I use the lists from Natural Speller. Day 1: Pretest on the white board. I give her words to spell until she has 5 or so wrong. Day 2: Copywork. She copies each word 2-3 times. Day 3: Spellingcity games Day 4: Test After a few weeks have passed, I make sure to include past spelling words on her pretest, to make sure they stuck. And if there are words in her own writing that she is consistently misspelling then I add those as well. She is a natural speller with a very good visual memory, and this easy low-key approach works for us.

:party: Loved your blog post, btw. Sounds like you guys had a great time!

I've bought wheat gluten at the local health food store. You can buy it on Amazon as well, in large quantities, if you can't find it locally.

Extra vitamin C (usually in the form of kiwi)

I've seen lots of marathon runners wearing them.

This is especially effective when I want some peace to clean the house. I kick them out, and tell them that every time they come in, they will have to do a chore.

We are! We cleaned the house this morning and will spend the afternoon putting up Halloween decorations. It feels like fall finally, and we had a crazy busy week last week, so we need some down time.

Primarily I watch Hulu on my computer, but I'm on my first month of trying Hulu Plus ($10 a month), so I can watch on my phone/iPad. (Don't have a TV.) With Hulu Plus, there seem to be a few ways to watch on a TV, but I obviously haven't tried them. I will say I've been very impressed with the app on my phone, and I think it will end up being worth the $10 a month for me.

Me Talk Pretty One Day was the first thing that came to mind. It's also really good as an audio book.

:grouphug:

What she said. I am so in love with my Kindle. I also have the Kindle app on my phone and on the iPad, but I much prefer the actual Kindle.

We also enjoyed My Father's Dragon. Others to consider: The Velveteen Rabbit Charlotte's Web Milly-Molly-Mandy This specific version of Old Mother West Wind has beautiful pictures and kept the attention of a 3 and 5 yo. Our local library carried it, perhaps yours does too?

You can make it with butternut squash, as long as it's meaty, not watery and stringy. I love pumpkin pie filling. I make mine with coconut milk, but I do use eggs, so no tried and true vegan recipe here.

Cold and windy. Maybe nice and sunny during the day, but gets cold quickly at night.

The Kindle itself is easy to use, and intuitive when it comes to reading books. Super user-friendly that even my mother could do it. My mother is also technologically challenged. the web browser is not as intuitive, but once you've figured out how to get there, it's pretty easy. Ideally, it would be great if she could try one out before she bought it. Does she have a Target near her, so she could go play with one for a bit?

Yes, in that case, the 3G would definitely be worth it.

The Kindle is different than the Nook. You can browse the web over 3G. My 2nd gen Kindle (without WiFi) can browse the web. The Amazon Kindle page says "New WebKit-Based Browser – Free 3G web browsing (experimental)" so the 3rd gen Kindle is no different.

No, no, no, not true at all. See my above post.

Actually, you can browse the internet over 3G. I wouldn't recommend it except in a pinch, because I think it's slow, but I may just be spoiled. (I also rarely browse for books on my Kindle because it's slow, so all signs point to me being spoiled.) Aubrey, if your mom truly only uses the internet to check e-mail in a great while, then she probably could cancel it and just use the Kindle. Again, I wouldn't recommend it, and it's not what I would do, but it would be possible.

5 yo can read but still doesn't know his colors consistently.

7 yo just finished reading A Series of Unfortunate Events. She has started reading the Little House series. She LOVES Roald Dahl and has read almost all of his children's books. She liked the Ramona books too. Pippi Longstocking was a big hit here as well. You might look at Sonlight's Readers 2 or Readers 2 Advanced for some more ideas. She enjoyed most of those books as well.

:iagree: I know all the parenting books say to give kids a choice between two acceptable things, so they feel they have some control. But for some kids, having to choose all the time is just too much.

Echoing a lot of the other suggestions here. I would combine your olders as much as possible. Same history, same grammar, same logic. I would not bother with spelling or vocabulary unless there are issues. Especially since you are doing Latin, so your children will be learning Latin roots. I would really focus all your energy and resources on your olders at this point. Get them started in math, then language, then add science and history. For your youngers, a couple free resources come to mind. MEP math is great. For reading lessons and spelling, look at ElizabethB's website, and stalk her posts on here about teaching reading and spelling using Webster's Speller. I think she has one thread with step by step lessons as she does them with her son. Peace Hill Press does offer the Activity Books as a PDF download. I have the one for Volume 3 and I've found it's more difficult for planning purposes (I like being able to flip back and forth in a real book), but for implementation, it's great. I can print off student pages as needed, and I've always got the review questions and map work handy, so I don't need to keep the big book out.

I wouldn't make a separate meal for him. And I wouldn't do a lot of labor-intensive things at first, in case it is just a phase. Can you keep some beans in the fridge for him to eat at dinners instead of the meat? I would slowly create a freezer stash for him. Make some beans this week that he likes. Freeze half or so in individual portions. When you make meatless meals, make a little extra of the main dish so you have leftovers, either for the next day at dinner or lunch, or to stick in the freezer for another time. Next week, make a different kind of beans (or lentils, or peas, etc.), and freeze some of those in individual portions. After a few weeks, you'll have a variety of beans and meatless main dishes that you can pull out to add to his meals instead of the meat that the rest of the family is eating. I'm not a big fan of fake meats. If his goal is to be healthier, I really wouldn't recommend most of them.

I can't read aloud for more than 30 minutes at a time; I need to take a break. So we read at several opportunities throughout the day. The kids are pretty good listeners (5 and 7 yo), but we've built up to it over time. They color or paint sometimes. Sometimes I read during lunch, while they are eating. Often they will ask me to read from our current fun read aloud while the are playing with legos, or other similar quiet toys. Every once in a while I will read to them while they're in the bathtub. And sometimes we just cuddle on the couch and read.