I think it will eventually get normalized whether some want it to or not. I agree, we are an overweight nation, and I don't think that is going to change anytime soon. If normalizing it means that people will stop fat shaming overweight people, I'm okay with that. Bunny trail: Why do women seem to do this to other women more than men do it to women? If normalizing it means that models will represent all the wonderful shapes and sizes women come in, I'm okay with that. People are objecting to your wording. It could have been done with much more tact. Is part of your issue with this woman that she is wearing very little clothes in the photos you've seen? I don't think that judging thin women is okay either. I know several women who are incredibly thin and they aren't anorexic. They eat like everyone else. They are just lucky enough to have good genes or something. And its just as hurtful for them to read that people think they are sick or anorexic as it is for overweight people to read that they are disgusting.

Preach it! I'm not crying but I am royally pissed. I'm almost 100 lbs. overweight. Am I happy about it? No freaking way! Am I doing something about it? Trying too. Those posts made me feel sick to my stomach. Disgusting, judgmental and seriously lacking in compassion for those struggling with weight issues are what they are!

Oooo, that's a good idea! Thanks!

Thank you for the suggestions. I'm going to sit down this afternoon, after we are done with school for the day, and work out a plan for the rest of the year. Shouldn't be too hard!

I did read that thread, and while we aren't having anywhere near the issues to cause us to not do school for two years, it did give me a nice little kick in the pants. My kids are all doing well with math, reading and writing. I have no worries there. I agree with those that said consistency is one of the keys to homeschooling successfully. I haven't been as consistent this year as I'd like to be. Starting now I'm working on changing that.

We live in a small town outside of Springfield too! I haven't met anyone who uses TWTM, but I don't know many homeschoolers either. We are part of an art club that meets once a month in Springfield for projects. And I'm in several Facebook groups that post field trips so we do those when we can. We have met a lot of nice people but we don't have any homeschooling friends. A natural result of me being a rather shy person with shy kids I suppose. I totally get feeling isolated.

Thank you! It's so easy to get into an everything, right now and all at the same time mindset. I need to remember to take a step back and appreciate what we have accomplished before I freak out!

Yep, I was looking at the calendar asking myself how it could possibly be March already! And started stressing about getting done before Memorial Day. I've calmed down and realized that we aren't as far off from where I wanted to be as I thought. So we are just going to do as much as we can until Memorial Day and then set it aside for our short summer break. Whatever we don't get done we can pick back up in July when it's so hot none of us want to be outside. We will continue with read alouds and their personal reading during our break. I am considering having them do some math 2-3 times a week. Sometimes I forget that homeschooling doesn't have to be locked into certain days or weeks.

Scattered is exactly the word that describes it! I'm feeling the same about next year. I think I just need a better plan. I went into this year just sort of winging it and it's stressed me out.

I went and added it all up, we've gotten 20 weeks done. So I guess you're right, its not awful! Why does it feel like we've accomplished very little? We usually take 6 weeks for a short summer break and I hate to take that away from them. Besides the fact that we will be busy with baseball/softball 4 nights a week, my kids usually come back from our summer break having made leaps in their learning and maturity. Maybe we will just switch to light school for part of those 6 weeks. Thanks!

Anyone else having a hard time getting it together this year? Our family life, housekeeping, outside activities, etc. are chugging along just fine, school is the issue! We started school in July and did 4 solid weeks of school. During that time my grandpa had a stroke, but because he was recovering well from it we kept on with school. Then at the beginning of August he had another stroke, deteriorated rapidly and passed away mid August. We didn't do school at all for the entire month. And I'm okay with that. Instead we focused on what we could do to help our family. I spent a lot of time cooking, cleaning, driving and visiting with family from out of town. My kids were able to say goodbye to their great grandpa and he was surrounded by family. It was a hard, yet also wonderful time and I don't regret taking the time off of school to focus on family. I think there was a lot of life learning during that month. Since then we haven't been able to stay in a good groove with school. We did school all of September to November, except for 2 weeks we were sick and a week at Thanksgiving. We got it done, but it was in fits and starts. We did a little light school through December, but not much. We came back in the new year and did okay, except for the 2 weeks in February where NO ONE wanted to do school. Now its March and everyone is getting sick again! I can't decide if we should power through or take a day or two to rest. Right now, even though I know we need to get some work done, I don't want to. We will, but I'm having a hard time getting my attitude in the right place. Except for the occasional bad attitude (constantly from my middle child) about school from my kids, I think the problems this year have been mostly my fault. I am having a really hard time sticking to any sort of routine or schedule for very long. It seems like the smallest things are completely throwing me off track. Winter has hit me pretty hard the last couple of months, so that is probably part of the problem. I'm so tired of the cold and the snow I could cry. We haven't had that much snow here compared to other places but I'm already sick of it! There is still snow on the ground today but at least the sun is shining! I'm going to go sit in a sunny spot on the couch and read to the kids, that would be a good way to ease into school. Oh, and something completely trivial that has made me INSANE this year is science! The amount of head space and time I've spent worrying about it is ridiculous. We started out doing Elemental Science Chemistry, boring and way too much writing for my younger two. We did a few lessons from BFSU, we liked them for the most part but I didn't feel like I had the time to really pull things together for it like I wanted. We've done some of the activities from Adventures with Atoms and Molecules, the kids weren't interested. Right now we are going through the short lessons in the chemistry lapbook from Hands of a Child and calling chemistry done. I think that maybe we aren't that interested in chemistry and that is what the problem has been. After the chemistry lapbook the kids asked to do a short dinosaur study and then we are going to stop fussing over science for this year, by then it will be warm enough to spend time outside in nature and doing some gardening. It will be good enough. This hasn't been a complete disaster of a year, and I know that people have had a much worse year, so I feel like I'm being a big whiney baby but this has been our hardest year so far. Granted, we are only about 4 years into homeschooling so there's still time to make this one look like a cake walk. Anyone else having a school year that isn't horrible, but certainly isn't going as well as you'd hoped?

