13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey for Alabama. Kathryn Windham Tucker did a whole series of these about various Southern states, but she was from Selma and Jeffrey "lives" there too (I think he was her house's ghost). They're a good introduction of Southern gothic for children, IMHO. If you want to introduce your children to Southern gothic. Charlotte's Web for Pennsylvania. Where is The Trumpet of the Swan mainly set? I second the nomination for Caddie Woodlawn over Little House for Wisconsin.

How about In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson for New York? ETA Blueberries for Sal for Maine ... or One Morning in Maine, which is also about Sal.

Wanda Gag's books: Millions of Cats (though a lot of people dislike this one because the cats eat each other up) The Funny Thing There are several others but I haven't read them yet. Loved Blueberries for Sal.

I really appreciate how you expressed this, gratefulmother. It's pretty much exactly what I was thinking but wasn't sure how to say. Thanks to the OP for giving a heads-up on the book. I don't object to its introduction as a topic in middle school, probably, but I do want to be prepared to discuss it instead of having my children silently assimilate the author's POV.

Elizabite by H. A. Rey (about a carnivorous plant who Bites Inappropriately) was a big hit in our house Bubble Trouble is a recent discovery anything by Richard Scarry, especially Best Storybook Ever I second Poems to Read to the Very Young Scholastic has a series called I Use Math... (at the Store, on a Trip, in the Kitchen)

The Princess Bride and The Hunger Games

I can't believe nobody's said Groundhog Day! What could be better than watching, over and over, a movie about living a day over and over?! (I enjoy it repeatedly for its own sake, too.) I will also echo previous posters who mentioned Waiting for Guffman and several of the Muppet movies. And Clue.

Ransom with Mel Gibson. My date and I found the language so awful that we were ashamed to continue watching it. I would have walked out on American Pie if I had not been trapped on a moving tour bus. To add to the general awfulness of it, my seatmate was a casual, platonic male acquaintance who shared my Christian values. It was memorable. Edited for grammar

A family friend found some Abeka readers in the local thrift store and sent them to us when he found out we were homeschooling. It turned out that they were great accompanists to OPGTR. The two we have are Story Tree and Sunshine Meadows. They are 2nd grade readers, but my son finished them both during his kindergarten year. They build phonetically in approximately the same order as OPGTR. I think you could order readers from suppliers like Abeka or Horizons -- really, any program which teaches reading phonetically -- without buying their curricula. Note: The Abeka ones are very religious. I liked that about them, but if you're looking for secular material, another supplier might be better for you. After we finished the readers, I, too, was casting about for suitable material. 100 Classic Stories fit the ticket. He read one per day. The easy ones are slightly challenging, and the second section is more difficult, which corresponded well to my son's increasing reading skills.

My kids are little bitty, but I was a similar child to the one you're describing. Can you have your daughter take the chapter she's studying and rewrite it like an English paper? Make the subject the same as the chapter and have her write a paragraph explaining to you each concept or point you want her to remember. I realize this might be pretty time-intensive, but I know that for me, science (and math) were just a bunch of nebulous facts not anchored to anything. Organizing them -- and explaining them in her own words -- might help her understand and retain them in a way for which she's already shown an aptitude. I doubt she'd be enthusiastic about the idea of so much extra work, but it might help her in the long run. Good luck!

I worked as a server at Cracker Barrel. The staff does not split the tips; everything you leave is supposed to go to your main server. If you leave it on your credit card, it is added to all the other credit card tips for that server and given to him/her at the end of his/her shift. I never had a busperson bring me a tip; if he or she bused the table before I got back to it, the money was always left neatly on the cleaned table. Of course, things may have changed in the years since then.

My ds6 has been enjoying the Snap Circuits Jr. set we got him last Christmas. (Maybe it's because he gets to spend time doing the projects with his dad.) He also loves his LeapPad 2 Explorer. I view it as recreational rather than educational, but it is an excellent toy to take on trips and to places that involve lots of waiting. In fact, his little sister (almost 4) is going to get one this year, because she can't keep her hands off his. To contradict all my previous suggestions, I think toys that require imagination to work (like dollhouses) have a longer play value because they're adaptable. Actually, to tell the truth, my children play longer and with more enjoyment with large cardboard boxes than anything else. Would it be so wrong to give my kids refrigerator boxes and markers for Christmas?

My grandparents and their same-generation relatives always really appreciated fruit as a gift. You can send a box of pears or citrus or whatnot from Harry and David. I wouldn't send grapefruit, though, unless you know for a fact it won't react with any of their medications. I would not give fruit to any teenagers, however. Somehow I do not see that being a memorable gift in a good way. I second a PP's suggestion to shop Thinkgeek.com. Even if the teen girls are not nerdy, the humorous stuff is still "geek chic". What about a gift certificate to the movies for the newlywed couple? They may not have the resources anymore for date nights.

I think this depends on what his "real life" is. You could pick one of the histories to complement his actual history studies, if he sees himself becoming a history major. The future artist/English teacher/journalist would get a lot out of The Tempest and Hamlet. Titus Andronicus is nice and gory if he's going through that macabre teenage phase. Classic high school choices are Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. For the truly reluctant Shakespeare scholar, I'd go with one which has been made into a movie -- As You Like It, Othello, maybe even combine watching Shakespeare in Love and reading Twelfth Night (if you must). Just be sure to have him watch whichever movie first! I like the previous posters' suggestions. I'd add some modernish poets like T.S. Eliot and William Blake, plus some angsty war poetry which may interest him.

