Not having done a rescue (or any pets save fish for years, cause my husband is allergic), I would say that it's common sense it would go either back to the rescue or to another good home (ie., not to the pound, and especially not out on the street). I would have thought though if the person could find another family to take the pet, though, that that would be preferred to bringing it back.

Nothing...we live in Earthquake country.

I'd add ProgressivePhonics.com to this list.

There is a series on Church history that has many of these...they share chapter length stories from their life with a quick paragraph bio at the end to fill in details not in the story. The stories are excellent...no pictures so definitely for kids at the chapter book stage, not the picture book stage. https://www.amazon.com/History-Lives-Box-Set-Chronicles/dp/1845508149/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=History+Lives+series&qid=1550382987&s=gateway&sr=8-1 You can get the books separately too... Here's the people you listed in each one: Book 1: Peace and Peril Saint Augustine Book 3: Courage and Conviction Erasmus Martin Luther John Calvin

UG. Usually, I like to give the teachers the benefit of the doubt, but it being a first year teacher I'm thinking this is major warning signs going off. If it was earlier in the year I'd say pull him...but it's 3 months, and that's something you can make up in the summer easily in homeschool if he's not learning much and if he actually likes it. But if the social stuff is really getting to him, I'd pull him in a heartbeat.

Teaching math facts was a real weakness with me, until I found Addition Facts that Stick (and subtraction, multiplication, division).

So, I've long planned to cover modern slavery when we cover the Civil War. Several years ago I wrote some articles about modern slavery for an awareness event, including a chart comparing modern and historic slavery. I decided today was as good as any to go ahead and make that into a homeschool resource...it has two versions, one for younger kids and one for middle and highschoolers. https://docs.google.com/document/d/19hntT-UAS8qdDfcJ_OmFW6AJedcnIbzQ3k-7BerbvTU/edit?usp=sharing You can also find a short teacher resource at Free the Slaves.... https://www.freetheslaves.net/teachersguide-1/

On Netflix I'd suggest the animated movie "The Breadwinner" is about life for a family under the Taliban in Afghanistan. It's excellent. Should be fine for the 5th grader but it's just on the edge for the 3rd grader (ie, I'd show it to some 3rd graders but not other based on their maturity and ability to deal with emotional stuff). If you browse your library, even if they don't have anything specifically about Katrina, I've noticed some recent books about hurricanes/weather have info about that (same for modern earthquakes, sunamis and such...if you can find a recent enough book about those subjects they often cover specific modern ones). And most libraries would have books about most of the modern presidents, and those would usually include major events that happened during their presidency, which would be another way to tackle that.

If you can find it there was a show called How we Got to Now a few years ago, that traced how inventions in the past affected things then and what developments are happening now. It was a really fun watch and got up to modern history (though it ended a few years ago). On YouTube Crash Course US History has up to Obamma, and their World History series has some more modern stuff too...and they are usually very good but I do suggest previewing as now and then (not every video - not even most videos) they have a joke that isn't quite appropriate for kids and I haven't gotten that far in their videos yet to tell you whether the modern ones have anything like that. There's some really great podcasts out there which deal with modern history but all of the ones I love you would have to screen, because while they are mostly fine...there's some stuff occassionally that's not good for kids. Plus some of it might be too dry for that age (the 5th grader might like some of these though). More Perfect and Stuff You Missed in History Class are two of my faves.

You mentioned he likes games? When you get to addition (not like the general concept/number sense type stuff...but down to memorizing the math facts), I suggest Addition Facts that Stick. It's a short scripted visual/tactile lesson followed by a week of playing a game for practice. So simple, I love it. Someone suggested story of the World. Some people just listen to the audio and love it (and then maybe do a craft or something for each culture...not necessarily each lesson). If you have a child who struggles with listening (since it doesn't have many pictures), I've started to blog about this and have suggestions for short attention span and other suggestions for making it more visual (pictures to go with, videos, ect), and ideas for the first 11 chapters (so far). I put way more work into it than necessary at first but the things like videos and links to pictures and such are easy and pretty open and go. http://imaginativehomeschool.blogspot.com/2016/09/story-of-world-our-lessons-plans.html If you are looking for a good easy unit study type of thing for science, I love the Small Square books by Donald Silver on different habitats (backyard, woods, cactus desert, cave, savanna, artic, etc.) . The writing and illustrations are beautiful, and there are little activity suggestions (usually with pretty common household objects) suggested every few pages. I've done unit studies with these just reading a section a day, doing the activity if there was one, and then sometimes looking up a related you-tube video or doing something from pinterest (but just the book and the activities in it are usually enough). Some of the activities are meant for doing in the environment (not so much artic and so forth, but backyard, cave, woods, etc.)

My husband is a computer programmer for a company that makes turbines, so that might be related. 🙂 Any advice for someone visiting the country for the first time?

Hello! I wish I could help you...I don't know anything about distance learning. But I just wanted to comment because my husband and I going to get to visit Slovakia in June (in Kosice). He has a business trip there and I will be coming with. It will be our first time going overseas and I'm so excited. It looks like a beautiful area.

Does your oldest have homework? I'm sure when he first comes home he doesn't want to do his homework right then, but maybe you could have a break on T/TH for an hour right after your oldest comes home, and then do "homework time" for both him and your other kids at the same time.

