We don't often get through our science, but I am determined that this year will be better. We are going with Galore Park's Junior Science as a spine, and I want to supplement with some experiments. I need the experiments to be easy to carry out, with a minimum of running around to look for supplies. Am I better to get a Thames and Kosmos Elements of Science kit, or Janice VanCleave's Biology, Physics and Chemistry experiment books? Or is there something else even better out there? My kids are at a grade 5 level.

E string squeaks can be worse with cheaper strings, but the biggest culprit is arm weight, and I think that might be the case for your daughter as you mentioned that the squeaks are the worst when she is changing strings. Check that her elbow is heavy and that it is lower than her wrist when she changes from A to E. The elbow always leads when moving to a higher pitched string. Watch the stick of the bow to be sure she is maintaining her arm weight, and if your teacher has taught her to have a strong bow thumb, remind her to work on that as she goes to the E. I'd suggest she practices short staccato strokes in this pattern: AAEE AAEE AAEE AEA.. :ll, ensuring that she has weight in the bow before starting to move it. HTH

Thanks, everyone! Epcot seems to be getting high marks from most of you. We'll be sure to see the country pavillions. Are there any particular rides we should try? What is there to do at Universal Studios? I know nothing about them, other than they make movies, and apparently also run a theme park. Would you go see the Harry Potter area, or is there something else to do there? If we were to go shopping for a day, where should we go? I live in a town with single lane highways and four stop lights, so am not keen on doing any more driving on freeways than absolutely necessary. I will check out the alligator place. Has anyone tried the simulated sky diving? Any good places for dinner shows? Is Cirque du Soleil worth seeing? Thanks for all of your help!

I'm travelling with my 17 year old daughter from Northern British Columbia to Orlando at the end of March for a special just-before-you-leave home Mother-Daughter holiday. We have a hotel booked close to Disney and would like to go to Disney World for a few days, but aren't sure where we should concentrate our time in the park. Any suggestions? Also, where else would you suggest we go in Orlando? Anywhere we should avoid? Thanks so much!

My daughter has been diagnosed celiac. She was never small or thin, and never had constipation or diarrhea. She started vomiting once a week, then progressed to almost daily. Just before she was diagnosed, she was vomiting blood. I was taking her to the hospital regularly, and several doctors told me she could not possibly be celiac, and one or two suggested I was making up her symptoms. My sister was celiac, though, so I pressed for the antibody test. When it came back, my daughters numbers were off the charts. She has been perfectly healthy since going off gluten, and feels sick if she inadvertently gets any gluten. I'd suggest a new doctor. Soon.

http://www.lego-instructions.com I've been looking for something like this for a long time for my son, so thanks for inspiring the search. Leslie-Jean:001_smile:

But I love Quebec...

When I want a roast for dinner, I put it on low at 1:00 and it is ready by 5:30. Our favourite way to cook a roast in the crock pot is to cover it with apple juice and add a package of Onion Soup Mix.

I am wondering how to change my login name, short of deleting my first account and starting a new account. I use that login name for my email, and I'd rather that everyone who knows my email login name didn't have access to all my posts on WTM. I was taken aback when I googled my login name and found all my posts came up on google. Thanks, Leslie-Jean

I'm in, though probably more as someone who will try to read a book a week, than as someone who will commit to read a book a week. I just want to be able to join back in if I miss a week. We may be moving, so I foresee some weeks where it might be difficult to get a book in. I do think I need to start reading more in front of my kids. They see me much more often in front of the computer than in front of a book, and I do wonder if that is part of the reason that my younger ones don't read nearly as much as my older ones. Leslie-Jean

Thank you so much for the link! I had found the Tools for the Mind book, and was looking for more information about the program and the philosophy. I will look differently at our days this week: trying to incorporate more activities and games that help my kids develop their executive functioning. I think they'll be very happy to play more games, to play act, and to be more creative. Does anyone have any more links on Adele Diamond's work? Leslie-Jean MacMillan

Many Canadians do not know the words to the National Anthem, and fewer would be able to sing God Save the Queen. As a nation, we are considerably less patriotic than Americans. That being said, I think I've found my new favourite Canadian song: r. Leslie-Jean

Your heart is hurting, and you have had many losses. I am so sorry.:grouphug: I am writing to tell you what we do and some of my thoughts, but please know that I do not know you, and that my thoughts might not be helpful at all to your dilemma. Please keep what, if anything, is helpful, and disregard the rest. In our family, all of the children who live in our house are ours. Some of my kids also have other parents and other siblings. My biological daughter sometimes complained when she was little because she had only one mother and father, while some of her siblings had two moms and two dads. I think all you can decide what you do. You can decide if your younger and older stepsons are yours, or you can decide that just the younger two are yours. In my case, the kids who live with me are mine, and I care for their extended families very much, but they are more like second cousins to me. However, they are full family members for my kids, so they are invited to birthday parties, and my kids always buy them Christmas presents. When the extended families have special events, only their biologically related kids are invited. My other kids are at peace with that. You cannot control what your older stepsons do, or how they behave. It could be that you choose to claim them as family and they never reciprocate. I am not sure. The quote I am trying to live by is: "You can change the world from one that is senselessly horrible to one in which there is compassion with your choice about how to live. You can choose that, to the extend of your ability, the people whose lives touch yours will be treated with love." LJM

Follow your heart.