We do WWE 4 days a week on M, T, TH and F. FLL we do 3 days a week M, W and F. I have read that some people here combine days 1 and 2 of WWE each week into 1 day, then they only have to hit it 3 times each week instead of 4. You can put them on your schedule however works best for you!

We made it through school on Monday but the rest of the week ended up being a bust. We did all of our outside activities but could not get going on any more school work. The weather wasn't too bad so they spent a lot of time outside playing. Maybe we just needed a longer break, it is February after all! I am not comfortable taking any more time off right now because I know once spring is here it will be hard to keep them on task, so we will be back at it on Monday whether we want to be or not.

Mine is April 1st. Growing up most of my friends thought it was neat to have a memorable birthday. No one ever played tricks on me. I think you may be over thinking this.

I'm going to try to participate in this thread once again! We finally got our internet fixed so that ought to help, posting from my phone is a pain in the rear. We did not get much accomplished at all last week. We had 4 solid weeks before that, so maybe we just needed a little break. Taking most of last week off messed up my plans for six weeks of school then one week off, but I'm just trying to roll with it. I also reworked our schedule last week. We needed to get back to waking up earlier and getting school started by 8:30. Our days just go much better when we can get our core subjects done before lunch. After lunch we just play it by ear, as long as our content subjects get done sometime before 3:00 its all good. I am also adding in a dedicated period of time each day for the whole family to do some housework. This is a much needed and long overdue addition! We jumped back in today and the new schedule is working well so far. We got all of our morning stuff done. Attitudes were not the best, but they did do what I asked. Right now they are outside riding their scooters even though its 37 degrees out. Brrr! I doubt they will be out too long and we'll do history when they are done. This week is going to be a pretty typical week as far as outside activities; the girl has basketball practice this evening, they have art club Tuesday afternoon, the boys have basketball practice Thursday night and then they have basketball games on Saturday morning. I hope that we can keep our momentum going for longer than 4 weeks this time around. Winter is just not my favorite time of year, its hard to keep my enthusiam up when all I really want to do is cuddle up with a blanket, a book and a mug of hot tea all day! Kids are back inside, time to grab that mug of hot tea and get back to it!

I don't think I've ever seen that, will go take a look, thanks!

Will one of these help cement narrations? He is hit or miss on doing good narrations. He can usually answer the questions in WWE fine, but sometimes I feel like I'm having to lead him through the narration. And I think he needs instruction in forming more coherent, interesting sentences. He is pretty good at dictation. Maybe we should just move on to WWE3 and then do one of these other programs. I don't know, I'm not even sure what I'm asking! Lol!

DS9 will be finished with WWE2 this week. We love WWE and plan on doing WWE3, but would like to shake things up and do something else for the rest of this year. I have been looking at Treasured Conversations and CAP Writing and Rhetoric Fable. On my phone so I can't link! Which if these would be a good follow up? Or if you have other suggestions? Thanks!

My kids started watching Liberty's Kids and it has sparked a huge interest in the American Revolution. They have asked to detour from SOTW 3 for awhile and learn more about it. So we will! I'm trying to decide if I should use the Time Travelers American Revolution (on my phone so I can't link!) that is somewhat planned out or if I should pull my own stuff together. My kids like a good balance between reading or being read to about the topic and hands on activities. They like worksheets and cut and paste activities, but too much and it starts to feel like busy work. Any reviews of this? Any suggestions for something else? Thanks!

I was pleasantly surprised, we had a great day and finished everything that I had planned. DS7 put up a little fuss over writing but he was the only one who complained. I think that my kids are a little more into routines and schedules than I thought they were. Even the bickering between them has been minimal. Hopefully tomorrow goes as well!

I'm going to join in this week. I could use some accountability since it's our first week back after a 3 week break. The plan is to jump in cold turkey with our full schedule and see what happens. I've exercised, showered and dressed so the day is off to a good start! Time to go wake the kids up and get the ball rolling!

Thanks everyone! It sounds like this might not work for my kids. I will take some time and look into all of the other suggestions. Would just doing activities from an experiment book be enough? Maybe we should just cut out all the unnecessary things from the science we were doing and just read and do the experiments? What I'd really like to do is BFSU but I worry that it won't be enough continuing on into the middle grades to prepare them for high school. Ugh, I just don't know! Maybe I will start a new thread tomorrow asking about it.

I'm looking for something fun for science to finish our year with and am considering Ellen McHenry's The Elements. We started out with Elemental Science Chemistry and it bombed. It had way too much writing for my younger two and my oldest isn't enjoying it. I've only looked at samples of The Elements so far. Is it going to be too much for an almost 8 year old and a 6 year old tag alongs? I don't expect them to be able to do everything in it, but do want them to be able to participate and learn. I want something we can finish in a semester and that isn't expensive. Or if there are any other suggestions, I'm open to those! Thanks!

You just made my night! Loved these games!

Afternoon! Last week mostly ended up being a bust as far as schoolwork. I should have known better than to plan on doing much of anything Thanksgiving week. We did read alouds and the kids read on their own. We did have several great days visiting with family. I had everything ready to go this morning and then my sister called and asked me to watch my niece and nephew today. The local school was canceled because the roads were too icy and her usual babysitter is out of town. So I said I would. And there is no way school is going to happen with them here. We will just have to get back to it tomorrow!