It sounds like you've already done some research, so you may have already read "Living Well with Hypothyroidism". I learned a lot from that and from her (Mary J. Shomon) website when I was first diagnosed.

I have a two part answer. 1) Before you even start, there is some preparation. The application is fairly detailed, and due to all the problems they've had, they need to run a background check before you start. There are several required training classes (one on safety), most of which can be done online and are pretty quick, but I'm remembering one longer one where we had to go to the local scout office...I think that one just had to be completed in the first six months or something, because we'd already been holding den meetings for a while when they finally had one scheduled. 2) DH and I were Bear Leaders right before they came out with the new planning guide, but I bought it for myself when my son entered cubs the next year. (Our cub scout career ended when I was put on bedrest with my last pregnancy.) It's a great guide! Even if you have no parental involvement, as long as your cubs are showing up most of the time, they should be able to advance on time. I had a big bin in the trunk of my car, and we had a rough idea what the activity for the next several dens meetings would be. We didn't take old material out unless it was totally in the way. We found it almost inevitable that if we had a week in which only one or two boys showed up, they had already passed off at home the requirement scheduled for that meeting. Having past and future stuff in the car let us drop the planned activity for something the boys needed to make up, or at least otherwise hadn't done yet. (We winged it a lot.! :D) We otherwise didn't spend a long time in prep. We received monthly theme suggestions and I'd read that and match up a requirement or two and read the corresponding pages in the Bear book. Most of the time, we had the required materials around the house somewhere (either in our homeschool stuff or in our camping gear), so I'd drop them in the bin. An hour a week, maybe. Once in a while we didn't have everything, so I'd pick it up during weekly errands. Small things, like an intact ball of string. (My daughter had cut up the one I thought I had.) Once we needed a half dozen bars of soap to do the carving requirement. The hardest thing I ever had to track down was a whet stone, for knife sharpening. It only took one stop, but I couldn't think where such a thing would be located and had to find an employee to show me. We usually looked for the simplest way to meet the requirement. Most of them don't take fancy equipment or kits or Martha Stewart creativity to get the job done. It was really fun to do, and I'd say, "Yes!!" if asked to do it again. We did have a minor bully amongst our cubs that got under DH's skin a few times.

I've heard that title somewhere before. Neither library to which I have access has it. Do you know any websites that sum it up well? (I'm googling it, and there is a lot out there, but I'm not seeing anything really basic for someone who has never seen it before.)

That made me laugh! We taught our oldest two negative numbers when they were 6 and 4, just to occupy them while we waited for our food to arrive at a restaurant. ("If I have a hole as big as three boxes, and I want it to look like I have two boxes, how many boxes do I need?") I hadn't thought of it that way, but, yes, I guess those are the gist of study skills. Good point.

I've got a year or so, then, maybe?, before circumstances push them to be receptive to learning to study, though DS just signed up for an ASL class that might push him to there. I asked him how his first day went, and he said it was boring. I asked what he meant, and he said, "It's very hard for someone like me who can't stop talking once he starts." (And, yes, he does talk like that!) I said he'd better work hard at learning lots of signs, then, so he can talk with his hands.

That sounds fun! I made a written chart like that once, but not for the kids. I was trying to get my in-laws to "get" my kids. It didn't work, but my mom and brother and sister-in-law had fun with it. I just recently tried to explain OEs to my oldest, and he just looked at me blankly. I'm so text oriented in my learning style that I sometimes forget the kids need visual or kinesthetic (DD6 is particularly hands-on) information, too. I think I'll try your chart.

Voted "other." We have had one, but we couldn't find an attachment method that worked. I finally rolled it up and put it away.

I wholeheartedly second James Webb's book. It has been so useful to us.

