We’re finishing up the third grade here as well, and I will agree with you on how difficult everything has been this year! We have a younger sister along for the ride who is doing 1st grade work, so the situation seems sort of the same. We start school at 8 and spend 30 minutes or so on devotional-type stuff, then 9yo does 15 mins. Piano and XtraMath. That usually has us at about 9am and she spends the next hour on math (Saxon 3). We have 30 mins. of recess from 10-10:30, after which she finishes up her math worksheets, and then she gets to go read for 45 minutes. After reading, she does her Latin (Latina Christiana I DVD, worksheets, etc.) Lunch is at noon. (I do 1st grader’s LA while my 9yo is off doing her independent work.) At 1:00pm I sit down to do LA with her—FLL3 (15-20 minutes), AAS2 (30 minutes because it’s a weak area), and she does penmanship on her own. When that’s all done, she and her little sister will listen to a chapter of SOTW 3 on CD and then they narrate/dictate whatever they want from it. This usually finds us finishing around 3:00pm. I don’t tell you this to gloat, but to show you that I could never get it all done before noon. I was trying to adhere to WWE with both my girls, but a quick re-read of TWTM (1st edition) made me think it was rather redundant—I do narration and dictation with them in regards to their own reading and to history, why do it a third time with something completely unrelated to what we’re studying? I try to keep track of what they’re going over in grammar and make an effort to include those particular topics in relation to their narrations/dictations in the other subjects. It seemed like it was rather easy to do 1st and 2nd grade, to me. Something about 3rd grade has really walloped me upside the head. I’ve struggled all year long, trying to decide if this is what I really want to do next year—mainly, is all the extra work involved in a “classical†education really worth it? I have homeschooling friends who are done by noon. I was able to be done by noon when my oldest was only 1st or 2nd grade. That has gone completely out the window this year—but we’ve added Latin, grammar and math take about double the time they used to take, and I have another full-time student this year. It’s expected that it’s going to take longer! Duh! J I don’t know if you’ve read TWTM, but it doesn’t recommend a second foreign language until 5th grade. From my point of view, I’d drop the Spanish. Play it in the car when you’re out doing errands if you absolutely cannot let go of it—but don’t give any school time to it anymore. (Really, you’re going to add it back in less than two years…it’s not going to hurt to take a break.) Being behind in history and science is perfectly OK for me. I’d rather drop history and science altogether and make sure the 3R’s get done because missing a year of history in the 3rd grade isn’t going to hurt anything in the long run, but missing out on writing, reading and math will hurt, very quickly. (I was actually called out on this by a commenter on my blog, who thinks I spend too much time on language and math “lessons,†but I stand firm in my opinion. You can pick up history and science in the two other times you cycle through—it’s pretty hard to do remedial math at the same time you’re supposed to be doing pre-calculus.) As to art and all those related subjects, I had to adopt a “Fun Friday†to fit them in anymore. I’m too tired at the end of a regular school day. We have “regular†school M-Th, and then on Friday we do all the fun stuff IF all the regular stuff was completed during the week. This has eased stubbornness, and also keeps me more motivated. I know Friday will be an easy day, full of things I like to do with my kids—like a reward for being a kick-butt homeschool mama the rest of the week—so I work harder as well to make sure we can really do those things. FWIW, Fun Friday includes: Math games (because we never have time for them otherwise!), writing letters to friends and family, Latin quiz and games, Art, Music Appreciation, Girl Scouts, and reading. My 9yo also does another spelling lesson, simply because she is so far behind in her spelling. It’s usually still a full school day, but it’s full of really fun things we like to do, so it’s not an issue. Fun Fridays are also great because I can also schedule field trips without feeling immensely guilty about missing lessons. (I get flamed for that as well, but whatever, it works for me.) Don’t let the burn out get you. Think about your last day of school—do you want to celebrate finishing the important stuff, or regret giving up? Think about the beginning of the next school year—do you want to spend the first two months catching up, or starting fresh in the new levels your daughter is supposed to be working? That’s what gets me going when I’m starting to lag. You can do this. Don’t forget to be awesome. <---- My motto right now.

