I was coming on here to say the same thing. Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson. Owl Moon by Yolen. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Frost (we have a lovely picture book by Susan Jeffers).

From a Christian perspective: I very much relate to what you're saying. I am a people pleaser and that trickles down to wanting to please my children. Which leaves me frazzled because there are so many of them and they don't want to be pleased with the things that are good for them. They want to just play and even then aren't usually totally pleased. I constantly find myself asking them dumb questions like "did you enjoy your math today?" or "ready for school?". I know the answers and I know I shouldn't ask those questions, but it's hard to stop myself! The solution 100% of the time for me is going back to the Lord: 1. Remember who He is. He is the One in control. He sees me and still loves me. He knows my children and what they need - I can go to Him with problems and I can trust Him. 2. Remember what my God given roll is. I am to love them - that means caring about (but not submitting myself to) their current happiness. But it means wanting their good in the future much more than caring about the present. That gives me a lot more confidence to say "no" to fun things. It also means that sometimes I say "yes" to fun things and put school work off for another day. Sometimes those side things happening are really important - even if they're not "school". Constantly reminding myself who God is and checking to see if I'm where God would want me to be is incredibly helpful. It shifts my focus and brings me instant peace and confidence. Otherwise I'm feeling overwhelmed and stressed and ready to just throw in the towel.

I'm like you and get up early. But, as soon as I get up I feel like I need to be doing things and would feel lazy reading (although here I sit on my phone and do not feel that way...feelings are complex!). The kids go down 1-2 hours before dh and I go to bed, so that is my ideal reading time (not that I always use my time wisely). Kind of a "done with my tasks and now winding down for bed" type of thing. Maybe you could read for a little while and then read something lighter if the initial reading gets you too keyed up. 🤷‍♀️

We used R&S through book 6 and then switched to Saxon 8/7 without any trouble. I can't speak to the writing in the book question because we have siblings coming up so try to keep it clean. I never assign all the questions, though -probably not even half.

I count instrument practice for my 7th grader because it is not something he would do himself. I don't count family reading time-he doesn't have to sit through those, but it is his favorite thing to do, I think. My goal is around 5.5 hours of work (he lengthens it out to 7 and I'm working on seeing what I can combine or get rid of). So, probably 5 hours of undirected time?

You guys, this is so helpful! That was a very long post and I appreciate you all taking the time to read it and offer suggestions. One of the issues is I'm expecting things without giving clear directions - Geography was pretty opened ended (which I thought he would like, but I think it was too wide open). Yesterday I worked on making more defined things to research each day including where to find the information (books, specific sites - I found a couple without a ton of ads) (I forgot to mention @8filltheheart that I do have a Geography book - one that @Lori D. had recommended - there are just some things that it doesn't include, like current information [written in the 90's]). So I'm going to be having him make a book for each country rather than write a paper - it will have clearly defined areas (like History, Arts, Food and Etiquette), with much less writing than a paper. I made an example for him, and he thought it would be a good change. I asked him about Latin and he wants to keep it. 🤷‍♀️ I also asked him about putting the religions book to the side until high school but he wants to continue. @SilverMoon good reminder to make the curriculum work for us. I'll start breaking the religions book into bite sized reading each day, for starters, and not try to do a chapter a week. I was aiming for discussion of the chapter on Thursdays, but there is no reason to not just discuss it when we're done - whether it takes a week or two or three. I still need to think through writing. Up until this point I have really liked Writing Strands. But, looking ahead to high school makes me wonder if this curriculum will prepare him for high school writing. I'll be looking at that today. One thing that I think will help is making sure he's doing the daily assignments in Writing Strands rather than trying to complete the paper by a given date - again, bite sized pieces. I guess I was hoping that he could figure out how to break things into bite sized pieces himself, but maybe 7th grade is too early to expect that. Maybe I can alternate spelling with figurately speaking. I really don't think he needs spelling every day (dh wanted to keep spelling this year if we can) - my next child, however, may need spelling up through 12th... We're starting figuratively speaking this week, so I'll see how it goes. And I'll think more on piano. I really hate to have him give it up because it was so good for me, but I know he's a different person... Thanks again, everyone (including those I didn't mention by name). I'll be rereading the suggestions many more times.

