Thank you! I just got the whole Peter and Starcatchers series for $3.95/book and all the Mary Poppins books for $1.95. My kids will be thrilled!

Called once when a friend showed up at my house late one night and told me she had taken a whole bottle of Amitriptyline in an effort to kill herself. Called once when I encountered an elephant in the middle of a city street. ... That was a fun call. I was also the local crime/court reporter at the time, so the dispatcher knew who I was. He repeated "An elephant? In the middle of Brushy Creek Road?? Is it pink???" I assured him that it was gray and that it appeared to be a large African elephant. He hemmed and hawed a bit more, then asked, "Ms. {Name}, isn't a little early in the day for the press to be inebriated?" I assured him that I was stone sober and that there was indeed an elephant in the middle of the road. Took two police units, a sheriff's deputy, and the fire department to get the beast to move too! Called once when my toddler disappeared. (We found him under a bed trying out Nana's makeup just before the police showed up.) Called last week due to an oven malfunction/small fire.

As the parent of a child with severe pet allergies and allergy-induced asthma, I thank you. Whenever we're traveling, we make sure to reserve rooms at pet-free locations only. Spending the night in a room where someone had previously sneaked in their precious pooches could very well land my daughter in the ER.

The first ones we ordered from Amazon were Chinese knock-offs. We are returning them at Amazon's expense. Amazon covers return shipping costs for any "not as described" products, then recoups the money from the third=party seller.

Korean Cucumber Salad is a favorite here -- https://kimchimari.com/korean-cucumber-salad/ . I love cucumber kimchi also, but it's more labor intensive, and the rest of the family doesn't like it as well.

We have a copy of https://www.amazon.com/Scholastic-Treasury-Quotations-Children-Adrienne/dp/0590271466/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500159055&sr=1-6&keywords=quotations that I picked up at a library book sale. It's supposedly for grades 4-8, but my 6- and 8-year-old do fine with it.

We own a few sets of Southwestern books and enjoy them, but I refuse to purchase directly from the company due to its exploitative business practices. When their sales people come by here, we offer them a cold drink and a bottle of water for the road, then send them on their way. I think we finally got dropped from their route a couple of summers ago after I brought one of their sale people inside, showed him that we already owned the sets of books he was peddling, and told him that I bought one set in like new condition for $29.95 on eBay and found the other for $0.50/book at Goodwill.

Yep, I woke to find a shipping notification for the LEGO DC Super Hero Girl High School I ordered for $20. :lol: Merry Christmas to DD1 (who has been told repeatedly over the past year that an $80 LEGO set isn't happening).

It was actually a short-lived glitch rather than a deal. ... Amazon was offering 20% off a bunch of stuff, but for whatever reason, their system was taking the discount off multiple times. Amazon caught on quickly, pulled entire inventories on certain products (including the whole of Toys and Games), then put products back online about an hour later with no active discount codes. :-( Now we wait to see whether they honor these unintended "deals" or cancel orders.

The 7-in-1 was Amazon's biggest Prime Day deal last year and was $69.99 then. Some people are expecting a deal on them again this year.

Just as an FYI, I went on Amazon a few days ago, browsed Warehouse Deals, and saved a bunch of items in case they offer 15% off on Warehouse items again this year. As of today, the price of almost every item in my cart has increased at least 20%. I also checked the Prime Pantry deals tonight and saw prices that had been artificially inflated for Prime Day. (Case in point, the 32-pack of Pop-Tarts has been $6.98 for months. As of today, it's a "Prime Day special" for $9.85 - 25%.) I'll still check in on Prime Day, but am watching prices like a hawk and checking price history on camelcamelcamel.com. I'm sure there will be a few loss leaders, but suspect that Prime Day will once again prove to be more hype than substance.

We use the plastic ones. The foam ones always seem to find their way into someone's mouth, plus they cannot be cleaned well.

We have The Real Mother Goose because I found a copy at Goodwill, but the one my kids read until it literally fell apart was the Mary Engelbreit one linked above. The Aesop collection illustrated by Milo Winters is a classic and hard to beat.

Amazon is my go-to if I need a specific title, although I generally buy used from third-party sellers. If I have to buy new, I try to give my business to Rainbow Resource. Most of our books come from library book sales and Goodwill, though. Our local Goodwill prices all kids books at $0.49, and I'm amazed at what they get in. In the past year I've gotten RightStart Math A-E (Lesson Books and Worksheets) for $5, a like-new My Book House set, almost a full set of Value Tales, Usborne and DK books galore, like-new Kumon workbooks, 20+ hardcover Nancy Drew books in mint condition, and more.

Unrelated to the OP, but why on earth don't they take the train from Midway to O'Hare? I used to live by Midway, but routinely took the train to O'Hare to fly the one airline that flew into my parents' hometown. It's not a hard trip by train -- certainly easier than forcing someone to drive across Chicago!

