I think I would probably go to a private SLP if the schools around here wanted to be catankerous about providing services that my child needs simply because we homeschool. The law is on my side and I could lawyer up and force them to provide services but I just don't think that would be conducive to a good working relationship and just make everyone, including my child, uncomfortable. It's 3 hour trip once a week and a co-pay for us to go to a private SLP but I think it would just be a better situation all the way around. So thankful that not only is the public school here amenable to working with homeschoolers but the SLP my son sees at the public school is a homeschooler herself lol.

I will admit, the Khan academy lessons are not terribly interesting. They are short, sweet, to-the-point, just the facts m'am type videos but not highly engaging or interesting. I do Khan Academy with my 4 year old but we don't watch the videos. I explain the concepts and we do the problems together. If your child wants lessons that get to the point, tell them what they need to know so they can be done quickly, then Khan Academy will likely be a good fit. If your child thrives more on engaging and interesting lessons, even if that means the lesson might take longer, then they might not like Khan Academy.

Oh and I meant to add, when my older kids (young adults and teens now) were all little and it was just too much for me to stand in there and make sure they all washed everywhere, I had a framed checklist on the wall on the kids' bathroom wall. If I suspected they showered but didn't wash, I'd tell them to go back and make sure they did everything on the check list. It seems like common sense to us adults but we have been washing ourselves for much longer than they have, lol.

Hmmm... an 8yo with a September birthday would be a second grader here. She would have started kindergarten as a 4 year old, correct? She would have had to wait to start kindergarten until she was almost 6yo here since the cut off is August 31st for us. Not that she couldn't have done the work in kindergarten at 4 years old. But now the demands of the work may have caught up with her? Is she maybe ready for the 3rd grade level material but not quite mature enough for higher expectations of third grade level work? Does she maybe need a little longer to complete the assignments or smaller bites of work until her maturity level catches up with her intellectual level? Just some thoughts based on the fact that her maturity level for both school and life related things (the shower/bathing thing) seems to be lower than where a I would expect a third grader to be. But I would also expect a third grader to be turning 9 years old at some point, not just turned 8.

How old is he? Just because he is a bright child doesn't necessarily mean he is ready for any amount of seatwork and boys tend to resist seatwork longer than girls do just in my experience (4boys and 2 girls here). Up until 6 or 7 years old, I find that how I introduce the lesson is as important as keeping it short. If they ask for a game or a video, and I need them to practice a Bob book still for school that day, my answer is generally something along the lines of "Yes, you may but first we need to practice your reading. Let's read your Bob book first then [insert activity they asked for]." I find that I get more cooperation when they are young when I phrase things that way and they learn work first, then play. I also praise like crazy for willing cooperation and good effort. Math especially tends to stick better in their young minds in the form of play. Math Mammoth had far too many problems per page in K or 1st grade to expect a completed page per day. Even from a bright math student. Sometimes we would do the problems concretely while playing with cars or blocks and I would fill in the answer with a note to myself that we did the problems orally with toys so I would remember why the answers were written in my handwriting. Sometimes I would only require a certain number of problems or boxes of problems done rather than a full page. If they got into it while they were working and did more than required, they would get 5 extra minutes of computer time or some other kind of bonus for putting in the extra effort to do more than I asked for. Some of my kids never did more than asked for, some would put in extra effort now and then knowing that they would be rewarded for it. And that's ok. I never expected more, just dangled that carrot out there for them and let them have it when they earned it. For the interest led stuff, I let their attention span and interest level tell me when we were done with a lesson. If they aren't interested any longer, then they aren't learning anything so I tried to stop the lesson while they were still interested and left them wanting more. Even if that meant stopping in the middle of a book and coming back to it later. I also tried not to drown them in too much information on something that they lost interest. If every little thing that they showed even a little interest in was turned into a school lesson, well, I wouldn't like that either to be honest so I use the same rule as above, leave them wanting more. Don't keep on if they are no longer asking questions. Remember that it's a marathon, not a sprint, they don't need to know everything on a topic of interest in first grade. Let them mull on little bites of information and present more when they are ready for more.

Oldest dd has late July birthday. She had been tagging along with her older brothers' school work since she was a toddler so really all that happened when she was 5 was that I had to officially start reporting her as a homeschooled student where we lived. No regrets even when she went to public school in late middle school. She did fine and excelled in math even more than she did at home with me. Younger dd has an early May birthday. She had also been tagging along since she was an infant/toddler. Her sister played school with her and taught her "lessons" in reading and math since she was two. She could read on a 2nd grade level when she started kindergarten at age 5. She ended up in the gifted program in public school. No regrets starting her at age 5 either.