@caffeineandbooks thank you for the commiseration. It does help to know I'm not alone. And helpful to know you're not doing spelling or grammar-maybe those are things I can remove too.

I see these "feeling overwhelmed" topics pop up periodically and haven't really ever paid much attention to them. Up to this point in our homeschool journey I have been pretty confident (with periods of uncertainty that resolve themselves). But, this year it's my turn to type up one of these topics: with my 7th grade I am feeling increasingly anxious that I am messing this up. Highschool is just around the corner. I am feeling like there are major holes and that I just don't have time to work one on one with him for everything. He's pretty independent, but he doesn't know what he doesn't know, ykwim? He is a slow worker, so I know that's part of the problem, but he's smart and compliant and any issues that we're having I think have to be rooted with me. But, I also have other kids that I'm trying to do school with too. School takes him from 8:30-4 most days and some of the output is, frankly, not good. He knows the material if I sit down with him, but his output (tests, papers, math homework) is just not at the point I think it should be. I just feel like the year is rushing forward and I can't get my feet under me to stop and help him understand anything -it's always "on to the next thing" and we just leave the poorly done assignments in the dust behind us. Any veterans want to chime in with ideas or encouragement? And thanks in advance for reading yet another one of these topics! Here's a typical M-Th weekly schedule (we try to use Friday as our catch up and to do a couple of more fun things): LA -Reading good books. I require 30 min a day, but he often reads more than that. Reading is a subject I'm not worried about. I also purchased a Progeny Press guide for one of the books we're doing this year. I thought it might be good to work through one of those. -Spelling. Takes about 15 min and we're doing Dictation Day by Day. No complaints here - this seems to be working well. I may stop doing it next year since he's a pretty good speller. -Grammar: 15-20 min/day in theory. Analytical Grammar. We just finished year 2 of the 3 year cycle. We'll be doing the reinforcements once every 3/4 weeks. I plan to fill our grammar time with Figuratively Speaking - it will get us talking about some of these terms and reading some short stories and poetry, which we haven't done much of up to this point. -Writing: my nemesis... He loves to write, in theory. We're doing the old Writing Strands level 6. He does pretty good with that. I've also started this week reading through Essay Voyage (MCT) with him because the essays that he's done in other subjects have been pretty bad. I don't plan to assign any of the writing from the book, just read through it together. I'm aiming for about 20 min of WS a day. However, he usually waits until the day before a WS paper is due and then spends all day doing it. Math: Saxon 8/7. I go over things that he got wrong the previous day and the new lesson for 10-15 min and then assign the evens. I think it's a good system. His scores aren't great, but it's mostly minor mistakes. I think we're going in a fine direction with this. Logic: We're reading through part of World Religions and Cults together. He reads a chapter a week and we discuss. No output required. It's a little advanced for him...I'm thinking about putting it aside until high school and doing a more traditional logic course. He is just really interested in other religions, so I thought it would be fun to do together, but it is a lot of extra reading each week. Science: We're doing Berean Builders, a chapter every 2 weeks as recommended. I make him take notes and assign him a test at the end of the chapter. We're starting to get into the habit of taking notes and seeing why it's important. Language: We're doing greek 2 days a week for 15 min and Latin 2 days a week for 15 min. It's slow progress, but that's fine with me. I think he enjoys it and it doesn't take much time. My high school plan is to have him use his greek knowledge to translate for his Bible study. I don't have thoughts on using Latin for high school - it may just be a good base for studying a modern language. History: We're doing a geography year - a new country every 2 weeks. This is another area I'm struggling with. I want him to research the country on his own (our library is terrible so it's mostly online research) for several days and write a paper. (We're also labeling a map, writing some general information about each country we study (major religion, leader's name, currency, etc), looking up recipes from the country (and cooking them with a friend), and playing a game from the area.) This has potential to be such a fun experience, but the 45 min of daily research is yielding very little in notes and his papers are not good. Online resources are hard to find and many of them have ads which is very distracting to him. I've been trying to sit with him during the research part of this but, again, 4 other kids... Piano: 30 min of practice. This may be the last year that I "make" him do piano - I think he would like to not be required to practice every day. What can I cut out? Is this too much? Not enough? Is this going to figure itself out like all of our past problems have?

