Oatmeal and toast with natural pb are popular breakfasts around here, as are homemade muffins. I try to make at least 2 types of muffin each week, usually pumpkin, zucchini, corn, and banana. I do buy cereal for the kids because it is an easy snack for the car (they like it dry), but I have a price limit of $1.50 per box and buy no more than one box per week. I make big batches of pancakes on weekends, and they are great with apple slices, banana slices, or even chocolate chips thrown in. They freeze well and it takes just a minute to reheat them in the microwave. The kids like grilled cheese for lunch, which I make using the toaster oven and no butter -- I just run the sandwiches through on the toast cycle once on each side. They eat plenty of fruits and veggies as snacks and side dishes. We can get local cheese for a really good price, so I offer that and crackers as a snack most days. I keep hard-boiled eggs in the fridge for snacking and to dice over salads. The kids also like tuna sandwiches and homemade alphabet soup. I always have the big tubs of nonfat plain yogurt on hand. We stir in our own fresh or dried fruit and sprinkle with cinnamon.This has even replaced ice cream for my evening treat after the kids are in bed! I try to clip coupons for some of the store-bought treats that they like, but I only pick them up if I can get them for nearly free. While it's warm we are enjoying lots of smoothies made with milk and frozen bananas. In the cooler months I bake lots of cookies and oat bars.

It's hard not to worry, but they all do get it eventually! ETC is amazing, and I am always impressed that my dd not only gets the exercises done, but sort of memorizes the rules they present at the start of each lesson. She definitely drags her feet when she doesn't feel like reading something, but then she'll give herself away -- we were at a community festival recently, and she was magically able to read all of the ice cream flavor options just a few hours after telling me that a simple book I had selected for oral reading was too difficult.:001_smile:

We're Jewish, but pretty much secular in our schooling. We do run our schoolweek from Sunday to Thursday so that I have Fridays open to take my youngest to Tot Shabbat, and we definitely incorporate Jewish themes during our reading times and around holidays, but not much else.

My dd finished Headsprout in June and tested at early 3rd grade for reading level (decoding, not comprehension). We took the summer off and I just had her do a lot of reading aloud before resuming Explode the Code this fall. When I tested her reading level last week, she scored an entire school year higher than she had in June! I really think that just plenty of practice worked wonders for her.

My dd sped through EB and we really debated about what to do. She started PM 1A a few months before her 5th birthday, and began zipping through that. I took a two month break, stopping right before a review section, figuring we would have to relearn a few things.... Well, when we began math again at the start of this week, she had figured out a few new strategies for adding that she didn't seem to know in June! Maybe it's just that Singapore is an extremely good fit for her, or maybe she's going to be a natural at math, but I am actually glad we went ahead and started 1A. Now I am slowing her down by doing just one workbook page per school day, supplementing with some fun Kumon connect the dots and coloring activities to practice number discrimination and counting past 100, and lots of oral skip counting. I'm going to take the rest of 1A and 1B nice and slow so that we can focus on memorization of facts, as others here have suggested. So I think it's fine to go ahead and begin 1A, but definitely plan on it taking longer to get through than the EB series.

My dd seemed to get a good bit out of it. We were doing ETC and lots of reading aloud and sounding out at the same time she completed it, though, and I cannot separate which elements were most influential for her. I do know that she enjoyed the program and that it introduced a lot of words/combinations earlier than she would have gotten them with other programs, and that made her feel really confident and excited when she came across them in reading other things. HTH

Pittsburgh has a large and active homeschooling community, amazing city and county parks, an outstanding library system, and award-winning museums. It is a very family-friendly city, in my experience. I moved to Pittsburgh for grad school, and lived in the city for several years before we moved about 50 miles south of the city. DH still works there and we make the commute in with him quite often because there is just so much to do. The homeschooling regulations are strict, but each district handles things its own way, and most folks I know have had no trouble. Mine are under reporting age, so I don't have a strong opinion on complying with the law yet:001_smile:

Thanks! We officially start on worms next week, but in reality my kids play with them all the time, and might already know half of what I'm planning to teach..... These sites will be very exciting for them, and will definitely help me out if it rains on any of our science days in the next couple of weeks:001_smile:

Thanks so much for sharing this!

Our library also has a nice selection of early readers. Using the name of the series my dd seemed to like from that section, I was able to use the library catalog to track down dozens more titles that we borrowed from other libraries in the county. That gave her more nonfiction topics to read about, which was a big help. SHe also seems to enjoy the Henry and Mudge books, as well as the Magic Tree House series.

We are going to be "doing" both. That sounds like a lot, but won't be in reality because the Spanish is something I am going to continue presenting in stories, songs, etc., and we already know a tiny bit. We are not approaching it in a formal way at all at this point, but I think that 10 or 15 minutes a day to cement the numbers, colors, and some basic phrases will be fun, and then I'm hoping to send dd to a week or two of an immersion day camp next summer. We are going to add in Latin using Minimus in the winter, also more of a gentle introduction than a formal study at this point. By the end of first grade we will have covered Roman history and parts of speech, and then I think we will get a lot more structured about Latin in second grade. DD would also prefer French (it's what Madeline speaks!), and it would be easier for me to teach, but it is a bit less of a priority for us given that we have access to a lot of resources for Spanish.

