This. Plus I have also read that this virus can live on a dry surface for 2 weeks.

I think going straight through without a break would be really hard. We do spelling (AAS) and Latin (GSWL) together and they play a game for Latin and then I let them take a 30 minute break. I set a timer that is loud and when it goes off they know we get right back to work. Then we do SOTW history (Mon & Wed) or In the Beginning Science (Tue & Thur) and read-aloud (I read to them) together. After that it is time for our lunch break which is an hour and half, usually from 11:30 to 1:00 or 12:00 to 1:30, depending on how our day is going and how long I read aloud to them. They get lots of play time but we eat lunch in there somewhere too. After lunch we split up. One will practice piano while I help the other with math. One may do his 40 minutes of read-to-self while I am helping the other with grammar or writing. They do CLE math, Fix It! Grammar, IEW Bible Heroes for writing, read-to-self and piano practice during this time.

My two just-turned 9YO sons will sometimes complain but that is more likely to happen when we are not in a good routine. If they know that Yes, we are doing school every day (Mon-Thurs and then co-op on Fri) and Yes, we are doing every subject, then there are usually no complaints and no whining. If we are out of our routine then there can be a lot of push-back from them. For example, we just went through two weeks (not this week but the two weeks before this one) where both or one of the boys were sick and we could no do a full load every day. So then it was kind of a negotiation of what we were going to get done each day we could get something done, with me making sure I prioritized what I felt was most important. Then on Monday they were trying to get me to take a day off "because daddy is off that day" or trying to get me to do a smaller load of work. I sweetly but firmly told them (again) we were back to full load and would not be taking any time off this week. After that, they settled into the routine and we had a good week.

Maybe it would help if you would share how old your older daughter is and what you are using in your homeschool. What does a typical day look like at your house? We have some days that are yuck but, fortunately, they are few are far between. It is usually when someone did not get enough sleep (maybe because said person woke up to see the red moon:) and that can throw off the mood and attitude for everyone involved. But most of the time we enjoy our homeschooling together, although don't get me wrong, if my sons did not have to do school work, they would be cheering. But they usually have a pretty good attitude about it these days (since they tried public school for one week last January:) and are pleased to see their progress.

I had a similar experience. I could not stand the unruly behavior, although the men who were the leaders did not seem to mind. If dh could have taken them every week, they would probably still be participating. But he has an ever-changing work schedule so I ended up having to take them often. I could not take it and felt they were in enough things already so we dropped out after one year.

This is what I believe also. I will add that I believe that any person (not just children) who does not understand right from wrong will not be held accountable. I believe you have to do more than just 'know' about Jesus Christ and believe is God's Son. The Bible says that even Satan knows this. It is more than mere knowledge. It is accepting the gift of Jesus, dying on the cross as a sacrifice for all of the sins of the world. Eveyone's sins are included and have already been paid for with His sacrifice. We accept this gift of Christ's sacrifice by following Romans 10:9 If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (more than just the knowledge of). Also: 1 John 4:15 says Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. I believe that once we believe and have made this confession, the Holy Spirit lives in us (God abides in him). This is the beginning of a relationship with Jesus Christ and we grow closer to Him and are better able to hear his voice or direction when we pray and read the Bible regularly and also fellowship regularly with other Christians. For those asking about people born in other countries where they might not have had a chance yet to have heard about Jesus Christ, the Bible talks about this also. In Matthew 28:19, Christians are commanded to: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (God calls missionaries to go to all the nations and teach people about Jesus Christ). Also: Matt 24:14 And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come. Mark 13:10 And the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations. These are my beliefs, so I voted that you have to be a Christian to go to heaven.

Thanks for the responses. I will try to answer all of the questions in this post. We are still calling around trying to get in to see a neurologist or cardiologist asap or get some advice from another doc as to whether I should just go to the ER. I have an appt. with a cardiologist on Friday morning but nothing with a neurologist yet. Dh has a call in to the head of the ER (dh's boss) to get his opinion on going to the ER or waiting for an appt. Dh said if it happens again and he is not with me I should definitely head straight to the ER in the nearby city where they have a major stroke center. If I am unable to drive myself then I will call an ambulance. Thanks for asking this TrulyCrabby. Not sure I would have thought to ask him other wise. We do believe they are TIA's from the HRT, which are not bioidentical. The timing is almost too perfect for coincident, although one never knows so I definitely need to have some testing done to make sure there is no other cause. I do believe I have migraines related to weather and have for many years but this was really different than anything I have had before. Dh is on the phone now with the ER director so we will have an answer soon, as to whether to make appointments or go to ER. Thanks for all of your responses and your reassurance. I slept terrible last night because I was really troubled by this but hopefully tonight will be different. ETA: The ER director doc is texting one of the neurologists to try to get me in quickly. He didn't think we needed to go to the ER but did think I needed to be checked out within a day or two.

