For lists of words try Barton's Fluency Pages on the tutor support part of her webpage. I use those plus any words from the lessons for quick words to make games with. After awhile you start being able to think of some off-the-cuff but honestly it's way easier to just pull them off the fluency pages ;)

This is how DD14 is too! MUS has seemed to help a bit and we're going to try some Visualizing and Verbalizing with math to see if it helps. Anyway, yes it's hard when they can do computations but don't have the number sense or whatever to apply it independently.

Okay, good to know! :) I'm hoping to use the long weekend to get a basic site started and stuff. I'm currently making some Visualizing and Verbalizing printables to teach DD the structure words and switching her binder over to Barton 5 (yay!)

Yep, usually within the first week. Once I knew the day after ovulation. I get vivid dreams only during pregnancy and so when I had one and woke up and saw my temp had risen (indicating ovulation...we use nfp when trying or avoiding pregnancy) I knew I must be pregnant. Also tender breasts and my cervical mucous will come back randomly after ovulation which doesn't usually happen. With my firstborn it was sore breasts, a need to pee more, and a vague sense that something was "off".

That is amazing!!

On the arms crossed for a blessing....this is pretty universal but at churches where taking communion on the tongue is common it can get tricky because nobody is putting their hands out so the priest/eucharistic minister can get confused :) My 7 year old insists on coming up for a blessing (he REALLY wants communion) and now that he's tall the priests have mistaken him for being a communicant and offered communion and I had to intercede. I suspect this is DS's sneaky way of tricking someone into giving him communion :laugh: Anyway, so if the church has kneelers I suggest staying seated as just easier. That's what I did anyway when I was attending but not communing because of my time away and needing my marriage convalidated (which TWTM keeps autocorrecting to "consolidated" haha!) And I second (third?) the suggestion for the Coming Home Network. We're on it and they just redid their website and it's fabulous! They're very helpful.

So I used to do the blogging thing but then just haven't had time and all so I stopped. But lately I've been wishing I had a place to share/document the extra games and strategies I've been using with my daughter and son and my tutoring students. I usually take pics of the stuff out of habit but it's hard to share pics on here in any organized fashion, kwim? I also think choosing Barton is a BIG financial and time commitment for most and it'd help people if they could sort of 'see' it in action. I know I searched in vain for info before purchasing it and I really found very little but what I did find I was grateful to find! Anyway, would a blog/site like that be at all helpful to anyone here? Took me a week longer than anticipated but thankfully with Snowmaggedon I was able to get it up! ;) http://readingtherightway.blogspot.com I'll post pics and instructions on how to make board games later and do reviews of spelling success games and add other stuff. Also, the 2 Phonemic Awareness Books linked in the side were the ones recommended to me by Susan Barton for preschoolers/kids not quite old enough/ready for Barton.

:lol: Your daughter is so funny! But it's so true. The Spelling Success cards have been a huge help for us too! I'm glad I'm tutoring several students now because if it was just DD I wouldn't be able to justify the extra review games but they're really well priced for the quality and benefit. But with 5+ kids using them I have happily bought the games for each level as we go.

For the basics of the Mass I've actually found children's resources to be really useful in a basic "how to" thing :) I was baptized Catholic but not brought to church so when I began attending at 16 alone I just sort of stood and kneeled and observed a lot. And I think it's important to know that just doing that is fine. The Mass is still the Mass even if nobody participates or everybody sings off key :) Anyway, my husband was a Lutheran pastor (well, technically he's still ordained but left his church position) and he's in RCIA and in private study to come into the Eastern Catholic (Ukrainian Byzantine specifically) Church soon. He might have some more resources to suggest if you're interested. I do know that the Didache was critical in his process of deciding to come into the Catholic Church so if you're up for it that might be an excellent place to look. The Didache really describes the early church's worship and it is amazing how much it looks like the liturgy of the mass. I will say that Scott Hahn's "The Lamb's Supper" really gets into the "why" of the mass and even pulls direct quotes from it and scripture, tying it all together. It's a really excellent book in general, theologically deep but fairly accessible to a layman.

