This struck me probably harder than it should have because I was accused over and over when my daughter was very young of "pushing" her academically for my own goals when I asked a question about how to best teach her "x" that she wanted to learn. I was just trying to keep her thirst satisfied. Some kids can be *very* determined about this sort of thing! Being able to follow her pace--fast, slow, alternating between both, or even backing up occasionally--is a large part of why we homeschooled. Now I will admit to eventually having to do a bit of pushing in math later on, as she otherwise would have been quite happy to stop with addition and subtraction. ;) I think that artificially blocking and frustrating a child's progress in learning to read by withholding instruction solely because of age when he desperately wants more is likely to do as much harm as artificially pushing him to try to learn too early for him. Neither respects the child's pacing. I agree that you have to know your own child, and I don't know the OP's child. In our case, I wasn't surprised at my daughter's early passionate interest in reading as both my husband and my father taught themselves to read by 4 and I don't remember a time when I didn't know how to read. That's why I said,"Teach the child in front of you," whether he's ready to try to progress to the next step in reading now or 3 years from now, which is some wisdom I learned on these boards. Follow his lead and level of interest in both content and pacing, especially at this age, and it will work out. In case it was misinterpreted, I didn't share info on my daughter's academic success to try to push early reading as a goal for everyone but rather to say that mixing phonics with some sight words to ease frustration did not negatively impact her long-term ability to read or spell at all.

My daughter was similar at that age. I tried 100EZ Lessons, as it was recommended and my friend had great success with it, but she quickly began crying every time she saw the book so that was out. She still wanted desperately to learn to read, so I tried Phonics Pathways (another WTM recommendation at the time), same result, but she still badgered me to teach her to read. She had always enjoyed drawing, and I stumbled across Explode the Code which incorporated writing and was a hit. What finally worked for us was a combination of things and doing it at her pace, which could mean 5 minutes one day, 30 minutes another, or nothing at all for days or weeks at a time. We stopped lessons if things were showing signs of getting frustrating, and continued to read, read, read to her, listen to audiobooks, etc. You've had a number of good suggestions for games for blending, so I'll mention our overall path. We used ETC for the phonics basis along with Bob Books but she quickly became frustrated that it wasn't "real reading" because it didn't sound like the stories she was used to having read to her (very artificial sentence structure). At that point, I added in Dolch sight word cards as a game, so that we could incorporate words like the, said, from, mother, father, her name, names of pets and friends, etc without waiting until they came up in her phonics lessons, which then gave her access to more natural sounding writing. To my mind, this approach is very different than the "whole language" method that was popular at one time. This doesn't mean we never addressed these in phonics lessons as they came up, but I didn't see any point in needlessly frustrating her in the learning process for the sake of staying only pure phonics. At this point, we added in leveled readers from the library. As she progressed, Dick and Jane books from the library gave her the confidence to read aloud to someone other than me, which was a big breakthrough. For fun, I would write a sentence and she got to illustrate it if she could read it. I also took a "magnetic" photo album from the thrift store and used it as a tool and storybook, where we could change the pictures and words at will. I wrote little short stories for her using the names of our friends and pets, which she enjoyed. Once she was reading well, we continued with ETC for phonics-based spelling until we completed the series. She is now almost 17, a voracious reader, has consistently scored at the top in English and reading on her yearly assessments (34 and 35 out of 36 on the ACT college entrance exam), and has has earned a regional honorable mention in the high school Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competition. She's aced her college writing classes in dual enrollment at the community college, so mixing in some sight words with phonics did not hamper her reading or spelling. My godson, who was initially taught using 100 EZ lessons, is a writer and majored in English in college, so that works, too. I don't think there are many absolutes in education. :) Trust your gut, be willing to mix things up a bit, teach the kid in front of you rather than the stage he "should" be at, and take things at your child's pace and interest. Good luck!

I grew up eating it well-done, but my college roommate (who likes hers rare) got me to move it down to medium-well. :)

We did a rental through Amazon for history last semester and will do it again for her history class in the fall. I'm hoping to find the English one used, as it's a Norton anthology. It's the shorter one for Am lit, 8th edition and we already have the full 7th ed., so we may wait until she gets the syllabus to see if she needs it for the few stories that aren't either in both or readily available online for free. If not, rentals are available. I think we're out of luck on the two classes this semester that require codes, unfortunately. For those we'll definitely wait until the first day of class, as sometimes evidently profs have given out discount codes on the first day.

My daughter is dually enrolled here at the community college. They offer 3- or 4-credit courses in different formats: 16 weeks, 12 weeks, 8 weeks, and 4 weeks. All have the same requirements and the same credit in each of the formats, it's the amount of time per week that varies.The 4 week course was online and required what would have been a month's worth of work each week in the 16 week class rather than have less work. She ended up dropping that one due to the concentration of work, even though it was the only summer class she planned on. As to credits, I'm giving my daughter one high school credit per 3-4 hour college course. If there is a separate one-credit lab course (for science, foreign language, etc), I'm giving .25 high school credits for those since they will be reported separately on the community college transcript. I've seen others do .33, but this is easier for me to do a GPA.

