That article about sums up when I went through learning to play as a child. There were some rough tween years where I pretty much didn't practice at all. Thankfully my grandma and mom kept paying for my lessons during that time. My grandpa would offer me cash if I learned to play "pop songs" from his era (30s-40s). Once I hit high school I would practice for hours and hours a day.

At the beginning of the summer my girls and I were shopping at Target and in a hurry and I needed to use the restroom urgently and pay for everything at the same time. I sent my girls to the checkout with my Target card. My youngest watches me type passwords and had figured it out. Anyhow, they told me after we met up at the exit that the cashier asked them how they got there. My oldest told them their mom drove them. When I asked her why she just didn't say I had to use the restroom she replied that she forgot because he had asked HOW they got there (yes she is very literal lol). She found the whole thing strange because they were both capable. I often send mine to buy things themselves, like if we are at a fast food place and they want an ice cream or sometimes at 7-11 I will get gas and they will go in and buy slurpees. I also send mine on missions while we are shopping. Even in places like Costco I will send them across the store for an item. 1- it teaches them some independence in a relatively safe environment. 2- it keeps them from nagging me when we will be done. 3- they don't fight. And annoy me with their fighting. Yes, I still worry about something happening but as pp mentioned the statistics of that are far less than in being in an accident on the way to the store.

My DH is exactly like this. It's been interesting to read all of the replies.

I use steel wool to scrub the hard water build up in our showers. I alternate scrubbing and rinsing everything with hot water. Surprisingly they don't scratch the surface of our shower at all.

My oldest is a figure skater and picked out a poster at one of those Scholastic warehouse sales of a figure skater that she hung in our school room. It reads, "Dream Shine Believe." I never really thought about having a motto or having a sign but I guess it is fitting that we have that up on the wall.

I don't think I have enough replies to link photos...I'm trying and can't seem to get any to work. Go to Amazon and search for Mondor Ice Skate dress. Any of the velvet ones are what you are looking for. I recently bought my ODD a 12-14 (child XL, adult XS) and it was barely big enough for her. For competition fit I would suggest getting an adult small. For tights in that same search on amazon about halfway down will be the 3310 tights in suntan. Order her the adult small. Underpants not being visible means she should go without. If she cannot do to sensory issues you can buy her some high cut dance underwear in a nude material from discount dance supply. Now, for the final round dress this would be something "custom". I have ordered from ebay and been very happy with the dresses from wonderland0559 and skating-on-ice. Pick out a few that you like that go with the theme of the music and then I would ask the coach for approval.

My girls love to do themed costumes. So far we've had: Little Bo Peep and Sheep, Bumble Bee and Ladybug, Explorer and Giraffe, and Snow Princess and Unicorn. This year we are doing a family costume and going as characters from Pocahontas (Disney version). YDD is Pocahontas, ODD is the hummingbird, I'm the raccoon, and DH is John Smith. Next year my girls already have theirs planned and YDD will be an Autumn Fairy and ODD will be an owl (we bought their costumes resale because they were so cute). Some other ideas I can think of are Cowgirl and Pony, Princess and Frog, and Dalmatian and Firefighter.

Mine just started that level this week. We have the student text and TM for A. Honestly I could do without the TM. Aside from glancing through it before we started, I haven't touched it. I have ODD watch the video explanations of topics on Kahn Academy (just search for each topic myself) and then I sit next to her and we work the guided practice problems together. Last I have her work the practice problems by herself. At this point I'm not seeing a need for the added cost of the extra practice books or the enrichment book. They are quite expensive to purchase and we have a subscription to IXL that we can utilize for any extra practice that she may need.

We switched ODD from Saxon to MIF this year. She did 6/5 last year in Saxon and is doing Year 1 in MIF (gr 6). One of the things I picked up in the teacher's guide is that you shouldn't expect to complete an entire lesson section in a day. Some of the sections are quite long and I don't see how you could cover all of the problems, while others are much shorter with less practice problems. This year we have just been working for an hour and then putting it away.

I did. My ODD started public school and I enrolled YDD so that I could volunteer some in ODDs class. I ended up pulling ODD halfway through 1st to begin homeschooling. My ODD can be pretty dominate and my YDD really got to get out of her big sisters shadow and make her own friends. My YDD really enjoyed going so I left her in the class for a few years. We used those days to get the more nuts and bolts done and did the hands on science when YDD was around. She went very part time, only 2 half days a week. Plus she learned how to write her name and all of her letters/sounds and numbers. It was a private preschool and I was very comfortable with her there.

We do first day of school pics in front of the front door. My oldest went to traditional public K-1 so I kept that routine for her. My girls love shopping for their first day of school outfits. Then we go on a field trip. This year our field trip will be 1 day after though. We are planning to go to Not Back to School Day at Disneyland. We also do school portraits each year. We homeschool through a charter and they offer the lifetouch photos. If we ever break off on our own I plan to continue with portraits at a studio. My girls get new backpacks and lunchboxes each year. We do a lot of homeschool groups during the week, ballet, GS, etc so we are always bringing school with us so the backpacks come in handy. We go to picnics after ballet class and my girls pack their lunches themselves in their lunchboxes. We have supplies coming out of our ears so the only thing I let the girls buy that was new was they each picked out a journal, spiral notebook, and folder because they had characters from Frozen on them.

I honestly don't read the magazines that my girls get but they have gotten Kids Discover and National Geographic for Kids and enjoyed them. I just order them from the groupon types of sites when I see a good deal.

That is the version we have and it runs on Win7 just fine.

Mine watch it through an ap for PBS kids. You can watch some of the videos through the PBS website as well. Oh, and forgot about scigirls until I saw someone else posted that one.

Design Squad

Several groups I am in use Shutterfly.

We have used many of the kits through our charter school. They come with a workbook/journal and a guide. The guide will have some background information to read and how to put together the experiments (step by step and some include diagrams) and the journal with have questions that go along with each one. My oldest (just finished 4th) really likes the kits and was able to pretty much do them all herself and answer the questions herself. Sometimes the questions that required drawing conclusions and making inferences were a little harder and we would discuss them together and work through her ideas before she would be able to answer but I felt like everything was pretty solid. I think you idea to use them along with books is perfect. That is basically what we did. I used the text Real Science for Kids, Let's Read and Find out books (level 2 ones), DK eyewitness books, and free printables from education.com and used the kits for hands on. Which kits are you ordering?

I don't think I can post links since this is my first post but I used one from Teacher Created Materials called "How to Write a Research Report" grades 3-6. It looks like they have a version geared for 6-8 as well. I liked it because it starts with narrowing down your topic, through all of the various ways to research (library skills), then to organizing your research, and finally writing it and ways to present it. My oldest balks at writing and she really liked learning all of the library skills sections and we took our time going through and it came together nicely. She used her information to create a research poster on a chicken for 4H that she is entering at the fair in a few weeks.