Pray, pray, pray! It’s amazing how clear the path is if we are only looking for it. Ask God to make your path unmistakable.

Remember that God has given your son the gift of being an only child, it’s exactly what he needs right now. You are his best solution for loneliness.

Our kids love arts and crafts. Our boys enjoy wood carving and spend hours whittling and carving from their imaginations. I posted some of our quiet activities here.

Sonlight is the curriculum that we use. I love it and it’s a perfect fit for our family. With only one child going through it’s pricey, but you should be able to re-sell for about 80% of your purchase price.

1. Yes, except small babies. (under 1 or 2 depending on how much sleep a child seems to need)
2. Basically, yes. On Saturday’s when they are allowed to sleep in they are all up by 7. We have one who would sleep much later, but she is so laid back and mild mannered that once she’s up, she’s happy.
3. We read a book, pray with them and they go to sleep on their own. We’ve done this from the time they are little. Once they settle into a rhythm as infants we just keep the nap time routine the same.

One thing we began with our first and are very thankful for, is the early bedtime. Remember, I’m really not a night person. So even when our babies are newborns I don’t wake them up for a 10 or 11pm feeding (I’m usually sleeping by then). I feed the baby around 6 or 8 and let them sleep as long as they will. So that sleep period for the baby always ends up being their longest. I keep the 2 or 3 am feeding way past the time that they drop that late night feeding. Does that make sense? I’m not suggesting that you should do it this way. It is just what has worked for us.

2. Are your children all morning people (cheerful in the morning easily) or are there some you must pull out of bed?

3.How do you get your toddlers to bed at nap or bedtime? Do you just lay them in bed and they go to sleep, or do they play quietly, or what? How did you get this sleep pattern going for them? (Can you tell we’re short on sleep here? The 8 month old and 2 year old were up until midnightlast night and this is not terribly uncommon. For naps I hold the baby until he falls asleep, I lay down with the toddler for about 5-10 minutes.)

Thank you for any ideas on the sleep and waking front. We are all up by 7am, but we still struggle to get little ones to bed by 9pm. From age 3 on up they just go willingly and lay down, but the just turned 2 year old shares a room with the 5yo and he jumps on big brother and pesters him so neither one gets any sleep if I just put them in there together with the 2yo awake.

Also, because of all of The Old Schoolhouse review material (and other factors) we are stretching out Sonlight 5 over the course of two years. This leaves a lot more give in our schedule.

We “school” year round, so we do a lot of fitting 2 days into 3. In theory, we do science everyday, we will accomplish 180 days of science over the course of a year, but reality is that they often do more than one science assignment in a day to “catch up”. We also often continue science into the summer, when we stop some of our other subjects.

I don’t teach vocabulary or spelling as separate subjects. We do write everyday. We use IEW.

I’m going to be reviewing a completely new language arts program beginning next month and it will be very interesting to see how that will work. I will have two groups of students working through it and it will take me a half hour of concentrated time per group.

Do you do science every day? What about writing, vocabulary, spelling, etc.? I’ve been trying to fit vocabulary and science and now am starting to assign some small writing assignments. Would you say all of your kids’ independent work fits into 2.5 hrs broken into 2 time slots? I’m still struggling fitting it all in and now I’m adding portfolios. Do you use portfolios?