We went to seaworld and san diego zoo last year. We also went on that multi acre flower walk in Carlsbad and legoland. DS does not remember Shamu, the dolphins, beluga whales and anything at all about the zoo. He does not remember that flower garden (it is incredible with tractor tours of millions of flowering plants) and legoland. He remembers the Ninjago toy we purchased in a store inside legoland. He also does not remember his best friend from preschool or his teachers there. He does not remember his classmates from last year :( Normal for that age. He does remember that I bought a bunch of spinach in the farmer's market 4 years ago and we found a live worm in it. He said recently that he is terrified of eating spinach because of that!

I never take food. I have juice boxes, granola bars, nuts, fruit in the car. I never bring them into our relatives' houses. We order the main meal of the day and pay for it too because we are inconveniencing them and don't expect them to cook for us. But, when my MIL visits, she brings everything with her - rice, flour, spices, condiments etc - she is a picky cook, likes to cook for her son and claims that all the "fancy" stuff in my pantry ruins her famous recipes.

I don't think that buying highschool books for a 6 year old is pushy. I own the whole AOPS set and high school level Greek and Latin books (that I bought when DS was 3 and still chewing his books). As for your curriculum choices and reasoning, I can understand and agree. But, it seems like your choices are more teacher intensive and that is something you need to consider. Do you always want to teach to your child? Or do you want to let your child self-learn and come to conclusions on his own on some topics and have the self-discovery experience in learning? Things like LoF, BA and MCT may not be "serious" like high school text books, but I have found that if I let my child loose on them, he tries to read them on his own, imbibe the knowledge using his own thinking process and imagination. Ofcourse, I am around to assist, probe, help and reteach if something is not very clear, but these fun curriculum choices always hand over the reins to the child in our house.

There is a powder spray that you put inside stinky shoes called "Odor eaters" - i buy it from the pharmacy. I wipe the insides of the stinky shoes with a disinfectant wipe and then when it is dry, I spray Odor Eaters inside the shoes. For the long run, I was told to reduce the intake of sugar of the person with the offending feet and to put them on a probiotic with lactobaccilli strain - this seems to have worked in our family because my can of Odor Eaters has not been used for a while, now :)

I think that in a homeschooling environment, you can go at your child's pace - but you need to ensure that there are no learning gaps and also do periodic reviews. In our case, DS loves math and LA and we accelerate to a very high level because he can handle it comfortably. So, to answer your question, I would not linger at a level where the content is too easy for the child (except for testing or review) - it just seems like busywork to me and you could spend that same time teaching something new ...

I am not the kind of mom that will keep sending my kids over to their grandma's house if she was being constantly critical of everything from socks to behavior (I am not the kind that feels the need to suck it up to foster family ties at all costs etc and I strongly believe that respect and effort at getting along with each other is mutual, even when that relationship is between a young grandchild and a grandma). That said, if you still want to keep sending your kids over to your IL's I suggest that you buy a 12 pack of socks and send it along with a note with your kids next time. Explain in the note that your children choose how to dress by themselves and if the socks are missing and the lack of socks bothers her in the future, would she kindly provide them the socks that you left at her house???

Thanks for the pointer. I am looking for a reasonably priced tester. We are not close to this tester, but it might be doable if I cannot find someone closer.

DS goes to an private school with high academic focus. They do Geography for half a year (American state study) and American History for half a year (discovery of america-columbus/American wars/civil rights/presidents etc). They typically do one lesson a week. They also do one chapter of science every 2 weeks. They have an annual science fair project that they work on for 2 months at school time. But, none of it is that involved or stimulating in my opinion. Seems like superficial attempts at teaching these subjects. (I am a tough critic and maybe this would amount to a lot for some others ?) We use our own resources and afterschool DS when we can: SOTW, American presidents, educaional videos (How the states got their shape, Lewis and Clark expedition etc), Evan Moore Daily Geography, BFSU science, Boston Children's Museum Activity Books by Zubrowski. We also throw in programming the Mindstorms, snapcircuit projects etc.

I am not sure where logo would lead to next. Crystal Rainforest looks cool. What my son does at school is create a sequence of commands to accomplish things - like draw pictures etc. He learns things like navigating, moving an object, placing it in a particular spot (x,y co-ordinates), rotating the objects etc. They do it in small projects and it is very fun for him. For example, they used Logo to create a silkworm's lifecycle diagram last week after they had a science project to hatch the silkworms in the classroom. I personally like Scratch and then Java as a next step.

Thanks to all of you. It seems that I am mostly on the right track. I have never heard of Bulletproof coffee - it will be interesting to try it :) I am thinking of adding in a little grassfed butter to my daily coconut oil used in the dinner dishes now. Thanks for all the reassurances and for being a sounding board for me.

I am very sorry for you. I would have moved out of the house if that happened to me :ohmy: I would put motion detector night vision cameras and catch him in action. Look inside all your closets and shake out all the clothes and jackets - if I were a bat, that is where I would hide.

Thanks. I am vegetarian (and mostly vegan) - I have been trying to avoid animal fat (I also have one family member with high cholesterol which plays into the no butter philosophy). I think that more is needed because my MIL gave me a lecture on how I am not feeding my child butter and how her kids turned out smart and accomplished because she gave them a chunk of butter every day until their teens. She claimed that the brain is made of saturated fat and that butter was the way to go about getting it, especially for growing kids. I mentioned that DS drinks 2% milk to her and that he eats cheese often, but she left me feeling inadequate and like a slacker mom and it has rankled me ever since. I cannot avoid her because she invites herself over for long stays with us in order to closely observe and comment upon my weird parenting methods. And DH is very close to her and wishes her company.

