Praying!

The lady who I took driver's ed from always called that "up your keester for Easter." She was quite a character.

#1 That's what I was taught. I think that it was taught that way because new drivers can't always tell where the line or car is exactly in front of them. By telling them to stop where they can see the line or car they are definitely safe. Over time we all learned where we could stop not seeing the line or car tires and still be safe. #2 This is 100% wrong. Far left lane is for passing/very fast vehicles. Very bad advice.

Today I finished The Big Four by Agatha Christie. I'd never read a Christie novel before. I liked it. I was especially interested in the fact that aside from carts and carriages and newspapers to get news and lack of electronics being mentioned, the story could have been happening right now. The detective work of Hercule Poirot stands up to the test of time.

Technically, there are several sections that would not apply for various people. I don't have any kids in the preschool age anymore for example. Some people only have high schoolers left. When I first read TWTM years ago I only had a preschooler and an early grammar stage kid. The first time I read the book I read the parts that applied to my kids and skipped the rest (actually, I skimmed a little and was really overwhelmed until I realized that at 6 I didn't need to worry at all yet about educating her 16). When I re-read the book in March I skipped the stuff on very early education and read the parts that applied to my particular kids at the ages they are now. I would suspect those without SN kids would simply skip a section on making TWTM work with SN if they weren't interested.

My daughter was exactly like that when my husband traveled when she was around that age. He was gone as much as 3 weeks of the month. We talked about it and she knew she wasn't being reasonable when he was gone but she couldn't help it. Over time she got used to him being gone and her behavior when he was out of town got better and better. Now that we moved (we did move to where he was traveling to, but we only moved because we wanted to live in Texas anyway) he only has to travel every couple months for a week or so. It's no longer an issue for any of the kids.

No, not at all.

32 minutes. I'm pretty sure that is accurate.

I have a cute apron I love that I got on Amazon, but it has a tie at the neck. It could probably be altered to have the neck permanent with just a few quick stitches (I leave it tied when I put it on and off), but then it (obviously) wouldn't be adjustable. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00H70EI7C

If 11 months works for you, go with it. I have a friend who does 6 weeks on 1 week off. We follow the public school schedule more or less. Between swim team at the end of the school year and taekwondo camps that are during school breaks, it makes sense for us. We start back the day after the local public schools (which means we will be starting back up 8/25). We take off all federal holidays (husband is off work those days) and birthdays. We have off one week at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, and a week in March. I plan in 4 day weeks at least every other week. We finish a week or two before the local public schools (we will finish May 27th next year).

I plan a lot of 4 day weeks. It makes rearranging if necessary much easier for me. In February my daughter and I went to Utah. We planned the trip about 3 weeks before we left. I compressed a few things and made some 4 day weeks 5 days and within 2 weeks of getting back we were all caught up again. I also view school as the #1 priority. Unless it is super important (and the trip to UT truly was), it cannot take precedence over school. We rarely have days not go according to plan.

Isn't that kind of how Disneyland was originally? I seem to recall reading somewhere that you paid very, very little to get in the gate, but then bought tickets for the rides like you do at fairs.

That's pretty much what my MIL said. She is English, married an American and lived in the US for a few decades, and then retired almost 15 years ago to Ireland. At the Cork City Gaol Adrian, age 4, was the only one of the kids who wanted to go. He should have cost 5 Euros, but they didn't charge for him at all (and even gave him a giant lollipop to "keep him busy"). I even tried to explain that he loves museums and especially ones with wax figures like that one has so I really should pay for his ticket, but they insisted on not charging for him. They told me to just enjoy it and they are happy to see a young lad loving history.

True, but perhaps the way of thinking is a 7 year is going to want to go to a movie like, say, Minions and parents might not be so excited about that. So charge less for the 7 year old, parent is happy (ETA: and maybe they will go see it in the theater instead of waiting for it to come out on DVD). An 11 year old might want to go see, say, Mockingjay Part 2. That's a more adult movie the parent would enjoy, too. It is arbitrary, but cut offs have to happen somewhere. Pretty much everywhere we went the posted family pass stated 2 adults and 4 children. She probably said that because you had three. We did a lot of touristy things all over the western half of the country (my MIL lives in the southwest) plus Dublin and the only place it wasn't posted how many the family pass was for was Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin and they didn't bat an eyelash at us paying the family rate for 2 adults and 4 kids.

They work together as far as FLL is grammar and SYS is spelling and that's two parts of language arts. As the pp said SYS doesn't really have "rules" so there isn't really anything to integrate between the two.