We don't have family near so have never had any issue with too many visitors. I definitely don't want any visitors a few hours after the birth: trying to figure out b feeding, all the yuck from post birth, etc-I barely want my husband there. But, after that time, I would welcome short visits from some people. I guess it depends on how much family is around- having visitors all the time is exhausting and especially when you're trying to figure out a new baby. But if they could all be short visits and not too many it wouldn't be a problem.

Just jumping in this thread to agree. I've been homeschooling for 7 years and am gradually becoming more confident. But, I needed some kind of curriculum, even in the early years to boost my confidence, give me ideas, show me what not to do, etc. And sometimes using curriculum is me not recreating the wheel: if it is a good curriculum and will prevent me from having to work hours to develop something, it is probably worth it to me right now. BUT, just because I use a curriculum doesn't mean I'm not teaching to each individual child. We spend a lot of time discussing things together. Sometimes I feel like I'm not very intelligent being on this forum because I don't create (or even know how to create) all my own curriculum. OP: have you tried looking at individual subjects rather than looking at an entire curriculum set (like MP, Bob Jones, etc)? That has worked well for us. For example, for language arts we use: -FLL 1/2, then some other resources, then Analytical Grammar for grammar -Dictation Day by Day for spelling -Writing Strands (and occasional papers that I assign in other subjects) -I've just purchased a Progeny Press for a book I've assigned a couple kids to read. Mostly we just read good books based on many book lists I've found through the years.

I'm sorry-that is frustrating. I offer relatively inexpensive art classes and, for the most part, people have been very appreciative. I did ask this year that people let me know as soon as they can if they would not be in class (it is frustrating when you have prepped a bunch of stuff only to have the kids not show up). If attendance was an issue with the majority I would be very honest: "it is important that your student is in class at least x number of times a month". I've had a few flakey moms that just stopped showing up half way through the year. If they had asked to sign up this year I would not have allowed them to join again. I've found it helpful to just be very very clear about expectations-even expectations that you would think would be no-brainers. Every year I fine tune how I word things so that it's clear. I blame social media-it's easy to just leave groups or forums without giving a reason-seems like people are applying that to actual life too. I think calling people out on it can be a wake up call to them.

We have added the memorization piece into our memory work time instead of our Bible time. We found some great songs for the books of the Bible, 12 disciples, Kings of Judah and Israel, etc.

We all got step throat twice last year. First time my kids have ever been on antibiotics (oldest is 11). Our Dr said that, yes, antibiotics are really important with strep (I had also read that maybe waiting it out was fine). All my kids had a terrible cough and congestion the second time we had it, which is definitely not a sign of strep, so now I don't even know what to look for in the future 🤷‍♀️. Parenting sick kids is hard!

Another vote for read and enjoy. I've tried a couple of curriculums in the past, but reading and discussing the actual Bible together as a part of our morning work has brought the best discussion/questions by far.

School has been going well here. Ds6 has really grown since last year. He does not enjoy any writing that I assign and just wants to get all the writing things done first. He's my first right handed child (older brothers are lefties-the left hand genetics run strong in our house), and probably writes the neatest. Correlation? Probably. We're getting really close to finishing Ordinary Parents Guide-I could probably assign double lessons and just finish it out, but that might kind of kill his love of reading. So, small bites it is!

Thank you, @Lori D.!!

Ah, ok-I've got it reversed in my mind. Thanks! I can see that 🙁 Thanks everyone-you've given me lots to think about, lots of resources to check out, and the encouragement that I needed! I went from panicking that I had been missing a large chunk of education to feeling reassured that it will be an easy fix of discussion and learning some new words.

