On Fuller House it says that it is a bad word.

The good thing about BA is that if you keep the books in good condition the resell value is very high.

They mentioned the study packets on the show a few times. I would love to see what was in those study packets. :) And I agree. Much less impressive when they are provided with materials to study. And frankly I think it should not be an elimination type show. I think it should be 10-20 or so kids and the one with the overall combined score after many weeks would be winner.

My son was a precocious reader. Started at 2.5 was fluent by 4. He could pick up my college text books and read them. Not understand them necessarily. He was taught whole work method with the assistance of ASL as he was non verbal. He learned to speak as he learned of read. He intuited phonics first by chunks. If I remember correctly suffixes were the first thing he picked up on. It was easy to add an -ed or an -Ing to the end of a word. He would figure out unknown words by looking for the chunks of words he knew within the words. For example he could read scattered because he could read cat, er, ed and s. By 3 he could read unknown words phonetically. We have since done phonics programs with him, but via spelling. He is not a natural speller. So if there was a downfall to learn if to read whole word style this might be it. But it was always my intention to teach phonics through spelling.

I am mixed on Child Genius. I binge watched it on Lifetime Network earlier this week. I think competitions like this have advantages for the children. They can meet peers who they can interact with on a similar level. They also get the chance to know that they aren't always the smartest person around. A rather humbling option for some kids. But.... Once it is out there it is out there. Immortalized as a preteen/child on tv bothers me. Other things I liked were the close relationships that the children have with their parents, in most cases. There are some genuine sweet bonding moments. I loved seeing how the family dynamics were all different and how each family had a different approach. In one case a father was a very involved coach to his daughter. But when she said she wanted to study on her own he respected that and gave her space. You can tell it tormented him. With another child his father took a more holistic approach and they practiced qigong and martial arts to help his son get into the right mindset. Another family relied heavily on their faith in God. There were some very tender moments when children were under pressure or when they were eliminated and you could see how supportive the families were. However I do wish they didn't film the children crying. Sure they get upset. I just felt there should have been more respect for their privacy at that moment. There was a good show of perserence and hard work. The children were proved packets of information in which to study. I think you could see how much the children wanted this. I do wish that they spent more time on the competition itself. They edited that part a lot. I don't like what I have seen of the second season. It is much more exploitive. All the children melting down. One girl who buckled under pressure. It was stomach churning. I stopped watching. Oh and I dislike the term child genius.

This sounds perfect! You can dress that up or down with hair you do her hair and accessories.

I would go with a nice dress, leggings and some nice boots. She is still a girl.

James was asked this the other day and he just said, "well I homeschool so we don't have grades."

Haha. Rubber is still used in Australia. Nothing older about it at all.

Check out the forums at brillkids.com

I just said the same thing this morning to a friend.

With our states K12, class connects are not mandatory unless needed. James likes to go for fun. They are there for the students that are doing that particular work. Or they have remedial ones for the students who need it. Once caveat is that science and history are content subjects and they don't accelerate those. However, for us we choose to just supplement with higher level work. Our k12 does go to 12th grade. And dual enrollment is a popular option.

Yeah. I have heard horror stories. And to be fair we are only 3 weeks in. I have tweaked a lot of the lessons. To learn some simple vocab it is 7 lessons long with a quiz at the end. I have eliminated all the extra practice and instead use the vocab words throughout the week then he passes the quiz. This knocked out about 1/3 of the lessons. The biggest complaint seems to be that there is too much busy work. But it is not all mandatory.... Yet. The moment we start having issues we will go back to homeschooling proper.

As you know, James and Alex are very alike. Socially not there, defiant, stubborn but they love to learn. If I had the funds, which I don't, I would be hiring tutors. Several if need be for several hours a week. Tutors that teach her in a second Or third language might thrill her. Now because we are poor and I didn't want to send James to public school and buying curriculum (that he flies through) has been costing us a lot, I decided to do K12. Now I have heard a LOT of negativity about k12. And I know it gets no respect in the homeschooling world. But after several weeks I have discovered if is a lot better than I anticipated. If is amazingly flexible but it helps keep us on track. And James really likes it. The history component is SoTW. It is a classical program. The labs for science have been good. Not useless experiments that serve no purpose. The use HWT without tears for handwriting..which we did not have to do. The Language Art program is HUGE and pretty amazing. The kodaly based music program is pretty awesome. And I like the art program thus far. The math component has been meh. But we supplement with that. We also skipped Kindergarten and started at 1st grade. He is required by state law to log 5 hours a day or about 25 hours a week. We meet that easily. Hours can be supplementary hours for things not on their lesson plan. What I love best about k12 is that they will place her at her abilities for her core work. James was placed into second grade language arts immediately. He has a full math assessment tomorrow for math placement. K12 in our state also has science fairs and spelling bee.

