In my son's TKD class they have to "promise never to be abusive or offensive" and to only use what they learn in self defense amongst other things about "working towards the betterment of the fellow man" etc when they recite the student creed. We talked in depth to the Master Instructor who has 8 degree black belts before signing up my son who was 4 at that time - we had concerns that his immaturity at that age might translate into inappropriate use of his TKD skills outside of the martial arts school - we were told categorically that it is the kids who do not know martial arts that end up in fights and they were right. I can see how they drill values like respect, courtesy and self-discipline every single day. And my child has learned that what he learns is only for self-defense. And it has been 2 years and we have seen a remarkable level of self-control, impulse control, discipline, focus and maturity in my child. So, get a really good martial arts instructor for your children and they will teach them self-discipline and respect which go hand in hand with martial arts. Check out the church instructor - see what his pedigree is and then make your decision to sign up or not.

Take a good quality probiotic or drink kefir every day. My family is full of people with IBS and the ones who took probiotics regularly have seen the symptoms lessening and disappearing over time.

I am too busy to google this - but, if you google it, there are a ton of statements from Mia and her family that says that Soon-yi suffered early childhood abuse and repeated head trauma from her biological mother that resulted in mental disabilty and that she has a low IQ. And it is they who claimed that Soon yi is mentally disabled - not me - both Woody and Soon-yi deny it. And as I said, I get worried and stressed when I read about this topic. PS: I don't have time to search in detail, but here is a quick link - not sure what kind of magazine is nypost, but that is what popped up first: http://nypost.com/2012/01/08/the-quiet-victory-of-mia-the-kids-woody-left-behind/

I think a lot of people who think that the personal lives of Woody and co. are none of our business would feel very differently if the same drama played out inside their own home - especially if a creepy old guy was taking naked pictures and having sex with his child's adopted and mentally disabled sister. That is all I have to say on this topic. And I too have spent more than 20 years thinking the worst of him. Sometimes, I get creeped out, sad and worried when I read that he and Soon-Yi have adopted kids of their own - that is when I tell myself that I need to do something better with what little spare time I have.

My MIL and FIL would totally say something like that - and add on that the child had all the bad qualities because of the "poor uprbringing" he gets from his mother and not really his fault (and also add what a stellar job they did of bringing up their own kids). That is the way they are. I would be furious if they gave my child a card like that - and I would not assume that my child did not read it properly - young kids have their own way of dealing with emotions and pretending to not read it could have been one such mechanism for dealing with hurt. I would talk to my son and make sure that he understands that what grandma says is not true and I would talk to grandma and tell her that it is inappropriate and to take her sense of humor elsewhere.

Actually, we do exactly this - we pull out the interesting problems and puzzles and do them - because our main spine is SM and we don't have the time to do MEP sequentially. You can try to first print out a few pages of MEP for the correct level - just get the pdf and review it and print out the appropriate pages. Mark the problems that might interest your son and help him with a few until he feels comfortable with the MEP style. My son enjoys MEP puzzles hugely and keeps asking me for "Hungarian math puzzles" :) PS: They are one year ahead of the US - so their 1st grade material would not match US first grade, I think. There are threads here about mapping MEP to US grades. What I do is get the pdf of a few levels and print the pages that interest us.

I make a work packet like beishan said. I add some puzzle math, SM cwp, copy work, Latin worksheets, critical thinking company logic book pages. In addition there is piano practice. When this is all done, I let my child watch brainpop, do dreambox math or EPGY for fun. We might do a longer read aloud and let ds have a bubble bath on snow days.

I like a lot of supplements. But, if you wanted only one, with puzzle math, I recommend MEP too. (but, if you like more than one, I would suggest Zaccaro, CWP and Life of Fred).

I agree with Kai. Get Singapore Math and Miquon math and afterschool her. SM has many supplements and all of them are excellent. Miquon uses a lot of manipulative which are helpful to build strong concpets through hands on play. Reading aloud and discussing the story with her and then asking her to narrate the story back to you in her own words help in improving comprehension. If you want a workbooky style reading comprehension book, there are plenty of recommendations on the general education board - I have used and liked the Reading Detective series from Critical Thinking COmpany: http://www.criticalthinking.com/reading-detective-beginning.html . But, you don't really need it if you can work with your child on the reading and listening comprehension using books at her reading level. Good luck.