I just added one more to my count. (A sweet friend of mine is one of the main characters in a short movie and it was released on DVD recently. She posted on FB about it and it reminded me I wanted to get it.)

Money. I like how some amusement parks charge based on height rather than age. My 9 year old is much shorter than his 8 year old friend and only just barely hit 52". On the other hand, my 13 year old is almost 5'9" and towers over most of his same age friends. So when we are at a place where you can/can't go on rides based on height, charging that way makes sense. Otherwise, I suppose like the pp said, a butt in a theater seat is a butt in a theater seat no matter the age. Perhaps they charge less for younger kids to entice the adults to come. When we went to Ireland it was nice that the kids (they were 4, 6, 10, and 12) were almost always much, much cheaper because they often had adult, child, and student rates. I also liked that family passes were generally two parents and four kids (usually it's 2 kids here in the US) and were a significant savings.

When Cameron was 6, he spent 6 months trying to learn the sight word "the." Yes, the word the. I knew that wasn't normal, but everyone said he was probably just a late bloomer and, honestly, I didn't want him to have a learning disability, so I let my concerns go. At 7 and then 8 he still wasn't reading even though he really wanted to. He has always had a great love of books and wanted me to read to him all the time. He was frustrated that he wasn't learning to read and I was frustrated and wondering when he would suddenly get like everyone assured me he would. In the back of my head, though, something kept telling me this wasn't normal. This went beyond "late bloomer." Just before he turned 9, someone said to me, "What's the worst that could happen? He could be illiterate." That wasn't okay with me. That statement hit me so hard. That is when I knew I needed to know what was going on. I googled signs of dyslexia. With the exception of one or two, Cameron had them all. I decided I wanted to be sure of what was going on with him, so we had him tested (through the public schools - great experience). They said he had dyslexia (I wasn't surprised) and severe dysgraphia (I had never heard of it until then). At 12, upon retesting in a different school district (and another great experience), his diagnosis was changed to orthographic processing disorder (which looks like dyslexia and dysgraphia combined). Knowing there really was an issue helped so much. I had direction and was a lot less frustrated trying to teach him to read and write. I do wish I hadn't listened to the "late bloomer, don't worry about it" camp but instead listened to my own instincts when he was 6 years old. Knowing earlier would have saved so much time and frustration for both of us.

The problem I've seen is that people give up because the times given are not reasonable, particularly at early ages, but they are still trying to do the subjects that long because the book says to. I think the pp's idea of have ranges is probably a good compromise. I've also heard from people that TWTM is a good idea, but they rejected it because it only works for highly verbal kids and their "proof" is that SWB and her kids are highly verbal (whether that is accurate or not). Maybe having blurbs about how it works or something in various homeschools with various types of kids (late readers, SN, math-focused, etc.) would be useful since that would show that it's really not just for a certain "type" of kid. I don't know if it would fit, possibly in a section on adjusting homeschooling for SN kids, but my son has always had a much, much, much higher comprehension level than reading level. The school psychologist recommended immersion reading (we use Fire + Audible, but there are other ways to do immersion). He is going to be in 8th grade and can read the books recommended for his stage/year because he does the immersion reading. It allows him to learn without the struggle of super slowly plodding through the books.

The LOE people are using their Google :lol: (And, honestly, their invasion makes me LESS likely to use it... and I have a dyslexic child!)

That's pretty much what my 15 year old daughter said. Teens are in such a rush to pair up and declare their sexuality before they have really figured themselves out sometimes (for example, one of my daughter's friends decided she must be asexual because she wasn't attracted sexually, at 14, to males or females... fast forward a year and she realized she is heterosexual and really likes guys, but at 14 there was so much pressure to declare your sexuality she felt like she had to pick something).

Thanks. I did indeed finish reading Across Five Aprils today. I loved it. It's such a bittersweet book.

Best when used in combination, but can definitely be used with something else.

Boys can decide who they flirt with. They know she was a boy and it's okay if they don't want to flirt with her or date her. It's not discrimination any more than it's discrimination for a boy not to flirt with the nerdy girl or the sporty girl or whatever girl they are not into. I definitely wouldn't put it past TLC to have staged the rudeness. My daughter was in the magnet program with a FtoM transgender. He was very much living as a girl at the beginning of the school year. In January he began living as a boy. He told the kids before Christmas break what he would be doing and what his new name would be. He was a sophomore or junior at the time. Everyone was actually pretty cool with it. He didn't have problems finding girls willing to flirt with him as he transitioned. He had a couple girlfriends. That was real life. I'm sure TLC could have made it all much more dramatic than it really was.

My husband's favorite joke! Every time someone says 144 he says "That's gross." It's weird how often someone says 144.