I have to say I really enjoyed the Ramona and Beezus movie. It cracked me up (the actress playing Beezus was wonderful), and it also had many sweet, tender moments. I thought they did a good job making that movie out of I think more than one of those books. If it could be done as well, I would go to see The Penderwicks on screen.

Congratulations! And 5 days early is a good idea if he's already 9 lb 6 oz--don't need another half pound on him! Enjoy.

Also in Oregon. My dd is now taking 6th grade band at the local middle school. They've been great to work with (except for taking her out of class for a reading test...grrr!). It's mutually beneficial--their funding from the state is based on how many kids they have. I know they don't get full funding for her, but every little bit helps. And she's a good kid--the kind teachers want in class. She's enjoying it too, and since we plan to put her in the public school for high school, it's a good way for her to make some friends and have a place where she belongs when she hits 9th grade.

Kind of expensive, but I think we're all enjoying our foray into Lego Robotics. We got the NXT 2.0 and are going through Laurens Valk's The Lego Mindstorm's NXT 2.0 Discovery Book. This is the right level for my girls (and I'm doing it with them) and we're all enjoying the sense of accomplishment at figuring this stuff out. We started MCT Lit last week and are currently reading Alice in Wonderland--a mix of me reading it aloud and all of us trying to finish it up on our own in the next couple of days. I think we're all going to enjoy this too. I saw somewhere (really it must have been this chat board--where else do I learn anything!) that the next set is due out very soon. It will include Dicken's A Christmas Carol which we've never done but I've always wanted to do that during a December. I think we'll have to get that and fit in that book before we're finished with the first set. I'm amazed at how much I am learning from Latin Alive. I thought I knew all of this from LFC, but it really fleshes out concepts to a much greater degree. Not sure if dd "enjoys" it, but I'm pleased with it.

I read some kid lit and I'm counting it because I'm having great difficulty getting anything read these days. I was ahead on the whole book-a-week thing for some time and now I'll have to get reading again or fall behind. I read Barbara Cohen's Seven Daughters and Seven Sons which my dd read for history a few weeks back. It is based on an old Iraqi folktale. One man has seven daughters (not a good fate) and his brother has seven sons (good). One of the daughters pretends to be a man so she can go into business and make enough money for her sisters to marry. In the process she falls in love with a prince (will they get together at the end???) and gets revenge on her seven male cousins who thought they were better than her. Dd and I both enjoyed it. I tried to read The Island of Lost Maps because it sounded so interesting when folks mentioned it here a few weeks ago, but I don't seem to have enough brain cells left to give it the attention it deserves. I'm pretty wiped out with home schooling and kid activities and need to stick with easier reading for now. I have Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on hold at the library because I thought I would read that first before seeing the Colin Firth film when it comes out. Hope it's easy reading.

This is simply not a required chore!!! Take it off your list of things to do. Cold cereal for everyone.

Also a former teacher here. You absolutely need to begin by talking to the teacher, and I would do that in person. You are making assumptions based on third party information and you don't necessarily know the whole story. At the excellent school where I taught, any parent calling to complain to an administrator about a teacher would be asked, "Have you talked to the teacher first?" Teachers are professionals. Treat them that way, at least to start the conversation. You will learn a lot about how this teacher operates, what is important to her, and what are the keys to success in her class. And I agree with the other posters that your ds needs to complete the homework to her requirements. Make sure he uses whatever resources are available to do that. Ask his teacher what helps are available. At my school all teachers were available before and after school and lunchtime and there was also a peer tutoring center (free). There were also professional tutors who could be hired. If the teacher is unprofessional or incompetent and cannot address your concerns, then you can go up the chain of command.

I like my friend's answer. When her middle-school-aged son kept asking her when he could get a cell phone her answer was, "When it's convenient for me." I can see that there comes a time when kids are at activities and need to arrange rides, etc., when it is a convenience for the family that they have a phone. I'm thinking high school age.

We used many methods of visualizing these problems throughout 1A/1B. I think being able to solve a problem in different ways builds dexterity with numbers. In a given section, if the text wanted the child to use a particular strategy, we did that. But your son's approach is the one I find easiest and tend to use the most. And it works well with larger numbers too. 73-8=? "How many do you need to subtract to get down to the next 10 (meaning 70)?" If you've developed number bonds well, you immediately see you need 3 to get down to 70, then 5 more will take you to 65. It's a good approach and I don't think there is anything intrinsically better about subtracting 8 from 70 and adding 3. Can also subtract 10 and add 2. All different paths to the same place. Explore them all, but don't worry if your son has a favorite he uses most.

I taught high school math for 4 years. Kids who were dependent on calculators could not progress very far in algebraic thinking. If you have to reach for a calculator for simple things like dividing both sides of an equation by 3, solving equations becomes a real chore and the kids don't seem to develop the facility or understanding that the number-literate students do. And fractions--it was so frustrating to see kids turn 1/3 into a decimal--very difficult to work with, not exact due to rounding--instead of multiplying both sides of the equation by a common denominator to get rid of the fractions entirely. They go for the slow, clunky, imprecise solution instead of the quick, elegant, exact solution. Around here the public schools require a calculator for third grade. A fellow math teacher friend was telling me that she refused to get one for her daughter and told the 3rd grade teacher that her child would not be using a calculator for third grade math. I loved that. We don't use calculators much here, but there are times when I think they are appropriate. We'll use them for computation-heavy problems in CWP. We use them for some averaging problems, some decimal problems. But I think that making kids do most calculations by hand/brain is what really solidifies math facts and their understanding of numbers.

See I think of those parties as a "young mom" or "mom of young kids" kind of thing. There was a season for that, and now it seems that all of my acquaintances have outgrown them. But when you spend all day with toddlers, it's kind of fun to get out of the house and see some adults! I don't mind going to a Pampered Chef party now and then. I have no use for candles, gifts, jewelry, make-up, etc., so I don't usually go to those. But cooking stuff, stamping stuff--sure I'll go once in awhile (like once or twice a year).

What a whirlwind! Praying you will have the peace and strength you need for each day's challenges. And for complete healing for dear Hannah.

It depends on how often you do laundry! I only want to do laundry once a week so kiddos need 7-8 changes of clothes. My youngest has way more than that because she gets all of the hand-me-downs from 2 sisters (I don't buy her much). My other two are too close in size now for hand-me-downs to work for them. My middle dd has been growing the fastest and thus has the fewest clothes--she's in the next size up within a year. My oldest is a slow-grower and is able to wear her clothes for 2-3 years before they are too small. Both of my older two need new clothes this fall. Their lists are different (oldest is in a wheelchair and doesn't do skirts or dresses but lots of leggings; middle is getting too mature for leggings but now likes jeans plus dresses and skirts), but both will have 7-8 outfits to get through until the laundry gets done again.

Like.

We stayed in a hotel for a night. If I had known how strong the fumes were we would have stayed 2 nights!

Toilet paper is what we ran out of first. I had bought some, but clearly not enough!

Love HP here. Would love to get a wireless one, but won't until one of our two dies. I think the one on my desk is about 10 years old. The all-in-one on dh's desk is maybe 5 years old.

We had chili last night with...you guessed it...rootbeer floats!

All of the above.

Praying for peace for you and your dh, safe travel, real answers and professional treatment, and a good outcome. :grouphug:

No screens. I have to admit I don't have any 12 yo boys, but we don't have t.v. reception, the kids don't use computers, and we don't do video games. My kids play with each other and they read. They read a lot. That's their doorway into another world. My first thought when anyone wishes their child read more is to wonder whether or not the child spends a lot of time watching t.v. or playing video games. I think they tend to replace reading.

Agree with previous posters. I also use the "you must need more sleep" argument and they get an early bedtime. And if they resist an activity (like maybe writing here), that's a sign that they need MORE work in that area to make it easier. If they're complaining about it, it must still be hard and they just need more practice. But I would suggest that maybe he's getting a bit old for FIAR? You read the same story everyday 5 days in a row, right? Sounds like he's ready to just be reading for the love of reading. I wouldn't want to keep reading the same book either. Maybe choose some more challenging reading for him that you will read also and then you can discuss it together.

Our parents paid for our college education (well, I paid for the 5th year for my masters), and we intend to do the same for our kids. I should say that we intend for them to get a bachelor's degree from a decent university with no student loans. We do hope they will get some scholarship money, especially if they are interested in private schools. Hopefully we will be able to cover tuition and room and board. They can cover books and any other living expenses from summer earnings or a part-time job while schooling. I hashed and did some paper grading--it was easy to keep up with my own studies with little jobs like these. We want to give our kids the best start possible in life, and I'm pretty convinced that means a college degree and no massive student loan debt. Our public universities are still reasonably priced (I was shocked that CA's are so high now), so I would think we would be able to at least do that.

I taught high school math for four years--everything up to and including trig. My department head was talking about me taking on AB calculus (which would have stretched me) when we moved away. I know that I can teach anything up to that level, but even when I was teaching math as my profession I put time into lesson planning and working out problems on my own. I could probably just wing it for algebra 1 and 2, but I think geometry (proofs) require some teacher work as do trig and anything higher than that.

You might make sure that you and any other adults caring for her are up to date with your own vaccination. I believe that in recent cases in CA where infants have died from pertussis, they caught it from their own mother. For the child, immunity would be built up from the series of vaccinations. Doesn't it start at 2 months? I was thinking that dTap (or tDap, I get them confused) is 2,4,6 months, and a year. When there was a local outbreak several years ago, they found that younger elementary kids were not getting it, but many 5th graders were. That's about the age when another booster is being given now.