She is dumbing herself down to match her peer group. I have the same experience with my child who is in a weekly class with a chess coach - he is good at chess and is one year ahead of his friend who was enrolled by his mom into that class so the friend would have someone he knew in that class. Ever since, my son has dumbed down his game, become a goofball and lost his competitive spirit while before he was intense, focused and ambitious in chess. It seems that he is trying to be at the same level as this friend who he has known since they were infants and is trying to make the friend feel better by keeping him company at his level. The reasons are because DS is a single child, very empathetic to his friends, emotionally attached to this kid and tries to "hang out" with this other kid and be like him. Also, having this peer and old friend in the class is distracting, taking away DS's focus and making him concentrate on what his friend is doing rather than his work. We talk to him before every class and let him know that the class is not a playdate and that he goes to the class to learn and be good at chess and not to reconnect with friends. I also tell him that I am happy to set up a playdate for later with that friend and that he should focus on his game in the class. Sometimes, it works, most times it does not. My DH feels that life will bring forth many incidents like this and that DS should figure out how to deal with them starting now. I feel that the friend in the class is a distraction and that I should change the class time. Well, I might end up changing the class time eventually if things continue like this. Good luck, sorry I cannot offer any suggestions to help.

We went to an indoor party place and they had these soccer balls that were soft and squishy and felt like bean bags and were made of cloth or felt. It was a great toy for the kids to kick around indoors and not hurt or break anything. I am looking to buy one for DS who likes to kick balls and has to go outdoors to do it often. But, I am not able to find a name for googling it and cannot seem to find it in any stores. I hope that my description is enough for someone to help me find one :)

Thanks for all the resources. quark, I use your signature all the time to research the living math books and have made several purchases already! CW, we use the Balance Benders and Mind Benders and love them. I am ordering the other CTC books you recommended as well. Cammom, we have a stack of Kumons at home when I went on a buying spree last year. I will pull them out and check what we have. minniewannabe, I do lack the patience to teach or discuss the ways to apply the math skills in real life, except while making change for purchases at the store. I am working on improving that ... Thanks for the reminder that math does not make much sense if we don't know how to use it in real life! crazyforlatin, we are headed the AOPS way, but not just yet, I think. I am looking forward to BA level 4. sierranevada, you have a very accelerated child - I don't think we can keep up with that pace, but I like your plan and might copy some of it. La Texican, I will have to order that great courses dvd - when I have a bigger budget. kiana, my biggest problem is sticking with one curriculum - I want to pick the best of the best and use them. But, for what it is worth, we have stuck with SM all through.

My son who is obsessed by American states and Presidents found 2 workbooks in the dollar bin of Target about presidents and the states. He loves it and pulls it out often to check facts. They seem to be seasonal in the Targets around here. Kumon Time workbook helped drill clocks and time. Miquon workbooks, though not cheesy at all, were well loved and affordable for us. Two other workbooks we love are: Evan Moore Daily geography, Maps Charts Graphs series from MCP.

quark, one other option to consider - a lot of top private high schools in my area open up their AP courses for homeschooled kids and kids from PS. They do ask for achievement testing to enroll, I think. A lot of these classes are in the weekends and at convenient times. If there was one close to you, it would be an easier option to start with for logistical reasons and then you could move on to community college or the UC system.

I find BA to be fun. My child loves it. But, it does not seem to have "enough material" in each topic. And I seem to be always looking for something else to add on to it. We are just working on book 3A, though. So, cannot say how I will feel when I reach the end of level 3. I am comparing it with my SM books - which are IP, CWP, WB, Tests, Extra Practice, Visible Thinking etc for each level - and I can always grab one of those if I needed the review/extra practice for a topic. My child is whizzing through BA so fast (one chapter in one sitting) and he might finish each book under a month. There is very little available for extra review that if I needed to come back to a topic 4-5 months later, there just isn't any more practice material. Buying a second practice book, photocopying the original practice book etc is not practical. That is why I said that BA does not feel rigorous enough to me. So, I plan to choose the matching topics in the SM books for review and practice. This is my problem with BA.

