Thanks, Beth. I am definitely instituting this at our house PRONTO. I have an almost three year old who will need the training next, I'm sure.:tongue_smilie:

Thanks, Mom to Aly. Yes, I know this works. It's very similar to our "go to your room if you're whining" rule. Sometimes I have a hard time telling when she's truly in distress and when she's just whining for no reason at all. Actually, I've tried to impress upon her that using a normal voice will always get our attention, when whining will usually only get negative attention (or none at all). The real issue is that this evening after getting out of the bathtub, she had a small bite of some kind (mosquito? I'm not sure) on the back side of her knee. She cried about it for a LONG time. It did not appear to be a truly painful bite (i.e. I know she wasn't stung by a wasp), and I finally just LOST IT over her crying. Yes, pass the "Bad Mother of the Year" trophy over to me. I deserve it. :crying::crying::crying: I suppose my question now is how do you cope when your children are crying/whining over something that is perhaps legitimate? How do you console them without going bonkers yourself? I think this might need its own thread.:tongue_smilie:

Thanks, Starr. I usually send her to her room to sit in the rocking chair until she can get her whining under control. She does not like to do this, but I have noticed the last few days that she has been making a real effort to use her "normal voice," etc. Again, I guess what I need is some coping skills for myself in dealing with the whining. I know she is still going to cry at times, etc., but it REALLY gets to me. For you parents out there with little ones, how do you cope? :confused::confused::confused:

We're having a very difficult time right now with our four year old dd. She is a somewhat sensitive child, and she tends to over-react to things. She whines a lot, but we are working on training her out of that. We by no means have it licked, but we are working on using a "normal voice" to ask for things, etc. Most of the time she tries to comply, but she still has her moments (okay, lots of moments) when it takes a while to get a handle on things. What I suppose I'm having a problem with is COPING myself with her whining after I've dealt with it all day long. How do you cope? I almost see this as the deal-breaker for homeschooling around our house. Unfortunately, it seems that she takes after her mother :tongue_smilie:in terms of sensitivity, etc., so I'm not sure I can handle this on a day-in and day-out basis. (Of course, this begs the question of how have I handled it thus far--she's never been in daycare.) I'm sorry. I'm rambling here. We've just had a rough couple of days and I HAVE NOT reacted well.

I have been thinking about posting something along the same lines. I buy my girls a new Christmas book every year to add to our collection (which is put away until Christmas time so we won't read them all year long), so I've been thinking about what to purchase this year. Last year I got a Jan Brett collection which I really like. I think I'd like something about the real Saint Nicholas--does anyone have a recommendation? :lurk5:

Yes! That is it! Thank you so very much!:D:D:D

I'm pretty sure I found a link to this article on someone's blog. The man has three children and he works in the field of public education. Actually, I believe he is an intructional technology professor or coordinator for a college. His article details the different reasons he gives for homeschooling based on who is questioning the decision. For example, when teachers ask about his family's decision to homeschool, he responds with something about how since both he and his wife were teachers, they are eager to "try out" various educational philosophies on their own children, etc. Does anyone have a link to this article? I want my dh to read it. Thanks!

This is the sweetest thread! I love it! Keep 'em coming! Right now I can't think of anything extra special I do for my girls that hasn't already been mentioned. I think maybe the most important thing I can do for them is LISTEN to them, and it's also the hardest thing. They talk a lot, and my brain gets tired.:tongue_smilie: I also try to remind myself to stop and do the little things they ask me to do.

My girls are 4 and almost 3, and we have read Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, The Wind in the Willows (abridged), Winnie the Pooh (the original), and are now stalled in The Cricket in Times Square. We have also listened to the audiobook of Mr. Popper's Penguins. Their favorites have been Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and Mr. Popper's Penguins. The others, I think, were hard for them because of the vocabulary and the British-ness of the language. However, I am too stubborn to quit reading once we begin, so I finish because I'm interested in the story.:tongue_smilie:

Thanks! I will admit that I haven't done much at all with numbers yet, so the number one would definitely be useful. Thanks for all the suggestions!

Thanks, everyone, for bearing with me and answering my question! I think I'll try OPG. We can always try something else if it doesn't work. We have lots of time!:tongue_smilie:

Thanks! Anyone else?:bigear:

I'm sure this has probably been discussed before ad nauseum. Forgive me. For those of you with experience, though, which of these two do you recommend and why?

I am about to place a huge order at Amazon, and I thought I might throw in a few Kumon workbooks for good measure.:tongue_smilie: I've only seen these in a Barnes & Noble once, so I don't have a good feel for the appropriate ages and abilities, etc. I have one dd, age 4, who is progressing well with phonemes and has pretty good (IMO) motor skills for her age. She ADORES using the scissors and can cut an almost perfect line. She is interested in doing mazes and word puzzles ('though she doesn't know how to read yet) and can make most of her letters. My other dd, age almost 3, wants to do everything her big sis does, but she obviously lacks the fine motor skills to do some of it. For the record, she, too, LOVES using scissors.:tongue_smilie: What would those of you who have used these workbooks recommend?:bigear:

:grouphug: and prayers going up right now!

