I bought the first 6 months from Currclick of the 2-3 years old program to try out. I thought it looks very doable and most of the materials I already have.

I mailed a letter to Germany last week. The post office told me that while technically you can use Forever stamps to send mail out of the country, they are getting complaints of undelivered mail or undeliverable mail because the stamps don't have the amount of postage on them.

I don't know about an app, but I emailed a pdf file to my Fire and can access it under documents.

It depends on what you want to do with it. If it's just reading and playing some word games, a kindle ereader might be the way to go instead of the Fire tablet. I have a kindle keyboard that I love for reading. The e-ink is easy on the eyes and I like that I can change the font size. I also have some word games and a notepad on it. We also bought a Fire since we need something to take to appointments and for travel. I much prefer reading on the e-reader instead of the Fire tablet. It's like reading on the computer and hurts my eyes when I read for awhile. We use the Fire for watching movies, music, educational apps. We also have some picture books on it because of the color. Overall, we are happy with it as the iPad was out of our price range. You do need to be sure you have a good wifi connection to make the most of it since the idea is that you will mostly be streaming from the cloud. However, one big negative imo is the homepage. It has this carousel thing that shows every book I have on my kindle--even though it's not downloaded on the Fire. I really don't like this feature and sent Amazon feedback on it. Hopefully this will be changed in a software update. In terms of parental controls, I don't know of anything for the basic kindle. The only thing you could do is delete your books off the device when letting a child use it. The books aren't lost, just saved in your archives. For the Fire, this is a big topic on the Amazon forums. It does not come with any parental controls outside of being able to disable one click ordering. Their is an app though that you can get that disables the web, so the child would only have access to whatever is directly on the device. HTH

We received our Fire Thursday night and so far so good. We don't have a smart phone or another tablet so this was our first time trying out the touch technology and apps. We have enjoyed streaming movies from Amazon prime and Netflix. I sent amazon an email through the feedback feature on the Fire regarding the lack of a queue for the amazon prime movies. It would be much easier to search for movies on my computer and have a queue set up ready to go anytime we wanted a movie. We have read a couple of books. However, my eyes prefer to read on the e-ink of my kindle keyboard. We downloaded a couple of kids songs which my boys loved. We are especially enjoying the book apps from Oceanhouse Media. They have an autoplay feature that works great! The boys enjoyed hearing the narrator do the voices and loved the sound effects. I can definitely see us purchasing more of these in future. I am also keeping track of the free app of the day. The email and web browsing worked fine though I didn't do much with it. I haven't yet figured out to get some of our school books on it. We have a bunch of the amanda bennett studies and her new passport books. I need to work on this. Not too happy with the Marware cover I purchased. The stand is flimsy and I don't think the cover protects it well enough when out and about. I have to agree with many other users regarding the carousel. I really don't like that it shows a history of your activities and all of my book covers. Hopefully there will be a software update for this soon. So overall we have been pleased. This was a great price point for us to give a portable tablet a try.

Could you please clarify what you mean by Kindle Lending Library? Do you mean the free lending library available to amazon prime members? I've been lucky that my local library system offers kindle ebooks. It's saved me some money on bestsellers. Hopefully you will be able to get a library card for a different library sytem. Checked my account and our kindle Fire should be delivered tomorrow! Will have to get our schoolwork done early so we can play with it! lol

There are tons of disney digital kits available. I wasn't too impressed with the Creative Memories kits. Here are some of my favorite sites. Each site usually has a store link plus freebies that go along with their kits available on the blogs. http://natalieslittlecorneroftheworld.blogspot.com/ http://kellybelldesigns.blogspot.com/ http://brittishdesigns.blogspot.com/ http://www.wyldpeasdesigns.blogspot.com/ http://www.keystonescraps.blogspot.com/ http://www.mousescrappers.com/forums/ I love Mousescrappers! They have lots of challenges with freebies. Have a great trip!

Too funny! Loved the part about the DQ!

Have you tried this site? http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/

We use Harmony Fine Arts. Barb has a great blog with some really great plans for different ages. We also use her nature blog.

We are planning to use the site's free curriculum guide for Dolphin Tale when it comes out later this month.

Hands of a Child--a company that sells lapbooks.

This is part of a set of spiral bound pattern and early math skills books. We have used several in the set. I think I bought ours at the local teacher store.

We have enjoyed Take A City Nature Walk. It'a part of a series. Others are Take a tree Walk, Backyard Bird Walk, etc.

Glad to hear it went well! We did Storm in the Night this past week. For science we did more with the themes of lightning and the water cycle. I found some activities in the FIAR archives and ds made a mobile about weather/thunderstorms.