Math Mammoth does go pretty deep, but that's not addressing the elephant in the room. Your son needs more review than is being built in, no matter the curriculum. That's not something Beast will provide. Rod & Staff is a tight spiral, and that wasn't enough to connect the concepts together in his mind. So how do you provide the review and connections? Be explicit when you're working with him. Explain how X is building what he did with Y. For example, the child working with fractions should see how it relates to division and multiplication. The kid working with time should be encouraged to use the same strategies from basic addition/subtraction or fractions/decimals. Everything has to be related to each other. Review with games or other material. Pick one day each week to put aside the book and do something different: more applicable, more targeted to something he might have struggled with or didn't quite get. Expect the child to teach back to you. They know it? Great, they get the benefit of skipping half the problems on the page if they teach you how to do it. You want to bring in the teaching/learning pattern of Show it (with hands on materials) Write it down Relate it to other material Explain it back When these are met, move on. I would very much hesitate to move into something like TGTB, where the pages are overwhelmingly busy and still won't provide the targeted work your child needs for mastery of a concept.

In a lot of places, even though afterschool care isn't available at the school, it IS available. Here, the only afterschool care for kids in our district at the school is 7th-8th grade, who actually have a designated program to help with homework and organized social time. It's free. That doesn't mean there isn't afterschool care for younger kids. It means it's not at the school. Many of the kids are bussed to the community center for care, or the Boys & Girls Club, or the Y. There is care, it's just not on the school grounds and unless you have a kid that needs it, you probably won't find it. School schedules are also staggered so those who don't go to care have the option of high school students to provide immediate after school care for their younger siblings/neighbors.

Good morning! I think your storms are headed our direction, @mommyoffive. We've got weather tonight through Thursday. Today: coffee tidy house take ds to school tutor finish painting WE bags pick up ds from afterschool program schoolwork dinner...? I planned chicken, but have 2 sick adults and am not inclined to have them sit at the table with us. wipe down house/disinfect common surfaces take ds to evening activities

I think caring for and taking on the added responsibility/stress of logistics for many people, even if you're not officially "in charge" is extremely draining. I am an introvert, but dh is an extrovert. Put him in a collaborative environment and he thrives. But put him in charge of herding cats and he's exhausted.

That sounds fun! We go much slower, but we have the passport books that we get the stamps for.

No. That would not be a logical move. He has no capacity to understand his legal obligations and impact. The organization had 24 hours to ensure they followed procedure due to the time constraints imposed by the regulation. That time has passed, so if they did not, they cannot fulfill their obligation at this time unless the parents agree to the delay. I feel okay with what I ended up doing. It was morally neutral. We'll see how it goes.

You hit it on the nose with the not supervising/leading well/following procedure. It's a rot that is enabled up through the organization because of the relationships of people going back generations. It's really not fair to the other kids. They're a mixed group of boys and girls and some have never had the experience of either these adults in charge or this child, so to get them all in a fell swoop must have been a little like falling through the looking glass. Oh, plus the kids ds dealt with still there, so it's just one big ball of fun that made the party swing. The number of stories I heard this year could be written into a bestseller.

You can think that I'm being hard on the kid, but I'm really not. He is not dangerous, but he has absorbed a lot of things he should not have and made the group a toxic environment to others. Calling him a git is much nicer than describing exactly what was being said by this child. I'm usually pretty easy going with other kids, and compassionate to everything they are dealing with. I cannot in good conscious minimize my reaction any more than I have. This is not within the pattern of 'challenging', this is bad. Ineffective adults around compounded the issue. Previous years he was challenging, but he had adult leadership that understood his social needs and worked as hard as they could to set firm, reasonable limits. Even that was not enough sometimes and he was on thin ice often, and I never remember a parent dealing with it in the moment, just reacting when they had to. This year they gave him to the two leaders that fostered a terrible environment for our ds two years go. To say I am shocked this is a hot mess with several parents raging mad would be a gross overstatement, but apparently we were the only ones who could see the writing on the wall.

Side and back sleeper. I wear a lightweight cotton mask and it is a serious game changer. In the summer we use a fan for white noise, but we don't need it most other months. There are two types of birds in our backyard as soon as it gets warm. And they are extremely annoying: one sounds like baby kittens and one has an obnoxious almost echo-like honk-tweet. They start at 4am and don't shut up until around 9-10, well after we're awake.

@mom31257 that is an ambitious trip!

Good morning and happy Monday! coffee schooolwork work out throw the hockey gear outside? There's no sun, but there is a stiff breeze turn in notes wash sheets plan dinner get ds through his homework violin set up the week calendar when available paint the WE first aid bags

My kids have nicknames they use in their daily life. One got his as a baby and it just stuck. One was given his as a teen due to the range of voices he can make. He's my sensible, quiet, one, and imagine him being called something like Porky or Taz, which makes no sense whatsoever until he opens his mouth. His given name cannot be shortened well (it's short enough already, like John), but this fits him pretty well.

But the OP's son expressed interest in being a truck driver before it was sent. I don't see this as pushing a child into the trades when they're desiring to go to college. My kid expressed interest in being a storm chaser when he was about 13 or 14. His scoutleader sent an email to both of us about a weather/storm class about a month or two later.

