My MIL (well, step-MIL) is glad that we're homeschooling because there are so many black kids in the public schools. Under the circumstances I'd prefer that she disapprove.

I'm keeping a list of the books my 5yo reads for her portfolio, and to make it seem more "official" for the state's purposes :rolleyes: I want to include some measure of reading level. She has mostly been reading her way through the Beginner Books series from Dr. Seuss & friends: Go Dog Go, Are You My Mother, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut, etc. I had been pulling up grade level equivalents from Scholastic BookWizard, and then someone here recommended using Lexiles instead so I looked up the Lexile numbers too. Now I am completely confused. The numbers don't seem to bear any relation to each other; for example, Green Eggs and Ham (Seuss, of course) and Mouse Soup (Lobel) are both rated grade 2.2, but Green Eggs and Ham has a Lexile of 30 and Mouse Soup is 240. Mouse Tales is very similar to Mouse Soup in my opinion, but its Lexile rating is 200 points higher. This morning my daughter read a very simple book (It's Not Easy Being a Bunny) and it's listed as grade level 3.3 and Lexile 590. That doesn't make any sense at all - it's much easier than many books which are a full grade and 250 Lexile points lower. On the other hand, I looked at a list of titles of very, very low Lexile books (under 50) and saw words in the titles that I would consider to be more complicated to sound out: In Our Country, Simpson Snail Sings, etc. Is the rating system not based on phonetic difficulty? Then there's the leveling of the I-Can-Read series. A Picture for Harold's Room is a "preschool" reading level? Really? It has a Lexile level of 310 and a grade level of 2.3, but the little circle on the front of the book says "Preschool" clear as day. I'm just torturing myself trying to make sense of this, aren't I? So, my questions are: do reading levels make any sense at all? Is it even worth keeping track of them? Is there anything to take away from this whole exercise other than "she's reading just fine for her age"? And how do you find new books at an appropriate level if the leveling systems are all so weird? I like to keep a basket of books for her to choose from, but once we've finished the Beginner Book series (which are very reliably at her level) I don't know how to choose books that will be comfortable to read.

This is mostly what we're doing. I did find that it was hard to find real books for the very earliest level of reading. BOB books didn't hold my daughter's interest at all, and I think the artificial sentence structures they get forced into to keep everything phonetic and easy actually make reading for understanding more difficult. At the very early stages we used Progressive Phonics, which has little stories in which the parent reads most of the words but some are printed in red for the child to read. Ever since she's been able to read real books we've been doing that instead. We sometimes find, as she's working her way through a book, that she has trouble with a particular phonics rule. When that happens I pull out a whiteboard and we go over the rule and a list of practice examples. I find that she is much more motivated to practice phonics rules when she has that context: "This book will be easier to read if I practice these words."

100%! There was some educated guessing, though.

This is what I was going to recommend. It's particularly noteworthy as a kids' science book because it is explicit about the limits of what is known and what evidence is behind scientific speculation.

My position is that freedom of speech, as others have said, is only a guarantee against governmental restraint. I've run into far too many people who seem to think that their "right to free speech" means that no one should criticize what they say - or that the right to free speech guarantees the right to an audience. Nope. I used to take the bus to work, and there was one particular man who rode around town on the buses preaching VERY LOUDLY. It used to make me sick to my stomach to get on the bus and realize that he was already on there, and that my entire ride home I would have to listen to a diatribe against gay people. Did he have the right to hold those beliefs? Yes. Did he have the right to express those beliefs? Yes. Did he have the right to hold an entire busload of people as a captive audience, preaching so loudly that even with headphones you couldn't shut out his voice unless you were prepared to damage your hearing? No. He simply did not.

:seeya: We're a Unitarian-Universalist family, secular and humanist in our homeschooling style and skeptical and materialist in our understanding of how the world works. So we don't believe in hell or homeopathy, which tends to leave us out on both sides. ;)

I am so very sorry for your loss.

I think of the GED as such a lowest-common-denominator test. So much of what I learned in high school was beyond GED level: literature, writing, higher math, advanced science classes. I probably could have passed the GED at the end of my freshman year, but no way would I have been ready for the work at the private liberal arts college I eventually attended.

