I have very mixed feelings... I love having my kids home but I really do miss them when they are gone .

Also, I really dislike homework and how much time it takes away from their evenings. Sigh.

I also don't like rushing around early in wee hours of the morning. One has to be at the bus stop by 6:42.

They both have great teachers... all will be fine! My 4th grader has the same teacher as he had in 3rd grade and my 7th grader has a great team of middle school teachers. They are both in good hands.

On that first day after I get them dropped off... I will take a deep breath and be happy! Aah.

WHOOPIE!!! WOO HOO!! (wait did I just do a back flip??)
I babysit 5 kids in the summer... bu buy!!! lol
I miss the time with it just being my little ones and myself.. Dagan will go part time to preschool, so it will be myyoungest and my last year of having us time... I'm taking full advantage of it.

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Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like. - Will Rogers

I agree with you - mixed feeling. I love them home, but sometimes they drive me crazy. I love them in school, but then miss them at home. Mine will be in 8th & 5th grade.

Lisa

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"It's not having what you want,
It's wanting what you've got"

DS starts jr. high this year so both kids will be at the same school for one year. That's a plus.
I'm a big time PTA volunteer. There's not very much PTA work to be done on the jr. high level. I will miss that tremendously. However, I will be at the school office bright and early to see what I can do to help out. I have no doubt there will be plenty to do.

I love the structure of school days, but am always happy to see them come home. What I am not looking forward to is my son's homework load. He is special needs (and really needs my help) and last year we were averaging two hours a night in work. I love helping him, but basically have no evening.

This summer has been a dream since we were so busy with summer school half of the summer and a summer enrichment class.

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I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!

Thinking of homeschooling this year. My son is going into his junior year and we are both pretty dissatisfied with school. He's extremely smart and school is so boring for him. We are looking into it. I don't think we can convince his father though! Not critizing teachers but he said they have to correct a lot of them, especially math, the teachers let so much slide, the behavior of some high school students is appalling. My son estimates that about 25% of his classmates have trouble even reading! And this is in a collge town with a medical school in the Midwest! Kids sleep in class or even get up and dance to their headphones (which they aren't supposed to have) at the end of class!!! My son has gone through the school system and they never even taught him long division!!!! They didn't concentrate at all on handwriting or spelling. And he never has homework, he just does it in study hall. I think an hour spent at home studying would be more than he learns in a full day of classes and that's a waste of time. My son and I are really checking it out so we can present it to his dad!!

Mixed feelings here too --
I hate getting up early to get DS up, ready and on the bus by 7:15am (he will be in 2nd grade this year). I also hate homework because it's usually some kind of project that is more for the parents than the students -- last year in 1st grade, DS kept coming home with assignments that started "search the interent for.........." as if I'm going to let my 1st grader search the internet by himself.

DS loves the structure and being with his friends so that is good.

Sarah.........mom to Jason & Devin

I'm also one who has mixed feelings. I love our summer schedule(we don't have one, lol), love spending time with my kids and not having homework to deal with, early mornings and general school drama. But I also get more accomplished when they're in school . And the bickering between each other, I will NOT miss.....I will miss them being gone all day though.

my kids proclaimed the first day of school: mommy's independance day!

i thought that this year I would be in the clear.my 5 year old is staarting Kindergarten.but we've decide to homeschool our 8th grader.I am alos very disastified with the middle school.too many fights,police going to the school every week.drugs on the bus.....
she was in a prep school in 6th and half of the 7th grade.she failed Algebra.and there were noway she could get her grades back up befor ethe end of the school year.it was just pure stress on the whole family,she had to be at the bus stop(15mn away from our house) by 5.55am,the workload was crazy...
so we stwiched to the regular middle school in january.it was a madhouse.she never had any homework.in language art,she was learning nouns and pronouns(in 7th grade!!!!,waste of time!!!my 4th grader was learning the same thing...)she didn;t learn a new thing in 4months.and the principal didn;t care.the assistant principal didn;t care.they put so much emphasise on uniforms,nothing else mattered.my dd got her school uniform stolen out of her gym locker.
so we are homeschooling...
the 2 youngest ones will be in elementary school,then we will see.

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By the time you make ends meet, they move the ends

I'm doing backflips with refundsrus! OMG the older two have FOUGHT all summer and I'm ready for them to go and get away from each other for awhile, I'll still have my 4 and 2 year old at home so i wont be totally lonely and if they was gone too i'd still have the dog who follows me ALL day around the house, up the stairs down the stairs into the kitchen into the living room UGH hheheheh

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Books just wanna be FREE! See what I mean at:
http://bookcrossing.com

My other favorites
www.paperbackswap.com
www.wheresgeorge.com
www.geocaching.com

Today, I am so ready for the kids to go back to school. The boys were at each other all day long. The flip side is I have to go back to work, so I don't even get a day of peace and quiet at home by myself.

My niece did her senior year at the local community college, they had a program for the top students. Maybe you have a college near you with such a program.

I am happy when school end BUT I am also happy to see it start again. The magic day is Aug. 20th this year!

