I wouldn't eat it, just becase tofu is cheap enough and food poisoning is so awful!

My kids all enjoyed "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" and "Superfudge" and that whole series by Judy Blume. It was the first chapter book that held my son's attention!

I remember being frustrated when my oldest knew all the letter sounds but could not put them together to sound out words. At some point it just clicked for her, and it worked. My youngest is now kindergarten age, and we're almost finished with the letters and sounds at the start of OPGTR. I'm fairly sure that we'll have to take a break for awhile once we finish the letters. I don't think he'll be able to sound out words yet. I plan to play with phonics games and wait until he's a bit older. But who knows? Maybe he'll surprise me and be able to do it!

My dd was getting them pretty frequently. I finally put her on cranberry supplements and stopped letting her take baths (showers only!). She hasn't had problems with them since then. I'd second what everyone else said about seeing the doctor before it migrates into your kidneys, but once you get rid of it, try the cranberry. I had a doctor telling me that cranberry "only helps with the pain" of a UTI but I know that's not true. I took multiple rounds of antibiotics for a UTI while I was pregnant, and I could never get rid of it until I finally took cranberry pills.

If you think you might have them, you might want to see a doctor right away. When I got them last year, I went to the Urgent Care right away because they can prescribe an antiviral, but you need to start taking it pretty early. (I think in the first 48 hours.)

I'm having the same problem. I'm assuming it's just temporary... I hope!

My second dd also started to hate OPG. I love it, though. I looked at all kinds of other programs. I bought Phonics Pathways and decided I really like OPG better, so I returned it. I started to look at a lesson in OPG the night before and type up the words. Sometimes I spell them out on the magnet board for my dd to read. Sometimes I write them on a piece of paper. Sometimes she reads them directly from the computer screen and deletes them as she goes (a current favorite). I usually split the lesson up into two days. This has been working well for us, and she doesn't hate it anymore! I'm sure if I pulled out the book and asked her to read from it again, she would throw a fit though! She just doesn't know it's the same program.

I have "All Things Fun & Fascinating" and it looks really good. The next time around, I'll probably have my 3rd grader use it, in addition to WWE. (Not that that helps you save time!) I find the IEW materials to be very easy to use, though. They spell out exactly what the student should be doing.

We're using IEW's Student Writing Intensive B (SWI B) for my 5th grader this year. The DVD's are great, my daughter loves to watch them, and so far we are really enjoying it.

We love them too. My dd6 and dd9 both really like to play them. Even my almost 4 yo ds can play one of them with us (Money War). I find that if I take a few minutes the night before to read the directions for the game and figure it out, it's not too bad. Sometimes it takes a few minutes to "click", and I don't want to try to figure it out while my child is waiting to play!

My 5th grader is doing SWI B this year, and we also love the DVDs. She really looks forward to watching them, and writing is getting *done* now!

We wanted to do more work with fractions and decimals. I *loved* how they were introduced in Right Start, but wanted more. (We've also worked partway throuh Life of Fred Fractions.) Also, at some point my daughter will probably be taking math at our charter school, so I wanted to use a program this year that was following the CA Standards more closely than RS Geometry would have.

I can't get on the Right Start webpage right now, but I'm pretty sure that Level G (Geometric Approach) is a 2-year program.

My oldest finished Right Start E last year (4th grade) and we switched to Singapore 5A this year. So far it is working out well. I really like the way both programs make you think about math.

I started the Student Writing Intensive B with my 5th grader this year. I love the program! Like you, I always felt sort of overwhelmed by all the information about IEW, so I avoided it. Now I'm so glad we're using it.

We started Singapore 5A (Standards Edition) this year with my 5th grade daughter. We've never used Singapore before. (She used Right Start up to Level E.) It is going well for us so far. I bought the workbook, textbook, and Teacher's Manual (only because there is no HIG yet for 5A Standards edition.) I also bought "A Handbook for Mathematics Teachers in Primary Schools", used, just to be sure I would understand how to explain word problems the way Singapore does. I'm not sure I needed that, though. I really like the program so far, and although it is very challenging, it is going well and my daughter likes it too.

I would love to participate in this! I've seen the e-book you're talking about, and thought about buying it, too. The idea of sending all the activities to you (or anyone else who wants to do it!) seems good to me.

I have really found the tests useful for SOTW. I think I started them with SOTW 3.

I'm using SWI B with my 5th grader this year, and she loves it! Mr. Pudewa is a great teacher, and she loves to watch the DVDs. I'm so glad I finally invested in this program. I resisted spending the money on it for a long time, mostly because I thought it was something I would have to teach and put together lesson plans for. It is all laid out for us, though, and we are getting more writing done than even before! It was well worth the money, and I'll get to use it for my 2 younger kids as well!

We use the Teacher's Guide (because there is not a HIG out yet for the Standards edition level 5), textbook, and workbook. We have to have the Teacher's Guide for the answer key, but I'm so glad we have it. Even though I'm a math person, I use the Teacher's Guide everyday. I run through the lesson with my dd, doing problems on the whiteboard together, that I get out of the Teacher's Guide.

I just bought three rolling carts from Office Depot, too. (Maybe the same ones.) I felt exactly the same. I wanted them all to match, I really liked the look of them, and I felt they would look fine in my dining room (our schoolroom). I bought one for my youngest child, too, because I figured I'd be all set when he was older and doing schoolwork and it would be good to get him used to them now. For now, they'll just contain fun projects to try to keep him busy while I work with his sisters.

We're only at about lesson 80 in OPG and we've just started FLL and WWE. It's going well for us so far. We've hit a wall with OPG and I'm having to use other materials (and to be honest, I forgot that you were "supposed" to wait until later in OPG to start FLL and WWE)!

Thanks so much for the information! Sounds like a good fit for us, and I hadn't even thought of checking the library. Just placed a hold for it!

How does Phonics Pathways differ from OPGTR? We've been using OPGTR and my dd just can not stand it right now. It's so bad that we've just had to do other things. She's happy to do her other school work, but OPGTR bothers her so much that she just can't do it! I've been thinking of trying Phonics Pathways, but I was afraid it would be too much like OPGTR!

I switched my dd from MUS into RS E last year, and it worked well for us. We did all the transistion lessons that you need to do to start at Level E (which I think is all of them!). I wish we had switched earlier, but we switched when I found RS and I'm glad we did. I will add that my favorite part about RS is the games book. I find if I actually schedule a day in the week to *just* play games, they get done a lot more! And both of my dds love the games.