Interesting! I didn't realize that literary analysis had changed, but that makes sense. Have you read the old thread that @EKS posted (I'm only a little way into it)? Ester Maria seems to be in the older-style literary analysis camp. I'd be interested in your thoughts on what she has to say. If I'm reading it right, she seems to be of the opinion that the kind of literary analysis that you describe ("what does it have to say about who we are...") is more suitable for the college level. It does seem like our educational system as a whole is shifting: it used to be (in all areas of study) you get the very basic building blocks and then work up from there to more complex things. I'm noticing that in things like math, for example, we are expecting younger children to understand complex things earlier too. It's not just "memorize the addition and multiplication tables", now we require them (at the same age) to understand why the addition and multiplication tables are that way. As I'm going through this homeschooling journey with my children the "newer" way of doing things makes less and less sense in all areas. I'm wondering if it's the same in literary analysis? All the Language Arts things are my weak point, though, so that's why I pose the question - I'd genuinely like to hear your thoughts on Ester Maria's thoughts ;). The older way of analyzing seems easier, in a sense, to teach because it is less subjective - it's a multiple choice type of thing (right?). Like, "is this a simile or a metaphor?". But, not knowing any of that and being raised in the educational system where analyzing was "tell me what this story meant", means I have no idea how to teach the easier method. Frankly, I have no idea how to teach the current method either since I almost always got the "what did it mean" questions wrong. I'll be looking into Figuratively Speaking, @Lori D. - thank you. That seems like a gentle introduction for both ds and myself. I started a book that was somewhat similar for poetry with him last year, but it would be good to look at books with that method as well. Lori, did you have your boys do any literary analysis writing in the middle (or high) school years? What does literary analysis writing even look like? Ugh - sometimes I think I've got this homeschooling thing running like a well oiled machine, and then all of the sudden I realize I'm missing a part of the machine and have to scramble to teach myself so that I can teach my kids.

There have been a few questions here that make me wonder what everyone does for literature analysis by grade. We're only up to 7th grade here and have so far not really done anything except discuss and write a couple book reports together (more for writing practice than analysis).

A friend once asked me, when I was voicing my frustration at trying to find friends for my kids, "How many friends from school do you still keep in contact with?" It's zero: all my close friends were made as an adult. That has been really comforting to me. Yes, we try to find friends and we do lots of things to make sure they are "socialized", but I try not to give into that panic that some of my kids don't have best buds.

Can you start something up? I posted on our local Facebook page that I was starting "a park meetup for other homeschoolers every Friday from this time to this time." I posted every week. There was a lot of interest on Facebook but only a couple people (friends that I already knew) would show up. I was really discouraged. But, I've been persistent. We've been doing it for about 4 months now and are starting to get a good core group. There's been 5-9 families meeting regularly now (which, really is plenty-it would be overwhelming if 30 families or someone started showing up). There are people out there like you-don't give up!!

I teach a local homeschool art class and send group texts weekly-even I (knowing that the other moms will probably want each other's phone numbers eventually anyway) make sure everyone is ok with a group text. I would be annoyed.

This thread is making me feel less alone 🥰. I'm seeing all of the above here in rural NC: hybrid co-ops, pricey options, fewer people who want to just meet up (although everyone will say that's what they want...), CC seems to be heading out, moms want to "homeschool" without actually doing any work (although, I think a lot of that comes from the many work-at-home careers that moms can now have and the realization that you can't do it all). On the positive side: we recently started a park meetup in our area and are seeing a pretty good turn out of regulars each week. I also have lots of friends that are actively homeschooling their kids, so it's definitely not everyone. It's good to remember that these things could very well just be trends and not necessarily the direction that homeschooling is going. Fingers crossed...

Thank you-that's helpful! I would think some of that would just be covered just in daily conversations or other science books we use, but probably some not too (like CPR or mental health). I took a science class in college about drugs and how they affect the body. It was so interesting-I wonder if I can find that book somewhere (wish I had kept mine!). I'll take a look at oak meadow too-thanks!

What great resources! I'll have to see if I can utilize those for future children...