We do as well. We use Feingold and are also gluten free/casein free/soy free. We are adding a variety of supplements. Feingold made the biggest impact in his behavior and focus; gluten/casein/soy free means his stomach doesn't ache anymore, he's growing and putting on weight, and the rash on his chest and arms is gone. One place we got information from recently was Dianne Craft. She has a two CD set (about 2.5 hours) talk/interview called "The Biology of Behavior" that was interesting.

That's awesome!! I remember when my brother finally "got" reading and he was 12 yo at the time. It just took the right book. He's a voracious reader now (at age 35). Just curious if he's more of an auditory learner? Trying to figure out if DS7, who loves hearing books, will ever love reading them to himself! LOL

Good news! I'm waiting for it to finalize my plans for next year. :-)

Thanks Diana! It seems that these deals are definitely too good to be true. :P

Thanks Donelda!! Being so bad that your DH walked out is a terrible sign. I have a gut feeling that this isn't a good idea but it helps hearing what others have experienced. Our plan was to send DH as the guinea pig. LOL That's what we did with our current dentist, only it was me. It's his turn. :-) I haven't actually walked in or even looked in the windows yet but planned to this week when I was next at King Soopers! Thanks for taking the time to write! It helps!

That does help, Diane! Thank you! DH and I have had the occasional cavity. Our youngest has terrible teeth, however! We really like our dentist a lot; he's competent and the office staff is really positive! We're just struggling to make our budget work. Thanks for the feedback! It helped!

I know it's a long shot but anyone use this chain of "independently owned" dental practices? I'd love an opinion on the quality of the service provided if you have. We have no dental insurance and while our current dentist seems competent he's also on the expensive side. (He was recommended to us by friends who have fabulous insurance.) In our quest to have our teeth cleaned at a lower cost we noticed Comfort Dental next to our grocery store and they have a family "plan". The plan would save us about $1,200 a year -- and more if we have any cavities or broken teeth and so forth since their rate is much lower than we've been paying. BUT, our big question is the quality of the dental work. Is it any good? Or will we regret cutting our costs in this manner??

To answer some of your other questions: I'm not burned out! DS loves school, especially Latin. A very brief story from just the other day: he decided to make a paper flag and did the work for a good 45 minutes in a way I would never have done it. I commented about that to him and he just grinned a big grin and said to me, "That's because I'm homeschooled and you weren't! I have time to think!" We started Prima Latina in 1st grade since he has a real bent for language and has a huge vocabulary. We'll continue with Memoria Press and Latina Christiana I and II. Like Mama Lynx we focus on the basics. Since DS is in 1st grade this has been math, reading, handwriting (cursive), memory work (bible verses and poetry), and Latin. Oh, and a TON of read alouds! We're easily done with that core in an hour right now (not including books read aloud of course). We do religion with Papa in the evenings which I guess you could count as school but it's just part of our life; we'd do it no matter where the boys were being educated. We do other "subjects", but they are more relaxed. History is usually once a week; we've done more American history this year and are reading through SOTW volume 1 at a relaxed pace for the summer. Science has been very informal reading from the library but we've read heaps of books since DS loves learning about all things science. We do other things that I guess could be counted as school like listen to a wide variety of music and learn about various composers; look at art books; do nature study informally; lots of PE with bike rides and hiking; and tons of free time with pencil and paper, art supplies, piles of books, games, blocks, etc. But that feels more like life than school. ;-) We're obviously at the beginning of this process so who knows how it will go, but so far we're pleased with what our son is learning.

We have the CD and have loved it! We also have the Pavarotti "Opera Made Easy" CD that the boys love to listen to (although it's not in English). DS7 especially *adores* opera.

Thanks!!

Perfect!! DH has been talking about this a LOT. LOL Now to inspire him...

Looks fine to me but I'm not sure what's really in LLFVY and would that be overlap with OPGTR? We did something similar this year. Science was more free form with lots of library books and lots of time outside. We did Latin not Spanish. We did read two of the Holling C. Holling books but we did it more casually without the BF Geography. What about PE? Religion?

I have SO BEEN there!! I finally got over the guilt of it all but now I'm just angry at our pediatrician who ignored all my concerns until the point of major problems with our youngest son -- and then yelled at me in front of both our boys blaming me for it AND told the specialist we were finally referred to that nothing was actually wrong. Thankfully the specialist did his due diligence and found out that something was seriously wrong (in this case, a nasty bacteria infection in his gut) and he is being treated for it right now. And now that it's being treated, he's a different child. Complete personality change for the good. We are in the process of changing to a wonderful nurse practitioner instead of our pediatrician as she's been awesome and supportive with treating us, the parents, and is very good at listening to the whole story! It sure sounds like you're getting more of the story for your son now and that's the big thing!! So glad to hear it!

Thanks Rhesa! There are definitely some on your list we haven't seen yet!!

It sounds like he loved Prima Latina so why not continue with Latina Christiana I? It's a similar format and it's a good fit for how he learns so it would seem to make sense to continue the series. Just curious as we're about to finish Prima Latina ourselves and are sticking with LCI since PL has been a good fit for us and we've learned a ton. Love the uncluttered pages as well! (I have my eye on Cambridge for down the line... a number of years yet.)

Great! I'll be glad to hear of the title and see if our library has it as well.

We loved this book! We read it just a few months ago. He was entranced. In fact, we read it two or three times in one week he enjoyed it that much. (Hopefully obvious that it was while the little guy was having his nap... he's still in the nursery tale stage, thankfully.)

If you figure it out, let me know! I'm guessing you're referring to "Hitty, Her First Hundred Years" right? (Which we read last summer and enjoyed a bunch.)

Pinkney is wonderful. Our three year old loves his version of the Little Red Hen which we just had again for about 6 weeks before forced to return it finally to the library. It was read daily of course! But I just had to comment that somebody else likes Teddy Robinson! Sometimes I begin to think we're the only ones who have heard of him. Love the hot water bottle story especially.

Wow, thanks for all the great ideas! We've read many (but not all!) of the books suggested: Jean Fritz, McCloskey, FIAR books, Patricia Polacco, Holling, D'Aulaire, etc. But we'll definitely look into Miriam Greenblatt and those books illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger! I hadn't thought of looking for illustrated versions of classic books, either, although the Wizard of Oz version we read had tons of pictures and was loads of fun with them in there.

My eldest is losing interest in most shorter picture books which of course makes sense with his age and the fact that we've read a slew of chapter books over the last few years. But he has enjoyed some of those longer fairy tale books and things like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (adapted slightly) in picture book format. I'm hoping to extend our picture book days just a bit more, even if the books take 20-30 minutes to read each. I can't find a list of similar length books but it's sort of a vague search term on Google. Does anyone have a website that lists longer picture books?

It makes sense since it's been a few years since the last one. I'll be glad to read it! That's a ways out though isn't it?!

That looks great for my eldest son! Thanks for sharing. :-)

DS loves both Singapore and Rod & Staff. Talk about different programs! He loves the clean look on R&S and knowing what to expect; we've used it as our only program and now as a supplement. It does have too much writing for him so I write the answers. We tried doing all the problems since he wasn't always "getting it" but I changed our approach so as not to overwhelm him and spaced it out more since there is a lot of built-in review and that has worked better. He adores Singapore since we play games and do the textbook orally. It makes a ton of sense to him but I think it's partly because we grounded him with R&S first. That, and he needed to catch up developmentally. He wasn't ready for a lot of math at age 6 but had a big leap in thinking at age 7. We'll do both programs with him for the remainder of elementary school and then see.

Nice and easy!! I love it!