The white gravy would probably be sausage gravy (milk, flour, salt, pepper, breakfast sausage). There's also red-eye gravy, a very thin reddish-brown watery gravy with no thickener (more the consistency of au jus) that goes with country ham---made by mixing the pan drippings from frying country ham and some coffee. Oddly, that is one of the two ways in which I find coffee marginally acceptable (the other being in something like dark chocolate cake). Country ham isn't my favorite, as it's too salty, but red-eye gravy can be good on grits with butter and cheese. We usually do rice with butter, salt, and pepper. If a meat dish has gravy with it, I'll put it on the rice or mashed potatoes. While we do things like curry, red beans, stir-fry, and other saucy dishes on rice, I would never have thought of eating rice with chicken and dumplings, as the dumplings are the starch/grain. To me, that sounds like eating spaghetti and meatballs over rice. :)

Go to Google and put in "xena warrior princess costume cheap," hit the shopping tab, then sort on price low to high and see if there's anything that might be workable. This list of forgotten Disney "princesses" might be helpful. http://screencrush.com/forgotten-disney-princesses/ Megara's costume from Hercules would be easy to do if you did a real chiton. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/144818944239954282/ A link for ideas and tutorials http://cosplaying-on-a-budget.tumblr.com/post/70664208831/this-costume-is-part-of-big-family-cosplay Pocohantas? Kida from Atlantis looks pretty simple--blue bandeau bikini top and a blue sarong.

Is gravy on rice really that unusual in other areas of the country? I had no idea. I agree with you on the minute-type rice, btw. We make brown rice, but long-grain and basmati are also good.

I do a variation of this by adding cooked pasta and broccoli, dropping the cracker crumb topping, and dusting the top of the casserole with the poppy seeds. It's very popular around here as well. My teen's favorite quick go-to is a frozen burrito. They could be made up and frozen on parchment paper on a cookie sheet then put into a big freezer bag once frozen, so they are easy to pull out one or two at a time. Sometimes she tops it with salsa and cheese, but sometimes just eats it plain.

Happy birthday!

I'm with you in hating the taste and smell of beer. I did tolerate a little in a shandy once in England, but it still wasn't worth it. I have enjoyed the taste of some wines and mixed drinks, though I don't drink anymore. My alcohol tolerance is so low it's not worth it.

Nope, that's the proper way to cook them. :)

My grandfather used to put orange juice on his cereal.

I'm with you on the grape juice and will add grape flavoring to the list (though I like real grapes). My sister used to torment me by chewing grape Bubble Yum and chasing me around to breathe on me. The first time I encountered grape juice in communion (Baptist church), it was...interesting. It didn't help that the minister was miked, it was a church where everyone consumed at one time, and the bread was melba toast. Sounded like we were in a bowl of Rice Krispies. The church I grew up in (Presbyterian) used homemade wine, which tasted rather reminiscent of raisins soaked in kerosene, but it wasn't grape juice! The port the Episcopal church used was much more palatable.

Fried, stewed, pickled, raw with dip, in soup, with tomatoes, curried, homemade, in a restaurant, etc, etc. Okra grows really well around here and I tried to find *some* way to eat it when we got it in our CSA box. I managed it with eggplant (another non-favorite), but I can't make okra be food. I can force myself to tolerate a single well-breaded deep-fried pretty thin piece used to hold a bunch of ketchup on the fork, but that's it and it's still fairly nasty. At that point, it ceases to be a vegetable, so I might as well have a (well-cooked ;) French-style) green bean.

LOL, I grew up in NC and have honestly never been offered either chitlins or squirrel in my 50+ years, though I'm sure I have family and friends who eat or have eaten both. I'll take vinegar-based over tomato or mustard bbq sauce any day. ;) I'm with you on okra, greens, boiled peanuts, black-eyed peas, butter beans, and catfish. I'd rather have country-style steak than chicken-fried, which was never a big thing in our area, and tend to limit my fish to something really mild like flounder. As to gravy, I was expecting to see sausage gravy or red-eye gravy.

The biggest offender is undercooked frozen green beans. Now, I grew up in the South on canned Blue Lake green beans, so my "undercooked" is probably different than many, but these squeak on my teeth when I eat them. There was also a particular type of Italian salad dressing that made the salad squeak, but I don't remember the exact brand (it was pouch at a fast food restaurant). Crunch is great, squeak is not.

Also, any food that squeaks when you eat it.

Coffee cooked greens other than spinach okra black-eyed peas (and boiled peanuts, which taste the same to me) brussell sprouts oysters in any form

If you go with a silver sandal, look online for a silver mesh or net shawl and see if that would work.

The BBC website might have some resources.

Also a folding wheeled crate http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/987304/Office-Depot-Brand-Mobile-Folding-Cart/ I frequently see them on sale for around $15, IIRC. I've used it to haul books and things back and forth to the library and co-op, take to used curriculum sales, etc. A wheeled cooler was also indispensable for getting lunch, drinks, and snacks to a weekly park day where we'd stay for hours.

When my daughter was young, we got a lot of use out of a lap-sized double-sided white board, blank on one side and with a grid permanently drawn on the other. It came in very handy for math. We used it to help line up numbers in equations, illustrate fractions, figure area, all sorts of things. I just passed ours on to my niece who will be starting with her young son soon. I also liked the Right Start abacus for counting and things because it kept all the little pieces together. My daughter said the box of geometric solids was very helpful for her.

duplicate

I think the PSAT was our biggest trigger.