You will be very close to Brookside Gardens, a very nice botanical garden/park that is adjacent to a public playground and hiking trails. I haven't been there in a few years, but it is a quiet and beautiful place if you get nice weather.

Sriracha or Cholula (both hot). I also love horseradish, either creamy or in horseradish mustard. And I grind black pepper onto most things, too.

I am scheduling 30 minutes 4 times a week for math with my dd, who is currently taking a one month summer break from Singapore 1A. That's enough time to review a concept or learn a new one and do one workbook page, at least most days. One other day will be for sneaking in a review worksheet while we're running around to homeschool playgroup or dance class. We also chant skip counting during our daily walks and practice telling time and counting money as the opportunity arises, but I don't factor that in formally.

DH is webmaster/e-commerce administrator for an urban community center.

You can always make a crustless quiche (essentially an egg custard). I make them all the time with whatever veggies/meats/cheese I have on hand. They can be very lowfat if you use mostly egg whites and part skim cheese, and they can be baked ahead and then either reheated or eaten cold. I love to make them at the end of the week to have on hand for the weekend, then I have the option to serve with fruit as a breakfast or with salad as a lunch. My dh and kids have some sort of bread or muffin on the side, which would be a good spot for the scones you are planning.

We started 1A just before dd turned 5, and I was expecting to hit a wall with number bonds, and we didn't. Maybe she's just going to be good at math, or maybe we just did enough with manipulatives that it clicked easily. I honestly don't know, but we did a lot of hands-on math for those lessons, and I have not had her memorize any math facts yet. Using food as a manipulative (especially chocolate chips) was a powerful motivator around here.:001_smile: One thing that she enjoys about number bonds is that they are sort of a "trick" or "shortcut," in that once she knows that 3+4=7, she doesn't have to count again to see what 4+3 will be.

I am getting hungry just reading this list! Breyer's coffee ice cream York peppermint patties Swedish fish jalapeno flavored kettle-cooked chips Mounds bars candied walnuts/pecans Egg McMuffins ginger ale pumpkin cheesecake dark chocolate raisinets

I order from Adoremus Books. They have free shipping on orders over $25 and excellent customer service.

My kids are also pretty young, and they both love poetry. We include some every night with our bedtime reading, but we have never tried to analyze it. We all especially love anything by A. A. Milne, R. L. Stevenson, and Lewis Carroll. I prefer to stick with classics, but we do add in some Jack Prelutsky, which they think is very funny. If you check the library, you might be able to find some nicely illustrated anthologies for children.

My dd is on the young side for 1A, but we moved into it in the spring after she was done with the EB series. I have not had her memorize any math facts yet, but focused instead on making sure she understood the concepts introduced (number bonds, counting on, grouping to ten, etc.), and we have moved on as she demonstrated an ability to put those concepts to use. Rather than drill, I have her use manipulatives or just oral response to answer additional questions. We began 1A doing a few workbook pages a day, but I have shortened our math lessons so that we cover just one page a day, 4 days per week, because I am hesiatant to push her into 1B too soon, which will require more drilling and memorization.

No matter what I tried for entertaining ds when he was 2, his favorite thing was scribbling in his older sister's old workbooks. Unfortunately, he "completed" workbooks faster than she did, so then he would usually do playdough, build with all sorts of blocks, and cut with safety scissors.

My dd is the same age, and we went through a phase recently where she seemed very bored by the material she was able to read independently and very frustrated by the material she wanted to read. I was able to request books at (or just beyond) her reading level across a range of subjects from various local libraries and have them all sent to the branch we usually use. One thing that really motivated her was having nonfiction at her level. I also think that your dd might be getting quite a bit out of reading silently. She may not get every word, but she's learning valuable skills in having to use context clues, which will really aid her down the road.

I have a world map up in the kitchen at the kids' eye level. It's not a very detailed one, but we used it to learn the continents last year, and now dd runs to check it whenever she hears about someplace that sounds interesting. We inherited about 20 years' worth of old National Geographic magazines last month, and I was so excited to pull out all of the map inserts! I have them all filed away now to match up to things as we study them.

This week we are having lots of salad and corn on the cob, a salmon loaf that will be dinner for two nights, and a giant pot of curried yellow split peas. and various types of pasta to pair with a big batch of meat and mushroom pasta sauce. It's too hot and humid to cook more than necessary this week, so it will be baked potatoes from the microwave to round out any meals that need it. The kids seem to want mostly banana smoothies and pbj anyway this week, which certainly takes the pressure off:001_smile: I made a big batch of pumpkin muffins this morning before it warmed up, and I have those and a big bowl of plums and nectarines available for snacking.