I second the idea about leaving notes. I got a tiny mailbox (red flag and all) in the dollar section at Target and left notes on index cards. Just little things: "Dear Alex, I had fun at the pool. Did you? Love, Mom." Or "Dear Alex, Do you like green eggs and ham? I do not. Love, Mom." We also get a lot of mileage out of silly sentences. I took three colors of index cards and wrote names on one color, sentence middles on another color, and sentence endings on the last color. This works especially well if you use the names of characters your child really loves - ours are about Oz. You shuffle up the cards and then lay them out, one of each color. So we have, for example, "Dorothy" "went to sleep on" "my foot." "Ozma" "ran away from" "a red cow." This is really, really funny stuff to the five-year-old mind, and she's willing to do a lot of reading practice mixing and matching the cards. I made most of them easy to read, and added in a few words that I knew would be a bit more challenging.

It's not the same type of situation, but my family hosted foster kids when I was growing up and so we frequently had new kids around who didn't necessarily share our background and culture. A very useful phrase my mother had was "In this house, we..." then she would follow it up with whatever the rule was. She was careful to never say things like "Everyone should do this" or "Your mother lets you do that!?" even when she was genuinely shocked. (Like a four-year-old who pulled a chair up to the stove so he could stand on it and make himself a can of soup. "In this house, kids don't use the stove until they're tall enough to not need a chair.") Anyway, that wording is really good for not shaming a child or giving the impression that you're criticizing their parents for not raising them right. It might come in handy. From my perspective as a former foster sister, I'd say that although you will definitely want your daughter to play with your visitor and make her feel welcome, make sure both girls understand that they don't have to be around each other all the time and constantly play host/guest. That is incredibly tiring for all concerned.

My stack of 8.5x11 wide-ruled sheets of whiteboard. - It's so easy to jot down a quick lesson when we're sitting on the couch together, without making it seem like a formal "thing." - We put our schedule on one every day. - My daughter is more willing to write on a whiteboard, I guess because it seems so impermanent. Paper-sized sheets mean that she can practice appropriate hand position, etc.

I took off my bra the other night and some change fell out. My son really likes coins right now. I've never really subscribed to the theories about "if he's old enough to ___ he's too old to nurse," but I don't know... if he's old enough to tip me by stuffing money in my bra, it does give me pause.

That's one of the funniest things I've ever heard. Do you still go to the same church? Because if you do, I fall down at your feet and worship your sense of self-confidence.

http://www.godhatesshrimp.com/

That story makes me so sad for my son. I hate that he is growing up in a society in which males who are interested in children are automatically under suspicion.

My husband rearranged his work schedule so that he is home with the kids every Tuesday. He teaches our daughter on that day and also takes both kids on fun outings. Every weekend we sit down and go over the tentative plans that I've made for the week. He relies on me to do the research, but decisions that need to be made are made through joint discussion.

:iagree: One of the major reasons why my daughter wants to learn to read is so she can read the awful books that I refuse to read aloud. I have a longstanding rule that I won't read anything based on a movie or TV show, not because I think she needs to remain pure but because the plots and writing are just so terrible that I can't stand them. But if she can read them? She's welcome to go crazy.

Yes, my 5yo has effortlessly memorized nearly all the states just from reading the Scrambled States books and having a map available on the playroom wall. The books gave the states such vivid characters that they really stick in her mind.

Yes, this. I found that when my son was bite-y it meant that he was not really hungry - instead I would give him a cold teether or something similar, and it usually did the trick. And yes, during the whole time that he was teething I would keep my thumb next to his mouth, ready to slip in and break his latch in a HURRY. Worse than biting for me was pinching, twisting skin, slapping, kneading, and various other gymnastics. I used to swaddle my son sometimes for feeding, just so I could get through without his hands hurting me. Now all that has stopped and we're still going strong at 16 months.

Oh my gosh, that is SO FABULOUS!!! Yaaaaay!

Adding another vote for FIAR. It's such a flexible curriculum that you can really make it fit your kids where they are. It's also easy to add in more depth. Your 6- and 8-year-olds are a fine age for FIAR. You would probably want to supplement pretty heavily for a 10-year-old - assigning extra reading, writing assignments, etc. But there are tons of resources to help you out with this - for example, lists of chapter books that match up to FIAR books.

Awesome! :hurray: By 18 months, my daughter knew to answer the question "What do we know about the Yankees?" with "Bad!" We're now working on our son.

I also recommend Carol Dweck's work. I think she has the right of it, although I'm finding it hard to integrate into my parenting. Here's an article in NY Magazine that gives an excellent overview of her work: http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

Project Gutenberg is your friend: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/results Sadly, they don't have the Newport book. But they do have The Automobile Girls in Washington: Checkmating the Plots of Foreign Spies! Who could resist that one?