I second the thanks for the replies to this thread! I don’t know what’s in the water these days, but I have people online and IRL sneering at how much time I spend doing school each day! I think, with homeschooling becoming so mainstream and people knowing homeschoolers more frequently, that the criticism of particular educational philosophies is becoming more common. Ten years ago, no one cared if you were homeschooling using the Classical method, the Charlotte Mason method, the Unschooling method, or Online method. They were worried about homeschooling in general. Now, homeschooling is so…almost “popularâ€â€”people who aren’t in the homeschooling demographic know more about the practice and feel qualified to remark on the nitty gritty details. A mother of one of my kids’ friends was astounded when she heard we did school until 3pm. “All my homeschooling friends are done by noon!†was her reply. That stung so much. I have four children: 2, 5, 6, and 9 years old. It is so much work. SO much work. There’s no way to have all the one-on-one with such young children if I’m not going from 8am to 3pm. Many days I try to corral them again for some stuff after dinner, but we’re not very consistent with the practice. I had to farm out science to my DH on Saturdays in order to get everything else done. It’s been a tough year, thinking I was doing something wrong because it takes so long to get through a day. So, once again, thank you for your honest responses.

Thank you so much for your replies! I needed your comments and support to help me out in a moment of thinking that I had a really big problem on my hands. (Why is it so easy to go to "that" place?!?) I'm going to just focus on the spelling a little more and keep doing what we're doing. Thank you all again. :)

I started my 3rd grader on Latin this year. It's been one of our roughest homeschooling years to date, and not a lot of Latin was done--we're on Lesson 9. My daughter took her Lesson 9 quiz yesterday, and eight of the ten vocabulary words were spelled incorrectly. Some were blatant misspellings and some were spelled correctly, but without the dashes above the certain syllables. I'm thinking about starting over at the beginning, seeing how we're not that far into it anyway, and really working the spelling as we go along. Is this crazy? Am I expecting too much? She's not a natural speller, and I am, if that helps explain anything. I started her over in spelling this year, and she's doing much better--she's about halfway through Level 2 of AAS at the end of this 3rd grade year. She knows the vocabulary and can whip through the flashcards easily. Spelling the words on paper, though…not really happening. It’s pretty much the same with English words; I’m still spelling a lot of words for her, but it’s improving. Would you tie Latin ability to spelling ability?

We didn't do school this week (SPRING BREAK, yay!), but I did post a "quarterly report" to wrap my head around what we've done and where we are at the end of this quarter: http://mrsbrooke.blogspot.com/2013/03/2012-2013-quarterly-report-winter.html

Ours is up now as well. I just can't seem to write everything up on Fridays anymore! http://mrsbrooke.blogspot.com/2013/03/2012-2013-weekly-report-week-27-dental.html

I've got my tests narrowed down to the ITBS and the Stanford. We normally use the CAT/5, but I just feel like I want something "more" from testing. I'm interested in a lot of feedback and questions that go above grade level to check on grade levels. Which test does the best job of that? I have a BA and I'm not worried about passing a certification test. At first glance, I like Stanford because I've read that it's considered the "hardest" test and it's untimed, which could be good for one of my easily distracted children. But then the ITBS seems like it might give me more feedback, and it IS timed, which...seems like a good thing for no apparent reason at all. We are not required to test, I just like having the results and giving my kids the practice. Thoughts? (Thanks in advance!)

UPDATE: It went really well! I'm so proud! I wrote up a blog post about it, if you'd like to full story and video of the proposal. The mayor was so awesome! http://mrsbrooke.blogspot.com/2013/03/bluebirds-brownie-quest-project.html

Our mayor phoned our house this morning to invite our 9yo to present her "community improvement" idea at the city council meeting tonight. We participate in the Girl Scout "Juliette" program, and seeing how the 22nd of February is World Thinking Day, I let my girls take the day off from regular school and just work on Girl Scout stuff all day. One of the things my 9yo worked on was a step for one of her "Journeys"--picking a problem she sees in the community and trying to do something about that problem. She wrote a letter to the mayor about our city's running trail and how she was hesitant to use it because it's not marked very well and, because they are no maps of it, she has no idea where it goes. She also wrote that she would appreciate a response to her letter. That was a little over a week ago (obviously), and the phone rang this morning with the mayor's name on the caller ID. I figured it was worth interrupting lessons to answer the phone, and it was indeed our actual mayor on the line. He said her letter was "the sweetest letter," and then he acknowledged that she had asked for him to write back to her and he said, "How about I do ya one better? Would she be comfortable presenting her idea to the city council tonight at our meeting?" And then there was some stammering from me, which I'm sure was very impressive, and we talked logistics for a minute before deciding that she could handle it and that'd we'd show up early so she could have a chat with the mayor and he could talk her through the protocol. She's excited, "but a little nervous." She narrated to me what she wants to say and I wrote it down for her, and now we're having lots of discussions about various political topics. What a great tie-in to our study of the American Revolution! :) I just had to share because I'm just so proud of her!

