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I spend a lot less than a food stamp recipient in my area gets. I spend around $600 a month and in my area a family of 5 on food stamps gets nearly $900 a month if they get the full amount. I live in Alaska.

I nursed during my 2nd and 3rd pregnancy. I never worried about a miscarriage caused by nursing and I did worry about miscarrying. My oldest weaned when I was 19 weeks pregnant and my milk supply lessened. My son nursed through the whole pregnancy but at the end he was only nursing once. He kept that one nursing session after my youngest was born and didn't ask for more even with a baby nursing.

If I lived in a warmer climate I would prefer a neighborhood pool. It would be more social for the kids and they would probably have other kids to play with that live in the neighborhood. I also like to use as much of my yard for gardening so a pool would take up a lot of space itself but when you take in fencing then it is even more. Plus there is the upkeep and the worry of a kid getting into the pool and drowning. Even with a fence up and a ladder that can be taken up I wouldn't feel safe to have my kids play in the yard without me there if I had a pool. I wouldn't need my own personal pool but it would be neat to have one I could walk to or that wasn't far to go to. Growing up we were members of a community pool and that was cool but we had to drive to it. A neighborhood pool would be neat. I really like things like that in the neighborhood that encourage community in your own neighborhood.

My 6 year old is rough on erasers and wears them down fast. I don't want to buy new of something when I don't have to so we use a hand held eraser. I don't like how the pencil top ones erase.

Magic School Bus Chapter Books Droon Black Lagoon Series I'm getting some ideas from here too

I dyed my hair red once. I have dark brown hair with red highlights and pale skin and freckles. I used a box and it turned out fine. It wasn't a really off color. I didn't maintain it but it wasn't too bad growing out. My husband is a red head so I got asked if I was his sister once which was an annoying consequence.

I started it with my 6.5 year old at the end of kindergarten. I could have started it a little earlier. The copy work is easy for her. I was going to use it for only the narration but she can do the copy work fast so I let her do that too. I am hoping the narration will help with reading comprehension. She is decoding at a 5th grade level but her comprehension isn't that high. I think I'll have her read the passages instead of me because she does a little better with that. I did some narration from it with my 4.5 year old and he actually did really good answering the questions. He isn't anywhere ready for copy work yet but I might do narration with him.

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How exciting. Congratulations!!! My oldest struggled for a while and then one day she read one of her picture books and from then on it clicked. I loved that moment. Now I am starting the process with ds and it is going very similarly. It hasn't clicked yet but I know it will one day if we keep working on it. Watching when dd finally got reading was one of my favorite parenting moments.

I don't do raw milk. No matter what the practices used there is risk to raw milk. A local farm near me had outbreaks of food born illness from raw milk and it was a farm that had good practices allows you to tour the facility. It wasn't a huge factory farm it was a small local farm. I don't buy into all the Weston Price claims or the claims that it is illegal because they don't want small farms. It is very false that there is more food born illness from pasteurized milk especially if you look per capita. Only a small percentage of people drink raw milk. Milk started to be pasteurized because of all the deaths and illness that were caused by raw milk.

My cat was just left outside an apt complex when the owners moved. It is sad people do that. He was brought to the humane society by my office manager a cat collector who just could not take in another and I adopted him. What will you be naming kitty? If you do bring him to a humane society it sounds like he will be a squeaky wheel who will get the grease. I got my because of his meowing when we walked by. My cat growing up is a kitten that adopted us by showing up in our backyard.

The figures they stare for how many French kids have adhd and are medicated are not even accurate. Sure there are kids that are diagnosed that probably didn't go through a rigorous enough process and don't have it and kids that are medicated that don't need to be but I don't like how it is blamed on parenting or that it is the person's fault and not a issue with brain chemistry. A kid who truly has it cannot be cured by diet or different behavior approaches any more than kids with autism, bipolar or whatever other condition kids may have. Eliminating food dyes and other additives probably does help some kids but it doesn't work for everyone. I don't know why adhd especially is always blamed on parenting. Kids that are not properly treated run an extremely high risk compared to the general population of being addicted to alcohol or drugs. The rates are lower for kids who are treated properly yet everyone makes parents feel terrible for treating it.

