I wouldn't worry too much. I'm sure it feels worse becasue you are the one who ended up purchasing it, but I'm betting you would have ended up with one as a gift at some point. My mother had a no-Barbies rule that she managed to maintain until my grandparents finally got her to relent. I was in 6th grade at the time, and couldn't really see the point by then. All of my younger sisters ended up playing with Barbies, and I can't really see that it had a negative impact. I haven't purchased any for dd (5), but she has received many as gifts. I'm sure it would irk me if she played with them a lot, but they are not one of her favorites by a long shot.

Tights seem to be very "in" right now. I bought some, but I am always so cold that I end up wimping out and wearing pants anyway. I have even found low-rise tights that work with skirts I thought couldn't be worn in cold weather because of their cut.

Are you in PA? You should be able to continue with the extracurriculars, so long as they are not given letter grades. HTH.

I had planned to keep my dc separate, but my 3 year old ds does listen in on everything my 1st grader has done this year. So imagine my surprise when we made a replica of an Egyptian burial chamber a couple of months ago.... dd was meticulous about all sorts of things, and I was proud of how involved she got in the project. Then my sweet 3 year old took a little cat figurine out of my china cabinet and added it to be the "temple cat." I hadn't realized he was paying attention to our read alouds, and I was really thrilled. So I will have to make the decision when he starts 1st grade -- if he keeps absorbing what we are working on, I'll have to come up with a new plan.

Does she eat olive oil? When my dc seem to be off schedule, I make sure they get a liberal dose of olive oil, and so far I've never been let down. For my kids it's as simple as tossing noodles or roasting potato wedges in the stuff and over-dressing their salads for a day or two. You can even sneak it into spaghetti sauce if she prefers pasta that way.

We do keep cereal (oat rings and cornflakes) in the house, but only for snacking -- my kids might not even know they are a breakfast food. I don't mind cooking in the morning, but I don't always have time. What I try to do is make a huge batch of pancakes (can be done with WW, even add in pumpkin puree or anything else to make it even healthier) once a week, usually on the weekend, and that gives us a few days worth of breakfast. Dh has his with real maple syrup, the dc with butter and a dab of fruit preserves (no HFCS). I also make a lot of WW quickbreads that are just slice and serve, or heat up in the toaster, and those keep very well in the freezer. Corn muffins and boiled eggs are a favorite combination with the kids. Then I usually make a pot of oatmeal mid-week that I can keep in the fridge and microwave as needed. Out of all of that, the oatmeal is the only thing I can eat..... so I make myself eggs most mornings. Omelettes actually fare pretty well in the fridge for a day or 2, so I can make my breakfasts ahead of time if I know I'll have a busy morning. And when it's warm outside, my absolute favorite breakfast is a frozen banana tossed in the blender with skim milk and cocoa powder, I just can't handle cold things this time of year.

I can hear all sorts of my favorites in my head just fine, which my dh thinks is unusual (I'll have to show him this thread!). However, I almost always have music playing if I am at home. Through our library we can access Classical Music Online, which is like having all-request classical radio that always plays exactly what I'm in the mood for (my poor kids!). But in the shower, outside, etc., I definitely take my music with me in my head.

Last year doing K I was worried about getting dd ready for the history cycle, and we did this: -- Put up a big world map and made up a song that named all the continents. We repeated it daily until she could name the continents and find them on that map. -- Spent a lot of time reading DK's Children Just Like Me, and locating the countries mentioned on our map. I wasn't aiming for retention of facts so much as an understanding of how varied cultures around the world are. -- I threw in a lapbook about Antarctica just because I knew it was the only continent we wouldn't cover in the history cycle. It was fun, touched on things dd was interested in, and just generally fit in with our science studies and social studies quite neatly. And we also did the first three ETC books, SM EB 2A-B and PM 1A, copywork, museum science clasees, dance classes, and swimming. HTH PS -- I lived on the UP for 3 years, and still have family there! I get the impression that homeschooling is pretty rare there.

Last year dd was 4, and I didn't require much time at the table, but we covered a ton of material orally. Maybe some of what you open with (the memory stuff), and some skip counting could be done while taking a walk or doing chores, just to shave a few minutes off of seatwork?

Amazon really came through for us, as well. I also got an order from Adoremus Books that seemed to take no time at all, although it wasn't really meant for the holidays. Oh, and Usborne Books -- my first time ordering from them, and I was very pleased.

Don't be scared -- do be excited! Remember that you and dd will find your way together, and that a great deal of her learning doesn't have to look like "school." Homeschooling means that she has so many more hours in her day to read/write/explore/experiment and just soak up what she wants to!

When I first met my dh, he was a single dad, so I figured he knew just what to do with kids.... He had his (then 3 year old) son with him through the week, and got him up each morning, took him to work (at-work daycare), stopped to visit him throughout the day, and took him home each night...... What I did not realize was that most evenings they ate dinner at Grandma's house, that my future mil also loved helping with the bathtime routine, laundry, etc. Plus, dh had most weekends free to do all the sleeping in and getting chores done that kids make more difficult. Nearly a decade later, I'm trying to convince him that he could handle a weekend alone with our two (3 and 5), but I know that they would eat cereal and granola bars and watch tv for 48 hours straight if I really tried it. If it fell on a weekend that dss was visiting, that would be even better -- he keeps his younger siblings busy and happy.