I'm making up my lesson plans for next year and was wondering if anyone could help me out and tell me what the usable page numbers are in Zaner Bloser Kindergarten, 2 Cursive and 4. Normally I have the older books from previous kids, but I went on a big cleaning spree and threw the used books out a few months ago! I'm always guessing, and I'd like to have the actual numbers so I can plan it out correctly. Thanks in advance for any help. :)

Here's ours: http://mrsbrooke.blogspot.com/2013/02/2012-2013-weekly-report-february-11-15.html

We took December off, but I went dark on the blog back in November, so this is the first Weekly Report I've posted in FOURTEEN WEEKS. But yeah...who's counting? Ha! http://mrsbrooke.blogspot.com/2013/01/2012-2013-weekly-report-january.html

Introvert doesn't translate into "only can re-energize when home." It's most often more of a "re-energizes when by myself." You have special needs kids, you homeschool and you never leave the house? Yeah, that's a perfect recipe for discouragement and burn-out. You say you don't want to leave the house because that's not a break for you--but staying home isn't a break for you either because you're sitting in the back room listening to the escalating conflict, which tenses up all the muscles in your body and causes severe flare-ups of Mommy Guilt, and then you give up and jump up to put out the fire. Staying home isn't a break for you. Period. Is DH going to harm the children if they are left alone with him for two hours? The answer to that question is important. Literally speaking, will your children survive for two hours if they are left alone with their father? Because you NEED two measly little hours EACH WEEK away from your house to eat a meal by yourself, read a book by yourself, get your hair trimmed, and/or meet one little friend for dessert/coffee/whatever (introverts can have friends, I promise). You are doing a big huge bunch of work and you need a break. I only chime into this conversation because I experimented with this idea when I was pregnant with #4. #4 wasn't exactly planned, I still didn't feel "recovered" from all the emotional trauma of #3...I hated where I was in my life. (I'm being completely honest here because I think you want to hear that kind of thing.) I knit and I had always loved the idea of Knitting Nights where people would meet, eat something and then pass the hours knitting together, talking or not talking as the mood struck. So, after a particularly difficult day, I stomped my foot down, exclaimed that I couldn't stand another minute in my home and that I was "going to go out that night and meet some knitters and talk about things that I wanted to talk about and not be interrupted by toddlers and preschoolers!" (I was in a very, very dark place at that point in my life.) So I went. And it filled me with so much anxiety to approach those strangers and ask if I could join them--I think I had to give it three tries before I actually made it to the table, but I made it and they welcomed me with open arms and looked forward to me coming back again the next week. I felt so great after those two hours of listening to them talk to each other, sipping my hazelnut steamed milk and silently plugging away on my little knitting project. DH never rang me up on the cell phone, and I still didn't feel like going home when Knit Group was finished, so I went grocery shopping afterwards and returned home that night at 9:15--rested, uplifted, and with foodstuffs for the rest of the week. The house was a disaster. Food was dried onto every plate, most of the kids' clothing had stains in them that never did come out, and they had spent the entire night watching episodes of "How It's Made" with their father while eating popcorn. They went to bed 30 minutes late, but when I walked in the door they were asleep in their beds. I viewed the experiment as a complete and total disaster. I now had more work to do! But in the morning--my kids went on and on about what a great night they had! They asked when I was going to go away to knit again so they could hang out with Dad and learn more about how stuff was made and eat popcorn. It dawned on me that they needed that time with just him, just like I needed some time with just me. That day of school was phenomenally better than any day had been in weeks. Both myself and my kids had gotten a break from each other, which allowed all of us to "reset" a little bit. That was three years ago, and I still go out once a week by myself. Depending on how I'm feeling, I go completely by myself or I meet up with a friend or two. I make up a nice CrockPot meal for the fam to have in my absence, put my 8yo Martha Stewart wannabe in charge of sides, and tidy up the house a little extra as a "thank you" to DH for his service. DH gets home from work sometime between 5:30/6:00 and then I go eat dinner somewhere I want to go eat dinner (or take a picnic dinner if I'm not feeling up for a restaurant), and then I do something that I want to do--knit, read, get my hair colored, window shop, sit next to a river and stare at the water--for two hours. When it's 8pm I head to the grocery store and get my shopping done sans kiddos and long lines, then return home with means to feed everyone, which my DH appreciates very much. Sometimes the dishes are done, sometimes they're not. And when they're not, it's usually because DH was actively doing something with the kids and just forgot. And really, it's not that hard to fill up the sink with water and let the dishes soak until morning...in the long run, it's not that bad a trade-off at all. Some nights are not enjoyable for DH. I felt terrible about that for a long time until one day he said, "You deal with rough DAYS all the time, I can handle two hours." And that's true. Fatherhood isn't only about enjoyable times with their children, just as much as motherhood isn't only about non-enjoyable times with our children. My best guess is that your DH really needs that "single parenting" time his children, even if it's tough because it will allow his parenting skills and relationships with his children to grow. Not that patient with the kids? Lame excuse; he needs to man-up and deal with what's going on in his home. (Tough love, tough love.) You need to do something about this discouragement before it gets bigger and becomes something much worse than "being discouraged." You recognize that something is wrong with the situation, you are trying to remedy the situation, but it's not working out the way you need it to work out, which signals that you need to keep tweaking it until you get what you're after. If what you're really after is time alone in your home, then DH needs to take all the kiddos out on a Saturday morning or the like. There are a million different ways to tweak this "alone time" idea to fit what it is that you need. Dream about it a bit and then take action. Try it for two months before forming any permanent opinions. (Two months @ 2hrs/week = 16 hours, which any able-bodied father can handle alone with his kids.) (And once you master the 1x/wk Alone Time, you get to add in the 1x/wk Date Night EVERY WEEK no matter what. It'll change your life. Your husband will love it. [wink, wink, nudge, nudge] But don't skip over Alone Time and head straight into Date Night--if it's hard for you to leave your children alone with their parent, you won't handle leaving them alone with a teenager very well.) ;) Hopefully this doesn't come across as rude--that's not my intent at all. I find that when I try to sugarcoat it, that the message gets a little foggy. So I go with truth and find that there is much less confusion on the receiving end. I wish you peace and I wish you strength. You are special and you deserve to have a wee bit of fun...who can fault a woman for wanting to eat french fries in her minivan by herself once a week? Not too big a thing to ask!