Yes you would ask the PCP for a referral to a Speech-Language Pathologist (an SLP or speech therapist) or possibly an audiologist who has training in speech language pathology. I've had 3 out of 6 kids who needed this kind of testing and we saw both audiologists and SLPs for testing.

Like the previous poster said, receptive language is what one can understand when spoken to him. Expressive language is how well one can express his thoughts in spoken language. I don't know what specific test an SLP uses to evaluate these but the results are given in as an age level. For example, my oldest daughter had speech testing with an SLP when she was 18 months old because she wasn't talking and only communicated in grunts and gestures. Her receptive language (what she could understand) was at the 36 months age level because she could follow any direction given to her, even multiple step directions. Her expressive language (how she used spoken language to communicate) however was at the 9 months age level because she did not use any intelligible words, only grunts. A child with a receptive delay would have trouble following directions or understanding what is asked of them. A child with an expressive delay would struggle with putting the thoughts, wants and needs into spoken words. The severity of the delay would determine how much of an issue it would cause in school. My son who is currently 4 years old, has apraxia which translates to an expressive delay. He can talk but he can difficult to understand so we take him to speech therapy weekly to work on producing speech sounds accurately but he doesn't need any help with receptive, he understands what is said to him perfectly fine.

I tend to prefer to have privacy when I am an emotional mess. The only person I am comfortable being emotional in front of is my husband. But that's just me. I would never dream of telling someone else that they have keep their emotions in check around me. Especially in such a hostile fashion. That's just repugnant. My husband's mother is the type to turn on the water works at the drop of a hat any time she feels like the spotlight is not on her. I think it is manipulative and immature but I wouldn't tell her to stop it unless it was directly affecting me or my family. For example, she attends a function where the spotlight is suppose to be on my child and she throws one of her fits because she wants the spotlight on her. But that is completely different from what you are describing. I know you said you weren't looking for sympathy but I'm sorry someone felt the need to shame you for being legitimately emotional. Seems to me that person needs to take a good hard look at themselves before they call out others. :grouphug:

I have no problem with nudity within our own immediate family. My kids have no desire to see their step dad naked and nor does he have any desire to see his step kids naked and I think that in a blended family situation like ours, that is a perfectly acceptable boundary to have. There is just a different family dynamic when the relationship is a step parent / step child and not a biological parent / child. I have no problem with nudity in other cultures. Or art. Or seeing a breastfeeding mom in public. Or other people's fashion choices. It is what it is. Everyone is entitled to their own comfort level when it comes to how much bare skin is tolerable and they can even have different comfort levels depending on the situation. I don't have any problem with other people have more or less conservative comfort levels with nudity than me. I do take issue with other people imposing their cultural beliefs and personal comfort levels on me and my children, especially if I have informed them of my boundary and they refuse to respect it. My issue in this situation is that this mother's culture is not one that embraces nudity. This mother is uncomfortable with her mother-in-law bathing with her 4yo. This mother expressed the concern to her MIL about bathing with her daughter and the MIL not only disrespected her cultural boundary but admitted that she knew that this practice could be considered taboo in the modern culture that her grand daughter is living in by suggesting that the mother was treating her like a pedophile. If granddaughter walked in on grandma in the bathroom and grandma didn't immediately try to hide behind a towel but just went about her business as usual, that would be one thing. This grandma completely blew off her son and dil's cultural beliefs because they did not match her own cultural beliefs. That's not ok in my opinion.

I showered (not bathed) with all my children up until about preschool age but I would never dream of it with children that were not biologically mine. My dh would never dream of showering or bathing with any of his step kids of either gender (my kids from my first marriage). We would both be livid with anyone else wanting to spend time naked for any reason with any of our kids but the deal breaker for us would be the reaction your MIL had to your boundary setting. Dh and I both are children of narcissistic parents. We have both tried and tried to "play nice" with them. We've tried setting boundaries with them. But we've just had to accept that they are incapable of playing nice and incapable of respecting other people's boundaries. There just came a point where we both had to decide how much of that we were willing to continue to live with. For us, the answer was none, so we cut off all contact with our biological parents. Neither of us regrets the decisions we made regarding our parents one iota. It was a long, painful process for both of us but we both feel that it is for the best not only for us but also our children. Our children still have grandparents who love them dearly but also know how to act appropriately and respect boundaries. The fact that they are not biological grandparents does not make a bit of difference to them or to the grandparent figures in their life. They are learning more about healthy boundaries and healthy relationships than their biological grandparents could ever teach them. It is a little sad that it has to be this way but I am truly grateful that my children will not have to grow up learning how to be someone's narcissistic supply like I did. It has taken years of therapy as an adult and lots of soul searching to finally understand just how messed up my childhood was and begin to heal from it. Setting boundaries with parents/in-laws can be tough but setting boundaries with a narcissist can be a nightmare. I wish you and your husband the best of luck.