Okay, so I'm not alone.:tongue_smilie:I can't even think of an exact example of my own to share right now (I'm supposed to be grading essays and my brain is TIRED right now), but believe me, I've got plenty of 'em!:blushing: It's unbelievable how a thread about something bad can make me feel good- KWIM?:tongue_smilie:

Thanks!:)

Oooh, thanks! That's an even better idea!:DFree is ALWAYS good. . . :D:D:D

I'm thinking about the future and how eventually when my four year old daughter gives up naps, I want to have a plan in place for maintaining a quiet time. I'd love for her to listen to audiobooks, but because I have a younger dd who will still be napping, I'm hesitant to start something that might be distracting to little sis. Does anyone have a kid-friendly portable, personal CD player that you recommend? I'm thinking along the lines of the old Walkman, only for CDs.:tongue_smilie:

How about Molly's Pilgrim? It's especially appropriate since we're sort of close to Thanksgiving. How about The Hundred Dresses? I'm not sure what age the children in the co-op are, but these woul work well with lower to middle elementary, I think. ETA: Ooh, now I see that you said it's upper second grade. I'm not sure what the reading levels of these books are. HTH anyway.

DH and I saw it last night. The theater was packed--sold out! We ordered our tickets online Thursday night at the recommendation of my MIL who had heard that it was selling out in a lot of places. I loved it. Of course, I loved Kirk Cameron as a teen. :D I thought it was well done. I cried most of the way through it, but then, I'm usually an emotional mess when it comes to anything that involves others' emotions, so I'm not sure that's a good indication of anything.:tongue_smilie:

I'm really just a lurker here; my dc are nowhere near high school age. However, I think perhaps I can shed a little light on this. I have taught both public high school history and English, and I currently teach freshman composition at a cc. I must admit that in my early years of teaching, I did not assign enough writing, especially in my English classes. However, I primarily taught history, and I did require my students to summarize newspaper or magazine articles as well as respond in writing to essay questions on their tests. I am fairly certain I was one of the only history teachers who did much of this and actually tried to grade it. The students' writing skills varied from decent to dreadful, with most of them falling more toward the negative end of the spectrum. I did try to give them a clue as to why they missed a question, even if that meant only going over the expected response when I went over the test. Mind you, I even gave the essay questions out ahead of time. Now that I am older and more seasoned as a teacher (and now as a parent, which is definitely the better of the two teachers), I'm sure I'd do things a little differently. However, some of what I did was because that's how things were done at the school where I taught. Expectations and standardization and all that jazz, you know. Now that I teach freshman comp, I grade a whole lot of essays (i.e. this semester I have about 75 students, and they will write a total 4-6 essays each--one class will also do a research paper). I give my students two grades, one for grammar/mechanics and one for content. I try to specify, especially on the content portion, what they could do to make their paper better. I'm not sure that I always communicate it well. For the grammar portion, they have a handout that details how many points each type of error will count. It's still by no means a perfect system. I still struggle a lot in my grading, and I still try to grade somewhat holistically, especially as we the semester progresses. I also try to make specific comments to the class on the day I return their essays about errors that were commonly made. I'm not sure I answered the OP, but maybe I provided a little bit of insight. And now, I'm off to grade essays.:tongue_smilie:

I can't wait! DH and I are hoping to see it opening night. Our Sunday School class had been trying to get an outing together, but we probably won't wait for them!

My girls have never watched much tv. We get the occasional video or dvd from the library, but I would say that even with that, they watch no more than 2 hours a week. Usually it's less than that (if I can manage to avoid the videos/dvds on our weekly trip to the library). I don't know much about breaking the habit, but I do know that my girls stay busy all day long. Now granted, they do their fair share of fighting, whining, etc., but it's nothing unmanageable (most days--remind me that I said that tomorrow!:tongue_smilie:). I think it's just a habit that you have to break, but once it's broken, they don't miss it. I also work from home part-time, but I usually only work when the girls are napping or resting or when DH is home. He's great to take them outside or over to his mom's for a while.

We're reading the original Winnie the Pooh right now. I can't say my girls, ages 4 and 2, are loving it, but usually my four year old will ask for another chapter when we finish one. By far their favorite read aloud so far has been Charlotte's Web, with Stuart Little and Mary Poppins coming in a close second and third. I think we're going to read A Cricket in Times Square next. I'd forgotten about Patricia M. St. John. I LOVED her books as a child. I've got most of them around here somewhere. We'll have to give them a whirl. Great thread!:001_smile: