My dh's reaction when he saw this in the news was "again?" The media has been "announcing" her pregnancy for over a year now! Each time a "close friend" confides the news (and I only know that because I was in a waiting room for 2 hours.) Every pregnancy announcement make me happy. :)

A new whiteboard, a crochet book about edges and corners, Once Upon a Time season 1 dvd set, a new camera. But I'm only getting the white board.

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That is so AWESOME! You HAVE to post pictures!

I post a funny every Saturday morning on my blog (that's the link to just those.) Also, here's the in Shakespearean language. :thumbup:

We've only seen clips on the show on youtube (which we love.) They do a sketch that shows Martin Luther (father of the protestant moment) as being obsessed with his own bowel movements. :001_unsure: They also don't shy away from the Catholic/Protestant fighting and killing. They do try to make a lot of things funny, which can come off as disrespectful/insulting. They say that, at least with the show, they try for 100% accuracy. We are Christians and we've never seen on the clips anything that made us say "That's awful/untrue/ we're not watching anymore."

What a lovely tradition! I love the colors! I've seen that combination in the stores before but I've never been bold enough to use them. I do a different, single color theme each year with a different "filler" (garland one year, beads another, snowflakes this year.) :lol: Builder Boy is calling them "orbits." :confused:

I didn't see another thread about this yet, so I'm making one! I want to see pictures of everyone's trees and decorations! I found this article through Pinterest on how to take "glowing" pictures of your tree. I tried different settings on mine (and discovered some I had no idea were there.)

Starfall.com and Leapfrog videos and LeapFrog Word Builder. It takes the pressure of learning off and gives good review to build confidence and fluency.

In October I wrote about our experience with Zaner-Bloser. They contacted me and after talking back and forth with one of their handwriting experts about a problem I had when I was first looking at their handwriting curriculum they wrote a guest post for my blog talking about why WTM calls it "continuous stroke" but the ZB website doesn't. Is that the sort of thing you're looking for? I write a lot of my posts on a regular basis about what we're doing with SOTW and FLL. Those posts always include a link to the PHP page for that book, but I also have a link on the bottom to the Amazon listing (I am an Amazon affiliate.) Is that more what you are looking for? I'm not sure after already talking about those what I would have left to review. Are you only looking for smaller companies or larger companies? Hmmm...thinking...would you consider Right Start too "big" a company to be on your list?

Ds says "it's round; just round." I guess that means 0. Dh says 1. I like the inside and outside answer, :lol: but dh pointed out that that applies to all shapes. :tongue_smilie:

You forgot Hooked on Phonics. :) I taught/am teaching ds#1 with OPG, but ds#2 is doing better with HOP.

I blogged about our experience with ds3.5 learning to read really early. Here is the thread that I started on this board that was very helpful. jenbrdsly's blog Teaching My Baby to Read has a lot of wonderful ideas and resources. It's her Leapfrog recommendations that lead to Early Bird's early reading. The LeapFrog Word Builder toy recommended on my blog post is the BEST toy for learning ever. I can not recommended it enough. A bunch of parents on here who blog did a blog tour this summer, writing about different challenges they have encountered teaching gifted or 2E kids, and the things that have helped them. As for people noticing your little kid reading, well, it's going to happen. I think what is most important is to not damper your child's enthusiasm. If they're trying to sound out a word in public, help them. You can't spare the whole world from possibly feeling bad. What you can do is use the real world as a learning experience the same way you would with an older child. I read on a blog a few weeks back that said that they homeschool because learning shouldn't have to wait. I completely agree with that.

Since I ruined your "Chuck Norris Survivor" joke, this is for you:

http://pinterest.com/pin/96827460708034335/

Every year I decorate the night of November 30th so that on December 1st my kids wake up to Christmas. Although last year I didn't end up decorating until a week before Christmas because I was depressed.

:iagree: HOP K level covers CVC words and a few sight words. That's OPG up to lesson 40 (sections 1-3.) HOP Levels 2 & 3 (orange and red) are suppose to be 1st grade. Both deal mostly with consonant blends, OPG lesson 41-63 (sections 4 & 5.) HOP Levels 4 & 5 (green and blue) are suppose to be 2nd grade. They cover R-changed vowels, which is started in lesson 154 of OPG (section 16), but they don't cover most of OPG's section 15 (Silent letters.) HOP also introduces compound words in level 4, when OPG doesn't until Section 17 (out of 25 sections total in OPG.) HOP 4 mostly cover silent-E words, vowel pairs, plus R-controlled words, and introduces smaller compound words at the end (plus more sight words than OPG.) HOP 5 covers more, less common vowel pairs, plus shr, str, scr, spr, spl, squ, and soft sounds of c and g, which were already covered in sections 6 & 7 of OPG. I would consider anything in OPG Lesson 134 (section 15) and up to be 3rd and 4th grade. I hope that helps! Added 12/6: this inspired me to make a blog post about how OPGTR and HOP compare. It contains more in-depth information than this post, for those interested.

$25-35 each for two kids. But I also get to pick the presents my aunt and mother spend on the kids, about $50 more (for them together.)

Aw, :blush: thanks. Yup, that's Early Bird (3.5) in the back and Builder Boy (6) in the front.

That's what I figured. :tongue_smilie:

I like my name, but I've been thinking about changing my avatar. I just don't know if people would recognize me if I did. I know I get thrown off when other people change theirs. ETA: Okay, I changed it. Fair warning! :)

I've seen a LOT of ideas for it on Pinterest. A lot of "learning" things for it, too. Personally I think the elf itself looks creepy, and since we're not "doing" Santa or anything like that we're not going to do something like this.

If it helps, ds6 has recently started calling me "My Mother" instead of "Mommy."

nm. It won't let me re-size the picture to not huge.