The quakers maybe?

My kids watch the magic school bus dvds and sometimes they watch Peter Weatherall. My son likes Popular Mechanics and the kids all love Brainpop. I read them science books based on what interests them. My son loves reading about how things are built like boats, tunnels, trains, buildings and planes etc and right now I am reading my daughter books on the human body. They all like Magic School Bus books. I am reading the Story of the World to my 5 and 7 year old and my oldest is finally getting into it. She actually wanted me to ask questions so the activity book is on the way. I have read them books on history that interest them but I am going to focus on ancient times for now. We have liberty kids but I will wait to do more modern stuff. I just looked up my states science ranking and yep we are near the bottom. The state I am from is one of the top 3. I totally remember getting a good education in science and I did get a much better one. I really wish the kids in this state had better. I bet it is even worse at other schools. Sigh.

I know she mentioned MIF and not essentials but I do think Singapore math in general has its weaknesses for some kids for sure and one of them is that it does not provide enough practice for the concepts it teaches. My kids always understood the concepts they were taught but they need lots of practice for it to turn into them having facts down and just just knowing it right away. As time goes on I am just not finding it to be a great fit for my kids.

In my city they don't do history at all. They do social studies in elementary school and only do little season appropriate lessons like about Martin Luther King. Science gets the series short staff here. Only half of the kids in the city can pass a basic science proficiency test. Low income schools score dismally. One school only has 9% proficiency. Yikes! Dd's school does better but although they list science I don't see much at all and it isn't connected. They covered much more of those topics when I was growing up on the east coast in school. I am very unhappy with the fact these things are just skipped over in our schools. I think being exposed to it early sets the foundation for later. Kids can learn about science and history.

Charter schools are not controversial where I live. There are lots of charter or alternative programs or programs housed in neighborhoods schools here and I haven't heard anything about trying to get rid of them. Some have been here for decades already. Right now vouchers is a local issue that is being discussed that is controversial and I am personally very against. I don't think charters are the magic bullet solution to the schools in this country that do not perform by a long shot. I also don't think they make things worse either. I like that charters offer different learning approaches and freedom of curriculum and it is available to anyone who applies via the lottery and gets chosen with no cost. I like being able to have a choice of a school where parents are all very involved and there are no bullying problems. What I don't like is that yes it can pull the involved parents out of the neighborhood schools and it can be hard for parents who can't afford to drive to them and have no way of getting their kids there. I also know of parents who have kids with varying special needs and they couldn't get their kids in certain charter schools because they couldn't meet their needs. I know the results across the country vary and some charters score really well, some are just ok and some are bad. In my area the charter schools and alternative programs all score really well. The best scoring schools in my city are the charters and one very high income school. One charter doesn't score well but the parents who would chose that school would not be concerned with test scores. Other are schools within schools and they house several programs that also include special needs programs.

With the house we brought we brought it because it met all our criteria. I don't know that I would call it love but I liked it a lot. It was in our price range and not at the tippy top of it. The house had a decent yard for the burbs. It had a lot of south facing windows and the windows on the north were smaller. A lot of the yard was south facing, It had more square footage then we needed but still had a small footprint because the bedroom and laundry floor was a finished basement. It also had a fully fenced in yard and a huge tree in the north facing front yard where the kids would play that offered privacy (the tree fell down in a wind storm lol) Even though I wasn't using the neighborhood school I wanted it to be zoned for a school that was at least a little above average. It was only 1 mile from the charter school my oldest got into. It was an older home but it wasn't in terrible shape. It needed some stuff done but it wasn't falling apart. The one thing I didn't like is that it had new wall to wall carpeting. I am not a fan of carpeting. The house ended up more work then anticipated being an older house but so far it has been okay. I can see myself here if we stay in this city but I am kind of itcing to get out of this city one day and be somewhere a little warmer and closer to family.