Thanks. That is reassuring.

This evening dh and I figured out that I have had at least three TIA's recently and there may have been more. I recently started HRT because I was just soooo tired of the hot flashes and not sleeping well at night. I have used HRT in the past without problems but had not been using it for probably a year or more. I have bad allergies and have bad head aches and sometimes some dizziness when the weather changes (storms/rain). We have had a lot of storms and rain lately so we thought it was just that again. But the worst time it happened I was meeting a friend for dinner and she is an RN. She said then that it seemed like I was having a stroke because my speech was slow and took more effort. This happened on Sept. 2nt. The last time it happened wasn't as bad, didn't impact my speech but did make me feel kind of drunk and uncoordinated. Dh was with me that time and he had me try to walk a straight line and I couldn't do it. This was about a week and a half ago. So, thinking (hoping) it was related to my allergies/sinus headaches, I saw an ENT today. My sinuses are fine and, if anything look too dry so he wants me to quit taking my Zyrtec for a while. He definitely did not think these episodes were related to my sinuses and thought they sounded like TIA's. Dh is a dr. and had thought I might need to see a neurologist but, with my history of bad allergies/sinus issues, we thought seeing the ENT first would be good. I don't think either of us really thought about a TIA because my cholesterol levels are good and I am generally in pretty good health. We had forgotten about the HRT. When we figured it out, I immediately stopped the HRT (I had a patch) and took a baby aspirin. He will call tomorrow and see if I need to do anything else. It's kind of scarey. Anyone else had any experience with this?

I have an 8 YO son who sounds very similar to your daughter. School used to take soooo much longer than it should have because of his melt downs. When he finally calmed down, he would normally apologize and feel badly about how he acted. The vast majority of his melt downs were related to school, being told no or having to do something else he didn't want to do, such as having to go with me grocery shopping instead of playing with a neighbor friend. We read every book that has been listed in this thread and felt as if we had tried everything (this was not new behavior). We went to several counselors and never really saw any improvement with any of them. We finally put him on a very low dose of prozac (half of a normal child's dose). It is like we have a new child. He is so much happier and has not had one major melt down since the medication kicked in. And he is so happy about that. He did not like having the melt downs either. So he is so happy that he can now control his behavior and emotions so much better. My gut feeling is that he is a high anxiety child. We really did not want to put him on medication and felt that we exhausted all of our options. I don't feel good about having him take a medication like this at such a young age. We are thinking about trying to wean him off of it very very slowly starting in January and see how he does. My dh was also doing a lot of traveling over a couple of the years when ds's anger was so bad and I wonder if that had an impact. So we will try to slowly wean him off and see how it goes. If we see he still needs it, we will put him on the smallest dose possible and try weaning again maybe a year or so later, with hopes that he may outgrow it at some point.

I had one son who liked them and the other who hated them. I dropped them and they have both done very well with math without the timed drills. I think if they cause stress you can just drop them. We do flash cards and that has ensured good fact knowledge.

both

I am finishing up AAS3 with my two 3rd grade sons and getting ready to start AAS4 in about three weeks. We will just keep going but that's just me. I started Getting Started With Latin over the summer with my sons so that we would already have a routine with it down before we added back in all of our other subjects. It is going really well and we all enjoy it. It is so easy to implement. There is normally one new word each lesson, although sometimes it is just a new grammar concept or Latin expression. We use my laptop to listen to the author read the new word and the sentences to be translated (files you can download from his website). I explain the new word and it's various endings, if needed. Then we read the sentences to be translated in Latin aloud together. Then the boys take turns translating each sentence. All of this probably takes 10 minutes tops. I make index cards of all of the new words and the boys play the memory matching game with them, which they love and it is like doing flash cards with them only more fun. Then we are done with the lesson. Very easy and fast. The game takes the longest. Good luck with whatever you decide.

