Harold and the Purple Crayon ... you should see my daughter's wall now. LOL. But for the 2yo she was then, it's actually pretty good art!

I haven't done the club, but I do have two of the workbook studies that go with the new updated books (the ones with the dolls). I liked them very much. I have the Elsie and Millie ones, and liked the Millie one best. (And yes, I went through them as an adult, just for fun.) If the club is on the level of quality that the workbook Bible studies are, it is probably worth trying.

You don't have to be a member of a particular church to homeschool. You have to homeschool under the umbrella of a church-affiliated cover school ... many churches run these as ministries, and the rules vary. It took us time to find one in our area that didn't require two parents to sign a statement of faith. Some require two parents to sign, some require one, and a few require none (but I don't know of any of those personally). I suppose there are a few out there that would require church membership too, but I am not familiar with any. The one we're in covers many counties and is very active. There are several like that. After you do find a school, the rules vary depending on what the school itself requires of you. Mine, we have to submit progress reports and keep attendance, but they don't inspect our lessons or anything like that. Some have requirements about attendance at meetings or co-op involvement, some don't. Our church school submits our paperwork to the school districts yearly. I'm not sure that all do; it depends on how much work the school wants to take on. Some may have you do your papers yourself. Hope this helps some. I don't mean to be vague but don't want to post my location either. :)

If I had based our HS decision on how my kid behaved at 3 ... well, let's just say he would've been a great candidate for Supernanny. :) He is a very intense kid emotionally, was very prone to tantrums, but too shy to explain concerns to his preschool teachers so was a 'good' but wiggly kid for others. He also had some autistic behaviors. And our attempts at practice homeschooling were pretty rough. He was/is very bright, but never demonstrated his knowledge to his teachers. (In his 4yo class they were telling me I needed to work on his 1-10 number recognition because he wouldn't do the worksheets correctly. In reality ... the kid was trying to teach himself multiplication already. But they never saw any of that.) Fortunately he outgrew the worst of it, and my expectations got more realistic too. :) He's a bright, quirky kid with a sensitive nature who does very well in his small group classes (Sunday School, scouts, and so on), but has a harder time in large groups and would probably end up being a troublemaker in a regular classroom. I guess I'm just saying, tell her to give it some time. Kids mature a lot (specially when they're home and you have to work on the discipline issues or go crazy, LOL), and the school years will get easier. It's also not an all-or-nothing decision. A few mornings in a mom's day out program might be fun for both of them. Perhaps there's a good co-op homeschool program in her area so she won't feel she's bearing the whole educational burden. And so on.

Ditto ... I can't find you either.

Maybe she's just not interested. Or maybe she's bored and doesn't know what she would be interested in, so doesn't really put forth the effort. It may also be that the achievement tests they used simply don't support her learning style, or she may just not test well. If they can give you a breakdown of what all was covered, along with a breakdown of the subscores on the IQ test, you might be able to get some useful information from that.

If it hasn't been released, then it's an illegal copy. Whatever the site may say.

Or the simple legal ramifications of having the whole discussion searchable from Google. Regardless, I hope it went, and continues to go, well for you and your daughter and her classmates.

Can he listen to the SOTW CDs while reading along? Would that count as listening practice? Are there some sort of fact sheets he can fill in while he listens, that might help him focus? (Like those cloze worksheets where you fill in the missing word in the sentence.) I don't think you're a slacker not to tackle it every lesson. It needs to be addressed, but not 24/7. Life would be way too frustrating that way. :)

A protein snack really helps me about that time.

I honestly don't know what I would've done. There were times in school where I did speak out ... but there were also many more times where I didn't. I was an easily intimidated student, too afraid of being a 'troublemaker'. I will say, I would be more likely to have spoken out on behalf of someone else than on my own behalf.

I'm not a leader, but I've had some of the same frustrations with our Tiger den... I wonder why some of these families even signed up in the first place. On the other hand, since I know several of them haven't even bothered to skim the manual, they probably just don't get that the kids don't earn the rank if they don't do the achievements. Sigh.

I remember seeing some cute ones in maybe Family Fun one time ... a simple little two-shelf cupboard (nightstand size maybe?) with spare CDs glued to the top to be the burners, and other little things added here and there. Could easily be made the right size for an 8yo and could be a lot of fun to play with.

If he feels these fears are interfering with his life, then counseling may be in order. If not ... a fear of jet-skis or planes isn't really going to ruin him. Lots of people fear those things. But there's fear, and then there's fear. I have a severe panic disorder. It didn't hit me till I was an adult, but looking back (and only in retrospect) ... I was a pretty anxious child. I *might* have benefitted from counseling to help me develop better coping mechanisms before I completely fell apart. And then again, I might not have, because I wasn't bad off enough to really see a change was needed. (And I was just a kid, and when you're young you think everyone experiences the world the way you do, or at least that you'll outgrow things when you get older.) In my case, I can differentiate between my panic fears and my 'regular' phobias. I'm terrified of heights, for one, but that's a 'normal' sort of fear, and I cope with it by either avoiding heights or just hanging on tight. The problem for me comes when everything in daily life triggers the same sort of terror that standing at the edge of a cliff would trigger. And no amount of reasoning can talk you down from the fear at that point ... you just have to wait it out. But you're not really describing panic attacks, right? Just phobias and avoidances. You might benefit from a counseling session yourself, just to get some feedback from a professional about ways you can encourage your son without pushing, and when his behaviors cross the line and need help. Sometimes an outside perspective is a good thing.

They're for any age, younger families mostly who are just getting started. Lots of tips of things to look for, how to get started doing nature walks, some poetry and stuff. A real variety. Some sheets for notebooking to get you started if you want them, and some samples of observations in Jane's own journal.