My son, when he was 5-6, wanted and played with trains. Wooden, Lego/Duplo, or GeoTrax. Other than that, he started collecting the huge assortment of teddy bears that live on and under his bed, but he doesn't really play with them. My older daughter, who is still six, asks for Barbies/LivWorld, but doesn't play with them for more than a week or so afterwards. What she plays with are costumes. Especially ballerina, princess, or animal costumes, in that order.

We do, too! We love to travel and have taken lots of roadtrips with our kids. We've done longer audiobooks for the whole family (like SOTW, the Hobbit), or just let the kids do short ones in the back seat. DD6 loves read-alongs, but the rest of us get carsick. I've also read aloud to everyone in short spurts. Colored pencils, a clipboard for each, and lots of paper. (Crayons melt and markers lose their lids.) One from the Carschooling book that we tried our last trip was a roll of aluminum foil to be twisted into whatever strikes your fancy. It went over well, especially combined with roll of wide, blue masking tape one of the kids found under the seat. We often get a couple of small, new toys just for the trip. (Ours are still young enough to be impressed by dollar store toys.) Definitely this! We've found that the first rest stop over a state border is often also a welcome center, with free road maps and travel guides. We geocache, so we always bring our GPSr (or now our phones) preloaded with caches at likely stops.

Some of the side tracks on the Grade Acceleration thread got me thinking. I'm not intimidated by my gifted kids academically in anyway. Let's be honest, they are gifted because DH and I are gifted. I "got"/"get" the subject matter. What I struggle with is the things I never learned along the way, or only first learned in college. How do I teach them, as young kids, to study when I only first learned how in college? How should a young child study, even? How do I teach them to stick to a schedule when my deepest inclination is to "let me just finish this great book first, then we'll do math?" When I teach math, I teach not only from what I know as an adult, but also from how I remember learning it as a child. How do I teach to a child on his or her level skills, like studying, that I didn't know as a child? (Even worse, how do I teach skills, like organization, that I am still learning right now?) Did that even come out as an addressable question, or is it more of a frustrated vent?

I was supposed to try to record it, but I forgot. They wanted a copy to review at their next rehearsal. I'll have DH ask if any of the others had someone record it.

Steam can provide some relief. So can a warm compress held to your cheek and eye.

He's been singing all his life (High School, University, and church choirs). He's been doing Barbershop regularly for a year and a half. His quartet has been together for about six months, but this was their first competition!

Just had to share! DH's Barbershop Quartet took second place in a local talent competition last night. The not-to-shabby prize was $750, which they plan to split 5 ways. (One share going to some quartet business they've been putting off, like business cards, getting a domain name, new music, and the fee to enter a district competition they've eyeing.)

There is a very interesting statement in the information at the link you provided: "8. Are schools and students required to participate in these assessments?To our knowledge, few, if any, countries require all schools and students to participate in TIMSS. However, some countries give more prominence to these assessments than do others. In the United States, TIMSS is a voluntary assessment." DH and I are curious. Is there a financial incentive to participate? If not, why would any school that didn't believe its students were doing great in math and science ever volunteer? And if only schools that think they are doing great participate, that might mean that the results may paint a better picture than what is really happening in our nation, and that would be very sad indeed, given our generally low scores. (Unless all nations are equally voluntary, in which case, it's sad, but accurate.)

Me, too! My oldest doesn't like fantasy, and my second isn't ready yet, but I loved them, have them all, and hope the kids will like them one day. I want to know where the illustrator, Brett Helquist, went to High School and when he graduated. He's from my hometown, Orem, Utah. Wouldn't it be weird if I knew him?

Oh, and the Faber site lets you look inside "My First Piano Adventures" (I don't see a place to look inside the writing book), as well as the later books. They also have some teacher guides, which could be useful if you are teaching them yourself.