DD6 has a good decoding ability but she is very picky about what she likes and often starts a book but won't want to finish it because she doesn't like it. She started reading an American Girl book and she seems to really like it. I don't know that much about the series. Are they decent books?

I am usually an advocate for kids roaming the neighborhood and playing outside. I spent my childhoodplaying in the neighborhood and it was great. My parents were aware of where I was though. We never scaled peoples fences to go into their yards and if we did something destructive then they would be able to find my parents who would then give us an appropriate consequence. I can't think of a time where I did something destructive. I know one time we threw berries across the street and the neighbor complained and we were told not to do it again and we didn't. I wish things were like they used to be. That said this situation is different. The kids under 6 are too young to be wandering like that especially around a pond. It should not be op's job to do something to her pond that other children should not be going to in the first place. It is not okay to jump fences into other people property. It also seems like the parents are not even home and aware of where there children are. 6 and under is too young to be left alone for long periods of time. I was aloud to ride around the block and walk to the school to play and when I was going to school but I had to tell my parents where I was going.

Natural News is so hokey it isn't even funny. Nothing from them is actually factual. So many people actually believe the fear mongering junk they publish. All there articles are so full of holes and easy to refute.

I like preschool prep meet the phonics, blends and digraphs.

I will do both plus show the concept with manipulatives. We already are working on skip counting in kindergarten. She knows her 2s, 5s, 10s and 25s to 100. I plan on eventually showing the concept with cuisenaire rods and working more with skip counting relating to multiplication. Once they really understand what multiplication is I wouldn't mind them memorizing it.

I do some of the activities from education unboxed but I really want something more laid out to work with the c-rods with my kids. This seems so confusing. You need the notes to teachers, lab sheet annotations and the 1st grade diary plus the orange book to start with? I don't see myself reading through all of those and working with them all to figure it out. I wish there was an easier program for working with c-rods. My 4 and 6 year old have been enjoying what I have been doing with the c-rods.

My dd is in ps and I after school at her exact grade level in Signapore. At dd's school they use Saxon and she is nearing the end of the year. She is finishing up kindergarten level B and the scope and sequence is right on par with what they are doing in class with Saxon. They actually are practically doing the same things. The school district doesn't use Saxon though. they only use it at dd's charter school. The school district was using the new math and switched to something else. From what a friend's dd is doing it sounds like they work on similar things in the school district too but Singapore just has a different way of teaching the concepts which makes more sense. Saxon and Singapore teach some of the things similarly and don't seem too different but that will probably change in later grades.

Junie B Jones. Her behavior and language are really bad. I don't want to encourage that sort of thing.

Yes I do feel that way sometimes.

Do you mean sending him to a brick and mortar school or teaching him? You don't have to send him to a preschool especially right at 3 if you don't want to but I don't recommend waiting until 7 until you do any more formal learning. I actually recommend teaching kids right from the start but in laid back manner. You don't need to use a formal curriculum but you can still teach them stuff. If I could go back I would have done more with my oldest.

My son goes by his nickname. I realize when he gets older he may chose to go by the shortened version of his nick name or his full name and I would be fine with that. I knew that was a possibility. I would personally have a hard time calling him something else though. I always known my brother by his longer nick name that is similar to my son's in that it has a shorter more mature version and a longer version that can be seen as kiddish. My brother now goes by his shortened version but I still call him the other nick name. A friend changed her name to her middle name and I can't help but call her the other name. It just becomes ingrained. When my husband slipped out what ds's name was going to be before he was born my brother told us to not call him by the name he goes by. lol

I am not worried about him too much. He still has a year before kindergarten and is actually doing great with academic stuff. He can understand things meant for much older kids and has a great memory for details. I never taught him to add but he is starting to add. He can count to 100, skip count and is beginning to read. He isn't fluent yet but I think he might be right on the verge. He uses advanced vocabulary and can talk in great detail about stuff. He has an articulation delay but he is making great progress in speech therapy. He even knows his full name that he never goes by but not his address ;) I wish he could write because it would be helpful now that we are working on math and spelling but at least he has a year before school. I have a feeling that will be an area he struggles with.