Family meeting. Set a limit together of X number of things each person needs to get rid of. I do this occasionally for my oldest who has the same problem I do and doesn't "see" clutter. I mean, we see the mess, we just get so overwhelmed we have to look at one item at a time. I will say that part of our decluttering has been in reshaping our spending habits. When we travel, we no longer buy tchochki. We purchase a single thing that a) helps us remember b) can't be bought elsewhere and c) goes in our home, a place already established. This means our last several trips we've brought home street paintings, since we can hang those flat on the wall. My children have brought home coins or pins or something else small.

I second narration. We start with a simple prompt "Tell me 3(or 5, 6..) things that you read in here/that made you laugh in this story." Once that part is down, we focus more on telling events or facts in order.

They would have started her in 9th anyway. It's a Texas thing. If it's not an accredited school/program, the school won't vouch that the student has passed the material to earn the credits.

Reading in our house is done 3 ways. 1 day a week we work on comprehension with a list of questions to go with a short text (inferring, vocabulary building, putting phrases together to build a big picture from a descriptive piece) 1 day a week I pick a book that he wouldn't have chosen on his own, but would probably enjoy. He reads to me. 3 days a week he picks whatever he likes, and gets to tell me all about it when he finishes the book or chapter. We don't use a reading curriculum except for the comprehension pieces (Reading Detective). He enjoys it since it's on the computer so it stays. :)

One more thing I realized, is we often look for older editions of a book. Up through the 1980's, children's chapter books (like the BFG) were on bigger pages, with larger type, and retained many of the illustrations. Newer editions have been slimmed down. They keep the text, but the book itself isn't as appealing with its tiny font. It's not unusual to find two or three copies of the same well-loved book in our house - an older edition that will get a kid hooked, a nice hardback to cozy up with, and a newer paperback to carry on trips.

Yes, it's always been that way no matter where we live. It was part of our decision to transfer our 8th grader to an accredited online school for high rather than have him repeat a year if he chose to transfer in (he did, and the school was very relieved we had done it this way!) At the time, his other option would have been to complete End of Course exams for each class, but given that those are based on the textbooks the school uses, it wouldn't have worked for content subjects. The private school here would *possibly* have taken him, but their usual cutoff for new students is age 12. Each candidate has to sit through a long interview to see if the school would be a good fit for them, and since they don't do credits the same way as the public school, it may have been fine.

I have the same thing here. We don't tie spelling to reading. Reading is done for pleasure (on own/being read to) or comprehension (material at a lower level than fun reading). Spelling is done to learn rules. Writing is tied to spelling. Mine blasted through AAS 1, and the retention was high, but we needed something different/more. I found an old series called Spell Correctly that goes through the rules, but not as overtly. Each week has 5 parts: introduction, word usage, checkpoint from previous week, fill in the blanks, spelling test. It's nifty. It doesn't spell out the rules so when we need it, I do. Each week he does the exercise from the book in one of three ways: orally, with tiles, or written. Each week I pick a copywork piece from our lit book or a poem/nursery rhyme that focuses on the rule, but doesn't use the same words as the spelling book if I can help it. It's short, but it helps to cement the rule that we go over every day that week. On Friday he does the spelling test, either with the tiles or orally, and writes the copywork from memory.

I will say it became easier to self-regulate on candy when we dropped hidden sugar in our food. Sugar does act like a drug - the more you get, the more you want. So when it's in everything there is a constant feed going on, creating more highs and lows. We started buying simpler foods, and sweets didn't taste as good/we didn't want as many as we did before. The lack of sugar in our every day helps on holidays, I think.

I know families that are near this, very close. We dropped a group here because the conversations were alarming when taken altogether: -letting little Suzy (age 8) drop math because she didn't like it, and she wants to be a midwife so she won't need it anyway. -what to do when CPS comes -kids will learn at their own pace, it's a fact. Johnny (age 15) just saw the need to get things underway and finished up 4th grade last year. -it's crazy to think kids need more than a worksheet for each subject (math, language arts) each day. Especially high school juniors. -don't keep records! You don't have to, so you really shouldn't! This wasn't like a 1 or 2 member thing, it was a group attitude that fed itself. Coming from a much more academically focused group (like, preparing kids for college and making transcripts) it was like walking into the twilight zone. And they weren't unschoolers! Or at least, they didn't see themselves that way. I am all for an annual review of progress and keeping records. I think it should be mandatory.

