We buy a lot of DS clothes at Jcpenney's, they have a decent selection of Husky sizes. We have also moved to men's smalls, from the men's equivalent of the junior section for his shirts. Even the biggest in sizes in kids end up being too short after a wash. The men's shirts are a little bit big, but better big than too small. Once they hit size 12H or 14 or so, men's waist size 27-29 roughly corresponds. They also come in lengths which is really nice My son now wears a 28/30, or the same size as me, which is a gap size 6 ankle jean :) The boy's 14-16 husky pants do have those red tabs in them which is nice. I don't understand why they don't add a little bit of stretch to boy's jeans like they do for girls and women. His pants are forever falling down because he has a tiny butt, and is thicker around the middle. If there was a little bit of stretch in them, they would fit better overall in my opinion, and wouldn't have to be so big to be comfortable.

For the pup having lots and lots of accidents I would suggest first not to do her shots until you figure out why she is having loose stools, even if she is big, 14 weeks is still very much a baby dog and I wouldn't want to overload her immune system. Also consider keeping her tethered to you or someone else whenever she is inside and out of her crate. It takes some getting used to but is the single most effective way to stop them from sneaking off and having accidents. It also means you can watch her closely for potty signs. We did this with the stray lab pup I took in last year and she never had a single accident. She was older but had obviously never been a house dog or treated as a pet, so it also really facilitated the bonding process and helped build her trust in us as safe.

I have considered the wood burning kits, we tried a model and he hated it, I ended up having to do most of it, and didnt enjoy it one bit either :-)

I am still working on that, and need to make it more of a priority. I have joined the Yahoo group for Tulsa area homeschoolers, but haven't made it out to any of the functions yet. I am also trying to decide if I want to go to the conference coming up.

If this is real it is completely ridiculous! :confused:

We use our lap sized whiteboards all day long for school, I got them for about 4 dollars each at a local teaching supply store and they are super lightweight, but big enough to really be able to teach from. I also have DS use them to practice extra math problems, and spelling, and any other simple exercises where we just really don't need to save paper. It also means we can school anywhere and be comfortable, but I can still teach using visual aids. I also love both Evernote and Pinterest for saving ideas and links. Lots and lots of mechanical pencils, our house eats pencils, and this way he isn't needing to sharpen it constantly, because he must have it perfectly sharp at all times.

Those are cool! That is exactly what I am looking for. I do not need to be set loose in a craft store without a very specific plan in place. I am also encouraging this stuff because I feel like he really is good at it and so needs all the success he can get after his horrible awful teacher this year, but also because it helps with fine motor, and spatial planning, and executive function in having a vision and planning the steps, even informally, of how to get there.

Does anyone have any ideas for fun hands on artsy/crafty stuff to do with tween boys? And also where do you get the best deals on supplies and materials for projects.....I am browsing Ebay right now for craft items. I cleaned out my personal stash about a year ago because I was so busy with work there was no time to make anything, and am kicking myself now wishing I wouldn't have. My DS loves to draw and make stuff and build stuff, and I secretly think he would enjoy making a lot of those fun craft kits at the store, but they are so glaringly pink and girly that he wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole. I stocked up today on some more clay, and various items so he could finish building his neolithic farming hut. It isn't a diorama, thank goodness, just popsicle sticks, clay, and earth tones of felt. I also plan on working on his drawing technique and painting skills and working with watercolors this summer with him. I am pretty artsy crafty myself, but I am having a hard time coming up with ideas for boys, there isn't much in the way of boxed kits, and I feel like I end up spending tons of money on supplies for this kind of thing.

We had a set of microfiber stretchy slipcovers as well as a microfiber office chair. I HATEDthem both, dog hair crumbs, lint, bits of paper, and who knows what else stuck to it answer was impossible to get off. We just got cheapo leather couches, and even though it is like a thick hide with a thin pretty layer over it that scratches fairly easily I am thoroughly pleased. The scratches cover with sharpie or a special marker and the rest of the couch just wipes clean. It also doesn't hold odors so when our stinky old dog sleeps on it we don't smell like a vet's office or sickroom.

I just wanted to add the we did the Astronomy 6-8 unit from Intelligo and he sailed rigt through it, and we have been working on their globetrotting with Folktales unit right now and he is enjoying it. But it is mostly online and listening or watching them on YouTube. The same kid who is listening to me read My Ishmael and having very thouhtful and insightful discussions about it, caused me to totally give up on school one day last week after Lake Titicaca came up in the Incan creation story. :-)

He will be 11 in June. He is also fairly high IQ with some learning issues going on that can be hard to pinpoint, but look most like ADD Innatentive, maybe NLVD, or dyscalculia/disgraphia. What is see the most issues with right now are executive function and self esteem. The rest is fairly mild, but with a healthy dose of preteen weirdness too. He made leaps and bounds in math and understanding of the stuff he was stuck on in regards to how to do school. But I still struggle to meet him where he is, to be gentle and challenging, especially given his zero tolerance to what he perceives as stupid or boring .

We have been taking things very easy, just doing math and some review in English. I tried to have him look and find books he might like to try, all he found where fwo books about bigfoot. All of the ones we got are picture books and well below his reading level, with the exception of the Myers book about Egypt. I am hoping he will try it out of loyalty to the author, maybe. Seriously at this point I feel like I need to pull out the book about the duck stuck in the muck, or Dr. Seuss just so that he is reading something! I have suggested Artemis Fowl, Rick Riordan, Lemony Snicket, 39 CLUES, and more, he says lame, lame, and totally way lame, like seriously not cool. Just once I would love for him to tell me a book was Beast

We are sitting in the middle of the 4 story downtown library, and he is just sitting in a chair staring at the wall bored out of his mind. This is so frustrating for me, I feel like a kid in a candy store...FREE BOOKS!!! And he won't even bother flipping through the ancient history picture books I got...that are 90% pictures :svengo: We tried the Ranger's apprentice, DH read them, loved them and tried to share them with him, he made it through a couple chapters and hated it. He has read My side of the Mountain, and Holes, and Sign of the Beaver in PS the last couple of years. We are about done here, I got him two of the You wouldn't want to be books, Temple cat, and a picture book about myths and monsters. They all go along with school but I am hoping he will enjoy them. Oh and Tales of a Dead King by Walter Dean Myers and The end of the Beginning by Avi. I also have a whole slew of books to go through together for science and history, but those aren't what I would call stories in any way, just lots of pictures and captions etc for studying.

