It may be possible she is WANTING you to set firm boundaries. I was a middle school teacher before a mom and you would be surprised at what kids share. What struck me is that by and far, kids appreciated knowing what was and was not tolerated by their parents. It gave them boundaries that served them. A kid would share with me that her dad would never allow her to dye her hair blue and she was secretly GLAD (her words). Is it possible that by ignoring some of the snippy words, she may be pushing to see just where your boundaries are. Now, I also want to add any consequence should be discussed gently and firmly with an eye on the heart. I.E. after everyone's calmed down very sadly (empathetically) saying something like "Now you realize that hitting your brother isn't acceptable and your father and I wouldn't be doing our job if we let you get away with it. I love you and it really pains me to do this, but we have to follow through with a consequence." But then EMPHASIZE the good part, that once the consequence is serve, all will be forgiven and she can begin again fresh. I also agree you need to take away the trip (otherwise you are setting yourself up to crying and apologies to get out of punishments in the future), but I feel the heart talks are important.

I find the best lay person lesson book of montessori materials is a book called Basic Montessori. I would suggest you look at it with a Nuinhuis catalog nearby so you can have a picture of the material as it is explained. Nuinhuis materials are EXTREMELY expensive, but you can make a lot of materials on your own. I will you warn it is time consuming!!!!! Another more homeschool friendly option (daily lessons) are these books: http://www.newchildmontessori.com/ There are also a lot of yahoo groups with printables and photos of homemade materials. montessori makers (make sure to sign up for all the subgroups to see all the files -- like mm2-culture), playschool6 , and montessori materials(no longer a yahoo group) (http://www.montessorimaterials.org/math.htm

I just thought of something else. You mentioned your child needing dental work. Most states have free health and dental plans for children if you qualify by income. Amy

Thanks!!! Amy

I know that Veritas Press has free shipping this month with a code from their newsletter. Does anyone have this?

Check out the let's read and find out books at the library. There are tons of them and most are extremely well written, interesting, and many have activities with them.

I haven't heard of this but I love a book called fix, freeze, feast. We've liked everything in it!

We love CLE math. It's gentle, and my math hater turned into a math lover. And she is getting it all:)

I found it to be more of a passive program than an active program. I'll try to explain. First of all, being able to select from multiple choice the sounds is entirely different from being able to produce the sound in applied reading. Furthermore, my student was good at following the rule for that worksheet. She learned the sound "ow" long enough to finish the worksheet, but it didn't mean she remembered that rule from then on and consistently read "ow" in a reading book. Does this make sense? I found it more useful to consistently reinforce phonics rules in the process of reading and in spelling.

How about Biblioplan? They have readings separated by ages. They include Hakim and then other readings for youngers (like If you Lived at the time of the Civil War). They also have activities and mapwork now.

You might look and see if there are any university style homeschool programs near you. They basically work like a university. You enroll in the classes you want (in your case math and science), the kids attend lab together and have a list of reading and homework to be completed at home.

I switched from R & S to CLE and am very happy too! I found CLE more fun (and advanced) than R & S as well. My daughter had done r&S1 for k and I thought I was going to start her mid-1st grade for CLE, but we ended up doing 1st from beginning to end. Story problems, number dictations, and geometry terms were foreign to her. We did a couple lessons a day at first, but I think this was the right approach. My daughter loves it. She doesn't have to stare at a whole page of facts at a time (but she gets plenty of review with flashcards and small spurts of facts inter-mixed with other math learning). The biggest plus for me is she is working much more independently and successfully than she was with R&S.

I use CLE math and I LOVE it. I haven't used Horizons, but I have looked at it several times. The problem that I had when I looked at Horizons is that it is too reliant on pictures and it lacks student accountability for memorization. I'm not an expert on it, however. CLE is spiral. The first grade emphasis is on facts, but it does it in a consistent and gentle way (some oral drill, some daily practice and after the facts have been practiced for some time, they show up on the timed one minute daily drill). Students look at small chunks of facts at a time (never a solid page of just facts). They also teach place value, oral number dictations, fractions, geometry terms(like congruency), clocks, money, lots of story problems (both oral and written). The best part is that students find it easy to be successful and good at math. And they learn to be independent learners. Each lesson starts out with guided practice (parent and student together). This is very short. Then they have "on my own" work. By the end of first grade, the teacher directed part takes no more than 10 minutes. I recently looked at the horizons first grade and found cle math to be more advanced at the same stage.

How about the Your Story Hour CDs (the American Heritage Album comes to mind)? You could also look at the books from My Father's World Adventures. A spine appropriate for that age would be Children's Encyclopedia of American History

Phonics from a to z does this too! We like this. I'm also pretty sure you can buy a phonics dictionary for kids from rainbowresource for very inexpensive (1.50 or so) that does this as well.

We love CLE math (christian light education). It's fast paced with a good amount (but not too much) of review. Students are quick to become very independent with it.

We LOVE Christian light education (NOT Christian light publications) for math! It is challenging, but the kids quickly learn to be independent. It's also inexpensive (big plus).

We love the Boxcar Children as a read aloud! We also liked the Cobblestone Cousins books.

Good luck! If you end up coming to KC I'd be happy to help you with getting acquainted with the resources here. Just PM me! Amy You can start here: http://midwesthomeschoolers.org/ I am in the KC area, but I'm on the Kansas side of the metro (overland park).

You didn't say where in Missouri you were looking at. There are a lot of groups available in the Kansas City area as well. The big MPE (Midwest Parent Educators) conference is this upcoming weekend. I can't wait!

Do you have a Mardel near you? They have a very wide (3 foot or so) laminator that is self service and they charge by the foot. They charge by the foot, but you can easily put many in at the same time for that width.

There are some very tasty cereals with flax. Have you tried those? Another thing, you can buy flax oil at walmart and mix it in with yogurt, etc. The oil has to be refrigerated, though.

You might check your thyroid as well. A failing thyroid can do this as well.

I also wanted to mention that you certainly can skip the first couple of chapters. She doesn't really present it as Big Bang exactly, but not creationist either. There is christian content in the book and I don't believe you will find any of it offensive other than maybe the first couple of chapters.

You also have to consider how graphic SOTW 1 is and how sensitive your child is. SOTW 1 goes into gruesome detail about making mummies and many of the battle scenes (lots of head chopping off, etc). Chapter after chapter of graphic (enough to give my daughter nightmares). I find CHOW much less graphic. I also find there is too much emphasis placed on several stories that sound just like the Moses story (but not Christian), and other old testament stories (placing the question of "how do we know the moses story is true and not that one" into little minds). It presents myths with the same weight as Christian history stories. Now, I do like some of SOTW 1, but excerpts of it. I prefer CHOW because it has better flow. Having said that, I think it would be an awful lot for a Kindergartener. I would probably go with something like "Usborne First Encyclopedia of History" instead.