DD completed Headsprout last June, the week before our library's summer reading program started. She read a book from their beginning reader section aloud to me each day all summer, and it was the perfect follow-up for her. At the end of August we resumed ETC at book 4 (we did book 1 before Headsprout, books 2 and 3 while working through Headsprout). We also continued with the daily oral reading.

have free childcare? If so, sign me up!

Today I filled the crockpot with porkchops, turkey hot dogs, and sauerkraut. I made a bunch of veggie sides, and that covered dinner tonight, with the leftovers for Tuesday. Tomorrow night will be turkey chili that's thawing now, plus rice and salad. Wednesday I'll cook ground beef to turn into one taco night and two pasta with meat sauce nights, order of meals to be determined by the kids.

My dh has been on vacation for nearly 2 weeks, and the entire family has gotten totally off schedule (and my kids weren't early risers to begin with!). I just gave the five minutes till bedtime stories warning, and they are acting like it's only noon -- I anticipate a bedtime battle. I'm going to have to whip up something extra special for breakfast tomorrow to lure them out of bed before noon.

Any Hitchcock is great in my mind. Also, I'll watch pretty much anything with Cary Grant. One of my all-time favorites is Holiday, starring Hepburn and Grant. I was thrilled to discover someone put the whole thing on YouTube, and I watched it on New Year's Eve.

Very ready! We were originally planning to start back on Wednesday, but I feel like getting at least some work done tomorrow. DH has been on vacation for nearly 2 weeks, so I figure we may as well treat his first day back like our first day back.

DD turned 5 in July. On a typical school day she does half a lesson in ETC 6 (4 pages), about half an hour of math from SM 1B (sometimes that's 2 lessons, sometimes it's half a lesson, totally depending on how she feels about the topic), copies a sentence from whatever our current read-aloud is (currently The Wonderful O by Thurber), and practices Spanish vocabulary for a few minutes. Then she either reads with me on our current history or science topic, or does hands-on experiments and crafts on those topics. She reads aloud to me most days for 15 or 20 minutes, and is currently working on A.A. Milne's stories and poems. She takes science, ballet, and tap classes outside of the house as well, and swims weekly. Art and music are woven into our recreational time -- I don't think she considers them to be part of school at all. She spends a lot of time working on art projects, dancing around the house, and generally being in motion. Even while she is working on math or phonics, she is constantly moving......

I think you can make it work, you just might have to be creative with the schedule. We dedicate 2 weekdays to outside activities, and have 3 weekdays at home doing our full schedule (pre-K and 1st grade). A couple of weekends each month I end up grabbing half a day to do more hands-on things like science projects or messy art stuff that didn't get fit in during the week. Just in the past couple of months, I've started carrying along some of dd's work to do on those days out of the house. Sometimes I have her do some oral reading while her brother is in dance class, or we just practice math facts while we're scooting from one activity to another. This schedule works really well for us, as I find that all of us benefit so much from the socialization, museum visits, library time, etc., that we fit into those 2 days. All of the scheduled PE occurs then, too, as well as dd's science classes, so we really do get some "school" done.

My junk drawer actually doesn't contain paper! It's where I put the hard to categorize little things that don't really have a home. It contains batteries that still work, but have been used, board game pieces that I keep around as spares, a calculator, some office supplies that I don't want the kids to have access to when they use the computer (they always use up all my post-its!), a spare garage door opener, a couple of disposable cameras that I really should get developed, and hand creams from various gift sets I've received over the years.

We're making pizza and eating lots of goodies, and that's about it. If the weather had cooperated, we would be doing First Night, but it's just too cold to be out that late with little ones. I think we will make some paper chains today to decorate -- we did that last year using white paper and aluminum foil, and the chains looked sort of wintry and stayed up until it started to get warm outside. Tomorrow we will have a special holiday meal and probably watch some movies we received as holiday gifts.

This has happened to me a couple of times, and the books always turn out to be on the shelves. One librarian explained that when the drop bins are emptied, sometimes a whole cart of returns is grabbed by a library page before a librarain has checked them in, and then they have dozens of books still marked as out that have actually been returned.

Just wanted to add that eliminating gluten might be helping even if she's celiac negative if she has another strain of gluten sensitivity (usually just called Non Celiac Gluten Sensitivity, or NCGS). The problem is that if she's following a gluten-free diet and recovering only somewhat, she may actually be sensitive to one of the other proteins found in wheat and related grains. For that reason, I have to agree that she needs a full medical workup to pinpoint exactly what the culprit is.

5 year old dd spent the morning creating a "store" in the playroom, changing outfits multiple times, and watching a Disney movie. She did some oral reading, and now she's hanging out with DH. 3 year old ds slept very late and woke up whiny. I think he's coming down with something -- he usually has at least two or three projects strewn about by this point in the day, and so far he hasn't really done much aside from eating two large plates of food.