We started baseball in spring and that in addition to all the other extra curriculars is slowing us down. We have decided to drop a few afterschool activities to keep us all sane. We had some great accomplishments and some small ones this year. When DS entered kindergarten, he was pencil phobic, could write and color but hated it. Now he is able to write paragraphs (neatly too!) using the "Step up to writing" method. That is our biggest achievement, in my mind. He has become a chapter book reader and I get a little peace in the house when he is poring over a chapter book all by himself. Math - We finished Singapore 1A and are halfway through 1B - slowed down to introduce MEP, finished Miquon Orange book, EPGY math grade 2, DreamBox math grade 4. LA - Copywork, Spelling workout A almost done, FLL1 almost done, Songschool Latin 1 almost done Science - Finished the Let's read and learn about ... series History - still on SOTW1 - taking it slowly Geography, arts etc - done various projects as time permits. Extracurriculars: Piano - progress at last after switching teachers Tae Kwon Do - This is DS's first love and he spends as many evenings as possible within his schedule to attend classes! I have a feeling that we may not be able to do this much next year.

Thanks a lot for all the replies! See, I always click and buy online when I "really need" a book, telling myself that I am "too busy" to search for other options to buy them. Your posts have been an eye opener and I need to figure out where to look for gently used great quality books. I have a lifelong relationship with books and have used them for enrichment, entertainment, escape from reality and learning. I will look at library sales, paperbackswap, craigslist, ebay and scholastic sales. Thank you for all the suggestions.

I would wait. I wanted to talk to my child's teacher on the first week of school. Though we met, the meeting was not productive as she said that she prefers to get to know the child for 4-6 weeks before going into the specifics of each child. She recorded all my inputs and told me she would bear them in mind. We did have a follow-up meeting later on when she had a good understanding of my child and that meeting went well with something constructive coming out of it to benefit my child. I know that you have problems in 1st grade now, but you have no idea at this time how the next year is going to turn out for her (maybe much better?) and how the next teacher is going to deal with your child. I think that you could wait until the beginning of the term in Fall and then email the teacher that you have some issues and concerns that you want to discuss with her (a brief summary of the diagnoses and therapies and the problems that you suspect she is facing) and ask for a meeting. Meanwhile, I would prepare a list of topics that I want to cover in the meeting. Interestingly in my meeting with my child's teacher, I also put forth a list of possible solutions to my child's problems (including parental contribution to the solution) and the teacher picked one which involved the parent (which I am very happy to comply with) because that would be the least effort for her as she is overloaded as it is.

We read aloud every day and need a constant supply of material and running to the library is not working out, so I have been building a "home library" for my DS to use for the past 3 years. I just tried to tally up how much I had spent on it and it is running to several hundreds just on my Amazon account. This is in addition to all the curriculum and software that I purchase. Admittedly I have bought many high ticket items including several encyclopedias, dictionaries, LOF series, SOTW series, several sets of classics, poetry compilations etc over the past few years. But, how do I "economically" build a home library for us? Does it take a lot of $$$ to build a collection? What is a reasonable budget for a "home library".

Buy a set of C Rods - my DS likes the plastic linking ones and I like the wooden ones. Also on Rainbow Resource, they sell compatible plastic 10 rods and flats and 1000 cube for a good price - so I bought a set of those. Beyond that, everything else are household items. We use a tub full of dominoes as manipulatives. For a change, we use paper plates with m&ms on them - for grouping, subtraction, patterns etc - we don't eat them at home, so the same set of m&ms last for a long time! We also used different dry beans (garbanzo, kidney beans, white beans etc). Then there is a big ziploc bag of pom-poms (? - those wooly things for crafts) that never got used, so we use them for counters. I made a set of coins manipulatives by printing, laminating and cutting the coin pictures. That is pretty much all of it!

I am not the OP, but thanks for that information. I am teaching latin to my son in the hopes that picking up related languages later might be easy. But, I never thought of it as helping out with logical thinking. Now I know another advantage of learning latin.

Is this a public school? If so, you are in luck! In my son's PS they hung a notice in the front office stating that it is mandated by the school board and school district governors that the classroom environment should be clean, hygienic and fit for children and to approach the school administrators if any parent noticed any problems. Just walk into the school office and look for/ask for school cleanliness/hygiene standards. I am sure if it is private school, they have similar procedures in place.

If the school thinks that you are not going to sue them or make a big issue then they will try to cover up as much as possible and support each other. In the past when my DS has had issues with our PS, we have always gone in demanding our child's rights be respected and asking for written reassurances from administrators that such things would not happen again (we are in a PS where they are extremely wary of lawsuits). Once you ask for things to be put on paper, they try to fix the problem ASAP because of "papertrails" leading to potential issues for them. I am aware that in a private school in a tightly knit community, it would be awkward to raise issues with people you might know socially. Is there any particular reason that you want to continue educating your girls in this school? (does not seem like fun for your girls. Ofcourse if the reason is private, please ignore the question!). If it were my kid going through all of this, I would be attending all the open houses for all the schools in my neighborhood and evaluating other options.

