That is awesome!!!!! Yay!!!!!

I certainly wouldn't be comfortable being alone with this guy. Sorry. 😞

I read somewhere that coffee is the main source of antioxidants in the American diet 🙂

Omg, that sounds exactly like my Dh. At least he'll finally take ibuprofen now.... sometimes.

Many of the American Apparel tees are long. You'd have to order online, but they're not that expensive, and are good quality. http://www.americanapparel.com/en/women_cat33158?N=4292578657&Nr=AND(P_Locale%3Aen_US%2CP_Site_ID%3A1)&Nrpp=250&Ntl=en&Ntt=cat33158

I have a dresser, but it's just a holding space for clothes I don't really like, and all the clean clothes end up in piles on top. What DH and I really want is a nice shelving unit so we can easily see all of the clothes. Socks and undies can go in bins. The secondary problem (maybe primary problem??) is that I buy clothes I don't love because they're a good deal, or I think I need X thing to look professional at work (ha ha, never happens), and then those B-list clothes just linger in the dresser. Why are clothes so hard? I'd really rather have 5 copies of the same outfit in different colors.

Those are adorable!

Awesome, thank you! Unscrambling sentences with actual word tiles is such a great idea. You can eventually use the ones with prefixes/suffixes, and he'll have to figure out that there's a word part in there, and where should it go? So cool!

Dang! I saw this at Goodwill yesterday! Going back!

If it were me, I'd probably go alone, and have the rest of the family skip this trip, and just meet up again in a few weeks. Or, have the family come, but go home a day early and I'd stay for the funeral. If the family comes, an AirBnB sounds great, because it's more homey. You could have the Christmas celebrations there. Although... do you think people will be feeling festive? Sorry this happened 😞

Yeaaaa, thank you! I will explore all of these! The file folder games look like they're pre-made, and there are a couple of different games for each skill. Score!

Wow... that sounds incredibly frustrating! Thank goodness we live in the age of technology - I can't imagine a kid like that in a classroom in 1950. How is your son doing now?

2 points for a nonsense word is a great idea! Funny to feel ripped off by a nonsense word vs. a real word.... only in the world of reading remediation... 😀

I found these awesome dominoes on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00149T45S/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1 They also have blends and digraphs, and long vowels. My students will probably play these for as long as I will let them! I have some sets of Spire Go Fish cards for various phonics skills. They're super simple, and have phrases like "the cat got wet" on them, and you play just like traditional Go Fish. I thought the kids would get tired of them after a few times, but no... it's like Uno... they never get tired of it! I mentioned to another teacher that I could probably teach a kid to read using only Go Fish cards... and I was only partially kidding! 😀

I've got V/V, and at my last school we were working on describing using the V/V words. These kids are beyond that, though. I'm pretty blown away by what regular ed kids are doing, and then I have to think about how inclusion works in these cases. I've got mixed feelings... on the one hand, wow, regular ed does HARD, awesome things! On the other hand, should I be modifying that to be within my student's grasp, or back up and work on the basics? It's a tradeoff either way, and so conflicting. I'm off to look at the Spotlight series!

Oh yes, we do! Yay! They are both SO awesome.

Hi everyone! I hope your holiday time is going well 🙂 Want to help me spend some money? I have some money in both special education and RTI budgets that I need to spend before June, or it goes away. I'd like to do it now, so the kids can actually use everything before summer. I'm not sure of the exact amount, but it's close to $1,000. If I don't spend it, the money still goes to worthy causes, so I'm not too fussed about it... but I do like spending someone else's money! 🙂 My students are K-5, and I mostly see kids for reading, but I have a few math students. The bulk of my students are in grades 2-4. For reading, I'm using Wilson and LiPS, and I also have Seeing Stars. I'm not really sure what I need! I tend to look on alllll the websites and then get overwhelmed. I'm planning to get: - Some High Noon sets (too bad I want ALL of them!), and the Scholastic Branches books - Comprehension workbook for 1st/2nd grade reading levels. I have yet to find one that I like, though. - A phonemic awareness activity book/game. I have printouts from the FCRR, but games in a box make everything more fun, and I also like having a real book instead of papers floating everywhere. - Would love some decoding games, if they exist, and some math games (easy and fast - like Uno, but to practice basic math facts) So... what would you buy, if you were me?

Are you in a public school? If so, you don't need a teacher's permission to request an evaluation. I would definitely do that as soon as you can. While you wait for the results, you can start working with her at home. I'm really intrigued by the High Noon reading program. Your daughter might be a better fit for level 2, or maybe part way through level 1. Some people on this board recommended it to me, and I'm going to order it this week 🙂 https://www.highnoonbooks.com/detailHNB.tpl?action=search&cart=15388331365529339&eqskudatarq=S8271-8&eqTitledatarq=High Noon Reading-Level 1&eqvendordatarq=ATP&bobby=[bobby]&bob=[bob]&TBL=[tbl] I use the Wilson program. It's fairly cheap, and it teaches eeeevvvverrrything. Every little thing gets thoroughly explained and practiced. You can probably start doing something, using any program you choose - and then you'll find out how severe her deficits are, and change your plan if you need to. Teaching reading is fun 🙂 You can do it!

I'm a big fan of The Writing Revolution. It teaches writing from the sentence level up, but you could jump in mid-way. There are helpful paragraph templates and such. She might not even need too much instruction on writing, once she internalizes the structure. I'm a good writer now, but not when I was in early high school (or even late high school... sigh). I agree that having the Wilson tutor work on writing would be amazing!!!

Fluxx is a nerdy/silly card game that's really fun to play with friends 🙂

My DH does this. He will procrastinate until he absolutely has to do something (even though he's not even able to enjoy himself during the procrastinating, because of the task hanging over him), and then he will get upset that he has run out of time to do a good job. It's not fun at all. As a very non-perfectionist myself, I find it hard to understand this part of his personality. I generally think people are pretty accepting and tolerant of others' mistakes/weaknesses, so I don't stress about doing an okay-but-not-great job at things. DH says I'm naive, and that the world is a dog-eat-dog place in many respects. Looking at how I tend to complete tasks, I could really use a little bit more perfectionism - but just a little. I can see how perfectionism can really make people's lives miserable.

I would love a reindeer car kit!! Someone replied to my thread like this and suggested toilet paper. That would be funny, too (and useful!) 😀

There are just so many THINGS... Raz, Epic, Overdrive, etc... we can't do them all 🙂

I love Raz-Kids, too. My kids are also enjoying Epic - the books are "real" books, not written-for-Raz-books. There's a small monthly fee for Epic. Lots of books have "read to me" options, and there are also audiobooks! Nancy Drew... if only I was 12 again!!!! 🙂

Oh, I love Billy and Blaze 🙂 Forgot about that - thanks!