I am mixed on it and for me the jury is still out halfway through level 1. I haven't seen great improvement yet in the area my ds struggles with smooth blending and fluency in sentences. I feel like it could move just a little faster in going into the multi-letter phonograms and blending words with those and long vowels. I also feel that the fluency sheets are a bit intense for a kid who is struggling. I am giving it more time though so maybe I will find that I just needed to stick with it a little longer and it will all come together but I am not so sure.

My dd's teacher is more likely to mark my dd wrong for every little thing or mark something wrong that was correct then the other way around. I don't think she missed one mistake yet this year. lol Most of my dd's mistakes are caused being careless. I would maybe say something when you get the chance like maybe at a parent teacher conference.

I am perfectly fine with my kids hearing about others religious beliefs and hearing from other people describing their beliefs. I am perfectly fine with kids praying at school or talking about their religion. I am fine with teachers talking about their religion or telling people their beliefs. I started going to a UU church specifically for the kids RE program so they would learn about all religions in accepting open minded environment. I am not okay with a teacher discussing something like young earth creationism, that Jesus is the the savior etc and teaching it as a fact like math facts are discussed as facts. I am also not okay with people who are nice to you but their real goal is converting my heathen children to their religion. I have no problem with my kids knowing or hearing about other religions or hearing people discuss what they believe if it is done with respect.

I would go somewhere else for a speech evaluation. Who did you see? Was it private or through the school? My son is getting speech for articulation and they went by how much someone who didn't know him could understand him. Do other people usually understand her?

If you have a 4 year old who wants to write letters and can I would let him do that. I would work with my kids much younger on writing if they were capable of it. You can use the hand writing with tears kindergarten workbook with a 4 year old. I am doing other things with my son besides handwriting and probably will with my youngest but that is because writing and drawing is a struggle for them and they are not ready for it. I would just work with them on formation on paper if I could because they were ready and enjoyed doing it.

I used Signapore Essential kindergarten and started 1A with my kids. I like some things about 1A but I think for some topics it moves on a little fast and with not enough practice at least for my kids. 1A has more instruction then the kindergarten workbooks but I still feel like it is missing something. I was thinking of giving Right Start B a try. It sounds like something I would like and would be fun for them but the cost is more then I wanted to spend. I do want something that goes over place value pretty early and uses games that are laid out for me to practice addition and subtraction.

The writing in what she read is above the first grade level and she is a 6 year old 1st grader. It is very plausible that she struggled through reading it. My 1st grader can read that but I know lots of 1st graders who would struggle their way through that really slow. My handwriting is very poor and would look like a child's and my 1st grader actually does better with smaller margins and would probably have handwriting that looked similar. It looks like the parents wrote something out that the child copied.

I am considering getting Right Start A and B for my kids. I have 3 kids. Right now I am only after schooling my 7 year old who is in 1st grade in a charter school. I do 2 plus 2 does not equal 5 with her but I wanted to add something fun where I can expand beyond addition and subtraction to 20. I just want something that won't take much time but is fun. She is doing good in math at her school at the moment but it isn't her strong point. I also have a 5 year old son. He misses the cut off for kindergarten this year. I plan on sending him to kindergarten at the charter my oldest goes to but I am not sure this school will work beyond kindergarten and so I will evaluate at the end of the year what to do with him and home schooling is a possibility. The charter has traditional methods to teaching and has really high standards for handwriting and behavior I am not sure he can meet. Kindergarten is only 2.5 hours really early in the morning with a really great teacher so I have the rest of this school year the summer and next I will have time to work with him. He just finished Singapore Essential Kindergarten but I am not sure I want to continue with it. He did decent with it and his skills are pretty average but I think he needs more addition and subtraction practice then it offers. Right now he can count to 100, skip count by 5 and 10s. He gets the concept of addition but still needs rods or manipulatives. He sort of gets counting on but needs a little more work with that. He gets place value, fractions and ordinal numbers. He cannot write numbers but he recognizes them. I was thinking of getting level B for both my 5 and 7 year old. Once my 3 year old recognizes her numbers I like something manipulative heavy that I can use with her gently. I was thinking of getting A for her but going slow. I prefer things that lay out exactly what I need to do because I am very bad at organizing things myself. If I decide to get right start should I get A and the A to B set or set B for the older kids and get the manuals for A once the 3 year old seems ready. I can hold off on A but I wanted to start with my older two. Do you think right start is a good fit for what I described? It is a lot more money then I prefer to spend but I am looking for something that is well organized and open and go and has a lot of games and practice and manipulatives. I have a base ten set, place value cards and cusinaire rods I use but I am not good at making a long term plan with them. We play with them at times but it feels so disorganized.

