Do you have stones or is your gallbladder not functioning? My gallbladder quit working so there was no hope in avoiding surgery. My family doctor misdiagnosed my condition, as I didn't have stones. It was a week later that my ob/gyn correctly diagnosed it and sent me to a surgeon. My ob/gyn said that she sees many young females that have their gallbladders shut down several years after childbirth. They can test for stones with ultrasound, but have to run a HIDA scan to check on how the gallbladder is functioning.

My DS7 is prone to ear infections. He never complains of his ears hurting and he never runs a fever. He will start by either complaining that his mouth or his throat hurts. He cries and is horribly whiny, can't sleep - not his normal self. I am always baffled... Several hours later, when he actually starts pulling at his ear, is when I realize that he has an ear infection. :tongue_smilie: Best wishes with your daughter!

Our local homeschool convention/book fair does not allow strollers or rolling carts, so be sure to check if your convention prohibits them. Last year our convention was so crowded, you could not have pushed or pulled anything through the crowds. :tongue_smilie: They do offer a "book check" area, like a "coat check" at a restaurant, where they will hold your purchases for you. Re: Convention food. It is generally horrible and unbelievably expensive. I have never been brave enough to take my own food, as they have signs posted everywhere saying it is a No-No. But after paying $8 for a small dried out baked potato last year... I may just sneak in some food this year!

I have never attempted this but have wanted to... Take Oreo cookie and remove creme filling. Replace filling with white toothpaste. Dip Oreo in chocolate to hide the fact that they have been "tampered" with.... Chocolate covered Oreo. Who could resist?! :D

Speaking of Weston Gardens - I just pulled up the e-mail they sent me a few days ago. They are having a seminar on growing veggies in containers! April 4th and 5th at 3 p.m.

Yes, that is specific to our region.Feb 15-March 15 is our general planting date for spring carrots. I know it is just a "bit late" but we have already had a few days up around 90 degrees. It is cooler now, but carrots will simply stall out. Not worth the space, water or energy to push them along. At this point, too, I would go for a few tomato plants over seeds. If you want a successful, can't fail, first crop - go for zucchini! Get a large (10-20 gallon) pot and fill it with soil and plant the seeds. Make sure to keep it well watered, as that is the biggest challenge in this area. Aubrey - Call or visit Redenta's, Green Mama's or Weston. They will hold your hand! The link to the MG website is good, too. In the past, they would send someone to your house. I don't know if they still do that or not, but do know that most MG are very helpful. Here is the link to the veggie planting guide I posted a few weeks back:http://www.redentas.com/pdfs/veg_planting_guide.pdf

Yes, dirt in a bag can "mold." It is fine. Just mix it up well. Add some fresh organic fertilizer (earthworm castings, mushroom compost, bunny manure, etc) to your "old" stuff and you will be fine. Re: Carrot seeds. It is too late to plant carrots. They need to be planted fall or winter. Can you check out a Howard Garrett gardening book from your library? He's going to have pretty basic garden info for this area.

I think at least one state (Colorado?) has made it illegal for schools to suggest that a child has ADD/ADHD or push for testing. Schools get extra $$$ for "learning differences" so if they have an active child they may be more likely to push for testing. My own experience - My DS more than likely would be diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. :tongue_smilie: (And, yes, a bit of caffeine does seem to help him focus, but I don't know about giving him an energy drink!) DS has three friends in our neighborhood, two in 1st grade and one in 2nd grade. All of their teachers have pushed for ADD/ADHD testing. The girl was tested in K and put on medications. (Her behavior is worse now.) One boy was tested in 1st grade and told he does not have ADD/ADHD. (I have known this child since birth and he is the most inactive child I have ever met! :glare:) The parents of the other boy (currently in 2nd grade) have resisted testing. Their son is really struggling with the amount of writing that is required in 2nd grade. He gets 100% in math and spelling, but the teachers mark off up to 50% of his grade due to "poor penmanship." BTW, our school district does not allow running at recess. If you drive by at recess time, you will likely find the kids walking single file around the school yard. K gets 30 minutes of "outside time," 1st graders get 20 minutes and 2nd graders get 10 minutes. No recess after 2nd grade. To meet our state requirements re: P.E. minimums, recess is now "scripted play" so it can count double - as both recess and P.E. (Hence the walking in circles. No wild free play time.) I highly recommend this book: Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. http://richardlouv.com/ Also, I have read - and it has been my experience with my son - that "visual learners" are more likely to be diagnosed with ADD/ADHD because every little visual thing grabs their attention. :tongue_smilie:

I bought it for DS for 1st grade and ended up selling it, unused. I thought the content was geared for younger elementary (though I just looked it up and it says 1st through 7th) but the amount of cutting and writing would be better suited for a much older child. Personal pet peeve of mine: I hate cluttered pages, heavy ink and small font sizes. I thought the pages were too busy and very difficult to read. My DS is currently in an outsourced Apologia class and the teacher sends home "homework" with worksheets from CGC and every time it reminds me why I sold it. :tongue_smilie: If your son has not had a lot of science, the content may be fine. But - at his age - I would run the on-line sample pages past him to see if he is fine with the graphics and font size.

I bought three or four of the Mrs. Pickerell books at a used book sale last year and we have loved them! Someone here recently mentioned The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron. We started reading it a few days ago and it has been a winner so far. (Thank you, whoever recommended it!) If you can get your hands on any of the old "Space Cat" books, they are charming. (By Ruthven Todd)

I did a Yahoo search and came up with this website http://www.okcs.us/whatsnew.html No pictures or additional comments, just a line saying they changed out the sand in their sandbox for recycled rubber chips. Might be interesting to contact the school - see if they still like it, how the children like it, etc. Living in Texas, I cannot even imagine a sandbox full of rubber chips - talk about hot and nasty when we are on our 10th day of 100+ degree temps. :tongue_smilie: Good luck with this!

I used GtG in a completely secular manner. We loved it! I don't think that we missed anything due to skipping their Bible suggestions or missionary stories.

There was a piece in the news a year or so ago about how many times some of their teacher took the state exam before passing. Twenty, 30, 40, times. One teacher took the exam more than 50 times! The superintendent was quoted as saying that the "quality of the teacher was not determined by how many times they took the exam." :glare: I now use that line when people question me about my ability to teach my own child without a teaching degree.

I posted a while back, asking if anyone was using their math "core" program. I didn't get any responses. Anyway. We have been using their math "core" (1st grade and half way through 2nd grade) and I was unsure how it lined up with other programs. DS loves the book and he is doing good with the subject. But I kept feeling that it was "missing something." :confused: I ended up buying two math workbooks to supplement the areas I was concerned with. (Learning add/sub facts, telling time, money.) We have their LA "core" book, as well. (1st grade) We haven't used it much, as it felt like a lot of "busy work." :tongue_smilie: Lots of handwriting, which DS struggles with. I pulled it out the other day and plan to try it (again) next week. I am still very curious how their math program lines up against other programs.

:iagree: FW Zoo had 23,000 people through their doors on Wednesday. I'd rather wait and go another day. We have done two days of school this week and two field trips. (Neither field trip destination was popular with the public school crowds. :D) We will take our real "spring break" the first of April when places are less crowded!

We bought a stereo microscope last year. It has been one of our best homeschool purchases. For that matter, even if we didn't homeschool, I would want my son to have a stereo microscope. We have gotten so much enjoyment out of it. Every few weeks, we will go for a nature walk around our neighborhood - picking up things we want to bring home and look under the scope. At that time, we also go through our garden and pick an assortment of flowers that are blooming at the time. DS enjoys comparing pollen from different flowers. Last month, we picked up some rotten pecans from our neighbor's tree. We found some of the coolest bugs in them! To the naked eye, the bugs looked simply like fuzz. We had no idea they were little bugs under we looked at them under the scope. Thank you for the info, Jean. I enjoyed reading your post.

Our "school year" ends December 31. DS has a late December birthday and we school year-round. The first year we homeschooled, I tried to start/stop the school year mid-summer but it seemed so... arbitrary? I decided I liked the idea of running our school years in sync with DS's age.

http://www.desotobeachhotel.com/ We stayed at DeSoto Beach Hotel on Tybee Island last April and had a wonderful time. Nearly a year later, we still talk and dream about going back. (The hotel itself was so-so. The room was small... But we had a private balcony overlooking the ocean.)

Go to Redenta's Garden and they can help you out on what grows well in our climate. You can actually veggie garden year-round in our area, you just have to know what to plant and when. Ex: Most people start thinking about planting peas in late March... Too late. They need to go in around the first of Feb. Redenta's has an awesome veggie planting guide on their webiste... http://www.redentas.com/shops-info.php - go to "Notes from the garden" then look for veggie planting guide. She has an accurate planting guide for most veggies for both spring and fall plantings. You can grow a lot in containers, including "bush" variety of summer squash and patty pan squash. The containers need to be big - fill the bottom with cheap potting soil but put good potting soil in the top half. They will need to be watered daily in Texas. In the heat of summer, they may need watering twice daily, depending on sun exposure. Re: Blueberries. They are extremely difficult to grow in our area. East Texas has totally different soil and climate than North Central Texas does.