I have two 8, almost 9, year old sons. We do spelling, Latin and History/Science together. Most of the time they do the majority of their math, grammar, writing independently, with me checking in on them here and there or they ask for help when needed. We use CLE math and it starts out with new teaching which I sometimes have to help with but sometimes they can read it on their own and do it without help. Then there is a larger section called We Remember where they are doing review problems that they can do without help. For Grammar we are trying IEW's Fix It! Grammar this year for the first time and, so far, we are all loving it. I teach something new once a week. The rest of the week they are practicing it and require very little help so far. Each lesson has them look up a vocabulary word in the dictionary, copy the definition that fits the use of the word in the sentence, fix a provided sentence, adding punctuation, marking n above nouns, ar above articles, etc. and then copy the corrected sentence (without the markings) onto a separate piece of paper. They add one sentence a day and they are actually writing an entire story that is interesting. We are really enjoying this, they are learning a lot and most of the work is fairly independent. For writing we are finishing up IEW's Bible Heroes. I work with both of them together one day a week to help them create their key word outline. The next day I work with them separately to brainstorm strong verbs, adjectives, etc. and then they are pretty much on their own to write the rough draft. I edit their rough draft and explain to them any corrections and then they are on their own to copy it to their final draft. They are also required to read-to-self for 40 minutes, although I need to up that to 45 soon. We are working towards an hour. One son also does piano practice for 18 minutes on his own. I don't know if any of that helps or not but that is the independent work my 3rd graders do right now.

This is the book my dh read and really liked/agreed with also (he is a doctor and reads tons of medical literature also). We have a almost 9 YO son who has high cholesterol genetically (he's adopted). Dh did tons of research trying to find ways to bring it down naturally. One of the things that seems to have helped tons is putting him on magnesium. It helped so much and has other good benefits that we are all taking it now.

I wouldn't think a 9 year old unit would be nearly as efficient as a unit made in 2014.

I am really stunned the doctor and others are hounding her and the family about her choice. I think her wishes should be respected. She has already been through a lot with the surgeries, living with COPD and the recent broken bone. I believe if I were in her situation, I could make the same choice. I just read an article this morning about how doctors tend to go this direction more often then their patients because they see what the patients are put through. If she is very firm on her decision, I think I would probably respect that and I would be very firm with her doctors about it. Maybe you could go ahead and contact hospice and discuss it with them. I would think they could probably provide some helpful advice and would likely be very supportive of your mother's wishes. My mom died two years ago after a bad fall and hit to the head. I know this can't be easy for you either way. I am so sorry you are going though this. ETA: My mom went through chemo due to breast cancer when she was in her late 60's. It REALLY took her down and I would say, based on what I have read, that it was a more short term chemo and was managed well (she was not throwing up every day) than some other chemo treatments. She was never quite the same again after the chemo. She still had to take some meds that really messed with her balance and had other bad side effects. She was never as strong and healthy as she had been and her ability to think logically really went downhill. She very quickly often seemed more childlike after the chemo. I know everyone is different and responds differently but chemo certainly does have it's bad side effects that really hit the elderly harder than others. My mom was really pretty strong and healthy before her chemo. Not sure if this helps or not but wanted to share it just in case.

I started with SM and tried and tried to make it work for us. It didn't work for my two sons or for me. I tried MM with them and same thing. I switched to CLE and they love it and I find it very easy to teach. I do sometimes still have concerns about missing some concepts. I have purchased SM every year and I just go through it and see how they are teaching a concept and make sure we cover it. I have also purchased MIF and tried it with my sons....same as SM and MM. So we trucked along with CLE for a year and half or so and for 3rd grade I decided to try again:). I order SM and MM and, over the summer, we spent a bit of time on each of them so they could compare and see the difference, now that they are a bit older. They both wanted to go back to CLE. It just makes more sense to them. So, every once in a while I revisit SM to see how they are teaching something, just to make sure we don's miss anything important and I will probably keep doing that because it makes me feel better and sometimes it helps me understand how to teach something better. I also used education unboxed . com which has really been even more helpful than SM. Awesome website. I have all of the SM Challenging Word Problems and we go through those every now and then also. The thing that I especially have appreciated and needed from CLE is the guidance on teaching add/subtract/mulitply facts (we haven't gotten to divide quite yet). It seems simple but if you have never done it before, sometimes you can be a bit unsure of exactly what to do. I have really love the handholding CLE has provded with this and my two sons are really getting their facts down well. Good luck to you in your decision.

