Having a child with serious nut allergies I would be furious if someone gave her something that I hadn't cleared first, particularly if I had sent food for her. For my son who gets hyper with too much sugar, I'd just inflict him on the person who fed him sugar, that would fix them:D

I failed both for my first two pregnancies and they didn't even bother with the 1hr test for my third, they went straight to the 3hr test. My diabetes was controlled with diet each time, and I didn't put on much weight. I did however get healthy normal-weight babies. Seriously, gestational diabetes can be controlled quite easily and the risks of ongoing health problems for your baby are not worth putting it off. I cried after I failed my first test too, but actually, you haven't failed.:grouphug::grouphug:

My son does this too. He can(and does) read anything, including chapter books, but he doesn't seem to understand the concept of reading in his head. I suppose the upside is he reads stories to his brother;). My daughter on the other hand, hates reading aloud and can't read slowly enough to read coherently aloud. I have to keep reminding her to slow down because we can't understand her.

We use Singapore too. My kids are just working through it quickly. My boys are doing 2B and they aren't learning much that is new, just consolidating what they already know. With dd I'm moving between 3A and 3B to get a bit of variety. I feel that I need to cover the basics for my own peace of mind, I watched my sister struggle with math for years because she missed some of the basics. We skip most of the workbook if I see that they understand the concept. My boys love math so they spend a lot of their free time figuring out new concepts. We have also introduced them to some Algebra and Calculus basic concepts to keep them interested. My dd doesn't like math (for all that she is good at it) so she just does her math lesson and then never thinks about it. One of the things I really like about homeschooling is that I can see when the kids get a concept and when they to spend some more time on it. Also, if we cover things too quickly now and it becomes apparent later we can always come back and do some review.

But if you live somewhere that uses metrics (like Australia) but you cook or sew, you have to learn to do conversions otherwise you can't cook all the yummy American recipes.:001_smile: Same with books, if you read a book with measurements in miles you have to convert them to km to figure out the distances!

There are some UK homeschool groups, I found them last year when we were thinking of moving to the UK, however, I can't remember what they are. I think I found them by doing a google search though. They will probably be able to answer your UK-specific questions. I've ordered almost all my curriculum from overseas(I live in Australia) because it is more difficult to find here too.

:iagree: My dd was reading at about a 3rd grade level when she started reading for fun, so was my ds. My other ds is not quite there yet and does not read for fun.

In addition to books we've found some great anatomy models. The kids find them a bit frustrating to build at times but they have learned a lot from them. It's also very funny when your 2yo says "Mummy, come make the eyeball with me!"

Funny you should mention Kumon. I tried to get my little one to have a look but she only wants the Excel range of workbooks:001_smile: They are also good, I used some of their phonics books as reading support for one of my boys.

Every time we pass a speed sign the kids tell me what the speed limit is, then they ask me how fast I am going......I couldn't speed if I wanted to;)

We used a colloidal oatmeal cream. That worked well for dd.

There's a huge developmental gap between 2 and 5 years. My oldest dd doesn't really like playing with her little sister either. Personally I'm inclined to tread reading like computer time. My kids self-regulate anyway and eventually they'll move along and do something else. At this stage I'd rather my dd read all day than half the night in bad light, which was what she was doing before she realised that she was allowed to read during the day;)

That's awesome! Congratulations.

We skipped the first HWT book for that very reason. My kids had no trouble starting with the first printing book.

Have you tried Secret Seven or Famous Five and other Enid Blyton books? Pollyanna is good, my dd read that. Unfortunately my dd will only read Rainbow Magic books:confused: just atm so I'm out of ideas.

Don't quote me on this but as far as I understand it Macs don't need anti-virus software because hackers can't be bothered writing viruses for Macs:001_smile:. We certainly don't have anti-virus software on our Mac while we do have it on our PC.

My little one will only fall asleep in the car now but even 5 minutes will delay her bedtime by an hour or more. It's not worth it IMO. It can still be hard at 5 o'clock but by that time she's ready to eat and she's in bed by 6.30. That gives us the time we need to spend with the older kids reading them the stories that the little one doesn't have any interest in. None of my kids had a daytime nap beyond the age of two and the girls gave theirs up much earlier.

I'm not suggesting to my dd that she should read them yet. If she asked I would reluctantly let her read them but she is sensitive and she walks out of the room if I'm reading something that she doesn't like. My son on the other hand I'd let him read them. He's a year younger than his sister but is not sensitive like she is. Actually, I've only read the first five and I think that my dd would cope fine with the first few, once she starts reading them though she'd probably want to finish the series.

Thanks Rosie. I'm hoping it will be fixed with grommets. It is definitely affecting her speech development at the moment though and has been for a long time.

I'm not using any reading program with my fluent readers. However, I have read that some kids get stuck when they get to a grade 4 reading level. I'm not sure what on but it's something to keep an eye out for. If you get her to read aloud to you you'll pick up any mistakes she makes and you can correct them or teach her any new rules she needs to learn.

Hi Rosie, What resources would you recommend for Australian Sign Language. My little one appears to be partially deaf (we haven't had her evaluated yet) and it may be correctable but sign would be really handy in noisy situations. She can read lips(at least partially) but sign would be great. Thanks

We're using Spelling Power with dd5 and ds4. They really like it and they only have to learn words that they don't already know. My other ds4 started it but found after a few word lists that we have to work on his reading a bit more before we do any more spelling. Spelling Power is designed to be started in 3rd grade. We tried Spelling Workout but the kids hated having to learn words that they already knew so they ended up testing our of each lesson.

We used the Targeting Maths Series for K and Year 1 Maths before switching to Singapore for Year 2. They are colourful and each state seems to have their own version. I bought them at a bookshop. The kids all transitioned into Singapore 2A with no problems after the Year 1 book.

My youngest is nearly 2 1/2 and I've been concerned about her speech for over a year. I tried to get a referral to an ENT but the GP told me to wait until she was 3 and put her in speech therapy. I saw an ENT (my dad ended up referring me:) ) and she has a hearing issue which is affecting her speech. My point is, hearing problems can affect speech development so make sure you get that checked too.

We have a board game that has tiles the kids can place. Some of the puzzles use pictures instead of numbers.