Why do we want them to read? A few reasons off the top of my head: 1) To hear great language and sentence structure. 2) To see excellent grammar and spelling. 3) To open one's mind to new ideas and worlds, and to enlarge the imagination. All of these are accomplished when your son hears a good book, then re-reads it himself. I see no harm in it! :)

Yep, I had to put them in the bathroom, too.

This, but I found an improvement on it! Fill the inch or so of your jar with water & dish soap. Put some fruit in the jar - I toss in one of my kids' apple cores. Make sure the fruit is above the soap water (they weren't attracted as much when I fill one too high). Now cover the top with plastic wrap and secure with an elastic. Use a knife to poke just a few tiny holes in the top. The fruit flies love the fruit and come right in. They can climb in the hole, but cannot get out. Eventually most of them drown in the soap water. Now, if you leave it too long, you end up breeding new fruit flies in the jar, but... just don't ignore it as long as I do ;) I have tried all the other ways and this one gets ALL THE FRUIT FLIES. I've been seriously amazed.

1) Teach the letter sounds. Letter Factory is great for this, but anything you have will work (flashcards, letters written on paper, etc). 2) Start with two-letter words. Some programs start with two-letter blends (sa, se, si, so, su). Either way would work. I made notecards with all the two-letter words I could think of (it, on, in, up, at, an, am) and we practiced themregularly till they got the concept. I don't start teaching blending until they easily know almost all sounds. 3) When they are ready for three-letter words (which comes very quickly after grasping the concept with two letter), choose a book that you like. My favorite combo is an A Beka workbook with Word Mastery (on google books), but you have three pages of good suggestions here. My 4 1/2 yr old is now walking aroung the house trying to sound out everything, so I know where you're coming from! When they're determined, you just have to follow along!!

Yay! I didn't comment on your other post, but I felt so bad for both of you! I'm glad to hear that it will just be a tiny bit easier.

My children all strongly favored a certain side early on. DD was clearly left-handed while she was still one year old. I know it's still perfectly normal to take much longer, but for mine it was clear.

Any tv show title with the word "Extreme" is code for "weirdos who do stuff most sane people wouldn't do"! I don't think I do anything that would qualify as extreme. Honestly, sometimes it feels "extreme" to not have cable, satellite, or Netflix! lol!

They said this on Facebook Saturday: "Autumn did well overnight, as all of you can tell she is getting closer and we did even see her kick up at her belly once or twice which can sometimes indicate a contraction. But nothing regular, so we are still watching. Her official "due date" is between Oct 16-21st, that is 15 months after her keepers last saw breeding behavior between her and Walter, so we may have a few more days to go, we will have to continue to wait and see :)" It's not my zoo, but I "liked" them on Facebook so I could get updates!:)

I would rather have a cat, but I actually have a dog. The grass is always greener... (I did vote for cat, btw).

Would it still be banned as a social group? There are all kinds of oddball social groups. Not that *I* have any interest in it ;)

We learned this rule in Phonics Road: "Two syllable words with the accent on the last one, double the final consonant when adding a vowel suffix." So worship would be worshiping, according to that.

Could it still just be wet inside? How do you know you have a keyboard virus? I spilled something on my keyboard early this year (choc. milk, I think). I was nervous about putting it in the dishwasher!! So I gave it a quick rinse at the sink and let it dry for a couple days. It was, thankfully, fine after that!

Does this make anyone think of Ice Age? The squirrel and the nut? LOL :)

What if you compromised and simply rinsed the unused spoons? Run them under water, dry them, and toss back in the drawer. I don't set the table. I put out the needed utensils in a pile. I'm fancy like that. I think it's kinda crazy to take out any utensil or dish that you KNOW is not going to be used. To me, it's the equivalent of saying, "It's 80 degrees, so I definitely won't need a sweater, but I always bring my sweater!" And then washing it when you get home because you brought it, but didn't use it. Craziness :tongue_smilie: :lol:

If they won't listen to you when you talk, then what on earth is their purpose for calling?! How bizarre! My number is unlisted. I do not get sales or political calls ever. I occasionally get calls from a couple of the companies I currently do business with, and occasionally about local sheriff fundraiser things. I highly recommend having your number unlisted if you do not need to have it available.

Well... I've let mine stand on chairs/pews, but only up to age 3 or 4. After that, they are tall enough that I feel it's disruptive. I can sympathize with you, though. It's hard to keep kiddos, esp. busy ones, occupied and quiet-ish during a church service!

Six months ago, my 4 year old was reported to have small cavities starting to form between almost every tooth. We took care of the bad ones, changed his cleaning routine and diet (no more candy, juice, etc!), and, by the dentist's suggestion, waited to see if maybe the other small areas would hold steady. A couple weeks ago, we went back for our next regular cleaning. Well, they got worse. :( He went back the next week for a crown (not the same process as for an adult), back the NEXT week for another crown and separate filling, and will be back again two weeks after that for some more regular fillings. He had enough that we were told we could do it under general anesthesia at the children's hospital (but he does really well at the dentist, so we opted not to). My point is that she should be okay with whichever she chooses. We tried our best to avoid excessive work, but it was unsuccessful. Waiting might be great (DS's cavity between his two front teeth has held steady) or it might not. I suppose that's not very helpful, but my point is for her to not stress over it. We do what we can and move on from there. (A second opinion is still a good idea!)

If I'm still getting live feed, then you aren't missing anything yet. She's still just standing around! :)

I think it's running for some and not for others? My SIL just tried to look and got a message about the giraffe wanting some privacy. I've had the feed running for a couple hours and haven't been kicked off yet.

Oh, I see - the .com is missing :) http://www.earthcam.com/usa/southcarolina/greenville/

The link isn't working? I'd like to watch!!

It was really good for us when the kids and I started saying the Lord's Prayer together. We never had a habit of praying together until we started that habit of praying before we ate our lunch. Simple enough, taught by Christ Himself, and it freed me from trying to think of words to say - we could just pray with our hearts. :)

My 4yo son can be pretty intense at times, and was at that age, too. "Time outs" are the only thing, once he gets out of control, that save our sanity (and literally protect us and the house from hitting and throwing). I don't mean isolation, though. When he was littler, I kept a pack n play in our livingroom, right next to the kitchen. I would him in there until he calmed down. Now that he's older, I make him sit in a chair right next to me (while I'mmaking supper or whatever), pulled away from the table so he can't reach anything. He's not allowed to get up until he has chilled. Eventually the switch just flips and he's charming. Yes, sometimes this takes 20 minutes, though usually more like 10. I'm also trying to figure out if there's a specific cause, but this helps a lot in the mean time.

If it's not worth something today, it's not worth something. Everything is worth something someday. The only question is how many centuries it will take!

The babysitter should have checked with the dad first, imo. Maybe she did. I babysit and I would have sent a quick text to say, "Hey, is it okay if they go to so-and-so's house?" Or maybe they had a conversation earlier - "Are they allowed to play with neighbor kids if invited?" "Oh sure, that's fine!" I voted to say something to the dad and leave it to him to deal with, at this point, if he feels different boundaries should be set. But initially, I may have just gone over myself and said, "Hey, are you sure it's okay with dad? We've only just met them and I wanted to make sure you knew that."