My son is accelerated in math 2 years ahead (he is almost 6 yo). We use Singapore math and Miquon - both of which are great choices as mentioned by a PP - we do MEP too which is harder for him because of the small spaces he has to write in. My son has a pencil grip problem which hurt his fingers if he writes a lot - so I scribe for him when it gets intensive. I have tried using stampers and asking him to stamp the correct numbers for answers, printed out number stickers which he could stick. But it all involves too much work and I finally decided that me scribing was what it takes to accelerate him. But, as he nears 6 years old, I have found that he can write a lot better. Now I have hopes that by 8 years old, he will be more independent in writing work.

Let her read to her younger siblings aloud. That will also let you check pronunciation issues. Also let her draw a picture about a book and write her own literary analysis of 10 or 20 sentences.

Was she just having a really bad day? Or was she goofing off (or acting out) at school and deliberately misspelling the words? Such things happen when they are 6 years old - my kid is like that sometimes - deliberately makes mistakes when he is tired to indicate that he is not ready to co-operate (for e.g he has been known to write 3+4 = 9 just to show how unhappy he is to be sitting down and working at that time).

I got the plastic ones first - they are the linking ones and they bow slightly but DS loves them because he is a Lego fiend and he is used to linking things together for play. I personally do not like them because the notch in each rod makes it bigger than the expected size. So I went ahead and bought the 155 set of wooden ones and they are great. My biggest problem with the wooden set has been that markers and dry erase pens stain the rods easily and now all of them have stain marks on them (we use a white board as a tabletop and write math on it as well as use the C-rods on it). I bought a compatible set of flats and 1000 cube from Rainbow resource and they work well together. Also RR has a storage tray for C-rods that I find very useful.

My DS is strong in reading and hence what I do at home is a "supplement". His school uses the "Step up to Writing" curriculum which I love, so, I focus more on reading comprehension and listening at home. I have a separate read-aloud list for DS and myself. He reads all the books in his list aloud to me and I progress through my list of books throughout the year (mostly classics and some booklists recommended to me). We have some discussions based on the books we read. We have added a lot of word based games/board games to play and try to do it often. I have added daily copywork (some funny or silly lines from current read-alouds), weekly journal writing, weekly spelling and weekly poetry memorization (mostly silly rhyming poetry which DS loves) in the past few months and it is going well. Looks like your DD is doing well in school, so you may want to supplement with a spelling curriculum, some fun read alouds or some poetry.

One option for people living where organic veggies are super expensive - to buy frozen organic veggies at a cheaper price (frozen organic spinach bag is $2). I understand how expensive vegetables are in the non-growing season for some parts of the country. I stockpile frozen organic spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, peas etc. The good thing is that you cannot tell the difference in stir fries and soups etc. And you can pull out as much as you like from the bag and store the rest away for another time.

I avoid crowded public places and landmarks on holidays - like airports, Disneyland, Statue of Liberty, Golden Gate bridge, subway stations etc on Christmas, Fourth of July etc. Terrorists like to strike where the impact is significant and maximum. So, we usually sit it out on major holidays instead of being in all the cool places. My husband calls me a wimp and I agree. But I cannot bring myself to "vacation" in famous places on popular dates.

Everybody should buy and eat what they like. But just because you can not see the immediate result from eating organic food, it does not make it a marketing scam. The rising rates of allergies, cancer, neurological problems at birth, birth defects, obesity, early puberty etc in children have all been linked to chemicals (pesticides, hormones etc) in our food chain (I am equally wary of genetically modified foods). Just because there are only trace amounts of certain chemicals in a food product (that was put there in the first place to kill a living organism on contact - pests - or an artificial hormone put into a cow to make it lactate longer) it does not make it alright to feed my family with it. I always wonder how long it takes for these trace chemicals to accumulate to a toxic level in one's body (a few years?). I was also told that kids below 5 years old should be fed organic food if possible, because their bodies are so little that even trace amounts of the toxic pesticides would be a large dosage and very harmful for them. I cut my budget in all the other stuff that I shop for, but stick to organic whenever possible for most things (especially for the "Dirty dozen" mentioned in a PP).

I think SWB and her mother could offer a subscription based online weekly class on subjects that they are so excellent at - what I suggest is to create an online virtual academy. Other people have made great successes of it, so this could be a business model to look at. I would sign up for a few classes myself at a premium price (in hundreds of $$ per semester) knowing SWB was behind it!

My son's PS uses a curriculum called "Step up to Writing". It is formulaic in the sense that it teaches how to begin, how to narrate and how to end the narrative. I have seen that it helps my son a lot.