Print Path also has the "start from the top" idea, and while I love their curriculum, I don't think it's the most efficient way to write, especially with capitols. MOST of the lowercase letters can be started easily from the top or middle, but I feel like the idea of starting from the top is just for consistency, mainly, and not for practicality. I purposefully teach my son to start some letters from the bottom (like capital M). Though, in cursive you do start N and M and other letters from the top, so maybe that's the reason.

Still could be a holdover from even earlier. Midieval scripts like foundational and gothic you generally use downstrokes/sidestrokes only for.

If you would like your child to listen to Bible Stories, I love the audio of the Storybook Bible. It's so well narrated.

Also, whatever curriculum you use...if you have found ways to supplement it, tips on how to use it, or if you have encountered problems (your child just really didn't understand the lesson in chapter 13, for example) and figured out how to get around those problems, others who homeschool with that same curriculum will appreciate the advice. Also, I always appreciate detailed curriculum reviews. Things I go to ask about on boards like these, which I think would also be helpful on blogs, is comparison's between curriculum you've used. Everyone's needs are different, but understanding why something worked or didn't work for someone else helps me figure out whether it would work for our family.

I'm always looking for ideas for science experiments and history projects and I find most of my ideas from bloggers who share those on pinterest...so I don't think that blogs have "gone down-hill." So, if you have an activity you did that you loved, please share it on your blog. If there was something that helped you, it's bound to have helped someone else. Think about what the strong points of your homeschool is...share about that and you'll be fine. 🙂

We really like the "Facts that Stick" curriculum here on Well Trained Mind (we've used Addition, Subtraction, and a bit of Multiplication so far). They are limited in scope, but really got my kiddo through the math facts. They have short, very visual/tactile lessons followed by games for practice. It's so easy...one lesson and then practice with games for a week. Others have suggested Right Start Math for a more complete math program to continue with, and we started on this and like it (VERY tactile, has review built in), but while my son loves the abacus (the primary tool used), it caused some trouble going back and forth from the number line to that. He doesn't adjust well to new ways of doing things. But it also uses games and tactile lessons (though the lessons are a bit harder to implement than "Facts that Stick" - doesn't have that easy "1 lesson/1 week of practice rhythm"). Before either of these, we tried Math U See. It also has some great manipulatives (we still use them sometimes) and I love how it explained place value, but once we got into addition/subtraction it was too much practice with dry worksheets and my son didn't do well with it from that point on.

On the lighter side, my teens like Spaced Out by Stuart Gibbs (and I think he wrote a sequel). Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was one I loved as a teen. Didn't like Martian Chronicles as much but that doesn't mean your son wouldn't.

What I'm really excited about, is that if I understand this right, things will continue to be added to the public domain each year, which means it's only 3 more years before we get to play with Winnie the Pooh! (1926) And another few more before we get the English version of Bambi (it was published in Austria in 1923 but the English translation was published in America in 1928). The ones I'm really excited about that were published in America in 1923 (foreign publication isn't always in the public domain at the same time) were some of the books of poetry... E. E. Cummings – Tulips and Chimneys Robert Frost – New Hampshire (including "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening") William Carlos Williams - Spring and All

I'd like to add that it really CAN help our kids indirectly. People who publish homeschool curriculum, workbooks, resources, and such now have a greater pool of public domain resources to pull from, and we'll start to see this trickle into our hands. Sure, big publishers can afford to go through the cost and hassle to get permission to use non-public-domain works, but smaller publishers (like people who sell through Teachers Pay Teachers, offer freebies on their blogs, etc.), can't usually do that, so this will mean they can now offer more stuff to us using these public domain works.

So, we were up to about half way through SOTW Volume II when I decided to re-enroll my child in public school. We loved learning history together though and I'd like to at least finish that Volume next summer if possible. It's going to be a stretch though to fit it in, because we will be doing some vacations and such too. So, I was wondering if there were chapters I could reasonably skip? For those who have gone through this, if you had to skip some chapters (or sub-chapters) between the Crusades and the end of the book, which ones would you skip? (Hard question I know cause it's all so good).

We haven't started that volume yet, but I've started a pinterest board for it with a few fun ideas: https://www.pinterest.com/galel/sotw-vol-3-early-modern-history-1600-to-1850/ I also have some other boards I collected stuff from when I was considering a trip to New England before we had started with SOTW, which has a lot of things about Colonial times that might be helpful... https://www.pinterest.com/galel/hs-new-england/ For Native Americans I suggest seeing if you can find this book in your library, which has a ton of fun ideas.... https://www.amazon.com/Native-Americans-Make-Work-History/dp/1587283018/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1547055610&sr=8-1&keywords=make+it+work+native+american Plus, wherever you live in the US there is likely that there were local Native American tribes there at some point, so it's worth looking up any historical sites or reservations you can visit.

I agree with everyone that there's nothing to worry about now. What you're doing now is instilling a love of history and a general sense of how wide and deep it is, and learning about the existence of other cultures and how they affect each other and how things change through time. The details of it (names, dates, etc.) aren't as important right now. I will say that if you can repeat the info in a different format they tend to remember more though. For instance, following up with a picture book or a short video from you-tube. (I suggest Extra Credits History and TedEd videos). Chronological Extra Credits History (may not include some of their newer additions...like they are currently midway through a series on the Viking Expansion that isn't included in this list yet): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyjLt_RGEww&list=PLHnQERzIZmXVYIRJyGkVCWWF6USpJYoDK Sadly no one has put together a chronological list of the TedEd Videos but you can just search TedEd and the culture/topic you're covering and see if they have anything on it. Also, I suggest looking up videos that show actual medieval/Renaisance buildings like castles and cathedrals and such.