I succumbed to the shakti mat in a recent thread. So far so good. I *think* it actually is good, but it could be the placebo effect. A lot of purchases have been influenced by the board, but the one that stands out to me is Staples' Better Binders. They are truly vastly better than other binders. More "better" than I could have imagined. :)

Have you read anything about visual spatial talents? Linda Silverman has a book - Upside Down Brilliance - that focuses on them. For the math, is it that she doesn't understand that 7 is 7, or that she doesn't memorize the addition tables? So she always has to do the 3+4 to get there?

Well, I guess now it is time to BE Santa. You could be very intentional about helping your 10yo spread the spirit of Christmas through generosity and secret giving. Magic retained, Santa lives on.

IKEA is supposed to be coming out with dividing walls - I recently saw an article. Maybe you can find more on that. Toilets aren't too expensive - somewhere like ReStore (Habitat for Humanity's store) could work for finding a good deal too. They aren't hard to install either. Just a nasty ring thing and you're golden. Basement does seem best. You can find nice, relatively inexpensive space heaters if it is cold down there.

Being left handed isn't that different. The issue is the smudging. Get a pen that doesn't smudge, or have him practice paying attention to how he has his hand on the paper to avoid it. Writing from top to bottom is the faster, more efficient way to do it - handedness doesn't matter. Writing slowly is an issue for anyone L or R handed - I am not sure how to solve that, but I don't think it is dependent upon which hand is used at all. Personally, I hate leftie tools. They are generally built in an inferior manner, and when you usually use a tool that is designed one way, then try an opposite one, it is awkward. I'd feel about as good using leftie things as you would.

Re is a prefix and a stem. Stems don't have to be at the beginning of words, prefixes do. Stem is a more generic term for "word part that comes from a root in some language somewhere" and prefix is for "word part at the beginning of a word that comes from some language somewhere". In my mental lexicon, anyways.

For the ADAM, you need to make sure the kids don't answer "I don't know" - that will cut the test short and will not give assessment of as many areas of learning. One of my children did that the first time they took it. The test is very explicit about that being an option and saying the kids should use it, but they really shouldn't. :)

Personally, I'd pull out manipulatives and let him use them while doing the mental math. When he doesn't need them anymore he will probably stop using them. And I'd play games. Many board games are GREAT for practice of the basics of grouping in your mind to add/subtract more quickly.

It is possible that you are expecting too much mental math and not encouraging the use of tangible things, but you can test that easily and see (by giving hands on things to use during the "mental math" part of your work). FWIW, it doesn't sound to me like you have a math problem - you have an attitude problem If it really is that he needs to practice being wrong and having to work hard, think how great it is that he can learn this lesson so young! I'd find all sorts of ways to help him see struggle as a chance to actually learn something. I'd talk about how you look for opportunities to learn - and learning happens when you don't know it already. I'd find an instrument - they are great for this kind of learning. I'd also keep math early in the day (at a time when he is fresh).

No, this does not sound like a learning disability. It sounds like your DD is bright and thinks faster than she writes or speaks. Since she can see her errors, giving her the time to edit her work would be an appropriate approach.

Yes. I should have realized the worlds didn't save somewhere in the "cloud," but somehow I hadn't realized before the catastrophe. I understand the PC version is better too - and I should do the same (now). I was just saying because the pocket edition has been a good way for my kids to play it a bit and learn about it. On the Kindle the time is automatically limited and it is easy to restrict, unlike a full PC. I liked that as a way to start.

Kindle Fire of some sort. Yes, you buy the game and it is shared in your amazon cloud with all your amazon devices. You can buy the pocket version of Minecraft for less than $10. Unfortunately, if something goes wrong with your kindle and it does a hard reboot (factory reset), your kids lose all the worlds they have built. Ask me how I know that...

For affording it, we got it through an umbrella school - it was something in the special education department. It used our curricular funding. Perhaps your school would do something similar?

I'll PM you. :)

Another idea - have you heard about Fast ForWord? It is an online program that works with reading and phonological processing/discrimination. It made a very big, positive difference for one of my kids. You can try the demo tab on the page and see if it fits the issues you have. I know when I looked at it (after our psych recommended it) I could see that it addressed the areas we were having the most struggle with. You don't have to do the "free demo" thing at the bottom to see what it is like, you can see many of the things they do in that tab. http://www.scilearn.com/products/fast-forword/language-series/language I feel like a commercial but it has been SO helpful for us. I could notice a big change after a month or two, and that improvement has remained and grew through the year. It was like it made it possible for my child to hear words in a way and at a speed that is more similar to how people generally hear.

I don't know about the Kid specific Fire, but I do like the Kindle Fire for our kids. It has become a gaming device, though. YOU can control what content is on there in regular freetime (although I am not sure this is the case if you subscribe to their Freetime). So, if you want it just for certain things, only put those things on there. It has built in time limits (that you control) internet access (which you can easily block). FWIW, my older Kindle Fire is perfect for controlling content for the kids, my newer one isn't as perfect for that, but perhaps I am missing something and I could move where the password is needed. For now, I need it to exit their freetime but to also get onto the device, so I always have to enter it and they can't get on without the code. On the older one, it is just to get out of their freetime, so they can use and stop using it at will.

When I was on a tofu kick for a while I would cut it into bite sized cubes, marinate it in a stir fry sauce I liked, then fry it up and put it in a stir fry with rice.

We have the "Good Pictures, Bad Pictures" book too, but it has a cover that matches this video, not what I saw on the amazon link. This little video explains about the book. It doesn't link through, you have to watch it on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT_UZ3WC9ZM I don't think there is a way to keep kids totally away from bad content online, but it is a bit like all aspects of parenting - there are risks and rewards to what we allow into our childrens' lives. We have kept access fairly restricted still (but my kids are young), but we have started reading the books and talking about it because one of my kids will randomly google things and wants to play on more websites. I felt I needed to explain why we have not done that so far and give them some tools for avoiding porn (and knowing what it was) before it became a problem (and my kids have been interested and receptive to the information - time will tell if it was an effective approach). So now that they have been equipped in this way, they have a little more freedom. It is still in a public room. I don't know what one would do with an older child who is driven to see things that hurt them. It would be very hard and I think I'd try to get counselling for the child if basic parenting efforts did not solve the problem.

Do you use graph paper for writing out the work? That can help a lot with lining things up properly and helping keep math organized. Singapore is great, as is Beast Academy. Singapore is very straightforward, Beast Academy is very incremental but has it all built into a problem solving format, so there is a lot of thinking that has to go into solving the problems, instead of "plug and chug". One of my kids does well with Singapore, the other with Beast.

Has your DD read any books by Grace Lin? One we have especially enjoyed is a magically fantastic folk/fairy tale series that starts with Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.

The head is too round, and I feel like he should have some hair perpendicular to his scalp... BUT, one could likely de-stuff the head a little and he'd be fine. I'm pondering this. Kingie should be rubber, right? But he looks perfect.

The crows around here were acting oddly as well. I see large groups every once in a while, but they were doing all sorts of odd looping in the air with one another, but not going anywhere. One might think they were eating bugs or something, but they were high up and low down, and it seemed more like they were... playing?

Yes, that argument is a very big deal (because of how it devolved, not because of how it started). I am not sure what I would do. Do you have any coverage for family counselling? If anything even remotely similar happened again, there would be severe, likely permanent consequences regarding our family structure. Or at least I like to think there would be, but life is complicated and I can understand how people end up in really crappy places.

Yes, if the colors matched Cuisinaire Rods, I'd buy this in a heartbeat.

nm