My family has enjoyed The Great British Baking Show. There are always highly intelligent, creative, and supportive contestants. I am thinking of Season 5, in particular, where there was a likable Med Student named James. Paul Hollywood, one of the judges, is smart about baking and earns the contestants respect. With it so cold recently, it is nice to consider the list of shows for my family.

This list is a great idea. I will have to reference this before game shopping next year. Agricola- Our whole family loves this game. It keeps my DD (8) involved in a special way because the small wooden animals are cute. These sheep, wild boar, and cattle breed and have babies, and she likes growing her herd. My DS (11) enjoys it too. He likes looking through the occupation cards and planning his strategy. It takes about an hour and a half for a family of four to play, which is a great Sunday afternoon game for our family. We have no regrets about this game. It is beautiful, challenging, and fun. Azul- the kids don't like this game, but the parents like it. It is like Yahtzee without the dice. The kids just can't bite into it like some other board games like Seven Wonders. Sushi Go- this is a great 10 minute card game. You pass a deck like you do in Seven Wonders but there is no board game aspect. We ended up making a dummy hand (kinda like a cribbage hand) to add a little more interest if there are only 2 players. Dragonwood- my son plays this with his friend, so we got it for him. Only DH and DS have played it. DS seems glad to have got it.

My son and daughter both loved Bone by Jeff Smith. Another vote for Zita the Space Girl.

In addition to the things you already have, my four year old daughter loves: Her REI kindercone sleeping bag Her own luggage Her bike I wish we had room for: little trampoline gymnastics mat Good luck!

We've created some homemade logic puzzles (like these: http://www.criticalthinking.com/mind-benders.html) using Pokemon. We've also drawn Pokemon together. We have not ventured into Minecraft yet.

I did not buy the supplemental material for Level 2. We still use the tiles sometimes. I photocopied the new headings that we would need for Level 2 out of the book (open syllable, closed syllable, etc). We do not use the cards. I think the dictation phrases and sentences are a great way to review previous lessons. I didn't know there were consumable books for Level 3 so I will have to check that out when we are ready. I'm glad to hear that this is working for others.

Hi, this is my first post, too. I have a DS in first grade as well. We do AAS afterschool. For awhile, I was reteaching him too, but that was a confidence booster for him. He loved playing with the tiles and using the white board. Now he has advanced past the school's teaching, and does very well on his pretests for spelling. AAS has also helped him build his dictation skills, which was important to me. I just bought book 2 and am glad we are sticking with AAS. I like its vision. We try to do one AAS lesson a week, and I include his school's spelling words in there, too. He spells words with the tiles one day. Then he spells them with the dry erase markers. Then he does the AAS dictation words. It works well for us. Even though it is a bit of an abbreviated version (15 minutes, 3 days a week), it is worth it. In the summer and breaks we will do more.