I'm in Dallas, too, and am interested in another convention within driving distance. Grapevine - They don't have that one anymore. Plano - It is in August, very small. Houston - I have heard it is good but it is in August. :tongue_smilie: (Or July :confused: Some time when it is too hot to willingly go to Houston.) Oklahoma City - I have also heard it is good, but they have many of the same vendors as Arlington and same general line-up of speakers.

We bought our house 14 years ago and it came with Corian. I loved them for the first few years. But - yes, they are soft and they scratch easily. But the main reason I now hate Corian -- I cannot use a slow cooker on the counters. Seven years ago, I unknowingly set my slow cooker - on high - over one the "invisible" seams. After only one hour, the heat caused the Corian to overheat and crack. Corian said it was the slow cooker's fault. Slow cooker maker said it was Corian's fault. We were left with a nasty crack in the counter. Per the estimates we received, it would cost more to "repair" the crack than it would be to tear it all out and start over! It was insane. We were also told at the time that since Corian is "seamless," meaning you can't see the seams, you really have no idea where seams may be - and any seam will "pop" when overheated. :confused: It has been seven years, but I am still skittish about having hot appliances on my counters. :glare: I was standing right there at the time the counter "popped." I nearly had a heart attack from the loud, unexpected sound. (And it was loud! It buckled up the entire length of counter and shook everything on the counter top.)

That website is a test prep FOR the ITBS, but does not have samples of the actual tests nor does it look anything like the ITBS test we took three months ago. My DS turned 7 in Dec and we gave the level 7, but he has been reading fluently for a while. Personally, if in doubt, I would go lower rather than higher. The tests are set up so that you should not be able to "top out" on them (can't score a 100%, so to speak) so you should still get an accurate score from a lower test. There was only one portion that required the student to read it themselves. The rest, the "test giver" read to the student. (You can read it to the student/s twice only, but that should still be enough for the student to grasp what you are reading/telling them.) I will tell you upfront my "pet peeve" about the test. The reading portions used fairly simple words - nothing too complex for young children - then they threw in words like "step-grandfather" and ethnic names that even I could not pronounce! What ever happened to "Max" or "Jane"?!

My son took the 1st grade ITBS the end of last year. The only part that was timed was one portion of math. There is a reading comprehension section that the child has to read on his own, but it is not timed. Everything else the teacher/parent reads to the child, while the child follows along. The test does list times as a general guide so you know how long to allow for each portion, not that the child must finish in that time. My experience: I had never given my son timed math problems before, so we were both nervous going into that section. He actually shocked me - he buckled down and really focused! On the non-timed math portions, he made a lot of stupid errors, like filling in the problem number as the answer. :glare: But he was so focused when I was timing him!

I have an only child - DS - age 7. We bought a stereo microscope last year and love it! I can't imagine NOT having it now. I keep the scope "put up" but we collect nature samples all the time and pile them up on a wooden tray in the living room. Every other week we have a "scope day" where I pull out the microscope and we spend an hour or so looking at everything we have collected - leaves, rocks, acorns, shells, dead bugs. We look at the items whole, then cut/break/smash them to look at the insides. Also, my son loves to dissect :001_huh: so I bought a dissection kit and we have been working our way through the specimens - earthworm, starfish, clam, etc. Looking at everything under the scope really adds to the study. ;)

I had my gallbladder removed right at three years ago. My family doctor misdiagnosed it for weeks. I went to my ob/gyn for a regular visit. She took one look at me and sent me straight to a surgeon. The surgeon did an ultrasound, which did not show any stones. He then had me admitted to the hospital for fluids (I had not been able to drink) while he ran every test known to mankind. Three full days of test. At the end of the third day, he ordered a hida scan - a nuclear test of the gallbladder's function. It showed that my gallbladder was completely shut down. On the fourth day, the surgeon removed my gallbladder. :001_smile: Ultrasounds only show gallstones. But a gallbladder can shut down or have limited function with no stones present. Only a hida scan will show that. Warning: The scan is very, very long and they can't sedate the patient as that could interfer with the testing. http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/gallbladder-scan