I couldn't tell time until well into the fourth grade and I turned out just fine. My $.02 is that this is not an issue to freak out about. Twenty years from now it won't matter if she learned to tell time when she was 7 or 10.

We're up: http://mrsbrooke.blogspot.com/2012/10/2012-2013-weekly-report-weeks-11-12-13.html We've done math all week. ALL WEEK. That's what happens when you're 6-8 weeks behind in lessons.

http://mrsbrooke.blogspot.com/2012/09/2012-2013-weekly-report-week-10-from.html We're moving along.

One of my BILs has a Dec 20-something birthday and my MIL had his birthday parties in June while he was growing up. My husband was actually very surprised a few years ago when I mentioned that I was sending a card to his brother in December--"Why are you doing that? His birthday's in June..." :D

I use my blog to help me track my kids' progress. I write up a weekly report nearly every week and try to describe areas of success and areas of difficulty. At the end of each quarter, and at the end of each year, I go back and read through all the posts that apply. I find it very motivating to "see" what has been accomplished. I also like to go back and read through posts from the year before when we're just stuck--it reminds me that we will eventually get through whatever difficult concept is before us, just like last year when whomever was struggling with whatever. I have administered the CAT5 test to my eldest before and I really like doing that. We were way short of funds this last year, so no test. I plan to administer it at the end of this year. I did have each of them read through two different (free) online reading assessments, just to get an idea on their reading levels. Sometimes I wonder if I should do that at the end of each quarter, just to satisfy my curiosity, or only keep it for the end of the year. It's just fun to see the progress unfold! :D

Bam! http://mrsbrooke.blogspot.com/2012/09/2012-2013-weekly-report-week-9-plague.html I had a funky week in which I just did not want to do anything, but we still got 'er done. Go us.

My 8yo is slightly obsessed with Harry Potter right now and has made herself a wand and goes around making up incantations using the small amount of latin that she has learned in these first nine weeks of the third grade. She was wandering around, hexing her siblings, and suddenly she shrieked "EXPELLIARMUS!!!" I turned to see what the commotion was about, and saw her 2yo brother running at her, wildly waving a popsicle stick in her direction. Oh, I laughed!

I'm in the same boat. SOTW 3 isn't as "fun" as 1 & 2 were. It is dealing with some much more serious topics, which my kids aren't really enjoying, and it feels like it's written at a slightly higher level, which makes it a little harder to understand. I'm going to keep on pushing on--we try to do a lot of activities to make it more interesting. If it was just the reading and narrating, my kids would probably mutiny by this point! ;)

We were going to ditch WWE after slogging through WWE2 last year, but I decided to ditch the workbook and just select my own passages according to the recommendations in the WWE book. It's been a night-and-day difference for us in terms of enjoying the program. Just thought I'd throw that out there. I did not like the workbooks because it just felt like one more disconnected subject to get done. My kids seem to care more about the passages when they're about something they're actually working with in other subjects.