He liked Where the Red fern grows, but has requested no more sad dead dog stories. His favorite books and The only ones he has read twice are The Diary of Patrick Seamus Flannery( or something like that) and Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers. He is a good reader, according to sonlight he was easily core G or above. And his comprehension levels are high for all information but math, he just hates reading.:confused:

We are about to go to the big downtown library and I hope to find some books Ds will actually read. I am currently reading STOTW, My Ishmael, and The dark Is Rising to him and he is thoroughly enjoying all of them. But other than Diary of a wimpy kid and other similar books, along with Game Informer he will just sit and stare at the pages. Pictures are helpful but I'd really like to find some content appropriate to his actual mental comprehension levels! I would LOVE suggestions, I feel like I have offered about a million books to him with no enthusiasm on his part at all!

I just found this thread and wanted to pop in and say hi! We are new homeschoolers in Tulsa and finding our groove with our 10yr old DS who is 2E and still recovering from Ps trauma. We are having a blast and rea:glare:lly enjoying the relaxed and creative options for homeschooling. my biggest concern right now is getting him involved in some co-ops or clubs or playgroups or aomething. (I am typing this on my phone and isn't letting me go back fix typos!! Please ignore them!!)

What part of the state are you in? Stay safe!!

It's funny, before i had my son i would have been looking for a good vantage point to watch the light show, and growing up here you get pretty used to them, but geez they make me anxious now as a momma, especially not having him with me!

Right now leflore county looks good and i think it is slightly south of where they think the worst will hit. But it is Oklahoma so who knows! kotv is a great website with really easy to find weather info. We are in tulsa county and they seem to be falling apart as they come at us right now, but Im still on edge, i really want to put in a safe room if we stay in this house.

We are in eastern Oklahoma and after the tornado hit OU earlier i am feeling even jumpier . It is windy as can be and thundering like crazy here, and my son is at his dad's which is a one story ranch home in the country north of town. It isn't even supposed to get really bad until tomorrow night and I'm already being a worry warts about it. I think the dogs and i will stay at my folks with their brick house and basement tomorrow night!

My son will technically be in 5th grade next year, he has an amazing grasp of verbal language and is pretty good at grammar thanks to shurley English at his ps. We have been doing wordsmiths creative writing lessons and he has enjoyed them a lot , they have really helped get him thinking about using the written word expressive without making him actually write too much. This kid really speaks like an adult and has a repetroir of dead on accents, but getting him to write more than 2 sentences like"it fell down " is a major struggle. I have been looking at Queen's first language lessons but Im not sure if it is complete enough

Our curriculum right now is sort of just cobbled together and I am refining as we go. Since it was mid year, and a bit spur of the moment I didn't want to plunk down a bunch of money without having time to research what I thought would work best. His biggest issues are with math and writing. He has a wonderful grasp of language and rocks with grammar. But he can barely get a legible sentence down on paper, and is totally unable to organize his thoughts into a paragraph. Handwriting is also an issue, his print is horrible, but his cursive is really not too bad. The problem is that he pretty much refuses to write in cursive even though it is quicker and doesn't look like a drunk chicken was dancing on his papers. This is not a fine motor issue, he will draw for hours and is quite good. Math is a wreck, we had started with Math Mammoth fractions 1 while reviewing multiplication and division with hand written worksheets. But at this point I have scrapped fractions and I printed out a ton of the worksheets she offers to review addition and start multiplication back at the 2 and 3 times tables. He understood the concepts, but doesn't have a good working memory of the times tables so we were spending all of our time waiting for him to figure out 6x5 etc. English right now is a mish mash of grammar, vocabulary, and language arts worksheets, sequential spelling, and we just started the wordsmith creative writing project. We are also doing Intelligo Astronomy for 6-8, and trying to work in some Ancient Egypt studies, but that has totally been neglected. I really like Math Mammoth, and the page layout works well for DS. They were just taught math is such a wonky way that I don't know where to really start with him for next year. I am also looking at MCT for next year but I'm not exactly clear how it is implemented. I know a lot of people use WWE too. I also want to find a more solid history program, but I don't even know what I want from it :001_huh:

This is my first post here! :seeya: We started homeschooling my DS 10 almost 2 months ago. Public school was just getting worse and worse for him and his teacher was downright nasty. The first few weeks went wonderfully, then he pushed back and was downright nasty for a couple of weeks, and magically the last 2 days have been back to being productive. He is what most people call 2E, but frankly at this point I am much more focused on undoing the damage from public school and trying to get him to engage in learning and remediate the giant gaps he has. He does have ADD inattentive (fairly severe), and based on the disparity in his evaluation they said he has Non verbal learning disorder. I think it is likely more along the lines of Dyslexia/graphia/calcula. Frankly the lines between ADD, gifted, and being on the spectrum are so blurry I don't know where he actually falls. I just know his output is much lower than his potential. But he is also a bright, happy, pretty much normal, boy and a low dose of Vyvanse gets him through the school day and we have very few issues otherwise. I have a bunch of curriculum questions, but I don't want this to get too long. I think I will continue in another post!