There is a paper test to check coordination and memory and such for readiness for driving. I'm not sure the details, but I was told about it in reference to my DD's driving. It might help her feel like it's a possibility if she could pass that easily and then also pass the written test for the learner's permit. Also, I will say that I personally chose not to get my permit until age 16 and got my license at 17. I was overwhelmed at the responsibility required for driving, especially because when it was assumed at our school that if you drove you gave friends rides frequently. Anyway, so I happily waited a year and felt much more prepared at 17 for driving. One thing that helped me a lot was taking a real driver's ed class with other teens, it just forced me to practice. So in your situation I'd maybe talk to your DD and DH and see if maybe she'd feel more comfortable getting her permit at 16 or 17 instead. Then let her know a permit doesn't require that she get a license in exactly a year, kwim? She can take it slow, practice in parking lots a lot, take a driver's ed class, maybe even take a defensive driving class, and of course practice in low-key ways with you and her dad.

We've had some success utilizing the Classic Starts abridged versions of classics. Because DD14 is never truly going to get to the level required for in-depth analysis I figure the goal of classic literature is cultural literacy and general exposure to good quality language and stories. So abridged classics, while maybe not ideal for most kids, are just fine in these situations. And if in the future she's ready for the unabridged versions in a few years she'll already have a general overview of the storyline by reading the abridged kid version which will actually be good! One other thing we're doing is focusing on reading the classic 1000 good books. Even if DD14 never reads the 100 Great Books I'll feel good if she got those 1000 Good Books, all that classic children's literature that have good language and memorable stories. Memorial Press has good reading lists, as does Sonlight.

We are just finishing Level 4 and we began it last July-ish? So 6 months....a full 6 months to finish it. BUT, it's been worth it! DD made a huge leap in reading recently but it was a lot of work getting there. I suggest taking it slow and reviewing lessons. With DD I did every lesson in Level 3 and 4 twice at least, AND occasionally paused for a few days to just review with games. I find that goofing around with games sneaks in fluency practice without the kids freaking out so much. If I can find a way to post pics or a video I will. Do you have any of the Spelling Success games? I find those helped tremendously with reading fluency as well. It's amazing what a simple card game can do to review skills. Basically, keep practicing, go back and review often, and just keep plugging away.

I like the idea of taking classes to build more recommendations. I think someday when I consider going back full-time I will go ahead and at least start on my master's degree so I can have professors and classmates and just get to know local people in the field.

Yes! This is one of my concerns too! I can't even list the supervisors I had because they've moved on.

I'm sure I've seen some similar posts but can't find them at the moment. So, how do you spin things when you've been out of the work force for a long time and find yourself needing to get back in? Background: During college I had a mix of nannying, riding instructor, and cashier jobs along with lots of side jobs like caring for a local stable's show horses for 2 years off and on. I have a Grades 6-12 English Ed. degree, got married, then taught a K-1st grade classroom in a crappy, failing charter school. The school covered up abuse by parents and personnel (the cafeteria lady spanked a student...no joke...and everyone turned a blind eye) and cheated on test scores (actually went in and filled in answers on all unanswered questions of the state standardized tests). So while I *think* they'd give me an okay recommendation they know I know they cheated and that I wasn't pleased about it so it's not guaranteed. Anyway, then I had my son and we moved out of state so I didn't keep my teaching certification up as I was busy with parenting little kids and not in my original state of licensure anyway. I did some nannying on the side for a family for 1.5 years as well. It's been 6 years since I even did that, and 7.5 years since I taught formally. Now I find myself starting to tutor on the side again because my husband is under-employed. I really enjoy it! I have a couple homeschooled students and a public schooled student :) And I saw a job posting at a local Catholic school for a school-based tutoring job and I'm wanting to apply. But how do I approach that with my long period of not being employed and having very little actual in-a-classroom experience to fall back on too?

Orion-Gillingham is a reading method for dyslexics. It's really ingenious and has been around since the 1920's. I got trained because my daughter is dyslexic and was not reading at all by 12. The training requires 60 hours and then if you want to get certified you will need to have a certain number of supervised tutoring hours. I am not certified myself because originally I was just wanting to help my daughter. If you're wanting to do it professionally or long-term then I do recommend getting certified along with the training.

