One of my husband's boss's children gets offered drugs in school almost every singe day. He goes to one of the best public schools in St. Louis/St. Louis County. What upsets me is that the grades that I may want to put my DD into school for are the scariest. :scared: Are private schools better?

Maybe he has a yucky fungal nail infection and is trying to cover it up? :001_huh:

Love it...thanks for sharing! :D

Me again. :tongue_smilie: If anyone's interested in this book, there's a new one in library binding (actually, I think there may be two) on Amazon (not Prime Eligible...third party seller Clean Earth Books) for just $4 shipped. I just bought one from a different seller for the same price. I plan on donating it to our local library after we're finished with it. http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0375937455/ref=tmm_hrd_new_olp_1?ie=UTF8&condition=new

Someone posted this earlier on here, I think. I think it was this board anyway. I signed up for it last week. Hoping the DVD is good. ------------------- http://www.pandaexpress.com/px/2011/cnysignup2012.aspx Panda Express, America's largest Asian restaurant chain, is offering a FREE educational program to your school and its students. For five years, our signature Chinese New Year Learn With Me Program™ provides educators with an instructional resource to encourage learning about one of China's traditional holiday celebrations. The FREE kit, geared for second through fourth grades, includes: Panda Express' Year of the Dragon DVD Year of the Dragon Fact Sheet Jade Emperor's Interactive Game & Activity Sheet Chinese New Year Decoration Art Activity Lai See Activity Sheet Bookmarks (with a Free Kids Meal with purchase coupon attached)

Cute!

Yes! It will be our social studies lesson that day. :001_smile: We are using the lesson from this resource book. You can view it on page 72. (There are a couple of book suggestions.) http://teacherexpress.scholastic.com/nonfiction-literacy-building-booklets-activities Checked out this book from our local library. Looking into a couple of others.

Came across these teacher resource books today that are on sale. They seem to be about half off. Thought I'd share. :001_smile: eBooks on sale... http://www.carsondellosa.com/cd2/SearchCatalog.aspx?rows=48&k=is_clearance_item%3a%22True%22+ebookFlag%3a%22true%22&CM_VC=CARSONDELLOSA_213&sort=cy_list_price_lh&start=1 Everything that's on sale... http://www.carsondellosa.com/cd2/SearchCatalog.aspx?k=is_clearance_item:%22True%22&CM_VC=CARSONDELLOSA_213&rows=48&sort=cy_list_price_lh Some I think are pretty decent. $4.97 $6.00 $7.00 Creating Curriculum Using Children's Picture Books, $7.00 - This one really appeals to me...just a little below grade level for us. :sad: $8.00 $8.49 - Just bought this one for Grades 1-2. Super excited about it!

Thank you. Some kind of videos would be good. That's a source I haven't tapped into yet. Our local public library stinks and our larger public library system isn't very user-friendly. We're still using paper cards for check-out, paper card catalogs and paper requests. I can't even go online and search for titles. :sad: I miss St. Louis so much in this regard. However, my sister is a public school teacher. I'm thinking they may have some Magic School Bus videos she could borrow for me. ;) I'm just looking for more, more, more...a little more detailed, a little more involved in terms of work. We kind of do things similar to your list now. We usually read a book and perform an activity one day, then either re-read the book or use another text the next day and work on some paper-based activities. If I have enough activities and text, we go longer.

LOL! I should have ran a search, but I've been coming up dry so often... Still haven't been able to come up with one for this. :tongue_smilie: PS - Thanks for the link!

Thanks! Checking them out now. ETA: This is intriguing. Wish the site had a preview, and, well, that it wasn't so expensive.

Looking for other teacher resource publishers that I may have missed. Please, add to my list. I'm desperately trying to find a couple of "perfect" resources for me DD. :001_smile: I haven't been able to find exactly what I'm looking for via regular curriculum. These are the ones I know. http://www.dedicatedteacher.com/estore/search/ http://www.carsondellosa.com/cd2/default.aspx http://www.creativeteaching.com/ http://www.theeducationcenter.com/tec/afc/home/go.do http://www.evan-moor.com/ http://teacherexpress.scholastic.com/ http://shop.scholastic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10002&langId=-1 Some of these links encompass a group of related publishers. Thanks so much!!

