If he isn't praise or positive reinforcement avoident, maybe he earns a marble, penny, whatever-small-object-suits-your-fancy to fill up a jar. At first it can be as easy as you want (depending on what/how much he is lying) "look, it's raining" "Yes, it is raining". Then when he fills the jar he could earn a prize for himself or possibly something for the whole family. That way he can feel like he is contributing to his new family and kind of be like a hero to the little guys.

I was thinking about gift certificates, there's not a lot of restaurants but maybe a few. I like the idea of the gift basket. Thanks!

refreshing

The cleaning service might help...I don't know if it might be more stressful to have to "pick-up" before the cleaning though. No, there's no food services with the business...

You all have such helpful ideas so I'm hoping you might be able to brainstorm with me. My cousin lost her mom this week. After she gets done with the rest of the arrangements, she is going to go home to her three kids and the business she runs with her husband. She lives several states away and I really want to help her out, but I can't be there physically. I have been looking up food services to see if I could send her food, but I'm not having much luck. Places like Amazon Fresh don't go there although Blue Apron seems to. The problem is there's three kids and I don't know their food preferences or how "picky" they are. There's a handful of restaurants around them but I'm not sure certificates to a restaurant will be helpful. I'm not looking just to send money, I want to help lift the burden a little. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

I like Danbury from daijabu

Margaret Peterson Haddix has a a bunch of good books. A couple series some of my guys have enjoyed are Among the Hidden and the "Found" series. You said classics; has he read Robin Hood and The Sword and the Stone?

The Daily Burn. It's a subscription service but it has a ton of different workouts from beginners to advanced. $14.95 a month.

...and yet we have second graders writing reports with parenthetical citations using MLA format. Why!?

Hand sanitizer.

I am using MCT Grammar Town, the iBook. We skip over the parts of speech he's learned, practice parsing the sentences, then go through interjections, conjunctions, and prepositions. We might add more but that can lead to teaching him how to do complex and compound sentences.

Totally non-science related...I like that two of the three main characters are going to be foster kids. There's not a lot of children's books that feature foster kids; especially as smart and capable. Well, I'm assuming the capable part. Apparently they are geniuses.

It looks like Bill Nye will be coming out with a new book series focused on middle school students and science. Coming out in 2017. http://www.ew.com/article/2016/08/23/bill-nye-middle-grade-science-series-exclusive

So sorry to hear about the fire. Very glad you family is safe though.

I loved The Wednesday Wars, it is still one of my favorites. I thought Okay for Now was almost as good. It's definitely harsher. Doug's dad is abusive while Holling's was mostly absent. But mostly the book is about how people can change the expectations for themselves and others my small gestures. This one also focuses on painting/sketching to make larger points as Shakespeare was used in The Wednesday Wars.

Fernwithy on AO3 and Fanfiction.net writes amazing stories for Harry Potter and the Hunger Games. She's a school librarian and she takes her writing seriously.

Jacqueline Woodson is an amazing lesbian author who has written several books featuring lesbian characters. The Notebooks of Melanin Sun - A teenage boy learns that his mother is a lesbian. It chronicles his journey of understanding. The House You Pass on the Way - Staggerlee is a teenage girl coming to the realization that she may be a lesbian. She bonds with her cousin about this. The Dear One – Several women including a loving lesbian couple help take care of a pregnant 15 year old. The Letter Q: Queer Writer's Letters to Their Younger Selves - she's a contributor in this one I like Jacqueline Woodson for several reasons. One, she is a fabulous writer. Her characters are very real and their "voice" is always unique. She also believes in writing books that have silver lining in them, even though in many cases the topics she writes about (death, child abuse) are difficult. There's always something dependably hopeful at the end. It's nice to see more books about the LGBTQ experience that doesn't just focus on coming out.

Just wanted to add that I did a paper in grad school on year round schools and the data differed on whether or not it was done for capacity reasons (in states like Nevada and California where the population is booming) versus academic reasons. When it was done for capacity reasons there was very little gain, partially due to to craziness of the scheduling. There was less data on doing year round schools for academic reasons. Of course, this was seven years ago so that may have changed.

Year round schools Longer/shorter school days Single gender classrooms Homework in elementary grades

This is a very visual/kinesthetic algebra program I wanted to use with one of my students but haven't had the chance to actually try. It seems quite interesting. http://www.borenson.com

I'm sorry it happened. Please make sure you don't settle right away with her insurance company. My mother is still dealing with the after effects of whiplash for nearly a year. They are keeping track of all her expenses, not settling for the lump sum the other insurance company wanted to give them initially.

Nicely done.

:grouphug:

:grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:

I am now significantly less worried about AI taking over the earth.