I suffer from SPD and GAD and one thing that really helps with the GAD is routine and very clear expectations. She can't complete work on her own without being reminded and that's fine, (and honestly, even my neurotypical 9 year olds needed lots of reminders to stay on task as well) but can she do a fun activity while you are working with your younger child? A computer game, a video or audiobook with headphones, free time to work on a hobby or do an art project. Give her a timer so she can see how much longer she has to wait until she can have your attention again. That way she doesn't get anxious wondering how much longer she has to resist interrupting. Praise her like crazy for not interrupting her sister's lessons. For kindergarten, you really don't need a huge block of time each day, just consistent little blocks of time. 3 fifteen minute blocks a day would be plenty. Get your little one up and ready before the older one, have special 15 minute picture book read aloud time with mommy while your older one is eating her breakfast. After lunch, while the older plays an educational computer game, do a 15 minute reading lesson with the 5 year old. For her cheerful participation in her reading lesson, she gets 15 minutes on the computer after her lesson while you draw your older one back into her lessons. After dinner, while your older dd clears the table or works on a hobby or listens to an audiobook, spend 15 minutes playing a math game or working in a workbook or just doing some oral math problems. If she was already playing a game on her own, join in her game rather than make her stop and use her toys to improvise a lesson. As an example, my 4yo prek son was pretending he had 10 puppies in the cart with him at the grocery store. He told me two jumped out so I asked him how many were left in the cart and we used our fingers to figure it out (invisible puppies are notorious hard to count lol) Then I asked him if one jumped back in the cart, how many would there be? What if 5 jumped out? We just kept on like this all through the store. People who over heard us probably thought we were crazy or something talking about the puppies in our obviously puppy free grocery cart but oh well. We got some learning done and that's all that matters lol. I've had up to 5 kids at home while homeschooling and I honestly think it gets easier the more kids you have, especially as they get older and they can take turns entertaining and helping teach the younger ones. My oldest daughter loved to read aloud to her younger siblings. Great reading and speech practice for her and it was wonderful watching them interact. She would always ask for simple lessons she could do with them so I would give her little activities to do with them. They were all entertained and I could work with the other kids uninterrupted. The fewer kids I still had at home, the less I was able to do these things. What works for large families won't always work with smaller families and different tactics are necessary to get it all done. I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't be too hard on yourself. I think it's much more difficult with only two children than it is with many more children. ;-)

Assuming your daughter started with SOTW 1 and you are now in SOTW 3 or 4, she has had years of practice now starting with the shorter, less complex passages in the earlier books. I'm also assuming that your son has listened to the previous SOTW books but was never asked to narrate or answer questions before now. If this is the case, it is more than likely that the passages in your current SOTW volume are just too long and complex for him. I would just have him listen and follow along with SOTW but let him learn the narration and comprehension skills his older sister has developed with years of practice with something shorter and easier. It could be picture books that go along with the SOTW readings that are more on his level, or something completely separate like fairy tales and fables that just work on his listening and comprehension skills.

