Thank you for your thoughtful replies, they helped tremendously! I think I’ll give her gift card to a skate shop so she can pick one according to what she needs. Great suggestions!

My 15 year old has expressed an interest in skateboarding and has gone to the skatepark a few times with friends, using a borrowed skateboard. I’d like to get her one, but have no clue where to begin. If anyone has a good recommendation for brand or accessories, I’d greatly appreciate it! Thank you!

I got a kitten for my birthday, and she is positively perfect. I love her so much.

I’m allergic to cats but adore them. My teenager asked for a cat as her next pet when her dog passed away. She researched and saved for a Ragdoll. Supposedly they are a less allergy triggering breed? I don’t know for sure, but I have no reactions to her, even when I am smushing her for kisses, which I do all the time. She is perfect. They are very a very chill, relaxed breed, which I felt was necessary in our sometimes chaotic and loud home. We have two small dogs, which she promptly got accustomed to in a day. She behaves a lot like a dog, wanting to follow us around and be nearby, but she also isn’t in our faces all the time either. I don’t know if that is just her or the breed. She is the perfect cat, honestly. Very easy going and lovely to pet and cuddle. They are pricey and it took us a few months to find the right breeder (my daughter did a ton of research on good breeders and found one willing to visit the cutters and be open and honest about breeding practices). Anyway, cats are awesome, and well worth it! Good luck finding the perfect kitty!

I loved Value Tales as a kid so much, I have slowly accumulated the entire series for my kids. They aren’t in print anymore, so you may have to eBay them, but they are good!

Title says it all. We did biology and chemistry for the past two years (middle school), so I’d like to do something other than those two sciences.

We have this cage for our lionhead bun, https://www.amazon.com/Living-World-Deluxe-Habitat-X-Large/dp/B007BNE1YA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505784933&sr=8-1&keywords=indoor+bunny+cage which we leave open all the time into this octagon playpen https://www.amazon.com/Summer-Infant-Surround-6-Panel-PlaySafe/dp/B000G1YW98/ref=sr_1_1_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1505784985&sr=8-1&keywords=Octagon+playpen It gives him a lot of room to run around when we can not supervise him. We take him out twice a day when we are in the room with him because he likes to chew. In the cage, we have a regular sized cat litter box, and he always goes in there. I put the wooden cat litter pellets. He also has a small shallow box for the carefresh fluff to nest in. He gets as much hay as he wants in his hayrack, day and night. A small scoop (1 tablespoon) of pellets twice a day, and a handful of assorted lettuces, herbs, and an occasional baby carrot, apple slice, grape, cucumber, sweet bell pepper slice, etc. whatever fresh veggies we have on hand, I'll give him a tiny bit with his 'salad'. He's the best little pet, so sweet, super easy to care for. Other than nail clipping, my six year old does all his care. We change the entire litter box every 2-3 days and it never smells. Under the octagon gate, I put one of those desk chair mats to keep him off the wood floor just in case he ever has an accident. It's never happened though. When he roams free in the room, he's never gone to the bathroom. Once he figured out the litter box, we've never had an issue. I'm hoping to take him outside into the chicken coop for some supervised outside time soon.

This! I stay home and negotiate peace talks between my kids...close?😂

We have to take something like it every year for foster care, but it is free.

I'm hosting a debate class for middle school kids this fall. I'm really excited as this is a fantastic group of kiddos! One thing I'd like to address with them is how to research online. Things like how do they know they are reading a reliable source and not an opinion webpage? How will they cite internet sources? How do they deal with plagiarizing as it pertains to graphs/charts? Is it allowable to just print those and put them into their paper? Any other advice you have for me to address with them before we start? Thanks!

Almost every weekend, we are gone at least one day. We have sundayfunday with our best friends-at the lake or pool, or just at each others houses. We travel a lot, last year we went out of town about 8 times. Then there are gymnastics meets. We probably have a full weekend at home only a handful of times per year.

Is there a thread for this already? I searched but didn't find one... What is on your shopping list this year as far as school supplies go? Where are you finding good deals? I'll get glue (for slime actually, not school🙄), tape, and some binders. We have most everything else I think...

We finished official school at the end of April, so we took all of May off. We had a bunch of stuff in May-travel, respite care with extra kids, and our own foster son going home-so we needed time to just be together, reconnect, and breathe. In June we are doing 2 hours or so of school. One hour of math/LA seat work, and one hour of reading. I have planned a world geography year, and it will take us a whole year to complete...maybe even longer. It's morning basket stuff-me reading aloud, crafts, map work, music, poetry, art...My older girls also read on their own for some time. Their gymnastics schedule has increased, so we are at the gym M-F, 4-8. I'm trying to fit in lots of pool, creek, lake time with friends. Every weekend is packed with parties, bbq's, play dates, etc. it's been super busy!

I'm looking into this for two of my children... One is 12 year old dd, who is a voracious reader and a terrible speller. We've done phonics and tons of spelling methods. She just can not 'picture' which phonograms to use in which words. She can memorize spelling rules, but doesn't apply them all when writing, or mixes up two sounds when spelling (for example, spelling black as balck, even in the same paragraph she has previously spelled it correctly in!), and never mind all those words that *could* be spelled with several phonograms and still follow the rules! I'm wondering if having some visualization methods would help her, at least with the 500 most common words. This child did vision therapy for six months at age seven because she was unable to read despite her desiring to, and me trying various methods to teach her. VT made all the difference in the world, and after six months of only VT and no instructional reading, she picked up a Magic Tree House book and read it. She's been buried in books ever since, reading for several hours every day. The second is 6.5 year old dd. We have been working on phonics and reading for almost two years at this point. She is still at the sound it out, CVC words stage. She has zero retention of a word from one page to the next...heck, most times she will have to sound out the same words in every single sentence! At times she starts sounding a word out with the middle or last sound, and at times she guesses a word that could be used in place of the word on the page, (for example, she said sleep instead of reading nap), even when the letters are not at all the same. I'm doing CLE learn to read with her, but we did try Phonics Pathways prior to this. I switched because she likes predictability, I needed something that I could step away from, and I felt that the writing included with the reading would help. She is VERY wiggly. This child does 8-9 hours of gymnastics a week. She's kinesthetic. She loves tactile experiences. She has SPD, the seeking kind. She struggles with emotional regulation. She gets frustrated very quickly, and shuts down completely. I took her to a highly regarded tutor for an evaluation, and she said she is doing very well with phonics, but gets overwhelmed visually and suggested this curriculum and a way to help her learn some of the more common words quickly and more easily. I do have an appointment to have her evaluated by a COVD this week, just in case. So. With all that. The program is $500. I'm more than happy to invest in this program if it will help. However, I don't want to buy it and have it not work...it's quite an investment. I also am wondering about just purchasing the teacher's manual and using the method for our own list of words...does it work like that? They sell a word list for $4, so I could buy the TM and the word list and we could make our own flash cards with index cards...the TM is about $100, which means the bulk of this program is for flash cards. I don't need anything fancy if index cards will work. If you've used this and this it would work for my girls, would it also work if I ONLY bought the TM and word list? Thanks so much!

Contact with his family is in their hands. Up until this point, I had only briefly met some of his bio family. We got along and everything was very comfortable, but no information was exchanged. I did give them my phone number at our last drop off, and I heard from them last night! He's doing well, settling in, and they've said they will send us pictures soon. I'm so happy to hear he is ok.