I would use Writing Tales for the 9yo, beginning with level 1, moving to level 2, and then IEW. Writing Tales is very gentle and begins with retelling stories, but gives plenty of assistance in the task, including sentence strips, numbering work, and filling in gaps. It's only two levels, but I would not move on to their suggestion (Classical Writing) and would do something clearer and more structured instead, overlapping some of the previous work. I'd start the 11yo on IEW level A, and add in a spelling program. IEW begins with retelling skills and quickly moves on to developing vocabulary and structure. Get the student resource notebook with it to reinforce the skills. It'll let her write as much as she wants but with guidelines helping her to rein it in a bit.

@Dmmetler Terrible for the fridge to go out today! I hope it's a quick fix when you get a repairman in and not a total loss. We had ours go out last summer. It was a small part that helped regulate that went on the fritz. $200 for a repair bill was nicer than a lot more than that for a whole new fridge.

Everyone decided to skip the hike today. It's a perfect day for it but the lack of will is real. DS14 is out burning sticks, ds25 is doing laundry. I am enjoying some quiet.

I honestly don't know how previous generations managed it all. I am exhausted with a very scaled back version. Dh doesn't celebrate most holidays with us so all the trappings fall to me while he goes to work. Ds hunted for eggs. It took him a while to find them all. We made paper airplanes, had some family time. Each of us went and did homework. Let me just have this one and say I hate professors who assign junk. In week 1's packet was the requirement to take a selfie and caption it with 4 things about ourselves. Week 2 has a requirement to upload audio about ourselves to go with the selfie. This is for a science class. DS is playing basketball with friends who were also sent outside after too much sugar. I'm not looking forward to the hike, making dinner, and orchestrating everyone into an activity.

Not in this case. The kid is obnoxious, but not dangerous. He's been on his "last warning" for a long while, and behavior has become worse and more colorful. It doesn't endanger anyone, he's just been a git with an active vocabulary and his parent/leadership don't do anything until it's ticking off the wrong people. If it had been my kid, there would have been immediate tomato staking so that there was very little leeway to be in a position to antagonize others or run his mouth. He would have been allowed to be in to do the activity with parent right there, leave immediately after without social time, 2-deep leadership in any part of the activity that required him to work with others. Any outburst or running his mouth would have led to a suspension for a week to help develop self control. There wouldn't have been the ability for several other parents to express their frustrations repeatedly about my child's unchecked behavior during the social time while I sat talking with friends and the leaders left them alone. On the flip side of concerns, this is a young teen who feels ostracized in many areas of his life, has an active imagination and fuel for his ideas, has parents with appreciation for weaponry, and is now losing the one activity that tolerated him and had mild aptitude with. The kid is not dangerous....right now. His life overall is not healthy.

Thanks. I mulled over what you wrote and decided that's the most I could do, but I also don't want to encourage the fight. I just sent the papers to the family with "this is what you should expect in your interactions with them." If they get read, the parent/child will know. If not, everything was given to her (which is one of the things the organization was required to do to inform them of their rights).

Yes, it is. I think 12 is usually right in the age range of when children seek out mentors and outside influence as well. How do you define ideal relationships between aunts/uncles and their nieces/nephews?

I do prefer cooking over gas rather than induction. I feel like I have more control over the temperature fluctuation than I do with induction. It's also nice to have that extra source of energy during a storm. However, my lungs are terrible, with a bit of scar tissue and very sensitive to disruptions in the air, so a gas stove isn't the healthiest thing in the world for me. It's why we use a lot of cast iron and things that hold heat well when cooking longer, so I can turn down the heat or turn it off completely after a while. The one nice thing about our previous induction stove wasn't anything to do with cooking, it was a glass cover that came down over it. Not possible with a gas stove, but it made a nice level area that was used as extra counter space in our small kitchen.

Thanks. The parent is feeling like they are being railroaded, but doesn't know it's not the correct procedure. They just think this is the way these things go when someone is kicked out. And also, this is the sort of thing that doesn't happen so it's rare enough that procedure is only on paper, not through anyone else's experience.

I know a kid who did some awful things, bad enough to get kicked out of the program he's in. There's no question he did them, or that they were wrong, or that safeguards against it were the equivalent of Willy Wonka saying "no....don't" from all adults involved except the parents of the other kids. He should be kicked out. It never should have gotten to that point if they had effective leadership or effective parenting. A combination would have been ideal. BUT The organization is a hot mess of donkey poo and isn't going about it the right way. They are not providing the child/parent the rights that are set forth by the governing body and the steps seem to be very muddled, giving a clear green light to the organization to let them sweep their part under the rug. I know this, because I have read every by-law and document that has been made available and what is happening is a blazing red flag. I can share the documents and information, and if it comes to light that the organization did not provide proper notification/list of rights to the child/parent, the child could be let back in and the same thing could happen again. I could not share the documents, the child/parent could find out anyway, and fight, and be let back in. If I tell the leadership (the very same two adults who enabled a toxic environment for ds, who we warned the organization about, and who are straight up ineffective again this year and leading this inquiry), they could change course now and get back on track according to the by-laws. I don't want the kid in and I don't want to open a dialogue with those two. Which is the lesser of two evils here?

We are all worn out here, and dh is working today. Today will be very low key, I think. coffee hide the eggs watch ds hunt for them after he wakes up Godspell lunch make giant paper airplanes go on a 3-5 mile hike dinner: chicken and noodles. We scaled way back and changed direction after I got some great deals at the grocery store. Disney Jeopardy family time

Is anyone doing so today or is it a day of rest?