Your daughter sounds very much like my son. Same age too. We use this book for history. http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-United-States-History/dp/1561896799/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1428719043&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=Complete+us+history It is a very nice spine. We have read it through a few times. We supplement it with shows like. Liberty's Kids and documentaries. And we pick other books to read that cover what we are covering at the time. We also do fun things like wash clothes with a washboard like the may have used in colonial times. And we also visit living museums. We also like the If You ... Series like this one. http://www.amazon.com/If-You-Lived-Colonial-Times/dp/059045160X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428719157&sr=1-1&keywords=If+you+live+in+colonial And we love the Who is...? What is...? Series http://www.amazon.com/Who-Was-Harriet-Beecher-Stowe/dp/0448483017/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428719201&sr=1-9&keywords=who+is+series Our next read through will be this book. http://www.amazon.com/Childrens-Encyclopedia-American-Smithsonian-Institution/dp/0789483300/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428719266&sr=1-1&keywords=smithsonian+american+history We have also read books from Dear America series, as well as American Girls. We love Little House Books. And we have a great picture book that helped to illustrate the passage of time. http://www.amazon.com/House-Maple-Street-Bonnie-Pryor/dp/0688120318/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428719456&sr=1-1&keywords=Maple+street+Bonnie We also love to read American Tall tales like those of Johnny Appleseed, Casey Jones. We also focused on other areas of Americana. Landmarks, geography, some presidents (will do that more in depth later), civics, economy. Age 4-5 was intended to be his Americana year, then 5-6 we were intending to start SotW. Incidentally we have decided to do Americana alongside SotW and keep going because there is so much just on the basic level to cover. We have barely touched on traditional folk songs. What Your Grader Needs to Know is also a great series that covers a lot of American history too.

Reads pretty much anything he wants, teaches me about Space time continuum and the purpose of RNA, but greets people like he is a puppy jumping up and down and panting in front of them. Not because he is pretending to be a puppy, but because social he just doesn't do well. Not to mention, the fights we get in about putting on fresh underwear. Or he knows all about losing teeth, how they dissolve, how new ones grow in. All their names and purposes. But he is terrified of losing his first tooth. It is so loose I could pluck it from his mouth.

Who decided the "right" age to teach reading? Why is it 6 or 7. Why not 3? I see the words "developmentally appropriate" pushed around a lot. I just wonder who it was that decided what was developmentally appropriate for the majority of children. My sister teaches Prep (4-5 year olds) and doesn't seem to have an issue teaching the majority of her class emergent reading. When my "kids" started Kindergarten (5-6) all four of them were in 3 separate classes where all the children were emergent readers within a few months. And according to their teachers this is pretty standard. As for countries that introduce reading at 6 or 7. What isn't mentioned is that the aren't learning to read English, which as a written language has its own issues. Learning to read or decode orthonogrphy that is purely phonic is much easier than English. What is also seldom mentioned is that these children that aren't taught formal reading until 6 and 7 may have been doing other things informally before learning to read. They may have had a great phonemic awareness and rhyming background from a nursery care program that was play based.

A few decades ago when I was in Preschool (kinder) at 4-5 we had an area outside with hammers, nail, screws, screw drivers and an assortment of things. Fabric, bottle caps, styrofoam, cardboard. The teachers let us loose to make whatever we wanted. I used to love nailing fabric and bottle caps to wooden blocks to make music makers. So I don't see tools being an issue with little ones.

Exactly. Why are parents doing their children's homework? Traditionally home work was sent home for the child as extra practice for stuff they had already learnt in class. It is not something new. A teacher can then look at the homework and see what the child is struggling with and help them. But if a child is returning perfectly done homework to school with the parents help the teachers can assume that the child understands the material.

We do CLE (very traditional, tense spiral) paired with the more concept orientated MUS. I think it is a great combination.

Yes. Wee Folk Art.

Yes. Wee Folk Art. http://weefolkart.com/content/homeschool-companion-guides

Awww

I use a cheaper alternative. I got a Carl Brands spiral binder set for less than $20 on amazon. It gets used a lot. I make flip index card books, and I bind so much of his school work with it.

Ball and stick is just a style of writing. Compared to Italic http://writealetter.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/scan00041-e1295145421913-1024x401.jpg