We've had good luck with a marble jar. Once the jar is full he gets a reward (we started with a smaller jar and moved to a bigger jar after a few weeks and a couple of rewards) He gets marbles added for doing what he is asked, not having an attitude etc. We also take out marbles for not listening, excessive whining, and what ever else we are working on that week. It helps for him to have the jar where he can easily see how close he is to filling the jar vs stickers/tally marks which are harder for him to see how many more he needs to get a reward.

One thing to check on is to see if your credit card has the option to download your transactions into quicken. We mainly use a debit card so our bank is set up to download the transactions into quicken. So each week I download the weeks worth of transactions and then categorize them using mainly quicken's categories, but a few special ones of mine own (education, pets etc) It takes me just a few minutes and then I only have to deal with the receipts if I have a transaction that I can't remember making and need to know what it was that I spent the money on or for trips to Costco/Target where the money spent may fall into several categories. When I had my home business I created a whole separate Quicken file for the business. It was easier for me to keep everything separate.

Just happened to pull mine the other night Here are the two numbers I can find at the end of my report Under Remedying the effects of Identity theft they have this number 1-800-525-6285 Security Freeze 800-685-1111

Another good site for Publix coupon matchups is southernsavers.com I used to go in weekly for their BOGO deals with coupons, but since I got PG with #4 I have been slacking off.

This is my first year but I also have an above grade K'er. I'm just kind of going with the flow. I started out trying to make simple plans (try to be finished with this section of math by this date etc) but as soon as DS saw the books on the shelf he was begging to work in the books. So we started school the beginning June rather than mid July like I had planned. So those loose plans that I had made were all thrown out. Right now our basic day is to spend some time working on OPGTR, a little bit of time on math, a page in his handwriting book and then some time on either ETC or AAS. We just open up to where ever we left off the day before and start there. Everything else is on a if we feel like it basis. There's some days where is feels like doing a whole lesson in ETC or a bunch of math, and other days where we only do 5-10 minutes before we move on to something else.

My 5 year old is a beginning reader so that has opened up a few new games to us His favorites - Connect 4 - Monopoly Jr - Scrabble Jr - Boggle Jr - Scrabble Slam - Guess who - Occasionally candy land or chutes and ladders - Crazy 8's and Go fish - Trouble - Perfection - Memory - Uno

Here

We are just doing Singapore 1a but I have my son either tell me the answers in the textbook or he writes it down on his whiteboard. The only thing he is allowed to write in is the workbook.

Another newbie with a K/1st grader. My DS should be starting K next week, but was too advanced for K but not mature enough to go into 1st. So we decided to homeschool for at least this year (trial for DH, but I'm sure we will homeschool at least all of elementary school) We are using Phonics - Ordinary Parent's guide to reading, Explode the Code Spelling - All about Spelling - Level 1 Reading - Bob books, Nora Gaydos readers, and other library books that are at his level. Handwriting - HWT 1st grade book Math - Singapore Standards Ed 1A Logic/Critical Thinking - Lollipop Logic, Logic Links A, Random workbooks on sequencing Geography - Evan Moor Beginning Geography to learn map skills and then moving into Galloping the Globe around Christmas Science - 2 classes a month at local science museum, plus random experiments to explain things he asks about and lots of science books from the library. We are also doing worm composting, gardening. We started school back in mid-June (DS couldn't wait to start his books once they arrived) We do Math, Reading, Phonics and Handwriting everyday and Spelling a couple of times a week. Everything else is when we have time or feel like doing them.

Spent 10 mins cleaning all the clutter off my kitchen island and cleaning up from lunch. Next 10 min - trying to tackle to playroom (It's going to take a lot of 10 min clean ups to clean up that disaster area)

A few things that my DS loves Wiki sticks - He likes to build designs on the window or on his lap desk Pipe cleaners - he builds all sorts of things out of them crayons, colored pencils, a drawing pad and coloring book maps - we like stopping at the first rest area in each state where they have a visitors center and picking up random maps and brochures. He enjoys looking at the different stuff (of course we have to listen to him ask over and over again if we are going to stop at all the different places) Magna doodle or etch a sketch

10 mins - Swept the kitchen, started a load of laundry, loaded the dishwasher and started

We just started AAS with my DS who is 5. He is doing a mix of K and 1st grade work. He is breezing through the early steps of level 1.

We had a rotary mower when we lived in Florida and had a crappy lawn. It was great on the few patches of real grass, but it could not handle the longer weeds without having to repeatedly go over the same patches. Also they have to be sharpened regularly and require a lot of sharpening if you have a lot of weeds because those wear down the blades faster. Most of the time we had to go over the front yard with the weed eater to knock down the random weeds that it couldn't cut. They are wonderful if you have nice grass but if it is mainly weeds you are only going to be frustrated at how poorly it works.