My older children's father often did graveyard shift when they were young and homeschooled. One thing that really helped me is to remember that one reason we homeschooled from the start was to have a more flexible schedule to facilitate having more family time since their father's job, by definition, had unpredictable shifts (he was military). Once I let go of the idea that school had to be started in the morning and finished by the afternoon and let our lifestyle dictate when school needed to be started, things got done so much easier. Typically, we would all spend time with their father until he went to bed, around 9am usually. Then, our school routine would start with clean up of the living room and any breakfast cleaning up that still needed doing. Actual school work didn't usually start until around 10am or 11am. We would listen to audiobooks, read alouds or composer studies over lunch. I still had littles in the picture so while they were down for naps after lunch, I would work with my oldest kids (upper middle school at the time) on anything that needed that quiet uninterrupted time. Their dad would get up around 3pm to get ready for work and we would take a break to spend some more time with him and get ready for dinner. After he went to work and we finished dinner, we would finish up any remaining school work in the evening, sometimes all the way up until bedtime. Once my kids hit the teenage years, they actually did their best work in the evening lol. Another thing that really helped once my kids were middle school age was to give them a list of what I expected them to have done for the week. I didn't care if they got it done at 7am or 7pm, if they did it all on Monday to have the rest of the week free or if they waited until Friday and tried to cram. The only requirements I had was that it was all done by the time I went to bed on Friday night and it was done to the best of their abilities. If it wasn't done or wasn't done well, they sat with me all weekend to get it done instead of getting to go out and do things with their father or their friends. Even if they got it all done Saturday morning, they were still more or less grounded for that weekend for not having their work done on time or done well for the previous week. It didn't take very long at all for them to realize that one, I was dead serious about them having it done and done well and two, that waiting until Friday night to do it all was not in their best interest. They all went to public high school but even with years of this kind of odd schedule, they did fine transitioning to a more traditional school schedule. It's hard sometimes for us to let go of the idea of what a "normal" school day should look like but once you can break free of what "normal" should look like and work with what you have instead of fighting against it, you will be able to enjoy the freedom that homeschooling allows so much more. Hope this helped.

Anxiety/panic attack would be a given for me. Our last pregnancy ended in a still birth in 2014. It would have been my 7th child and dh's second. The pregnancy was a complete shock because I had an IUD in place when I found out I was pregnant. They removed the IUD at 7 weeks pregnant and gave us a 50-50 chance of making it to the second trimester. Somehow we beat those odds but lost the baby at 20 weeks when we went to find out the gender. The baby had been kicking, moving and had a strong heartbeat just the day before. We have no answers as to why we lost the baby. This came just weeks after our son suffered his first febrile seizure. It was a very rough year for us. Given everything else we have in our lives at the moment, we have no plans to have any more though we haven't done anything permanent about it so as the last pregnancy has taught us, it is a possibility. But I doubt either of us could stop worrying long enough to enjoy the pregnancy.

I would say that allergies can absolutely zap you of all energy. I have both seasonal and food allergies and one of the first signs of an anaphylactic reaction for me is the inability to keep my eyes open that borders on narcolepsy. I know you aren't talking about that kind of sleepiness or lack of energy but once I started seeing an allergist and pinpointing my exact allergies, there was a definite difference for the better in my day to day energy levels. I carry an Epipen now and have to avoid a lot of foods due to tomato and shellfish allergies. I have to take Zyrtec once daily and I can take an additional one per day plus Benedryl as needed for reactions that breakthrough but are not an ana[hylactic reaction warranting use of the Epipen. During the height of seasonal allergy seasons, I'm typically taking all the Zyrtec and Benedryl I'm allowed to take. All that to say, it couldn't hurt to look further into allergies if nothing else is turning up to explain the fatigue.

I went to a school that used The Writing Road To Reading as their main language arts curriculum way back in the 80s. I even got to meet Romalda Spalding when I was in third grade as she came to our school to do a teacher's in-service day workshop and my mother was a teacher's assistant back then that attended the workshop. Needless to say, O-G and Spalding is so ingrained in me that it is very, very hard to imagine any other way of teaching reading and language arts in general. Usually, when I see a program that puts its own spin on O-G or Spalding, if I see it as possibly easier for the child in question to remember, I incorporate it. If I disagree with it entirely (like teaching "tion" instead of "ti, tall /sh/") I teach it my way and move on. To that end, I have changed some of how I was taught to fit my children. For example, I was taught that 'y' had only 3 sounds " /y/, /short i/, /long i/" and the phonogram 'ey' has only 3 sounds "/long a/, /long e/, /short i/" according to WRTR. We had to "think to spell" words like penny, lily and valley which used to be pronounced with a short i sound on the end when Romalda Spalding, Anna Gillingham and Dr. Orton were doing their research in the early part of the 20th century. But as conversational English has become more relaxed and casual, we now routinely pronounce those words with the long e sound on the end and the short i sound is almost never heard in those situations. While I don't think the Spalding think to spell method is wrong at all and I do employ it as part of my instruction, I just think it makes more sense to me to update some of the materials to match modern English and just add the long e sound to both phonograms. No program is perfect and there are many ways to arrive at the desired end, a child that reads and spells proficiently. If you feel there is room for improvement in your current curriculum, make the changes you need to make it work for you. You should use the curriculum, not let the curriculum use you.