I really like this idea too. It would work great at our house for doing AAS. I am teaching two same age sons so I could have them both working on spelling a word with tiles at the same time and they would not have to leave their seats! This is awesome! Thanks for the idea!

Just now seeing this. Will definitely be praying for your son and your whole family.

Read aloud time was one of my very favorite things about school. I specifically remember my third grade teacher reading a lot to us and we would always beg for another chapter. The funny thing is that I could still remember parts of a book that she read that really made an impression on me. I was telling my ds (8.5) about it one day and telling him the parts I could remember of the book. It just so happened that he had recently read it! I had picked it up at our homeschool consignment shop and didn't even realize it was the same book because I never remembered the name of it. When ds told me that sounded just like this book he had recently read, I reread it and, sure enough, that was it. Very sweet memories, especially of third grade. I think we were read to until we moved to 7th grade, Jr. High School.

One of our sons has high cholesterol. He is almost 9 years old and he absolutely loves fruits and veggies. Salad is his go-to meal for a quick snack. He probably eats better than anyone else in our household. Our two sons were both adopted from Russia when they were babies so we have no family medical history but we know his high cholesterol is definitely herititary. Dh is a family doc and was very concerned about it. He talked to a specialist about it and was told they would not do anything until he was at least a teenager. Dh thought that was pretty stupid, since the problem exists now and can be causing damage from now until he is a teen. So he started investigating it. After a lot of investigation, dh now has ds on magnesium citrate, pantethine and annatto tocotrienols. The magnesium citrate by itself really brought down his triglycerides and his levels overall are much better than they were before he started taking these. My level usually runs borderline so I started taking the magnesium citrate also and my numbers are much better now. After dh had read about all of the positive things associated with magnesium citrate, he put all of us on it. He also read a lot about what causes the raised levels and we have really tried to cut back on carbs at our house. We have increased egg consumption and cooking with olive oils. Overall our levels have been reduced considerably with everything combined.

I have two 8YO sons and in January one of them started fighting me about school every day. He has always been a more difficult child but this was over the top even for him. Even though he never said anything about going to P.S. I had a feeling he wanted to go because his friends in the neighborhood go. His number one favorite thing to do is to play with friends so I suspected that was the issue. Finally, I decided to sign them both up for public school, primarily because I knew he would not like it but he clearly wanted to know what he was missing. He loves his play time. He had also been in occupational therapy, had a lot of trouble with writing and did not have to write nearly as much as P.S. requires. They went for one week. At the end of one week all four of us (me, dh and both sons) were done with P.S. They loved riding the bus, recess and lunch but that was about it. He now knows that he is not missing out on tons of playtime with friends while they are at school and that he gets a lot more play time at home. He also knows that he does not have to write as much at home. The nice thing is that everyone at the school was really very kind, helpful and not against homeschooling. When we decided to go back to homeschooling, they were very sweet about it and understood. Some of the administrators/teachers had friends and family who homeschool so that probably helped too. The boys also tested very well so they felt we were doing a good job at home too. One of the teachers even came out to ask me about what curricula we use in our homeschool and some other things. So that was all good. We are happily homeschooling again now and neither of the boys want to go to P.S., which is great. I understand that this kind of test could backfire on someone, if the school was a good fit for the child though. It really is not a good fit for this particular son because of his writing issues. He is just not able to write the amount they would require now. During the one week, he would try so hard to get all of the writing done in his homework. He would sit and cry (very sadly, not angrily) and would be right back at it first thing the next morning trying to finish. He was reading at a 7th grade level but at P.S., in second grade, he was reading from a level 2 reader and was having to write answers to a bunch of questions about the reader. I explained that we just don't need to do that at home because we can discuss the books he reads. Anyway, TMI probably but that was our experience. We are peaceful homeschoolers now:).

This looks awesome and I can't wait to get my hands on the entire thing. Thanks so much for putting yourself out there. I would find that difficult to do also but I am thankful that you have done so. I have some of your threads printed off and often refer to them. I have been looking forward to seeing your book. Congratulations and thanks for all of the effort and time you have put into this. Did someone say this will be available on this coming Friday?

bump - trying again for the evening crowd. Anyone?