Ok, reporting back on this. Tried, used once and never picked up again. Both me and my child found it cumbersome to use, needed anywhere between 1-4 swipes of a word for it to recognize it correctly (usually 2 or 3 swipes on average). It has trouble on most books unless the page is stark white and the text large and black. Most books printed today have a kind of beige color paper and the contrast just does not seem to work well with the pen, sadly. I ended up selling it and will probably try the talking dictionary next.

I participate in a co-op that holds the classes at a church. We (parents teaching in groups of 2 or 3) do need to get a criminal background check. I think it's mostly for insurance purposes for the church. They don't want to be sued if something goes awry and they allowed a known criminal to be on premises. If it would have been anything other than a criminal background check (like financial) I would not have joined.

Thanks for your reply Flopsy! I have to admit, I am thinking the pen may have the same fate in our house as well. It might be viewed as a 'novelty' then quickly forgotten on a shelf, we'll see. Fingers crossed anyway.

I will let you know! I am going to order it tomorrow so should have it by the end of this week. We'll take several days to try using it and I'll report back.

I'm sorry you had to deal with this too. My daughter was adopted internationally and for some reason people feel it's ok to question me, in front of my daughter, about "how much she cost", "does she speak English" and my favorite.. "why not just adopt from the US?". I could not agree any more. I have also had "Is he yours?" thousands of times. Once in a supermarket I had a woman run up to my then 1 1/2 year old and start asking him, in Spanish, if I was mommy or if he was kidnapped. He could not even TALK at this point, never mind understand Spanish and I was floored that someone thought that was acceptable. :confused::confused: So yes, it would not surprise me to have someone come up and inquire about stuttering (my son does as well) right in front of my son. Some people are just dumb. :glare:

I also just wanted to mention that I do not think the supply list dilemma is the fault of the teachers at all. The schools have become underfunded & mismanaged for many reasons, all complicated and all part of the multitude of reasons why we chose to home school vs. using the local public schools. What has been passing as "the norm" in regard to the costs passed on to parents for collective school supplies, fundraising, textbooks, and the like is becoming increasingly disturbing and, what I view, an obvious symptom of a very broken system. I don't have a fix for it, that is going to take an overhaul of our entire educational system in my opinion.

Someone upstream mentioned fundraising. When we lived in a suburb of Atlanta, the kindergartners were even sent out with product catalogues to sell things for fundraising for the school. Really, they encouraged 5 year olds to go knock on doors to sell things. This is not a joke. Every single year of elementary school the kids were going around to neighbors pushing the most useless of items and the school called it "building character." I called it really poor money management on the school district's part as well as what could be considered criminal behavior asking children that young to knock on the doors of strangers to sell things. :thumbdown:

I visited my son's cafeteria during the week he was in kindergarten. Lunch was 2.75 and the only thing edible (without having to worry about upchucking) was the milk and a piece of fresh fruit. The public schools sometimes have the lunches made by companies who cut costs (to the extent that we are hearing about mass illnesses now every year from a cafeteria lunch as a matter of course in this country) and are, well, just nasty in some places. :ack2: This study indicates that some schools don't ever have their cafeterias inspected. In other words, they operate at lower standards than a McDonald's. Yuck! http://www.cspinet.org/new/pdf/makingthegrade.pdf

School, we had our own supplies in a school box. Yep, and if you lost it, your parents were not too sympathetic about it but never expected the teacher to pony up the items for you. My son attended a PS Kindy for 1 week - one of the supplies listed was coffee filters. I assumed it was for some type of project so asked the teacher what type (bleached, non-bleached, etc.) and she said, "Oh, whatever kind fits a standard coffee machine. They're for the teacher break room." :eek::eek::eek:

Oh, and keep in the back of your mind at all times that living in such conditions is not the end-game for you. It is a temporary situation.

Express your gratitude for her for letting you live there (even if it's in an unfinished basement, just say it anyway so she feels appreciated) and THEN lay down the law and let her know that you do not want her reprimanding the children in ANY way as that is your job and that if she has something to discuss about the arrangements, she needs to come to YOU first and never the children. This may work. I know because I had to do it too. You're not alone. :grouphug:

For those of you that use TT, do you have your kids use the workbooks, only do the problems on the computer, or copy the equations on to paper and then do them? I am trying to decide on which package to purchase. I have my son do some of the problems in the workbook as opposed to all on-screen as I know him and I know he needs to write things out to understand them sometimes. We have the workbook because I wasn't sure if it was needed but honestly, you could easily just do it on paper of your choice.

Oops, I see that was suggested above too :D

I would let him use what is comfy for now but maybe use a pencil grip thingy (sorry, not sure what the technical word is) on your pencils and lay those down with the crayons so he has a choice. Let me see if I can dig up a link.... something like this: http://www.business-supply.com/p-30752-foam-pencil-grips-5pk-assorted.aspx?src=google&utm_source=google%20shopping&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=google%20shopping&gclid=CKm--NqUzaoCFRDGKgodAiRn2A

We use the OM for core but are doing TT for math and just using the OM math for additional practice problems. Good to hear this, thanks for sharing :)