My 4 year old was exactly like yours. I tried a lot to get him to recall things as well as worked on his drawing and coloring skills. Everything he drew was a scribble. He could not draw a circle or a straight line. In desperation, I even hired an art tutor to teach him drawing once a week to see if he could get through to my son. We gave it all up because it was so futile. Then, when he was 4 years and 9 months old, he went through a growth spurt - that seemed to affect his brain too in a good way. He could remember many things that happened in a day and also his drawing skills improved to the point where we could recognize objects that he drew. He still is not good at drawing at 5, but it gets better when they reach 5.

Thanks for all your suggestions. I had just thought that my child had a really good memory, but not about which areas were stronger than others. Now that I think of it, he remembers things that were read to him or related to him (TV, audio books, songs/music etc) a lot better than when he reads them himself (maybe reading comprehension is not that great yet). He is also great in remembering smells, auditory and visual things. I looked up Mary Ann Hobermann poems and they sound like fun. I am also picking up some poetry anthologies for kids. I had not thought about Geography facts and Historical events (even memorizing all the president names). Thanks again and I will keep in mind the plagiarism issue when the time comes, as I have btdt too.

I think that poetry memorization is a great idea for little kids. I love your blog post. Could you post either here or on your blog what resources you use for the poetry? Do you follow a curriculum or just a few books fo choice (if so please let us know which ones). Thanks!

My son who is almost 6 is very bright (tested as gifted) and has an elephantine memory when it comes to remembering things and details (I am like that, so it runs in the family?). For him remembering and recalling stuff is great fun. Right now, the only memory work he does is with his piano pieces - he gets assigned a few piano music pieces each week by his teacher and the expectation is to practice for a few weeks and memorize atleast one of them in that timeframe - but, what happens is that he memorizes every single piece by day 2 of playing them and plays from memory without his book from day 3 onwards. He can recall 100+ piano music pieces and play them from memory (admittedly, these are all small pieces of 8-32 measures each). He remembers road signs on roads that we do not travel through frequently (for e.g. we went to the doctor's office 4 months ago and last week he could tell me exactly which turn to take and how to get there). He also remembers in great detail anything he watches on TV though he only watches TV once a week. He is able to recite poetry easily and to recall every single friend's birthday, phone number, address etc. I want to help him with this skill. I want to do memory work and challenge him to improve his retention/recall so that he can get even better. I want to do it on a regular basis and make it fun. I have no clue where to start and how to go about it. Would poetry and math facts memorization be a good start?

Since the OP posted the age of her child, my response is "yes, until older". My DS is almost 6 and spars every week with girls in the 6-10 age group for his marial arts and it is OK at that age - I have no problems whatsoever with it until my son turns 10. My son does not know the difference between boys and girls (same for all the 7 year old boys in his large sparring group). My son's close friends constitute both boys and girls and he considers sparring with a girl as no different than when sparring with a boy. I have issues with co-ed wrestling/sparring etc beyond the age of 10 and would definitely not allow it. But, as a woman, it is great to see some of those little girls in his class who are so agile, coordinated, graceful, nimble, quick witted and athletic and able to spar, duck blows and counter attack and take down most boys in their group (btw/ they all wear full body sparring gear with helmets etc and are supervised, so no children are harmed in the making of a sparring champion!). I wish I had such training when I was under 10 years old!

My family fell sick in succession with flu this spring and I was burnt out and then my DS started baseball for spring in addition to his other sports. So, we are currently on break. We are not completely abandoning afterschooling - just doing math once a week and DreamBox twice a week. Reading is done daily before bedtime as readalouds and piano practice is done daily (can't drop that as the teacher wants to see weekly progress). I have let the rest slide (no latin, science). We have taken up a 5 week long "fun" project instead - to learn all about bunnies - where they live, their habitat, making bunny art work, sprouting seeds of foods that bunnies eat, cooking "bunny food" (recipes, measurements etc), reading bunny classics like Peter Rabbit, Winnie The Pooh series etc. I am beginning to enjoy this myself now! We will be back to regularly scheduled programming in May (hopefully).

Another idea is for you to get a list of all the classmate's parent email addresses from the school (parent directory from PTA etc) and send out an email about setting up a playdate in the local park or some such place so that all kids can get to know each other and play with each other before the school term actually starts. Some parents in my child's class did this and we went and spent 2 hours in the park with all the kids in DS's K class and brought some snacks along. The kids got to meet everyone in their class, played with them and ate a snack sitting together on a picnic bunch while the parents introduced themselves to each other. This was a good idea because no one cried or had anxiety attacks on the first day of school (including the parents!). As for how to transition to the classroom learning environment, shy kids have a big problem in that they get assessed below their level - this is usually because teachers ask questions and go by the answers they receive for the initial assessment. This happened a lot in my son's classroom where a few shy girls refused to even formulate answers and speak up. The parents of these girls set up a meeting with the teacher and asked her to reassess their child. You might want to coach your child to speak up and answer the teacher's questions without hesitation. Good luck.