We believe in self-regulation here. For one, our Trick or Treat rule is they can only get as much candy as the houses they walk to. We don't do Trunk or Treats, don't do mall ToT'ing..it has to be door to door, and no lazy parent driving them. This means a 3yo might be done after a street and come back to eat, but a 5yo can walk a 2 mile loop. Doesn't matter. They earned it. The next day will be a sugar high, tempered with non-sugary foods (heavy, protein and veggie rich meals), and the next day less so, and by the end of a week it'll be 90% gone. Our only rule is that it has to stay in the main living areas (dining, kitchen, living room) and that the trash gets picked up. It's not as satisfying after a week or so. By that point we may add time restrictions (not right before meals or bed), but they end up being done by the second week.

The first time through the cycle is mainly for exposure - to the chronological events, different cultures, parts of the world. Don't stress. Pick topics for an overview, and bring the other subjects in. Copywork: from history. Reading books: biography/myths/historical fiction. Science: studies and experiments that go along with the time period (astronomy, basic physics, nature study). Social studies: what children did in those cultures. The second time through you'll go more indepth and be able to go down more rabbit trails. It's not worth trying to cram everything in now.

I chose other. We probably would do it more than once, but depending on how indepth the book went we would do partial or all. For example, I have a Children Throughout History book. We'd go to the children of the time period/place in our study, and then set it aside until next time. Or - we'd pull it out for a lesson in comparison: these children did this, but in this culture they were expected to do this. How did other cultures treat children? It really would depend on what is being taught and what they are ready for/interested in. If they want to make the connection between Ancient Egypt and how it evolved to Modern Egypt, by all means! Relate yesterday to today.

Earlier this week I had a teething, sugar-high'd 5yo. Did you know 5yo's teethe? Yeah, neither did I. But they do, and those molars can be a pain. Combine with the usual whinyness and slight OCD and well..after a completely terrible science lesson I had just had it. During a nice long lunch I realized I wasn't enjoying this week, and if I wasn't, he probably wasn't, either. The material did not grab me. I couldn't make myself be excited, so I couldn't expect him to be. I reworked what we were doing. Just because the book writes the information one way doesn't mean it has to be presented that way. We took the rest of that afternoon and just did fun. I read Life Of Fred to him while he played legos. The next day we went on a field trip. We made puppets and drew. Today was all about presentations - him teaching me. We still did math (that's working well), but I just took next week and themed it with a story he really likes. Same information being presented, not the same way I had originally planned.

I wish mine was old enough! We're still working on printing for another year or so.

Developing The Early Learner. Tracing, coloring, following directions. I'd also say the Bambino Luk books. They're not workbooks, per se, but she can do them over and over to her heart's content.

I think it's a bit idealized. We had the Childcraft series. Our house was full of talking, learning, lots of books on all different subjects..Children were included in adult conversations/activities at the age of 10, but helped along before that. We had the only computer among our friends, probably the only one in the neighborhood. We got three different newspapers each week and counted college professors among house visitors. Across the street, my friend lived a very different life. There were lots of books on the shelves in her living room, but they were all by the same author: Danielle Steele. Her parents were quiet, didn't engage in long conversations about anything. They didn't watch the news but occasionally scanned the newspaper. They lived simply. There will always be that wide span. Social media helps and hinders it, but so does how we expect and treat our kids. The Duggars, for example, are going to speak at a homeschool conference in Alberta and one of the comments on the piece that struck me was "they missed the point of homeschooling. They haven't ignited the love of learning and created life-long learners." I see the same thing with my son's experience in public school. He was to compare McCarthyism to Salem, 1692 - and was befuddled when I kept hounding him with the question "WHY?". WHY did it happen? What were the catalysts? HOW did the two subjects become fueled and gain traction? He kept repeating his teacher didn't care. She just wants them to make a checklist and move on. When he got around to researching for himself (to get me off his back) he became intrigued with the subject and could see how they related better than his teacher's handout on the matter. If we don't expect our kids to think, they won't get a lot of practice at it.

Give him golf pencils. It will change on its own, with little work from you.