We're in SW-a. My son completes a lesson three or four days a week and we test on Friday. I point out potential problem words especially and I ask him to spell them orally several times before we test. When he starts missing words on the tests, I plan to keep a list and add those words to tests until he knows them. We may slow down when the lessons get harder.

We chose Saxon because my engineery husband believes trig (and lots of algebra) are the most important stuff to hit in high school, and Saxon seemed to fit that goal best. We hope to stick with one program all the way through to avoid gaps. You may want to take my opinion with a grain of salt, though, since we are on Saxon 1 this year!

I was shocked that my children loved The Book of Virtues for Young People. My 3yo dd asked for it by name every night. (I skipped the Anne Frank extract and a couple of others that I thought were just too hard to explain.) The children were perfectly content for us to read "The Gift of the Magi", "The Sword of Damocles", and "The Charge of the Light Brigade". I had been looking for The Book of Virtues for Children and picked up the other by mistake.

I second the recommendation to continue with picture books. I think that will cement her love of reading best right now. I also agree with all the suggestions of Mo Willems and Cynthia Rylant books. I'd supply her with a bunch of good picture books and a couple of the easier chapter ones like Magic Treehouse thrown in for when they catch her eye. For read-alouds, we liked Henry and Ribsy, Emil and the Detectives, and the Winnie-the-Pooh books. How about The 21 Balloons? If you can get through the first chapter or two, she might be captivated. At least there are a lot of Magic School Bus books.

I taught carrying and borrowing to my Ker last year using pennies and dimes. When he had more than ten pennies in his ones pile, he could exchange it for a dime to go in his tens pile. For borrowing, he'd exchange the dime for pennies. I guess we could call it "playing bank". Even though this method worked for him, and he was able to transfer the concept into doing work without the manipulatives, I'm not convinced that he was really ready to understand regrouping. I only taught it because we were using inexpensive workbooks informally, and I just taught him whatever we encountered in them. I think regrouping was in a 1st/2nd grade workbook. This year we're doing Saxon 1, and I bet he wouldn't remember regrouping if I brought it up.

We use the Bible Study Guide for All Ages. I think the previous lessons' review part of the worksheet has been especially helpful, and I like that the reading part is text without commentary. The coloring parts are not straight-up coloring, but directed to reinforce the story ("Which character was angry? Color him red."). We love the song CDs. I do not have time for the timeline, drills, or extra activities, but I'm satisfied with what we do use as sufficient for now.

I have a first grader, too, and similar concerns. It helps to remember that if we had sent him to ps, he'd be expected to adhere to a stricter schedule than the one he has at home, and for a lot longer every day. Also, I don't think my first grader always knows to long for free time while we're having school. When your child begs to play with the geometric pattern blocks just a little longer or begs for another story, she is not pining for unfettered hours of play. She is playing. I really do understand how you feel, though! Guilt: The nonrefundable free gift that accompanies parenthood.

We are using Spelling Workout. My son is twenty-something lessons into the A book. Pros: It teaches proofreaders' marks. I think this is a valuable skill, and my child enjoys finding and marking the errors. It's a manageable lesson size per day for us. Spelling skills are important to me, so I don't think three workbook pages are too much. The list words for each week all use the same spelling form, like -a_e for long-a. Cons: It has the spelling list printed on each page, and I just don't think a kid is really learning to spell a word if he or she is just copying from the list on each exercise. I have to sit next to my son and cover the list while he does the lesson. The spelling rule for each list doesn't explicitly state, "The long-a sound in these words is made by the silent e on the end". It just says something along the lines of "Listen for the long-a sound in cake. What sound do you hear in lake and fake?" I have to point out the rule. The last section of most lessons directs the child to compose a few sentences on a topic like statues or favorite games, but the spaces provided are never long enough for more than one sentence or so. My son finds this very frustrating. No tests scheduled, and only one review lesson per several lessons. On the last school day of every week, I test on all the spelling lists we covered that week. This has ranged from twelve to twenty-four words at a time. Also, it is a lot of handwriting, which you may view as a pro or as a con. I am overall a little disappointed in it, but my son has not misspelled a word on a test yet. Either he is a so-called natural speller or the Spelling Workout program is effectively teaching him. I plan to finish books A and B because I already bought them. I hope that after completing B, I'll be able to judge its efficacy better. ETA: Today we started the long-o lesson, and I found that the words on that list are not all spelled using the same rule. Three of them use "oa", one uses "oe", two use "-o_e" and then there are "both" and "fold". The workbook grouped the words together in the exercises by different type but made no explanation. Ds had more trouble with these words than any so far; however, he was able to spell them correctly at the supper table later. Sorry this post is so long. I just wanted to be helpfully thorough.

I agree with all of this, and especially the bolded part. And all of it.

I'm so jealous of the poster who has a 99-book limit on each of her five cards! My local library only allows five books per card (we have three), and the other one we frequent allows ten for me but only five for a minor. I keep asking how I can petition to have the limits raised, but so far the answer is "Not gonna happen." My solution to the quality vs. twaddle issue is to tell my kids, "You can each pick out three/four/five books" (depends on what I need for school that week). Then I choose all the rest. I occasionally veto one of their choices, but not for being twaddle. We actually read Rainbow Fairies this week. Dd3 thought it was brilliant. I endured it and followed it up with The Secret-Keeper.

Thank you so much for this post! I taught this to my first-grader the day after I read it, and he's been doing it on his own to remind himself of Bs and Ds ever since! Great trick!