I am looking for ways to add healthy fats for good brain health for my family this year. We already take fish oil (barleans) and flaxseed oil (capsule/chewies) and get one serving of walnuts or almonds or some other nut every day. DS eats a sunflower seed butter sandwich often. I use olive oil in my cooking and add a little coconut oil to our dinner. I serve avocadoes a few times a week. What more can I do? I completely avoid using butter and other animal fats. Are they essential for the brain to be healthy in some way?

Since you can sew, you can think of making your own slip cover. Or, if you don't have time for that project, you can buy a slipcover from surefit like PPs have mentioned (in a tan/brown color - a suede or some such material) - they have "stretch" type covers that fit very snugly. All you have to do is spot clean frequently and wash it once in a while. I use one of these for our old couch which has been around for almost 15 years. I bought a living room set in tan leather and it has lasted almost 9 years so far. It is the best investment on furniture that I have made so far. My local Bed Bath and Beyond store used to carry a small collection of surefits and with their 20% coupon worked out a lot cheaper than fromt he websites. Surefit suede covers link

Your son is doing a great job. Best wishes to him to keep on composing more wonderful music.

My son's private school teaches Logo as a part of the curriculum. We teach him Scratch at home. He also programs the Lego Mindstorms which is his hobby.

My child's teacher always writes "there" when she means "their". It happened too many times and I got used to it!

My DS's teacher always gives him 100% on every thing. I have come to the conclusion that she is artificially inflating the grades - private school policy (?), curriculum too strenuous so that they need to do this to keep parent morale higher(?). I am not sure. My DS's school does not have an open door policy and I need to go through their director for every issue. So, I decided not to fight this battle and correct DS's papers myself and point out the mistakes and have him redo that part. In their defense, DS rarely gets things wrong, so this happens once a month or so. And I have an eagle eye and maybe other parents with kids in this class room don't care to look through answer papers??

I fill the tub with hotwater, mix in 3-4 scoops of oxiclean and 2 scoops of laundry detergent (make sure that the powder is distributed in the water and dissolves). Wait for 2 hours. Then drain and wash. My 1960's bathtub sparkles (we have hardwater).

I agree. My DS's best friend's mom even brings him late to school and extracurriculars. They even park outside the school and feed their child his breakfast because they were late getting ready in the morning. Funny thing is that they invited 30 kids to their son's birthday party at Chuck E Cheese's and they showed up 30 minutes late - all the kids were off and playing when the birthday kid arrived late for his own party. I never arrange any more playadates with them - because my time line in a day has set windows of time for playdates and we are not flexible people who can hang out after the playdate time is over to catch up for the tardy time. Besides, I am ALWAYS 5 minutes ahead of time for everything.

I thought that Minimus Secundus was more of the same thing. I will take a closer look. Looks like GSWL is the other popular choice. Thak you both for your opinions!

My DS at 3 and 4 had an extreme aversion to the color pink. I don't know where he got the idea that pink was a yucky color and meant only for girls (his preschool, maybe). He used to make me change clothes and then hold him if he saw any pink in my clothes. He took evening art classes for a while and I talked to his art instructor about his aversion - this guy was so nice, he spent a lot of time talking to DS about how every color was beautiful and if used appropriately, all colors could create beautiful art. He even went as far as to create some beautiful water colors using pink and involved DS in them. It changed DS's obsession with hating pink. I think that you can work on some art with your DD and use purple and another color and show her that the other color is as beautiful as purple. Just an idea ...

DS6 is finishing up Minimus this week. We did SSL before this. He wants to continue at the pace we have been going at, which is a chapter a week with reviews once a month. What program is best for this purpose? I am looking at GSWL, Latin Prep and Lively Latin. But, it is difficult for me to decide which one to pick. I need some hand holding on this! I would also like it to be secular with the classical pronunciations. DS loves pictures and stories and colorful layout - he adores Minimus. But, that is not the limiting factor. He is strong in languages and I am learning Latin with him. So, if there is a "great" dry, black and white curriculum, I can teach it to him in a fun way. We plan to do Spanish when he is 8 years old. Thanks in advance.

I am not Heigh Ho, but I have been following the Utah news and I also live in an area where people make high salaries and still are very poor due to astronomical costs of living. They cannot move out because their jobs are specialized and tied to the local industry. So, I will tell you what my child's PS principal said on "back to school night" last year - lots of people around my area make a high salary (higher than the cutoff required - $44K ??), so cannot qualify for the free lunch program, but are still very poor and hence cannot afford to pay for the school lunch sometimes. He said that the child who has a negative account balance would be given an apple and a note to the parent at lunch time. If this continues for a few days, the school would call in the parent to have a discussion. In my area, the PTA provides the principal with around $10,000 of discretionary funding and if a case arises where a child is going hungry because the parent is unable to pay for lunch, the principal will meet with the parent and after finding out the real causes, allocate money from this fund on a short term basis to cover the lunch costs for this particular child. This is a humanitarian gesture which the whole community supports. I am guessing that it takes a few days for this process and the child eats an apple at lunch time on those days, I think. The sad part is that this is a nation wide policy. This made the headlines because the Utah district apparently changed some billing system (or the supplier?) and the parents were not informed and too many kids had this terrible thing happening on the same day to create a big enough uproar. It normally happens to one or two kids in a month, I think. Yesterday, 2 senators showed up at that Utah school and talked about passing a law where no child would go hungry - let us hope they make it happen.

Salad dressing (i buy newman's own from costco), sunflower seed butter from whole foods (easy packed lunches), Orowheat oatnut bread, SF Boudin sourdough bread (grilled cheese sandwich for dinner sometimes), organic tomato ketchup, TJ's frozen cheese sticks (my DS eats them, not me), cheerios.