written work. Grammar tends to be a bit light, but it works fine for us since my daughter is already pretty strong with grammar skills anyway. I do, however, use the Killgallon books as a supplement (we did Sentence Composing last year and are using Story Grammar this year). Then there's the social studies lesson which is divided into day 1, day 2, day 3, and "days 4 and 5." On day 1, they have the kid drawing a large map (which will be added to throughout the year) and labeling certain parts of it. On day 2, they have them reading a short, non-textbookish lesson from the syllabus on the stone age and choosing a topic from a list of three choices and writing a page about it. (Earlier they are instructed in how to apply this lesson's grammar into their writing assignments). The choices are: A. In what ways do you think fire was important to the Stone Age people? What do you think they used it for? What kinds of changes in their lives might have occurred after they learned to use fire? B. Find out three animals that were alive at the same time as the Stone Age people. Think about the ways in which people may have used the different parts of each animal. Give specific examples and add illustrations if you'd like to. C. Explore your neighborhood and look for food that you think a Stone Age person might eat in your area today. Remember, only foods that would be naturally found in the environment! Write a report describing the foods and why they might be edible or appealing to eat. if you like, make a colorful illustration of the nuts, berries, leaves, fruits and roots you find. On day 3, they continue reading a short, non-textbookish lesson about cave paintings. They are instructed to go to the library and look at pics of early cave paintings and carvings (which I'm sure you could just do online, too), and to choose one of the following projects: A. do your own cave painting (using a large, flat piece of rock or a piece of plywood). They give you simple instructions on how to do so. B. Make a stone tool or weapon (using thick heavy stick or bone and leather strings to make it functional. They don't really provide instruction on this so you need to improvise or look it up). C. Make a clay figure of an animal or person such as the cave men made. On days 4 and 5, you continue to read the short, non-textbookish lesson about agricultural revolution etc. Again, they give you a choice of three activities to do. A. Write in a diary about one week in the life of a cave man, woman, or child, writing in first person with yourself as central character. B. Pretend you are going on an archeological assignment. You are about to excavate one of these early caves used by primitive humans. Write a newspaper article describing your findings. Be sure to include info about the tools you find, the floor plan of the cave, paintings on the walls, various other artifacts you might find. They then list "Extra Book Ideas" and they tend toward "living books," and they offer "extra project choices" so there are other books and activities you can add in throughout the week. So reading and writing assignments for English center around material being learned for Social Studies, and "art" is included by way of projects they have you do throughout the curriculum, which are to include sculpture, calligraphy, drawing, mosaic work, plaster relief art, marbling, costume making, cooking, mask making, games, poetry, designing, play writing, and more. I personally love OM but it's not for everyone. I've got lots about OM in my blog if you're interested in further info or seeing how our day to day lives with OM go, both in the sidebar to the left of my blog or by browsing my main entries. Hope this helps!

That's awesome! For some reason, I love "finding" other Outlander fans. I read the first four books once, and then found out there were others years later, so I re-read the first four and then the rest of the series. And now you have me wanting to re-read them all, too. I need my Jamie fix! :drool5::001_wub:

Did anybody ever tell you that you're kinda cruel? :lol:

She's adorable! Cute pics! :)

Hm. Well. My homeschool group is an active one and I'm a relaxed homeschooler with a "do school around life" rather than "live life around school" philosophy (I know, easy for me to say as a relaxed homeschooler who is only homeschooling two kids and one of them a new Kindergartener), but there that is. So my kids see other kids on our frequent field trips and get togethers. My kids are also in extra curricular activities, so they see and interact with other kids there. For my almost 11 y/o daughter, that would be girl scouts, book club, and judo at the Y. There are two girls from activities that she sometimes sees outside of activities, too, for a playdate or whatever. We also live on a street that has a bunch of kids on it. They all go to school but can play after school hours, weekends, summers, etc. So luckily this hasn't been too much of an issue for us.

Oh, not really, I've read all three of those books and would always recommend all three of them in this type of conversation. So already knowing the titles, it only took a minute to grab the links. No problem. :)