I am thankful everyday that after my divorce no one blamed me for any of my children's perceived academic short comings. My oldest son was reading and reading well by that time just like his siblings but my second oldest was dysgraphic and I thought sure my oldest daughter had some type of LD too but come to find out she was just testing the limits and was actually better at math than I even guessed (I knew she was good but I never imagined she would be labeled as gifted in math. She fought me so hard on it at times. She still under achieves at times even for teachers she adores so I know it wasn't just me.) Everyone just met the kids where they were at, helped as best they could and for the most part, they are all doing just fine now. I think what struck a chord with me was the notion that this mother has ruined this child's life based on what little information we have here. No child is ruined for life at the age of 9 no matter what educational philosophies the parents follow. Yes, Faithful_Steward, you did come back and rehash your words a little but only after more information was given about there being an online school involved. As of your most recent post, you still seem to be of the opinion that this mother is not doing right by her daughter by asking for help when we still only really know very little about the situation as a whole. We don't know if she is trying to get the online school involved. We don't know if she has asked more than just the OP for help and possibly been shot down or shunned. We don't know the attitude of her local school district toward homeschoolers in general and whether that plays into her fear of public schools. We don't know what her situation was during her marriage, during her divorce or after her divorce. All we know is that she is reaching out for help, possibly in the only way she feels comfortable with right now. She should be applauded for being brave enough to take these baby steps and directed toward even more help if that is truly what this situation calls for. Telling her that she is ruining her daughter and that she should be held accountable for not only that but also for not asking the right people for help isn't likely to bring about the changes needed for this mother and daughter. In all honesty it is likely to have the opposite effect of making her not want to ask for any more help because she feels like no one wants to actually help, they just want to judge and take away the last shreds of dignity she has left while she is trying to rebuild a better life for her and her daughter. I think we may just have to politely agree to disagree because while I have no problem with accountability, I do have first hand experience with what this mother is likely going through right now and I know first hand how much farther a little kindness and support can go when it feels like all the world simply wants to judge and dictate.

We are dealing with a very small amount of third hand information. This mother seems to understand she is not providing enough and is asking for help. You would dump more on her already full plate by reporting her? We don't know anything about the situation except that this mom has just been through a divorce and is now asking for help. It is possible the reason she divorced her ex-husband has something to do with the reason why adequate instruction wasn't provided before and now that she isn't under his control anymore, she is reaching out for help, but the answer she should be given is to make her send her child to school against her will because her daughter can't read? That sounds to me like a good way to make her not ever reach out and ask for help again. If the mother didn't see a problem with the situation at all, my opinion might be different but the fact that she is trying to reach out and get help tells me there is more to the story than we are getting here and I think she deserves the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps for now, the only help she is ready to accept is the help of a friend. I know after my divorce from my control freak ex-husband, it was very difficult for me to ask others to help me even though I knew I needed it. I say give her all the help you can give and encourage her, but don't push her, to do what needs to be done for her daughter's education, whatever that may be. Even if she has received no type of formal education before now, her daughter is not "ruined for life" at ripe old age of 9. With the right help and encouragement, she could be up to grade level by the end of the year possibly assuming she's neurotypical. My oldest son was a very late bloomer with reading but it definitely was not for lack of reading aloud to him since he was an infant and trying every thing under the sun to teach him to read from the time he was 5 years old. He tested neurotypical at age 9. Finally started reading on his own at the age of 9.5yo and caught up and surpassed his peers by the time he was tested again at age 12. He is graduated from high school now and is following his dream of being in the military. No one would know from talking to him now that he couldn't read when he was 9.

Just some observations... It sounds like you want him to conform to your learning style. Based on his habits and interests, I would guess he is more of a kinesthetic learner. That is why you are getting resistance to colorful assignment requirements. I bet if you had him build a model of some kind instead of draw a colorful picture, he would blow you away with his creativity. I'm also willing to bet money that even though you have fond memories of those junior high coloring assignments, there were plenty of kids who struggled to pass the class because it went against their natural learning style. It has been suggested in the public education community that one reason boys tend not to thrive in elementary school is because the vast majority of elementary teachers are women and women are often visual learners and so they design their lessons to appeal to a visual learner forgetting that most little boys and some little girls are not visual learners.