Just posted this on the other workbox discussion, but thought I should have probably posted it here: Another advantage I found with workboxes as compared to a list of to dos was with longer assignments. My son has a learning disability and is working through an intensive program that takes about an hour and half a day. At the beginning of each day, he used to feel overwhelmed. When we started with workboxes, I broke the program down into 10-15 minute sections, and put each of those sections in a different box. Suddenly, with the program visually and concretly broken down into smaller tasks, my son found the program much more pleasant to work through.:001_smile: LJ in Canada

Another advantage I found with workboxes as compared to a list of to dos was with longer assignments. My son has a learning disability and is working through an intensive program that takes about an hour and half a day. At the beginning of each day, he used to feel overwhelmed. When we started with workboxes, I broke the program down into 10-15 minute sections, and put each of those sections in a different box. Suddenly, with the program visually and concretly broken down into smaller tasks, my son found the program much more pleasant to work through.:001_smile: LJ in Canada

Our house is never extraordinarily clean, but it has been much better since we have started a daily routine. I do have a housecleaner come for four hours once a week to help with some deep cleaning that we miss. dd16 does dishes and cleans the kitchen nightly dd13 cleans the three bathrooms daily, and takes care of her bird ds10 takes out the garbage daily and tidies and vacuums either the living room or play room dd7 takes out recycling daily and tidies the front and back entryway. dds 5, 3 and 6 mos are currently chore free. dd16, dd13, and ds10 are responsible for their own laundry and tidying their own rooms. dd13 has a very messy room, and we usually leave her to that. dd7 helps put away her laundry, and tidies the room she shares with dd5 and dd6mos with some protest. In the summer, we usually ask dd16 and dd13 to do one extra household job a day, from lawnmowing to organizing a few kitchen cupboards, to hauling rocks or whatever else. ds10 often offers to help. dd7 usually cleans up the outside toys as needed. dd16 does lots of the cooking, while dd13 helps me lots with the littles. We do better if we have a rhythm to our day, and I found the chores did go more smoothly during the school year when they fit more predictably into the school day. LJM

I'd suggest you take a look at Dreambox math. It's an online program which seems to be similar to RightStart, with an abacus and lots of mental math work, and my daughter has loved it. You are not to help your child at all with the program, and you get regular progress updates via email. It's the first online math program that we have really liked. Leslie-Jean

You may also want to check Susan Barton's materials, Lindamood Bell materials, All About Spelling or SPIRE. My dd12 has dyslexia and I felt like I was banging my head against the wall trying to teach her to read with 100 Easy Lessons, Phonics Pathways and other such programs. She went through Learning Links (a program similar to the Lindamood Bell program), and jumped 2-3 grades in her reading ability in 3 weeks of intensive work. I'm now working on Literacy Links myself with my ds10 who has severe learning difficulties, and we are finally making our way through first grade reading materials. He was really struggling with sight words until I found Child1st, who sell flashcards with doodles. He is a strong visual learner, and seeing the words with doodles on them seems to help him learn the words much more quickly. We have nevertheless been working on "want" for two straight weeks, both as a sight word and phonetically. It will come! Good luck. Leslie-Jean

I find we do better if I spend more time thinking about our daily rhythm instead of following a list of pages to be done. Our current daily schedule is more or less like this: 7:30 Wake kids. I may need to wake them again at 7:40 or 7:50 8:15-9:00 or so: Read alouds, including historical fiction, novels we just like, living math, living science. Kids often eat, curl up under blankets, knit or play quietly with toys as I read. 9:00-10:00 Chores. Since I started a daily one hour of time dedicated to taking care of the animals, cleaning bedrooms, tidying and getting dinner started our lives have been going much more smoothly. 10:00-1:00 Schoolwork plus lunches. dd12 (dyslexic): 1 h reading, three pie pieces from Aleks math plus multiplication drills, piano or violin ds10 (severe learning disabilities): 1.5 h intensive reading instruction with me, plus independent online educational games of his choice. dd7: Dreambox online math, 2 pages of Singapore math, 2 pages Easy Grammar, 1 page geography, 1 page theory, 1 page of Just Write [*]1:00-3:00 Schoolwork dd12: piano or violin, Sequential Spelling x2 with me, Latin with me, writing. ds10: 2h work with Learning Assistant on math dd7: violin, and with me: All About Spelling, Sequential Spelling, WWE, Latin, FLL, Geography [*]3:00-whenever: Group activities including Karate, cross country skiing, gymnastics, biathlon, woodwork, cubs, and choir. Our schedule is flexible. Some days, my dd12 babysits or has music lessons during the day. On Thursdays, my ds10 has OT and my dd7 joins in. In the end, I don't worry if the kids don't get through all their work for a particular day because I know we have enough scheduled time to make sure that we will touch on the subject the next day. We rarely make up for missed days. Just another approach.... Leslie-Jean

I have a son who is also diagnosed with ARND, and he does not have any facial features. The characteristic facial features of FASD only occur if the mother drank on the days that the face is developping. Facial features do not predict the amount of brain damage, and, in fact, kids without the features often do worse because there is no outward sign of their disability, and their challenges are often not as easily accepted as the differences of a child with prominent physical differences. Much of how you describe your daughter rings true of my son. Diane Malbin of FASCETS explained that a child with FASD has many issues in common with an adult with Alzheimer's. They have good days where they are functional, and bad days when they cannot remember what you have taught them. My 9 year old son identified the sounds of "i" and "e" correctly for three months, then was completely stumped one day when we were reviewing. Because I knew he was likely having an bad moment where he couldn't find the information in his brain, I was OK with leaving it, and moving on. Sure enough, the next day he could remember the sounds again. In the past, I had often been frustrated with that behaviour. On good days, I can remember that he is as he is, and that thinking that he should be more like x or y does not help. I suppose the other big help has been that with diagnosis I have in the home help with his education, and that help has been an immense releif to me. Are there any opportunities for you to have your daughter fully tested? Let me know if you are at all interested in any resources I've found helpful. I'm happy to share.