I do when they willfully go to self-checkout instead of standing in a proper cashier's line. Being irritated is fine when you aren't creating the situation yourself and then complaining when it doesn't go to your liking.

I don't think cashiers are less friendly. I think customers are more poorly behaved. Half of them can't appear to read (coupons, signs, hours, limits), and another quarter of them forget common sense. I went through the self checkout line the other day and 5 of the 6 stations were being taken up by huffy people trying to buy alcohol but not wanting to wait for the lone attendant to get to them and check their license. Common sense, not so common. If I had to spend 8 hours a day with cranky people who did everything they could to make my job harder, it would be difficult for me to be more than simply polite. Forget nice, when I see people dropping off cartons of milk at the front of the store or letting their children eat bunches of grapes and then expecting me to weigh them. It would be hard dealing with what amounts to a store full of 3yos. I would become slightly wary of people and their intentions. Probably why I'd make a bad cashier at a big box store. LOL

Thank you for that! It looks like a much better fit for his style. :) I forgot when I ordered that this child is my non-joiner. Expecting to sing songs or play with puppets? Ha! No. His brother would have loved it, though. Right now he's hampered by the fact that he's still learning to write, so the minimal writing in SSS was what I was aiming for - it's hard to find something that fit that. Next year he'll be switching to The Fun Spanish. We'll just rework SSS in the meantime.

Montessori. I introduced one tactile letter at a time with its sound (no name) and left them out to play with. As soon as he grasped one, I added another...and then showed how to smush them together. Our letters were made by Learning Resources, I think(?) and had raised arrows to show the finger how it should be written. Same thing with numbers. I have a set of spindle boxes and 45 spindles. You can make one easily with divided trays and pencils. But the first box had the numbers 0-4 over their respective compartments, and at first I only put out 10 spindles. We'd go over each one together: see the zero? It looks like a big hole. Nothing goes in the big hole. See the one? It looks like one stick. 1 stick goes in its box..and so on and so on. When he caught the pattern I added the second box, numbers 5-9. Then we introduced MUS blocks to take their place and continued with the 10s, using cards that I could layer to make "10 and 1" (11) "10 and 2" (12)... with the MUS blocks above each pair showing the same.

The only change we've made is from Duolingo to Song School Spanish. I think we might switch back. He doesn't like it nearly as much and seems irritated by the songs.

I don't go to work for my husband, he doesn't go to work for me. Support? Yes. Enjoy conversing about our days? Yes. But we each have full day jobs - and if it's ludicrous for me to go sit in his office I don't think it's unreasonable for him to stay out of mine. I don't want to hear about schematics, he doesn't want to hear about spiral vs. mastery, but light conversation about things we've done - cool. He doesn't ask me how school is going or what we are using. I volunteer that information.

I'm a fan of the Overly Attached Girlfriend method. Getting right there next to them, cheerfully talking to them as they go through their tasks (because you're not going away until they do), asking them questions about what they're doing, encouraging them in a fake cheerful manner...it's very effective. They want you gone, you want them to do chores on their own and get started on school, and they will start to do anything after a while to get you away from them. :D

We straddle the land between traditionalists and non-conformists here. :) Our plan this year: -Turkey in a box. Well, turkey breast. We don't eat a whole one anyway, and a nearby caterer smokes them and turns them into deliciousness. Pick up the day before, reheat. -homemade cranberry sauce to go on top. It's a tradition, made with thyme and chicken stock. -premade desserts. We like cooking these. :D We'll cook them a day or two ahead of time. -mashed potatoes. Made while the turkey breast heats. -random vegetables, whatever's handy. -Bakery-made rolls. -an appetizer buffet. Meaning, I'm buying presliced cheese, crackers, salami, and olives and such from the deli bar. In previous years we've done chicken, breakfast-for-dinner, Chinese food..we've learned a few things over the years. We like holiday dinners to be as simple as possible. We cook from scratch pretty often. I'm good with holidays being off the shelf because dh and I want to enjoy our time, too. We also end up going to several holiday meals and so we make the foods we like best for there (homemade mac & cheese, savory sweet potatoes..). But we'd rather take the days dh gets off of work and center it around family. Our day will be spent watching football, playing board games, looking at the black friday ads, watching old movies.