I think you're doing great! The reading and playing sound like just what a little guy needs. For mathy type things, counting and number recognition would be a great start. Sorting and grouping and stuff in a play based situation might be good. So, "how many cars do you have, buddy? Let's point to each one while we count." "Hey, let's put all the teddy bears in one pile and all the dinos in the other. Which has more?" A formal curriculum seems a little, well... over the top? I'd say enjoy the preschool time and watch for what he's interested in.

I think it depends on what the allowance is for... around here, my people are all little yet, but I imagine eventually giving them an allowance that will cover their personal expenses reasonably - like clothing, school supplies, etc., and letting them manage it. My vision is that they'll learn to prioritize and make choices based on what matters most to them. For example, if you have a clothing budget of $100 and you spend $75 on a pair of jeans, you'll really have to get creative with the rest to make it work. Or if you want to Goodwill everything, you'll have some extra cash to do with as you please. Mishaps during the under-the-parental-roof stage will be a lot less costly than those ever after. If allowance works that way, it'll continue through high school at least and possibly through college.

My people are younger (8 and under) but I've noticed Children's Ministry really being geared towards extroverted kids. It may not be a good fit. The ever-changing cast of characters can be tough. Did your girl have a specific friend there? That can be a big help. My oldest can be in the same room with the same dozen kids twice a week for a year and never connect. But if she sees one of those kids separately, just one, it's a completely different story. The group dynamic is not conducive to an introvert making friends. I also recommend the book Quiet. Having read it, I honestly felt like I knew my daughter better. My husband too, for that matter.

I'd probably take 'em back, personally. Unless they're adaptations of significantly difficult books, in which case I might keep them. On the other hand, I'm sure it wouldn't hurt anyone to read them.

My girls (8, 6.5, 4 and <2) take foreeeever to finish lunch. I usually have eaten in 5 minutes. So often I'll read to them while they eat/goof/whatevertakesthatlong. I also read a bit to the three big girls when the littlest is getting settled in for a snooze. Content stuff we read as it comes up, and picture books are interspersed during the day upon request. I also have a $0.05 per baby book program in place during dinner prep. It's wildly successful on lots of different levels.

As far as finding a university student, you might could trade them use of your laundry facility and a home-cooked meal for an hour of their time - surely that wouldn't jeopardize their student status. It'd have to be the right person, though, since they'd probably become family-ish.

Before long, having sounded the words out bunches of times, your new reader will recognize them without sounding out. It'll come. There are a couple/few that I've always had to help with, but otherwise they figure them out. "Of" comes to mind, as does "aisle" and "eye".

I just read the best book about this very thing! It's called Mindsets written by Carol Dweck. You should totally read it. Her basic premise is that there are two general mindsets: a fixed mindset assumes that most things about a person are not changeable and a growth mindset supposes that most things can change. So someone with a fixed mindset would feel like a failure as a person when they encounter failure, and a person with a growth mindset would see an opportunity to learn something and improve as a result. She gives lots of ideas for helping people move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. One main thing with kids is being mindful of how we praise. Rather than "hey, wow! You aced that spelling test without even studying!" it might be "ooh, I see you got all those right without any effort -- hey, sorry for wasting your time. Let's find some more difficult words that you can learn from." It sounds like you're already mindful of those ideas, but you might glean some other tidbits from her book.

I'm far from an expert, but I'd be concerned enough to talk with a vision-type doc about it.

Great! Thanks for thinking through this with me. When talking with this friend, I felt sort of daft because I couldn't explain my position. I particularly like the point that the phonograms and spelling rules ARE the feast. Because, really. And the fact remains that the kid WILL have to develop some sort of logical sorting or storing of the sight words you're handing her. And I just put Climbing Parnassus on hold for me at the library. :thumbup1:

Hey y'all, Can someone tell me what the benefit to paying for Visual Link Spanish is? The free program seems high quality, though I've had trouble getting all the component parts to run. I assume my problems are due to our non-Windows, non-Mac computing. Have you found the paid subscription significantly different from the free stuff? holly

I can always do a yes/no by touching the child in question, but if I want a number we use the ear thermometer.

Right, y'all. I'm not jumping ship over her ideas, just kind of turning it over in my mind.

Hey y'all, in talking with a friend, we came on the topic of how to teach reading classically. I'm a Spell-to-Write-and-Read fan, and that's how I've taught my people thus far. She posited that a sight-words approach may actually be more classical. Her idea was that offering kids the words rather than requiring them to sound anything out is more of the "feast-of-information" that's desirable at the grammar stage. She also suggested that the sounding-out is really more of a logic-level abstract skill that's not well-suited to the little ones learning to read. What do y'all think? I feel pretty sure I'm right (ha!), but I'm having a hard time with the rhetoric part of it - being able to speak my thoughts well. -holly

Do you know xtramath? It's a website rather than an app, but it's really super. There is no incentive program except turning the math facts you've mastered green on an overview page. I also like that it focuses the practice - there aren't a lot of, say, plus 7 problems when the kid is still wobbly on the plus 2s. It'll also keep track of multiple kids, which I appreciate.

Mercy! French spelling is for the birds. I've not properly learned French, but have played with it on DuoLinguo quite a bit and the spelling always bites me. For me there seems to be little connection between the pronunciation and the spelling, though I suspect that if I were further along I'd be able to hear some of it. Urgh.

Age-appropriate musical vocabulary is great! You can do things like singing Itsy-Bitsy slowly and then quickly, and ask him to help you figure out what was different. Or softly and loudly, with the same follow ups. If you really want to go big, you could speak the Italian words that you'd find in printed music (allegro for fast, lento for slow, andante for medium and piano for softly, forte for loudly).

We recently bought Flag Frenzy, which is a lot like Spot It, but with world flags in common between the cards. My 6 and 8 yo kids like it, and I enjoy it, too.

Would a bilingual play group be an option? I'm in Austin, and I'm just .sure. those are around here, without actually having looked. Or can you be intentional about meeting up with their friends from the immersion school? Or read them some high-interest books in Spanish? Harry Potter comes to mind...

!Mil gracias! Those look super useful. And free is so nice!

Ooh, Ariston! I would love it if you'd throw out a couple of titles for those free readers! What fun!

Ikea has good prices on sheets, though I've not used them and can't testify to their quality.

The Hardy Boys are great! I have girls, but we have all enjoyed those stories. Also, the Redwall series is adventurous and generally super, although not specifically manly (the characters are woodland creatures).

Whenever I read a great book about education, I get fired up to educate my people well. Do you have an old favorite you can go back to for re-inspiration?

Ugh. We've had three gals in the same (small) room, too. Ours are 8, 6, 3.5, and 1.5, and we finally split 2/2 a few weeks ago. My suggestion is to make it their problem somehow. Maybe offer some sort of special breakfast (this could be super easy "y'all can have sprinkles on your oatmeal!) for a pleasant bedtime and be genuinely sad with them if they don't measure up. Or something along the lines of, "oh, hey, girls, it sounded like y'all were up for an hour and a half after lights out! It's a bummer, but since you need your sleep and it takes that long, you'll have to be in bed at 7:00 tonight instead of 8:00. Hope you can do better and go to bed at the regular time the next day! Or is it possible to just not care? Tell them that your last act of the parenting-day is to do goodnight hugs and turn off the light. After that, as long as they're in their rooms and quiet enough that they don't bother you, just let it to? If they leave the room or are too noisy, "oh, you're not tired? Great, I've been needing help with these chores. Grab dust cloth, youngster!" I wish you good luck in getting bedtime back to how you want it. It can be awful to end the day frustrated with the little folks we love so well.