I like how you worded your description! I am going to borrow your phrase and use it! My son is a "joiner" too :)

I afterschool my 6 year old. He goes to a school that provides 1~2 years of acceleration in math (and LA). But, he is very advanced in math and we have accelerated him during afterschool hours for a long time. We use a combination of SM, Miquon, Life of Fred and MEP (we don't follow a lesson plan, but I pick what DS can do and we go through the topics based on interest). I have a strong math background and so does my DH. So, we tend to talk about square roots, fractions, exponential functions etc with my DS constantly. He loves math and is excited to learn more. He has access to EPGY math and Dreambox. He is roughly at the 3rd-4th grade level in most of these curricula. I scribe for him to make it easier for him though he asks to write down the solutions himself sometimes. He recently started Beast Academy and loves it. But, it feels like a "fun" program than a curriculum. I think that I am ready to accelerate him even more - because this was his request for afterschooling in 2014. He wants to work on algebra and geometry. Can those that accelerated their children a few grade levels in early elementary guide me? I would like to know what resources to use and how to ensure that there are no learning gaps.

I have constant random thoughts - some of them are really funny, some morbid and some are "smart comebacks" that I should have made when someone said something to offend me a long time ago (with some family members these things happened even 25 years ago). The best times for these are when I am alone in the kitchen cooking and in the early hours of the morning before I am fully awake. What I hate is when my SIL walks in and talks about Ed, Marsha, Nancy blah blah etc when she lives thousands of miles away, I don't know her friends and I don't know the context and her random thoughts don't make any sense. She visits often and subjects us to opinions on these people who we have no chance of ever meeting in this lifetime.

Thank you. It is good to know that I can change it myself.

No. Spiders don't bother me. But, I hate snakes and will not even watch the TV when it features snakes.

I think that you are doing a great job working with him at home. I suggest that you ask the K teacher for remedial materials and work more with him at home. It sounds to me like he has little experience with how a classroom works - things like waiting, listening, not rushing etc. These habits come after a good deal of practice. Get a book of word problems and talk him through a few simple exercises and that will help him listen carefully and then act. Read aloud to him and ask him to answer comprehension questions on the story you just read. These are simple strategies to help with his classwork. Personally, I would neither red shirt nor pull him out. Because if a child is struggling for whatever reason, it is up to the parent and the teacher to find the cause and try to fix it. It could be the lack of school skills or a LD or just plain boredom in the classroom. I also like the suggestion of summer school above - in my area, most private schools offer summer programs where a lot of struggling kids go to catch up on academics. Good luck.

Grieg and Mozart.

I am wondering how the member title changes from one title to another. And if this feature still works? Mine has been stuck at "Hive Mind Larvae" or something for a long time.

I confess that I am not doing enough to meet my gifted child's educational needs. He is offered accelerated academics at school, but he still makes short work of it. I am afterschooling with a lot of challenging curriculum, have found a couple of mentors to guide him in his specific interests, but still, it seems that he is not challenged enough. I feel like a slacker mom most of the time. I confess, that even though I have a STEM background, my child's knowledge of science trivia has outgrown mine. I confess that I hate building with Legos. I confess that I find BrainPop to be pretty good! I confess that I am a mean mom who enforces a strict no TV rule in my house. This has actually helped us get to where we are in several academic areas and extracurriculars. I confess that I do not enforce a set reading time at home anymore because of the limited time we have after school which gets eaten up by instrument practice, afterschooling, extracurriculars, homework and free play. I should tell DS to read during beforecare which he attends every day.

It could be that some consumer protection agency (so called Feds?) is investigating the cause of the injury so that they can take action against the manufacturer. They probably wanted to talk to the affected family to figure out what led to that accident and take away the offending toy. Also, they probably were nice and gave the kids a replacement toy of some other kind so that the kids were not disappointed to lose their TMNT toy. I worked for an anti-virus company for a while and Feds were always showing up in our campus for gathering evidence for many information security breaks and hacking incidents. Pretty much any kind of federal agency used to be called the "Feds" - even the PR guys who worked for the federal agencies were called the Feds. The story is possible - but I am suspecting that they were some consumer protection agency.