Shadow Spinner, is that the Susan Fletcher book? What was the controversy around that one?

I always call as soon as I know, but they don't usually see patients till around 9 or 10 weeks. But in my case, we've had risk factors (threatened miscarriage with my first, and actual miscarriage with my second), so they get us in as early as possible. They don't *do* anything extra for me, and with two live ones, we're done now, but that's how it worked for us.

It's been awhile since I've been in the museum (it gets pricey), but I do know that NASA has tons of teacher materials and lesson plans on their site ... might be worth browsing. I know they've got some nice rockets to look at (you can see them driving by), and some rides, and some hands-on stuff inside. I recall a lot about astronaut experiences. But it's been years since I've been inside, and they've expanded a bunch since then (and retired some of the older exhibits). Here's the website; I can't find any nice teacher resources on it, but you can get links to the NASA resources. They do have a teacher resource center for using in person, but that doesn't help you much I guess. :) http://www.spacecamp.com/details.php?cat=Museum&program=Exhibits

It's possible to get limited POA ... perhaps you can get one that allows you access to medical records only, no paranoia about assets needed. I know when my grandma was moving from one state far off to our state, my mother was granted a temporary, limited, POA so she could sign the real estate papers on her behalf. It made things much easier. Anyway, it's something to ask about, if you can talk to a lawyer friend or something. POA doesn't have to be all-or-nothing.

I see this is an old thread that's been brought back to the top, but I found it fascinating to read. :) I was an elementary education major, with a double minor in English and Spanish. I love reading with a passion, but I found most of the English courses pretty tedious. And because I was in the Honors program, I tested out of the earliest courses, so I never did learn to write a paper my professors liked. :) In spite of that, when it came time for the oral comprehensives, a kindly Shakespeare professor took pity on me and let me expound on children's lit. :) At the time I felt the whole thing was an utter waste of time and money ... I had a degree and certification, but I didn't feel I'd really been taught all that much. Now, though ... I'm not so sure. I've read a lot more since then (and a lot more of stuff I actually enjoy!), and I've tried my hand at writing, which had always been a dream, and it's kind of like the lessons the better professors were trying to teach have finally found a slot in my brain where they fit. I get some of what they were trying to teach. After all these years of 'self-educating' after college ... I feel like I actually merit the degree I earned way back then. But then, I've always been like that ... coming at subjects from my own weird angle before I finally understand them. My major and minors were appropriate for my career choices, which were being either a teacher or librarian (I ended up sticking with the library till I had kids), so it worked for me.

My son has bunk beds. We found it locally via ebay, of all things. Sturdy, it's the T-shaped kind where the supports on either end are a desk and a set of drawers, and the bottom bunk sticks out from the middle. We got it when he turned 5, and only rarely was he allowed on the top bunk at that time. Over time he's gotten better, and safer. He's 7 now. No one else is allowed up there (especially not little sister!). *I* worry tons about accidents, but so far it's really been okay. The rails are higher than the mattress (I was surprised how many models we saw that weren't!!!) and it feels pretty safe. It's also designed to take apart and separate into twin beds, if we want to, though his room won't fit that much furniture. Not sure if it was a great decision ... but so far it's been okay. And he really enjoys them. He usually sleeps on the bottom though. :)

Eleanor, that's a fascinating post! I gave myself a good panic attack a few weeks back by planning out my son's math progression through high school. We're only letting him work about a year ahead right now, but somehow in my planning I ended up skipping another year, and it worried me how quickly we'll run out of math work for him, IF he keeps at the pace he's going. I'm no dummy at math, but teaching higher level math is another thing altogether. Fortunately dh's giftedness lies in math, so he'll take over .... it just may be a few years sooner than we thought. LOL. Anyway, you are so right that it doesn't hurt to TRY, as long as we can read the signs of stress before we burn 'em out, right? Right now we're really just working slower, with more time to explore interests, and more time to just plain play. I do worry about stagnating ... it is so scary to try to balance. I keep telling myself, I can't mess his education up any worse than the local PS, at least. :) Though they do have AP and things. But not much of a gifted program these days.

All my age books are mixed together, sorted by author, with the exception of the picture books which get the lowest shelves. And several series books have bins stuck on shelves, so it fits more. I do keep the poetry separate, but I don't separate the fiction any other way. I own thousands of books and this is just easier. (My 'adult' books are fairly clean so I don't mind them being on the shelves with kids' books.)

Very little training here. We listen to CDs sometimes, and my oldest (7) participates in the church children's choir when it's active. And my music-teacher friend led a musical play class over the summer, which we attended. Some basic rhythm, and instruments, and fun stuff like that. I figure they're young yet. We do have a piano and lots of rhythm instruments, but the only thing I feel I could teach would be recorder, so I'm waiting till their hands are a bit bigger. :)

I like the books (we're doing Bio I right now) and I like having a fairly simple schedule to follow. The experiments ... not as impressive, and not spaced out as well as I'd like. BUT ... I would likely not do them at all if they weren't included, so this works well for us. (We've had fun seeing how many science experiments Mommy gets wrong. LOL.) We don't do the narration every day, but my kids are still retaining. Science was the one part of our unit studies (FIAR) that was consistently getting left out ... so Noeo has filled in the gap nicely for us. It is fairly easy to find go-along experiments for weeks that don't have them, and most of the Usborne books have internet links for videos and games and further information, for those that want to do them. For us, it is worth it, because we love collecting good books, and I can see reusing it with my youngest ... or at least keeping the books as reference. I'm keeping careful notes of what parts of the kits we consume so I can just replace a couple pieces when it's time.