(Deleting b/c thread is publicly searchable)

I taught in South Korea for about eight years. Public school days actually tend to be shorter than American school days (although the school year is longer and kids go to school six days a week). Public school is primarily about testing, though. The bulk of actual learning takes place after school, when kids go to private institutes (hagwons) and study rooms for hours on end. I taught at one of the better English language institutes, where parents paid approx. $200/month/child for their kids to receive 80 minutes a day of English instruction in a small group setting. Most kids attended math and English hagwon at the very least, and many went to half a dozen or more after school classes. (Even in early elementary school, kids generally did math, English, music or art, and a martial art as a bare minimum.) By middle school, most kids were also enrolled in a "study room" where they went after hagwon classes to complete homework (and where they could still be beaten for wrong answers -- the Korean government banned caning in public schools in 2008). In my early years in Korea, the study rooms often stayed open until 1 or 2 a.m. In 2009 or 2010, though, legislation was passed that made it illegal for study rooms to keep students out beyond a "reasonable" hour of 10 p.m.-12 a.m. (depending on age). I loved Korea dearly and treasure the years I was able to spend there. As a teacher, I loved working with parents who valued education and kids who wanted to learn. I still keep in touch with some of my former students and love seeing where their hard work has gotten them. But I could not raise my children in that system. I briefly enrolled my oldest child in music and dance classes when she was a toddler, and I thought I was giving her great opportunities. But even in "fun" classes geared toward toddlers, the teachers' top objectives were conformity and cooperation. I couldn't handle taking my 19-month old native English speaking child to a class, watching her do her best to follow instructions in a foreign language, then see the teacher deny her a sticker or a hand stamp at the end because she hadn't followed directions well enough. I actually ended up leaving my job and moving back to the U.S. rather than transition into a position that would have required me to put her in all-day preschool.

Does anyone have any actual work experience with VIPKID? I taught ESL in Korea for 8 years and have looked at VIPKID's ads several times, but I thought it was one of these "Be online and available for XXX hours, but get paid only if someone wants to do a class with you." If there's steady work, I'd be very interested.

They're still modern kid fiction, but we loved The Fairy Bell Sisters. My older daughter also really enjoyed the Secret Kingdom books by Rosie Banks, which are written at a slightly higher level than Never Girls.

If he's struggling with basics, I would recommend starting with https://www.amazon.com/Write-Super-Sentence-Evan-Moor/dp/1557996067/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471321033&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+write+a+super+sentence and nailing down sentence writing before moving on to bigger "chunks." Also, if you suspect dysgraphia, try to separate the physical act of writing from the writing process. Perhaps he could dictate to you (or a computer, if you want to remove yourself from the process and foster independence), then revise/correct the paragraph that he has dictated, then finally copy the revised/corrected version in his own writing.

I sell on both Amazon and eBay selectively. Higher priced items ($4+ a book) tend to bring more on Amazon. Penny books can actually cost me money on Amazon, but sometimes do well in lots on eBay. I rarely sell individual books on eBay, but have had good looking selling lots of Little Golden Books, Nancy Drew books, beginning readers, themed books (Christmas, cars, nature, etc.), Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science, and so forth. Basically, if I have enough of a certain type of book to make a "lot" of 5+ books, I can list at $9.99+ (average of $2/book), offer a cheaper per book price than the penny sellers on Amazon, and earn quite a bit more since I'm paying only one shipping fee and listing fee. Random titles and books that are in poor condition get tossed into the yard sale bin twice a year and donated whenever we get too many.

I'm signed up with probably 50 companies, but work for only a few of them regularly. Many assignments offer low pay for a lot of work. I'm not going to spend an hour writing a detailed report on a fast food franchise to earn $5-7 -- especially since I don't like eating fast food or feeding it to my kids. As the end of the month approaches and schedulers get desperate to meet deadlines, however, pay rates increase. I discovered early on that I could run myself ragged doing $5-10 jobs, or I could wait until the end of the month and pick up a handful of those same jobs from desperate schedulers offering $50 or more in bonuses. I much prefer the latter option. That said, there are a few shops that I pick up because they benefit us in other ways. One supermarket chain offers $15 in merchandise plus $12 pay for a report that takes me about half an hour to complete. I shop there regularly, and the grocery reimbursement coupled with the pay makes it well worth my time. One steak house chain reimburses meals only, but their reports take all of 15 minutes to complete. I'll gladly do a short report in exchange for a free night out at a restaurant I like. I've gotten reimbursed and paid for every oil change we've needed in the past three years. I've also gotten pricier services, from carpet cleaning to eyeglasses, through mystery shops. These reports were much more complex, but again, I'd rather write a two-hour report than pay for a $200 service. I have an acquaintance in a large metropolitan area who supported herself and her children well for many years through mystery shopping. For me, living in a small city, it's not a major source of income. Select shops, however, have improved our quality of life, and I can easily pick up an extra $100-$150 a month without going too much out of my way.

From what I've been able to see online, it's this -- http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Resources-Friendly-Farm-Activity/dp/B0035EQDQ8/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 . Reviews are decent, but the price has been grossly inflated. (Rainbow Resource had it for $12.95 until it went out of print.) I love Timberdoodle's resources, but have noticed a trend of them buying up overstocks of discontinued products and reselling for inflated prices.

Our mail carrier will not deliver mail if the mailbox is blocked (but he will get out of his vehicle to leave a nasty note stating WHY mail was not delivered), so the neighbor's behavior would be an issue in our neighborhood. I have to say that I love the sprinkler idea. I would have been tempted to "spill" some roofing tacks.

I haven't limited much in the past, but there's a two-year-old with a sweet tooth and no sense of self-regulation in this house this year. Hence, all the candy is on top of the refrigerator. DD1 protested initially and pointed out that she couldn't reach it. "True," I sad, "but neither can your brother." ... It took her about two seconds to decide that keeping candy out of toddler reach was worth the small sacrifice of having to ask when she wanted some. ;)