I used to be a forum mod, and half my job was removing this stuff. I am sure some of us night owls would volunteer to do it. Other forums I have been on that experienced this problem put the kaibosh on late night registrations, or made your first three posts on a forum be approved by a mod before they would appear to the general public.

I started going gray at 23 years old, when I was pregnant with my daughter. (I asked my midwife if that would go away once I wasn't pregnant anymore and she laughed and laughed. :) ) I color my hair once in a while, with semi-permanent. So yeah, obviously my answer is whenever you want. Personally, I can't wait to be a BIT more gray.Crazy manic panic colors show up AWESOME over gray hairs. :thumbup:

We only did sit-down math and phonics last year. It always took less than an hour. Everything else was from our fun co-op or museums or life. We did add an Egypt unit study in the second semester (she picked the topic.) I was concerned about the state standards too - until I looked them up. DD had hit 90% of the K standards by 3, and she's just your normal, curious, kid. Every time I got worried, I'd just look up the standards again. It always made me feel better. :)

I have no problem parenting kids in that situation. "The equipment is for everyone." "You may not say that to her." "We don't threaten people." Most kids like that are Really! Shocked! When someone actually tells them to cut it out, but I haven't had it go badly yet.

We do a lot of hands-on learning, but I totally fail at nature stuff. In November, we'll be camping at a state park that has a lot of salt marsh, coastal wetland area. (Galveston State Park if anyone has been there.) Does anyone know of any cool things the kids can do/look for/observe that are unique to that ecosystem? We discovered on our last camping trip that DD likes nature drawing, so we'll do that, but I just remember playing for hours in tidepools off the great lakes when I was a kid and they were so COOL. We don't have anything like that down here.

My kids have grandparents who are really involved and teach her stuff, but I would be really put out and/or upset if my MIL acted like that. My mom was an elem. teacher for 30 years and she notices all kinds of things and has many ideas, but she always runs them by me in a non-pushy, totally helpful way. That's the big difference.

It doesn't actually ever snow here, but the thrift stores have racks of snowsuits and boots. If I needed snow stuff, but only a few times a year, I'd buy from there.

I was going to say prego traditional - ours can be put through a sieve and leave nothing in it. If she says that is chunky, I don't even know... :confused1:

Oh, that stuff some people shake on their carpet before vaccuming. :ack2:

Oh me too! I can't stand "outside" smell! Walking through an elementary school in the afternoon is just horrendous. Which is hilarious because we camp a lot. Kids seem to get it worse than adults. I also hate microfiber towels, some fleeces, and VELVET. Ugh! It makes me shudder. This thread is hilarious. Also, THANKS FOR NOTHING, because we camped this weekend and all I could think of at night was waking up with a roach in my mouth. :ack2:

:lol:

The ones in a bag from the store. It's a thing. The only other people I've met who know it makes a sound are ones similarly skeeved. The cottonball issues are googleable.

Cotton balls and/or cornstarch. I can't stand the way they feel or sound. Yes, they make a sound.

I'm not certain it's what soror is referring to, but all her periscopes are archived. If you google "katch julie bogart" it's the first result.

I'm subbing. You mentioned this in another thread and I thought it was very interesting. If DD continues working a year above her grade, this is something I'd think about. I'd probably let my kid define the goals for the time. Unschool would top the list. Travel really would be optimal, but the money would have to be available.

Thank you! I edited the title. Being misunderstood, or thinking I'm misunderstood, bothers me way more than it should for some reason. I appreciate you posts. :)

Oh wow. I might need to join that community of hers...

I think people are reading something into my post that isn't there? I am not upset or expecting anything out of ETC (except teaching her to read, which it did.) I just want to know what to do next for a child who is not picking up spelling at all and is not auditory. I appreciate all the curriculum advice. :)

Just to clarify, it's not that she can't spell all the words she is able to read - it's that she can't spell almost any words she is able to read. Nothing past CVC is likely to be right. And I also want to put out the disclaimer, that I haven't made an issue of this in any way. I really want her to love to write (because I do) and I feel like making spelling an issue is a fast track to making her hate writing. She just wrote a (page long!) story yesterday, and I was kind of shocked by the amount of misspelling. She's picking up grammar and punctuation really well though and even used a possessive apostrophe. :) And all her words are spelled phonetically...just not correctly. It's not that I'm particularly worried. It's just that given that she's not taking to it easily, I want to do my best to make sure our next step is the right one for her. I can get my hands on AAS at the local homeschool store, but I doubt they have Spelling You See and I'd like to look at it. Hmm...

She would not be able to do many of the spelling sections beyond short vowels and long vowels with silent e. I let her look up the words she can't spell in hopes that that will help it stick.

I'm watching it right now. It's really good. I thought periscope only did portrait,

Thanks guys. I'm looking into both of those now. In my house growing up, spelling was the source of every homework meltdown yelling fight with my mom. She just did not believe someone so "smart" could be SO bad at spelling if any effort was put forth at all. It clicked sometime in late junior high and I grew up to be a copy editor. So... We'll just keep plugging away, but I'm going to try to be zen about it. :closedeyes: I honestly think reading, reading, reading was probably what did it. My nose was always in a book. I know that's what made me so good at grammar.

We'll finish book 8 of the Explode the Code series by Christmas. This has been a good curriculum for her (though I am over it at this point! Lol!) and got her reading. She is obviously absorbing the lessons somewhat because her decoding and reading continue to improve at a good rate. She likes it OK to a lot, depending on the exercise. She seems to be reading at an early second grade level. But she can't spell for beans. Words that she can read very easily, she can not spell when asked. In a writing exercise today, I swear she misspelled nearly every word - including things like "her." Do I continue in phonics or go to a phonics-based spelling? Any recommendations on that? I think a decent part of her spelling problems come from the fact that she is not auditory at all. She literally can not hear the minor differences between many of the vowel sounds. The rest is lack of knowledge of trickier grammar rules - c vs. k vs. ck - j vs. g. She can pick the correct spelling if it's multiple choice, but she can't pull it out of her head.

We love Children's place here, and they're some of the only clothes I'll routinely buy new, because of the aforementioned sales, but I wanted to mention something that might help someone. I went in last week and bought $100 of clothes for my two year old. My DD liked a skirt outfit, but it was full price and I thought I had seen it on sale on the website. So I went home, loaded up my cart with each exact thing I had bought in store, plus her adorable outfit and three pairs of leggings. I googled and got a coupon code and ordered the whole cart for $85....... I returned my previous purchase to the store the next day. I need to start doing this whenever I spend a lot in a store. Stores have better clearance prices, but the websites seem to have better regular sales. And you can usually stack them with a coupon code.

I typically buy used clothes for kids whenever I can, so I wouldn't pay retail, but Janie and Jack is like magic. They weave it with some fantastical cloth that fits perfectly through two sizes and it still looks brand new when the child is done with it. Embellishments still look perfect after being washed a million times. It's just nice stuff. When I see it at consignment I scoop it up even if it costs more, and I've started specifically searching for it on Ebay for B. I have had a few Coach purses and even though I used them daily and totally abuse them, they look brand new after years and years. And there's a lifetime warranty. My friend bought one and abused it to the point that the straps were coming off 2 years later and they replaced it with a brand new one for her.