One of my cribs has a current recall on it. I'm still using it. The other I can't find a recall on but I can't imagine that it doesn't considering that the drop side doesn't work quite right and has a tendency to fall. I only use that crib for my newborns and even then they aren't in it that often since most co-sleep with me so the crib rail is down most of the time. The other is being recalled for slats that could break - My kids aren't the type to jump in the crib or kick the slats so I don't worry about it. I inspect the crib every couple of months and if I saw a slat that might break I would go ahead and do the recall. But this recall required that I send in parts to the crib making it unusable and then wait several months for them to send me a credit to Babies R Us to buy a new crib (which would cost me $100 even after the credit) What am I supposed to do with my toddler for those months? He's too big to sleep in a pack n play. My kids also sleep in the same crib that my mom had for me when I was a baby when we are there visiting. Generally only my toddler sleeps in there since I figure even if the crib rail were to drop they could climb out without hurting themselves anyway. I'm not looking forward to them getting rid of drop sides. I can't lay a toddler down in a crib with the mattress in the middle, let alone on the lowest setting without dropping the side. I'm going to have to have a step stool just to put my baby in his crib!

We are a Catholic Family but homeschool secularly.

Google... managed to pull up a blog that talked about the show and gave the title. It's amazing how having just the one added fact (the boys name) makes google work better for you. I remember seeing parts of this years ago, but I wouldn't have remembered the boys name and I think without his name it would have been nearly impossible to find.

Here you go. http://www.natgeoprogramming.com/film/1007/africa-desert-odyssey

Not the healthiest way to eat them but they sure taste good. Steam until tender but still crisp (usually a couple of minutes for fresh green beans). While they are steaming saute a couple of cloves of minced garlic in butter. Dunk green beans in ice water to stop cooking. Then toss them with the butter and garlic and let them heat back up.

Even gate checked your seat can get damaged. Mine got damaged while gate checked. I was able to get the airline to give me some money for it only because it was damaged due to their gross mistreatment of my seat. Thankfully I was watching from the plane and saw what happened. One baggage handler threw my infant seat to another one about 20 feet away. He missed it went tumbling across the pavement and then ended up in front of a baggage cart and getting pushed another 50 feet by it. They tried to claim that it was all scuffed up when I gate checked it! Thankfully I had snapped a few pictures of my son in his carseat and stroller in the airport so after fighting with them for awhile and finally sending them the pictures of my carseat and stroller in the airport they admitted that they damaged it and would replace it but wouldn't give me the full cost because they claimed it was still usable just cosmetically damaged.

Yes - Definitely use it on the plane. Like everyone else said she will be used to sitting in it and will be more likely to sleep. Also the possible damage that could be done to it checking it isn't worth it. I fought the airlines for over a month to pay for a replacement carseat after they damaged mine on a flight and I still didn't get enough to cover a replacement seat.

If he isn't opposed to skipping pages (basically starting in the last third of the book and then moving to the front) you could do most of the pages for the ending blends in ETC book 2. The sentence pages do contain words that have initial blends so you would have to skip those or read the initial blend words for him. If my DS wasn't so opposed to skipping around in workbooks we would move on to doing the basic pages in Lessons 8-10 and skipping the sentence pages, then moving back to lesson 1.

I am currently working my way through OPGTR with my DS and also using ETC. I decided that even though he could sound out short vowel words to review with OPGTR and ETC book 1 to give him more practice with them before we moved onto new material. It has taken us about 2.5 weeks to quickly review lessons 27-40 in OPGTR and go through ETC book 1. We will be moving onto book 2 in a couple of weeks. Since I use it as review of what we learned in OPGTR there will be a gap in using it because ETC book 2 starts with initial blends and then goes into ending blends where OPGTR does it the opposite. (My DS freaks out at not doing pages in order so we will wait until we have covered all the material in book 2 and then go back and use it as review) We also use Handwriting without tears and I don't make my son write everything in the ETC books. He just turned 5 and still isn't good at writing more than a word or two at a time. So most of the things that need to be written he tells me what letters to write and I write them, but he does all the circling and crossing out ones by himself.

Thanks! Just ordered one. It was on my shopping list to pick up at Wally world, but this deal made it worth it to order it from amazon. Although it did end up costing me more because I couldn't resist throwing a few more books into my cart :D

The messages will come into outlook unthreaded. It will be like downloading the mail from any other mail server.