I had an unplanned home birth. My labor with my youngest still had contractions spaced 5-7 minutes apart for a while but they were getting painful when I called my friend. During the phone call they got closer together. My mom was suppose to be there when we went to the hospital but this was a week early and my mom wasn't due in until later that day. My friend was going to act as my doula at the hospital but she had to stay with my older two since my mom wasn't there yet. After I called my friend to come I called the hospital and told them we would be coming soon. It was taking my friend a while to get there and in the mean time the contractions were getting bad and then started spacing out again. She finally arrived a while later. She lived very close but she got a flat tire on the way over and had to walk. Right after my friend got there I had a crazy painful contraction and had to use the bathroom. I was really scared because it was so painful I didn't know how I could make it through a car ride to the hospital. When I got to the bathroom I realized that I didn't have to go to the bathroom it was the baby coming! My husband called 911 and as he did my friend caught my surprise girl as I was standing up in the bathroom. She wants to be a doula so it was exciting to her to get to catch her. She was born with her hand by her head. The ambulance guys arrived shortly after and it was funny. They just stayed back and waited for the placenta to deliver then cut the cord really really long. Their labor kit was dusty. We went to the hospital and left 8 hours later and it would have been sooner if my pediatrician wasn't out on his yearly hunting trip.

He has sensory issues and speech issues too. He has an articulation delay and a few sensory type things going on. His current speech therapist through the school wanted to kick him out of speech. He is doing really well with his year of speech and learned how to make sounds but he still has speech quirks I think. He has a slight stutter and a bit of a lisp and he has his moments where he doesn't pronounce things right. I would love to get him OT but he can't through the school district because he has no labels like autism or cognitive issues and I run into the same issues with OT as I do with the vision stuff although I pretty sure he would qualify for OT privately but I am not sure about vision. There is no way I could afford weekly OT and from what I heard an OT appointment costs twice as much if not more than a VT appointment. Even monthly would be a huge stretch for OT.

My son is 5 and I know he still young but he is struggling with reading but has no phonemic awareness issues. He also has no ability to draw things or write letters and has a really immature grip for his age and does not use his arm for stabilization. He can usually read a word in isolation well but not in a sentence. He also puts his head really close and looks away a lot when trying to read a sentence. His vision at the moment is 20/20 but he likely will need glasses down the road according to an eye doctor we saw once. Based on what I am seeing I think he could have something vision related going on and it would be wonderful if therapy could improve his handwriting to where he could write and even better if it could get him reading. The thing that is holding me back is the cost. We don't really have the money for it. We live in a high cost of living area and our income is just enough to get by. We have insurance now but it is a high deductible plan and it won't cover something like vision therapy. We have no vision coverage at all. I also know it is controversial and a lot of people don't believe in it. I'm usually very skeptical of stuff like this especially when so many in the medical establishment say it is a crock. I do think it makes sense though that it could be an issue with vision especially since reading issues often go hand in hand with handwriting issues.I can't afford to get therapy though that isn't going to work. Anyway what is the typical cost and how long does it typically take? I know the initial evaluation cost more then the treatment sessions.