4 boys and 2 girls here. Only my youngest daughter was into glitter and lots of color for everything. My older daughter was more of a tomboy but did become more crafty when she reached the tween and teenage years but not in the form of art on paper; she likes making jewelry, sewing, weaving and knitting. My oldest son preferred pencil drawings for everything from the time he could hold a writing utensil. He is grown now and actual is pretty talented at pencil and charcoal drawings but his creative side really shines in story writing. He has been writing his own stories and novels, of his own volition, since he was in first grade. I encouraged him to use to color when he was young, but I never made him. My thought was that it was his drawing, not mine, and as long as he was paying attention to detail, who cares if it's in color? Pencil drawings are still art. My next two boys were allergic to pencil and paper when they were young. One ended up diagnosed as dysgraphic, the other just doesn't like to write he'd rather be outside building and doing. But they both are still very creative in their own ways. The older one with dysgraphia has a wonderful sense of humor and is very witty with words, he just needs to type instead of write, which in this day and age is perfectly fine since the shear act of handwriting is very difficult for him. The younger one can build anything and loves being outside with animals and can creatively build what he needs to meet his animals needs. My youngest son, he is only 4 and the only one still at home, he doesn't mind writing, drawing and coloring. Sometimes he uses lots of color, sometimes not but I can already tell that drawing is not where his creativity lies, he is already a master creative problem solver. This is the kid who will amaze you with his ability to figure out how to get the candy you put on top of the fridge, he will take everything apart to see how it works AND put it back together and it still works, he loves rube-goldberg machines and even once he has solved the puzzle, he wants to do it over again and see if it can be solved another way. If that's not creativity, I don't know what is. I guess all I'm trying to say is that creativity isn't just glitter and crayons, creativity comes in many many flavors and styles. I homeschooled my children in order to get to know who they were and build up their unique strengths. That includes finding out where their individual creativity lies.

Leapfrog Math Circus The only caveat is that you will find yourself humming the quidget song even when your toddler isn't around lol.

The others covered English language pretty well but as for starting math with a toddler, count everything in sight. Count her toys as you play with her, count cars when you are driving, count clouds in the sky, count stairs as you walk up them and count them backwards as you walk down them, count rocks, flowers and leaves she collects outside, collect with her and compare how many you each collected, for example "You collected 5 pretty blue rocks and I collected 4 pretty red rocks, which of us collected more? Wow, you did! How many more rocks do you have than me? Let's line them up and see!" Then line them up side by side to show that she has one more than you because you don't have a match for her fifth rock. Walk through oral word problems with her. "I cracked one egg into this bowl. Now I am adding one more egg, how many eggs are in my bowl now? Let's count them and see, one, two, I have two eggs in my bowl." Talk about ordinals with her when you are narrating what you do and when you see things lined up, "Which car is first in line at the stop light? The red one! What color is the second car at the stop light?..." Play games with her that work on position words like above, below, beside, behind..., Introduce the idea of fractions with by discussing halves and wholes. "I'm cutting your sandwich in half. See, now you have two pieces of sandwich that are the same size. Your two same size pieces of sandwich put together are the same size as my whole sandwich." Do the same thing with quarters and thirds. Break a cookie into two pieces that are not equal and talk about how it is two pieces but they are not halves because they are not equal. Introduce coins and money to her when she shows an interest. Name the coins and their value. Count change out loud for her when you get a chance. Let her have a piggy bank she can put coins in. Give her a coin or two now and then to put in her piggy bank and let her buy small items with her money when she has enough. Of course some of this is far too advanced for a toddler but start talking about this things as you go about your daily routine and in your play with her. You are introducing ideas at this age, not explicitly teaching them. Do not quiz her on any of it at the toddler or preschool age. If she can't remember what comes after two when she counts or forgets the name of a coin or can't identify which item is second, tell her and move on. You are not looking for mastery at this stage, just constant exposure to ideas and terms she will use later.

Usually just lurk here, but just wanted to let you know that homeschooling in AR is fairly simple. Yearly notice of intent to your local school district, kindergarten can be wavered for you technically don't have to start submitting notice of intent until your child is 6 years old and entering 1st grade. As the previous poster stated, yearly testing was done away with a few years ago so no testing unless you want to. We have a Tim Tebow law that allows homeschoolers to tryout for public school sports teams and participate in public school extracurriculars but you have to attend one class at the school. Rural areas are heavy on religious homeschool groups but more urban areas, like Little Rock, Hot Springs, Fayetteville and Texarkana have a little more variety. My son has an IEP through our local school district for speech therapy. If he couldn't get speech though the school district, we would have to drive a 3 hours round trip to visit a private SLP once a week. The school didn't give us any trouble about being homeschoolers needing services though the schools. In fact, even the SLP he sees at the school homeschools her own dd lol!