My older two children are using this series for lessons. They both could already read when they started lessons and went straight to "Piano Adventures, Primer Level." It is my understanding that "My First Piano Adventure" is designed for pre-readers. They use four books each. DS8 is using Level 1 and DD6 is using Primer Level. They have a Lesson Book; a Theory Book; a Technique & Artistry Book; and a Performance Book. There are notes in the margin of each book telling you which pages of the other books correspond to that lesson. My son also used a Christmas Book for the Christmas recital. (The teacher got him the book down one level, so he could easily play and enjoy the all the Christmas songs in it.) They have a lesson on Tuesday. I'll try to remember to ask their teacher about the Writing Book for "My First Piano Adventures." I know she is using that pre-reader one for at least one student. I LOVE this series, by-the-way. I wish they'd had something like it back when I took lessons. I might have stuck it out longer. And I would have known more theory when I hit college and majored in music (clarinet).

Thanks for the welcomes, everybody! I do have German ancestors, but nothing closer than a 2nd great. The first of the friends who started calling me "Maus" was a native German, and most of the others in that group spoke it.

I voted, "Yes." Mostly magazines these days, because the kids tend to shake their hands before they dry, etc. Both DH and I take books in there, but we bring them out when we come out. Hey, it's the closest thing to quiet time I ever get.

I never posted an introduction either. I didn't know it was expected. Is there an "introduction" area, or do we just start a thread? I'm Maus. I've had that nickname since before the advent of the World Wide Web. It's a bit of a play on my maiden name. I lurked for several years, then finally posted once or twice a little more than a year ago. I just started posting regularly this summer. I haven't posted on any other homeschooling forums before, but I participated regularly on the SENG forums using the same name before the forums there were taken down. I own a blog. I owned it for two years before I first posted there. I blogged like crazy for, oh, about two weeks, and now I hardly touch it. Most of my posts there were sort of secretly addressed to my In-Laws, who, as far as I can tell, have never read it. It's public, but it names names (first names only), so ... :D My DH does web programming and data security, so he discourages me for being very personal online. My kids have never been to public school, though we do participate in one of those charter/homeschool partnerships, so they attended classes on the charter school campus once a week. The classes are taught by fellow homeschool moms, many of whom we knew already from our co-op. I know I've met one WTMer in real life. I got to meet and talk briefly with LittleIzumi at one of the two Park Days where we ever found anybody else in attendance. (We've tried six or eight times this summer.) I suspect I know at least one other, but I'm not sure. (If you are in Utah Valley and were a part of either Keystone or Harmony, you may know me. I'm pretty introverted, though. My son isn't, so you may know him. If my vague descriptions sound familiar, you can pm me.) What else usually goes in an intro post? Umm, why we homeschool, maybe? Short answer, because the local gifted program is too little, too late, and pretty inconvenient. (Only offered in one elementary in the district.) And because we love to travel. DS will be nine this fall. DD #1 will be seven the same month. DD #2 will be two this winter. She, my dad, and I share the same birthday. We made the local news, so she's already had her fifteen seconds of fame, when she was less than 36 hours old. You're not likely to see a picture of me. I avoid them, because I like the picture in my head better. Reality isn't all it's cracked up to be. I had what I thought was a clever avatar over on SENG, but I think I lost the image when my hard drive crashed.

You give your kids sidewalk chalk and send them out to play, and pretty soon you are out there, too, because they can't remember how to make all the Greek letters and need your help. Or maybe when you ask for a level of MCT for Mother's Day?

I prefer offering one change at a time, and I've never worried about how long they kept the bottle. It was gradual, and my oldest gave up his daytime bottles first, and then nighttime bottles later. It could be a temperature thing. Many people warm formula and milk is usually straight from the fridge. I never warmed formula for our kids and both (oldest and youngest; middle nursed) liked milk better as soon as they were offered it.

Probably not, unless the seven kids are really close in age. My SIL has a home daycare and they have seven kids, but her older kids are 17, 16, 14, 12 and don't count according to our state regs. I don't think the 10 year-old counts either. As I recall, the inspectors were more concerned about the size of her house, how many bathrooms, etc., and set her limits for number of daycare kids based on that.