We still have her on ice packs and my daughter is giving her fluids (she is a vet tech).

Took our sweet kitty to the vet today and was told she has pneumonia. Her temp was 107. The vet gave her antibiotics and put her on ice packs to help cool her down. Sent her home and told us to keep an eye on her temp. It went down to 103 earlier, but is now back to 107. The vet said if it doesn't go down, that could be a sign of her kidneys failing. She was also dehydrated because of being outside all day (she is an outside cat) and I didn't know she was sick until about 3:00 this afternoon. Please tell me if you've had a cat survive this ordeal.

I remember worksheets in social studies, but I did have to copy from the book onto notebook paper in math and english class. My kids hate copying from the book, but I do think it makes them put more thought into their work.

I used Phonics Pathways with my daughter when she was a little over 3 yo. If working from the book itself is too much, you can use magnetic letters or a dry erase marker board.

He still had difficulty distinguishing between the short vowel sounds of i and e. It doesn't help that we have Texas accents, lol. But I do the "think to spell" way. He will almost always use the wrong vowel every time.

My 13 yo son has always, always struggled with spelling. I mostly taught him to read with Phonics Pathways, and only used SWR and now AAS for spelling. He is on level 2 AAS step 6. I've done everything as instructed, segmenting sounds, open & closed syllables, finger spelling. Here is how he spelled bonus: bouns. He spelled depend as dpent. He knows what vowels are and every syllable has at least one vowel. He can tell me how many syllables a word has most of the time. When he was younger, he had a difficult time with rhyming, and he didn't become a good reader until about a year ago. He wants to rush through his work, and he doesn't like to listen to me dictate the words SWR style, but he doesn't want to use the AAS tiles either. Any advice on what to do would be greatly appreciated.

To young children. I saw it recommended by Denise Eide on her forum. It is called wordywormreading.com. I could only afford to purchase the My First Phonogram Book at this time ($29.99), but there is a package for $129 & $179. It is cute, colorful, and has songs for each phonogram and its sounds. I plan on using it with a 4 year old.

I've been teaching 2 children besides my own this summer. One is going back to school, and the other child will continue with me. I agree that having a contract is a good idea. I need to make one. It is legal in my state.

I am intrigued by what I have been learning about the Miquon program by watching all the videos recently posted by Rosie (I hope I got her name right). I was wondering if the MUS blocks could be used (since I already owned them) instead of the cuisenaire rods. Are the colors the only difference? Also, thank you Rosie for all the time you've spent making the videos! They are very helpful!!

Thanks for the suggestions. I definitely want to keep the lessons short and fun!

I am planning on using AAR Level Pre-1, Kumon workbooks, lots of read-alouds and fun things like playdough, puzzles, sing-alongs, games, etc. He loves numbers and math. Are there any other suggestions as far as curriculum goes? What are some good math workbooks for 4yo active boys? Thanks. It's been a long time since I've taught one this age. :)

Thanks everyone. Seeing the scope & sequence for Barton's was very helpful. I think we'll stick with AAS since it's mostly spelling that he has a hard time with.

Thank you. It seems like my son will take 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Just when I get excited about his progress, he throws me for a loop.

My son struggles with spelling greatly. His reading has greatly improved. I own AAS 1-4, and he is making slow progress. Before AAS, I wanted to try Barton's with him but couldn't afford it. My question is are these 2 programs similar? If I'm using AAS with him now (just started level 2), wouldn't Barton's be redundant (assuming I could afford to purchase it)? For those who have used or seen both, which is better iyo? Thank you.

I understand, that's why I switched. Some days the teaching process of SWR drove me crazy, but now that I don't have it anymore I miss it. Crazy huh?! But I attribute LOE to helping me understand how SWR works because it is all laid out for me and I don't have to wonder if I'm doing it right or enough. And LOE has an assessment every 5 lessons, which I really appreciate.

http://donpotter.net/education_pages/spelling_books.html

I'm using LOE with my DD and also use FLL 3. We break up the LOE lesson into 2-3 days, and we do FLL lessons 3-4 times a week. It doesn't seem like overkill to me, and my DD doesn't complain. I used to own SWR and used it with all my kids, but I wanted something lined out for me like LOE is, and some days I really miss SWR now that it makes sense for me in how it works. Unfortunately I sold it, but LOE is a great program and it is working great. I plan to go into Webster's Speller with her after we finish LOE. I wanted her to know all the phonograms and spelling rules first. If SWR and FLL combo is working, I wouldn't switch unless you just want something all planned out for you with scripted lessons and worksheets to go along with it.

I recommend Webster's Speller. You could go over the syllabary at the beginning and then move into the tables with 2 syllables accented on the first and so on. Webster's is an excellent resource for multisyllable words, and it's free.

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I will be teaching my niece this summer and she loves singing. I'm off now to check these out!

Looking for some good suggestions of kids' music for kindergarten/1st grade that kids can sing along and dance to; kind of like we sing fun and folk, but songs that have dances made for them. Thanks.

Thank you so much for sharing that information. It was very helpful. I know my son needs the kind of teaching R&S provides, I guess I need to be patient in knowing that more understanding will come eventually. Since I own MUS also, I will continue incorporating teaching with the blocks hoping more seeps into his brain. I know alot of his problem is that he just wants to hurry and finish his lesson so he can do other things. He doesn't want to think about math. Thanks again for the information lotsofpumpkins.:)

I may have confused the two. I could use some suggestions on how to transition to a conceptual program with him. I'm so used to all the repetition R&S provides and I'm not sure if the other programs provide as much.

I recently saw a post where someone listed R&S math as a conceptual math curriculum. I've been teaching with R&S math for my son from levels 1-3 because he needs the repetition it provided. On the other hand, both of my daughters grasp math concepts easily and I use math-u-see with them mostly with some R&S thrown in. Math-u-see did not work for my son when he was younger, hence the switch. But I've been trying to figure out where the conceptual teaching is in R&S. It seems more rote teaching to me. There have been instances where my son will make mistakes because he doesn't seem to know the "whys" of math, he is just following the algorithm, so I will go back and reteach the concept the mus way. I feel some attachment to R&S, but I would like my DC to have a good conceptual knowledge of math that is provided in curricula such as Singapore, Rightstart, Math Mammoth, etc. I'm leery to jump ship completely with him because he literally needs to do the same kind of problems alot of times to get it, but then he has difficulty with word problems and knowing when to add or subtract even though I go o er the key words with him. He rarely can do a word problem on his own. If R&S is conceptual, can someone point out where to find that info. I've looked in the tm's with no luck. Thanks.

There is quite a discussion going on about C-Scope on the texas.teachers.net chatboard. It seems that the teachers absolutely hate it, and no one has anything good to say about it. Here is the link: http://texas.teachers.net/chatboard/posts.html click on All Posts or look at the box to the right and you can see several threads about it like C-scope is going down, give this lady a standing ovation, C-scope and 1st grade teachers, C-Scope cheating???

I have been thinking about purchasing this book for a while. Has anyone read it, and is it worth the $70? How helpful was it to you in understanding Orton Gillingham techniques? Thanks in advance.