Signapore may start school late but they are big on early learning and it says most go to preschool. I think that we do expect too much out of 5 year olds and we go about the wrong way of teaching them. I think small kids are capable of learning but they vary widely at that age. Some kids are precocious and others take longer and hit their prime at a later age since they develop longer plus there is naturally great variability in kids. Not all 5 year olds are ready to meet the standards. I don't think 5 year olds need to spend all day playing and not be taught anything which is not what this article is saying but what some people do say. I think that if a 5 year old is learning that it needs to take their developmental stage in mind which in many classrooms does not happen. I also think 6 hours of formal schooling is too much for 5 year olds. They need more movement then that.

I lived in a condo up until a little over a year ago. We survived just fine. I wanted a yard mostly for gardening spaces. It is nice the kids can just go outside and play in the sand box in the summer and the snow in the winter but I don't think the time spent in the suburban yard is the same as the time we spend hiking or playing in nature which we did just as much when I lived in the condo. We were really close to a cool trail. I wish we had less winter here because we get out less in the winter and are covered up. The kids get out slightly more with a fenced in yard but not as much if we lived in a warmer climate.

Where I am from the name is Dawn but when I was watching Black Fish I kept wondering why the female who died was named Don until I saw the name on the screen was Dawn. They are to me. I found out recently that most people in the US don't pronounce them differently and it is mostly a Jersey thing int he US. I personally feel that everyone else is wrong on that one. ;) I'm from Jersey and my accent is mostly gone except for a few holdovers. I used to say certain words with the aw sound and still can say words like dog with a bit of an aw but I know log and dog actually do rhyme.

I am an introvert but to me setting up an playdate isn't becoming an insta best friend. I sign my kids up for stuff and I do hope they find friends. If they meet someone they get along with and want to meet up I don't see a problem. I am an adult and I go to meetups and playgroups with adults I don't know well. It takes me a long time to become close to someone but I have no problem getting together with someone and having the kids play and chatting. It doesn't mean a am a bestie with someone. I am an introvert but that doesn't mean I never want to be around people. As SAHM I am not sure how I would be around someone a lot to even find people who eventually turn into friends if it I was completely against getting together with someone unless I knew them really well. I am not sure what I would do in a new place if no one even ever would consider having my kids over because my kids didn't know their kids well.

He sounds a lot like my son who also has some enunciation and light stuttering issues. My son is having difficulty with reading and especially writing but he can carry on advanced conversations and has an great understanding of advanced concepts for his age.

I am using it with my 5 year old. I am mixed on it. I love how it is open and go and easy to use. My 5 year old learned how to blend sounds into words when he was young but it hasn't translated into reading. He has only got more choppy in his blending over time not better so I wanted something the was multi sensory and took it slow. He likes the games and doesn't mind doing word cards and phonograms but the fluency sheets are hard for him and I am not really noticing a change in fluency from doing them yet yet. For some reason he is good at reading words in isolation but when he reads them in a sentence they are more choppy. We are only in lesson 14 though and taking it really slowly. I am sticking it through for at least level 1 for now because in the past I switched around too much.

I voted something else. I start my vegetable garden plants indoors so from mid February to late May I have plants in my house but I don't know if they are considered houseplants or not. I do keep pepper plants and some tomato plants indoors throughout the summer. I would have kept them longer but the tomatoes didn't produce much this year so they got pulled and the peppers ended up with aphids right at the end of the summer so I just sprayed then got rid of them. I grow them for food not the air.

I guess I am in the minority but my oldest only does girl scouts right now. She has something coming up on the weekends soon and I might eventually add one regular thing on the weekend. We can't afford multiple activities at once and during the week there just isn't time. Plus I am a big believer in unstructured time and not over scheduling. She is in school so long I want her to have time for free play. I make dinner early and we have a regular bedtime routine and she goes to bed at a decent hour. I also want time for doing her homework, a little math time and reading. A lot of the after school stuff is scheduled so that we would be having dinner late. I'm perfectly okay with them not having a lot of activities. I didn't grow up doing any extracurricular activities. I did swimming lessons for them for a while but the instructors were not very good or the lessons were super expensive and the kids were not even listening. I do want them to learn to swim but the lessons weren't doing that.