For breakfast we always do a hotel-style buffet :) I put out rolled deli meats and cheeses, yogurt (I make plain and always have some fruit compotes in the fridge, so everyone can make their own flavor), fruit, and some sort of bread: if I wake up early I'll make muffins, or we often have leftover biscuits or bread from the night before, or just toast. I know the bread is weird if using a NT diet, but they do have some options. Unless I make a breakfast bread that morning (and sometimes I'll do scrambled eggs, too), it all takes under 5 minutes to put on the table, but it's a pretty impressive spread and it keeps everyone happy and full for a few hours at least. I would also do hardboiled eggs (especially since they can be made ahead of time... they keep 7 days in the fridge), but no one in my family likes them. I do make my kids have the fruit last (as a "dessert," if you will) or else that's all they would eat.

I give kids a choice of candy or play dough. They actually usually go for the play dough: only the older kids pick the candy. And I give out full sized candy bars, too! One year, a parent came to my door the day after Halloween to specifically thank me for giving out play-dough. His child had some severe food allergies, so almost all of the candy had to be thrown away. That was something I hadn't even thought of.

Thank you for posting that link. I did a little bit of reading about TJEd, and was inititially very intrigued. But there were too many slightly "off" things about it, and I did find the stuff about the diploma mills and the weird conspiracy theories. Your blog post, and the person who commented and left her blog post, really explained a lot to me. I think that if I hadn't read TWTM first, I could have easily been sucked into the TJEd. I guess it's a good thing that I did! Everything about TWTM just made perfect sense to me. I wanted to like the TJEd, but nothing really made sense.

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I think that the general atmosphere of the home is more important than a specific curriculum, or even a specific schooling method. I think that loving, caring, involved, interested parents who inspire and foster a love of learning and who meet the educational and emotional needs of their children will, for the most part, turn out stellar adults. I think that if you take the child of uninvolved parents who don't have any respect for education and put this child in even the very best school or homeschool program, it is unlikely that he'll rise to his potential. And I'm not saying "I don't think an intensive WTM-style homeschooling curriculum is worth the effort" at all. I'm saying that I don't think that sweating the small stuff is worth it, so long as the foundation is strong.

Another vote for Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It was so boring DD refused to go past the second lesson.

I would be wary that an entire church can't find anyplace for this woman and her children to stay. There are a few red flags in the story, but that is the biggest one to me.

Job skills? I know that 6th-8th grade seems young, but at that age many girls start taking babysitting jobs, and many are looking ahead to getting a part time after school job when they're in high school. You can talk about presenting yourself in a professional matter, what to do if you have a problem on the job with either coworkers or a boss/manager, how to make a resume/fill out an application, how to ask for a raise. Many of these things are the same for volunteer positions, which so many high school kids take on now, too. Some volunteer positions are fairly competitive and will require a real interview and some sort of resume (if only so they have something on file about you). As I said, I know that it seems young, but these are life skills that everyone should have and you have NO IDEA how many young women I've personally seen who have no idea how to dress appropriately for a job interview, and some of the stories I've heard from friends who actually work in HR. A basic understanding of how to navigate through jobs is something that will most likely serve them now or in the very near future. ETA: You should also talk about the internet: they should never put anything online that they wouldn't want a boss to see in future years. People have lost jobs over old photos from high school or college that they put up on Facebook. It's DEFINITELY not too early to start talking about that: middle school and high school is where kids start using all the social networking sites like crazy, and something that they think is funny or cool now may not turn out to be if an employer googles them. Also, if they're applying for a babysitting job and their email is hawtgurlluvs2partee@yahoo.com, they should probably use a different email account to contact the parents.

Especially since those subjects are so much FUN in the elementary years! LOL, I can't wait until we get there. There are so many great history books for elementary school, all the science projects are really fun... it's all just about the world being an amazing place. As they get older and things get more intensive, we might develop a deeper understanding, but I think a lot of the sense of magic and wonder is lost in that.

Are you spending any time doing art or music or a foreign language? If you use that nap time as your rest period, you might want to look into educational DVDs at your library, or streaming online. If you search Discovery Education here, there is a terrific deal on DIscovery Education and BrainPop through an online forum called G3. You can set him up with something educational during that time. I think you're amazing for doing ANYTHING if you just had a baby 3 weeks ago! Especially with a toddler and 2 preschoolers at home, too.

I think you're probably underestimating your 4th grader ;) I still remember a lot of stuff I learned in early elementary school. I still remember the poem I had to memorize in 3rd grade, even! And even stuff I don't specifically remember still builds the foundation for things I learned later.

Yes, this really bothers me.

We're reading Paddington now, and DD loves it. The Carolyn Heywood "Betsy" series is perfect for very young kids, too.

All I have to say is that if anyone thinks they have "the answer" to making sure your 14 month old is always behaved in public, no matter their innate personality, you should write a book: there isn't a parent who wouldn't buy it. :lol:

"not homophobic" works for me.

No, for all the reasons already stated.

My 2yo and the baby go to bed at 6:30, and my 4yo stays up until 7. The baby takes 2 naps, and my 2yo takes one. They all wake up between 6:30 and 7. Except this week, which is killing me! The younger 2 have 4 new teeth, 3 infected ears, and one tummy bug between them! Yikes! No one is getting much sleep with all that going on...

I'm using the Starfall curriculum, and it's so cute. It revolves around Backpack Bear, who is a little teddy bear that has a backpack, and every morning he has a note for the children in his backpack. It's a full curriculum that has science and history, too.

Yes, exactly! Have you ever seen something online and you think "wow, that's a good idea! I should remember that." And you don't. Or else you just click "add to bookmarks" and then either never think of it again, or can't find it. Pinterest is like a visual bookmark bar, where you can add things by picture, based on category, and so when you're re-looking for something, you can find it. I do a lot of sewing, so I "pin" clothes that I see online that I like a detail of that I want to remember later. I also have boards for home decorating ideas, and even one for when I see cute ideas that my sister might like for her wedding. It took me a while to get into it, but really it's proven SO USEFUL. I love it.

I just want to warn you... we had a toddler girl who did really well at restaurants, too. Then we had DS... :lol: How a 14mo behaves is all in the personality... not much you can do.

Grounding him for a whole week when he did what you told him to seems really harsh, imho.

Laura Ingalls started school at 4 in real life, while the family was still in Wisconsin. I think formal academy type schools started at 7 or 9, but many expected kids to already know how to read. I think poorer and middle class families, and families who had less access to fancy private schools got whatever they could, whenever they could. Sending your 4 or 5 year old off to school was probably a good way to keep them from being underfoot, lol.

I just don't understand where he gets his energy! He's the fricken Energizer Bunny! He's just constant motion all day long. The upside is that he does sleep long and well.

We are using the Starfall kindergarten curriculum. I really like it because it's very gentle and covers many subjects. We are only on week 3, but DD is thriving under it and has been very interested in everything presented to her. For math, we are doing MEP because it's free. I think it's a bit too gentle for DD, but I also think that it's laying a solid foundation. I've read here that it ramps up quickly once you get to first grade. We are already 1/4 of the way through K (reception) so I plan to keep going until it gets too hard, and then switching to workbooks and activity books (like Count On Math) until shes ready for harder concepts.

There were no tears, but I was completely aggravated and DD was near tears. Then I remembered that I hadn't eaten anything that day, and that always turns me into a raging witch. Important lesson: don't teach on an empty stomach.

I never received any info, but my username is the email I used to register for the G3 site, and the password is the same as BrainPOP. Someone on another thread suggested plugging that in, and it worked for me.