Hate knowing that my 3 will have to get up every morning at 5:30, one must be on the bus by 6:20, the other two has to get down to the ferry to get in line by 6:00 or they don't ride the ferry at 7:00. So I'm not looking forward to getting up so early in the morning but my 4 year old is starting preschool, my twins are seniors and my 13 yr old is in 8th grade and I CANT WAIT for school to start!!! August 27th is going to be a magical day for me...lol. My day off from work, the kids will be in school and I'll be at the "Oh my God they're back in school" cocktail party....lol!!!

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Proud Single Mother to 18 year old Twins Ashley/Davey, 14 year old Shawna, 5 year old Emma, and my Boo Bear, "Angel Hope" (1996-1997) RIP Boo.

i'm a sad one here...my baby will be starting first grade and i will miss not seeing him all day.

I've finally given up on public schooling in MN.
Had hs'ed kids for 11 years in several states (with intermittent forays into public schooling *and* private schooling, mostly w/disastrous results).
DS #2, hs'ed till jr. high, begged to go back to hs'ing for his Sr. year. I let his school mental health caseworker convince me otherwise, and it was the biggest educational mistake I ever made for any of my kids. (this child is autistic, w/a mensa IQ, and also has a mental illness, under control, more or less ;-)
I've tried various of my heir force at public schools, private schools, (including a tony prep school one had a scholarship to attend), part time online schooling w/several days/week on a campus. and hs'ing. Trust moi ... I've tried just about every possible educational situation for myt heir force.
Just for our fam, hs'ing has worked best.
We have several kids with waaaaay above average IQ's, but they also have various special needs (a kid with an above average IQ is a special need that most folks can't even fathom).
I really do love the hs'ing lifestyle and how close we all become as a family when hs'ing. And it is sooooooo much less stressful than sending them out to schools.
For over 2 decades I've tried to improve the ps situation by becoming more involved than most parents, going so far as to sit on county ed. boards.
But I can no longer waste any more of my younger kids times and futures trying to fix what I consider a broken system.
My kids who've gone out to schools have had some fabulous teachers, people I wish every kid coulda had. But in general, it was abysmal, I give up.
I have 4 teens at home at presently, some of them love the hs'ing, one hates it. (can you geuss it's a girl? ;-)
MZ

I've got a digital countdown going on over here... I'm so looking forward to Aug 27..

I'm going to drop off the kids at school, go to Starbucks, and then hit the Target clearance without any little witnesses to run and tell daddy.

WOO HOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Definately look into it. Dd went to 1 year of preschool, but has been homeschooled ever since, and looking back I wish I could redo that 1 year and not have sent her. She's only in 3rd grade but we are in a coop with all ages from 0 - 18 so I have some knowledge of the older grades as well. Everyone seems to love homeschooling and are learning so much more than I ever learned in public school. The older kids do some of the neatest things, like this year they are going to create an old time radio show with commericals, sound effects, writing, acting, directing, etc. ("Praire Home Companion" type of thing). And they will be looking into getting it on air at one of the local radio or possibly tv stations.

I would suggest looking into the colleges in your area. A lot of them offer dual credit for high school and college. I'm in Indianapolis and I know a lot of homeschoolers take classes at IUPUI downtown. Plus there are tons of great curriculums to use. The web is full of homeschooling info. My dh was a little iffy at first about it, but now he loves it. If he's concerned about getting into college, that's not a problem at all anymore. Most colleges love homeschool students. If he's concerned about socialization, sports, prom, graduation, etc, there are tons of co-ops, homeschool organization, etc. that have things available for homeschoolers. We actually have to work at not overbooking our schedule with activities!

HTH.

If you have any questions about homeschooling, please feel free to ask. If I don't know the answer, I have a huge network of homeschoolers I could ask.

Jenn

I can't wait for dd to go back! She is being a real pain (not listening, bugging her little brother) so look forward to having her at school all day. The first day of school I'm taking ds with me to Starbucks, then Target to stroll around in peace and quiet. I guess Target will be really busy that day!

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I've never lied to you. I've always told you some version the of truth.

I kind of get sad when they have to go back. But then again it is nice to have some peace. I always feel broke when school starts that is for sure!!!

Thanks Jenn and way to go!!! My best friends have 9 children that they home school so I'm reasonably familiar with it. I was impressed with all the stuff they do too. They have also done commercials for fun, not to the extent you mentioned though. When people think of home schooling they don't realize what a great network there is out there. I love to shop (lol) so I even do their Prom decorations for them and go to Prom to check it out. It's just so sweet and so cool! I'm so gald you are doing it!!! There is a junior college in town so we are going to check out the dual stuff this week. Thanks!!!!!!

Sad because my one and only will be a senior this year..happy because he's eating me into the poor house!

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"Never loan your car to someone you have given birth too"

It must be that time of the year, my kids were at each other all day today! I even told them they were not allowed to play together for a while today and boy they missed each other after about 45 minutes!

This is the first year both kids will be in school every day, so I look forward to the time alone and getting things DONE and QUICKLY!

I really miss DS because he's gone all day. DD not so much, she is so clingy when DS is gone, that I am glad she will have school to do every day now, even if it's only for 2 1/2 hours.

I haven't had peace and quiet in 6 years! Doing the back flip!

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"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked." ~ Bernard Meltzer