I think this ^^^ is great advice! I am a middle child with an older and younger sister so I also see both sides. My kids (2 girls 7&4 and a boy 1) are still young so including everyone when friends are over is very important to us. IDK how this will change when they get older b/c I can't see ydd leaving her sis alone, voluntarily. I would definitely have to find something fun to distract her from getting in the middle of the older girl's time together. That would be my only advice, do as much as you can to distract the younger girl but explain, ahead of time, to your daughter that the younger sis may not take to these distractions and the older girls will need to be kind and patient with her. No reason to rock the boat over 1 night. It will all work out. :)

Picked this up at the library and my girls are loving it! Thanks for the suggestion!!!

Oh my this is us too!!! My Odd is going to 1 day a week enrichment classes that go from 9-2 (and therefore needs to bring a lunch) and we have settled on yogurt and fruit as her lunch. She has definitely been spoiled by hot lunches at home.

These are great ideas too! I am working on my "fun hsing mom badge" and these will definitely help out so Thank You!!!

^^^^This is awesome! I definitely need to do something fun like this. Thanks for the ideas!

Just commenting to keep track of this amazing list! Thanks!!!

Great thread! My yDD will be 4 in Sept and all I have planned for her so far is R&S ABC series. Lots of great ideas on here though to help me broaden our horizons. :)

Thank you all so much! All the comments were so very helpful! I definitely know that we need multiple years of phonics lessons I just wanted to confirm that these two programs were different enough...which I figured they would be. And thanks for the perspective on including AAS. I originally wanted to incorporate it into our K year but with a new baby around we were lucky to get our phonics lesson done each day. I may hold off a bit on buying that and see where CLE takes us. I have heard that CLE is a very thorough program and I am excited to try it out. I hope we have success with it!

Has anyone used a different phonics program before using the Learn to read program by Christian Light? Last year (for K) we used McRuffy Phonics and Reading and I am worried that the LTR program may be redundant and she will get irritated that we are doing the same stuff over again, i.e. letter sounds and such. BUT I don't want to just skip over it and go right to the Reading LUs in case McRuffy had any gaps. She is doing well with the McRuffy readers but is not up to the level of reading chapter books or the like. Any opinions or advice? Thanks so much! ETA: Oh and I also plan to use AAS too. Will this add yet another level of redundancy?

Just today I tried to convince my sister to pull my niece (9) out of ps and hs her b/c (a) she has always disliked school, (b) sadly has to repeat the 3rd grade this year and (c...even sadder) has not been eating and making herself sick so she can stay home from school (which just started on Mon). Her response was that she just could not picture her kids not being in school...that is was weird. Thanks sis. :glare:

Does anyone else have an issue pulling up their order status? When I log in and enter my order number and zip it tells me that no orders match the order numbers entered. I understand they are slammed and it might take a bit to ship everything out but I am worried that my order did not go thru properly. I did get a confirmation email (hence the order number) and am wondering if maybe I won't see a "status" update until it is ready to ship. I don't want to call and bother them but I guess I might have to so I know what is going on.

Man I just had a whole cart full of stuff and now my cart is empty. So sad. :(

My Staples had their 2x3 magnetic whiteboards on sale this week for only $10. I have been looking at them every week when I would go in for school supply deals but was not about to pay their regular price. I was so excited when I saw the sale sign. I plan to buy AAS in the near future so knew I would be needing the board.

Newbie here...what does WWE stand for? When I tried to google it I got wrestling. :001_huh: Thanks!

Just bought mine. So excited! And it is funny, while trying to justify the cost in my head, I thought about how we just paid $105 for 6 (summer) art classes at the local Art Museum (and didn't bat an eyelash at that) and here I am going to get 18 classes for the same price. Definitely makes sense when you think about it that way. I hope she really enjoys it!