LOL! I couldn't think of another way to ask it. I wanted to see what things other people teach that I might never think of. Apparently, game theory is the winner. Hah! I have no idea was it is. I was thinking it is something to do with video games, but I think I'm way off. ;)

How old is your son? What you consider young, others may not and might be able to point you toward age-appropriate curriculum. :001_smile:

100EZ Lessons didn't work for us either. Wasn't my teaching style and certainly not DD's learning style. I started Hooked on Phonics (Kindergarten) with DD this past fall. (She was 4 years, 4.5 months.) The first day was a little rough, the second was better, the third was amazing. We haven't looked back since then and she loves it. She's a book hound, so the little story at the end of each lesson reels her in. She loves the DVD skit each day too. HOP is very nicely designed. Very legible and colorful too. We use these two teacher resources as well. Very appropriate for children with minimal handwriting skills. You can always use letter stickers or stamps for the little bit of handwriting some of the activities request. Or, just skip them. There is plenty to choose from. Not every HOP word family is in there, but it works great with HOP and breaks up the lessons. When we use the activities in this book, we break up the corresponding HOP lesson into two days. There's a sample on the publisher's Web site. Not everyone is into sight words, but we are. HOP calls them helper words. Again, this is great for children with minimal handwriting skills. Each word is presented in a little six-page booklet. We divide each booklet into two days for better retention. Pages 1-3 first, then 4-6 the second day. For the activities that require handwriting, we use letter stickers or stamps. For page 3, we use Scrabble tiles, magnetic letters on a cookie sheet, thread letter beads onto a pipe cleaners and letter cards off-page. As we go along, I continually ask DD was word she made, found, etc. A very fun way to memorize! DD has learned 32 words with this book so far. She remembers them all. (We do review daily with a word wall.) You can view the contents of this book on the publisher's Web site.

My vote is either for Leapster Explorer LeapPad or just a regular Leapster Explorer. Leapster 2 is going out the door, so you can probably pick up one with games for pretty cheap on Craigslist. We have not had any problems with our Leapster products (we have Leapster 2 and LeapPad). Games are pricey, but you can usually pick them up for $10 during Christmastime. Just gotta keep your eyes open. ;) All of the games are pretty educational. At the very least, they teach logic. Otherwise, it's usually math or reading/spelling-related. You can usually choose from three levels of difficulty. HTH!

Probably not what you're looking for, but I just came across this. There's a sample in the link below. Looks kind of fun...like little unit studies that revolve around literature and includes recipes. http://www.creativeteaching.com/p-707-book-cooks.aspx

I just want more. I think want I really want are mini age-appropriate unit studies that use the LRFOS series (and other books). For the life of me, I can't figure out why the publisher doesn't come out with something. I'm thinking a combination of literature (the LRFOS books), experiments/activities, worksheets and/or paper-based activities, etc. that span at least a full week of studies (or two half weeks) with extras so I can pick-and-choose a little. Is this really too much to ask? :tongue_smilie: LOL!

I used to climb up on our roof at night to check out the stars as a teen. If she doesn't horse around and just reads, it might be ok. Hard to judge from here. LOL!

Not real helpful, but I've been wondering about this program. Been meaning to start a thread about it. (Sorry the pic is so big.) Steck-Vaughn Spelling: Linking Words to Meaning Grade 1 Teacher Item #: 035596 Grade 1 Rainbow Price: $49.95

No, not yet. I've been judging this book by it's cover for some time now since I haven't been able to look at it IRL. The cover and "Look Inside" on Amazon haven't reeled me in, so... Our local library stinks...maybe I can try to order it, though. Maybe they'll have it at their main library. Thank you for letting me know. :D I will definitely look into it more now. $20+ is just a little too much for me to spring on a book I'm unsure of. NWIM?

We're currently treading water in science. I've been using a public school textbook as our spine and then putting together my own curriculum around that. DD absolutely loves the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out-Science series. I know a lot of the books provide activities in the back (and sometimes the text is written around activities), but I'm wondering whether there is any curriculum, unit studies, etc. that uses the LRFOS series as it's primary text. Right now, it is taking way too much time to research and pull together everything on my own. I need a better springboard. Our local library has a whopping one book in this series, which we've already used, so I have to buy them a little at a time. That makes it difficult to plan very far ahead. Any thoughts? PS - We're secular, but would consider a good Christian resource guide, if everything isn't so interwoven that I can easily extract the activities.

Thanks for posting this. I'm bookmarking it...maybe for next year. :001_smile:

We are skipping it until DD's older. Too weighty for us for sure right now.

There are a couple of snail mail NetFlix-type programs, but I haven't been impressed with the pricing, as I feel like I can at least buy used and keep the books/re-sell for the price. I'll try to dig up those links. ETA: I think these are the ones I was thinking of. http://www.bookpig.com/Default.aspx - Found this on RetailMeNot (http://www.retailmenot.com/view/bookpig.com). http://www.bookswim.com/index.html Google "Netflix" and "childrens books" or "rent" and "childrens books"