Our Ana is like this too. She's older so it's somewhat tempered but she'll often get in the baby or toddler's face...regardless of who has a cold or flu or if they show obvious discomfort. She has also been known to sit on people, tickle too hard, just generally hangs on me, and gets in people's personal space. The only thing I've found is very clear never-changing rules. So like I can't let her hang on me at home if it's not okay in a store...because she just cannot understand the difference. And I can't let her kiss the baby on the face ever because she doesn't understand not to do it when she has a huge cold sore or the baby has snot from a cold all over. Anyway, so basically what can help is clear rules that are good in all contexts.

This is what I'm doing. My husband lost his job over a year ago and has not found professional employment since because he's trying to make a career switch. Anyway so I took on a few tutoring students this year and I love it. I'm trained in Orton-Gillingham so all my current students are dyslexic and I only do reading remediation with them. It pays fair and I love teaching the kids one-on-one. You could get trained in Orton-Gillingham pretty easily as long as you have a college degree. SAT and other test prep is also pretty steady work, my SIL has been doing that while she job hunts. In college I used to proctor SAT exams, that is another super easy Saturday morning job.

Hm, I'd be reluctant to assume AAR Pre will work for him but you can find it used fairly inexpensively or always sell it if it doesn't work. Like Elizabeth, my DS5 could not do AAR at all, he also failed the Barton pre-screening so that gave me the answer on why AAR wasn't helping him at all. So I'm doing LiPS with him. And my son did not have severe speech delays, just a very minor one from the start, never quite enough to bother getting him assessed by professionals. Anyway, so if you already know your son has benefitted from help with speech therapies then you should almost expect to need a little extra pre-help before diving into reading, which you have of course intuited yourself anyway by even considering doing AAR Pre with him. Just know that he might need *more* than AAR Pre even. Susan Barton suggested a book with phonological awareness activities to me awhile ago for my son. Let me find it and I'll link you to it, it was very reasonably priced, I just happened to already be doing LiPS for a tutoring student of mine so I decided to have DS5 join in with that.

I'm so sorry, that is a tough time! We got our 7 year old a kitten as a baby. They're the same age, which I thought was cute until I realized the cat would die right as Tobias is graduating and heading off to college and will likely already be feeling naturally homesick and adrift. Ugh. I'm dreading it already.

I think dropbox or maybe evernote might be best for this? But I also know people who use a private blog for it. Easy Peasy Homeschooling is an example of someone doing that.

For religious reasons I know I *should* leave everything up until January 6th at least but I'm already itching to get the house back to normal. So no, you're definitely not the only one eager to get everything put away already! If my husband didn't insist I'd probably have the tree on the curb tomorrow morning ;) Milovany, do you guys get a live tree? If so how do you get it to last that long? Ours usually starts dropping needles and drying out around the 4-5 week mark and we get it the first day of Advent.

Thank you so much for sharing because that etsy shop just gave us THE biggest laugh!! They have intestinal tract charms, bahaha!!! I'm dying! Also, my husband got me salt this year. When we were dating he got me a dictionary, so I can't say I didn't know what kind of gifts I could expect in my marriage :)

Hm, I wouldn't mind or be surprised if someone with an infant or young toddler asked to lay them down for a nap somewhere but I'd consider it no big deal if the bedroom was less than spotless ;) Also, it pretty much never occurs to me to ask for a private place to nurse. Isn't that what nursing covers/receiving blankets/shirts are for? I just sit on the couch or at the table or wherever there's a seat, haha! I only Anyway, I don't think everyone would think to ask ahead of time even if they did plan to or expect to lay the baby down in a back room. In some areas it's typical to lay coats on a guest bed so people tend to clean the bedrooms as well as the main living areas before a true party. It might be one of those areas where you have to be either prepared or flexible or both?

This is what I've been working on with DD13. Her comprehension and vocabulary are quite low, below decoding now, so I'm learning Visualizing and Verbalizing to help her....cause clearly with a newborn and 4 other kids and tutoring I have too much time on my hands ;)