Thanks from me as well!

My five year old just got home from it. She seems to have enjoyed it reasonably well (except when they had her wear the t shirt for a picture). Looking over her test, she did well on a lot of it, though she got a lot wrong as well. I'm really happy that she went through the whole test, not letting the ones she was confused by derail her. She can be a perfectionist, so that's pretty big.

I'm waiting for the group buy from Homeschool Group Buys, but I'm really looking forward to it!

Absolutely no idea, but I'll bump this for you.

I'd look at the Bunnicula books by the Howes. There's two series, one that is more advanced, one that is adapted to be much shorter and easier. They are fun reads, and if I remember correctly they are set up as chapter books but have lots of illustrations. Bonus: if he like them a lot, when he's a little more advanced it may be easy to hook him on the longer versions.

Thanks! I'm going to be reading that blog later when the kids aren't playing "Mr. Bucket" next to me (try to put balls into a bucket that is moving around and spitting balls out of it's mouth). I guess I should probably push the oral narration. She can do it, but doesn't usually want to. Still, she's good about going ahead and doing it if I say it's for school.

Thanks to those who've replied so far, and I'll look into those titles (actually I just pulled FLL off my shelf!), but I'm really looking for help in goal-setting for an accelerated young child. She can take a couple of sentences of dictation with decent spelling and correct punctuation. She reads fluently. She can write a sentence or two of her own. If she were older and doing this, I'd be wanting to work from sentences towards paragraphs, but she's young. I don't want school to become a bunch of essays. When I look through first, second, or third grade stuff, so much of it would be boring because she knows it. I'm fine with picking and choosing and pulling things together, but I need help with a roadmap so I choose the right stuff. I'll probably re-read WTM, but do you have any resources that are specific to the development of gifted/asynchronous learners? Like how Kitchen Table Math has sort of a map of which skills develop first, which are based on each other, etc.

Do you mean books for him to read aloud (or buddy read with you) or books for you to read aloud to him?

I'm having trouble envisioning what next year should look like. My first thought is to to "More of the same, just with higher expectations," but that doesn't make it much easier to imagine. My husband isn't much use for planning because right now, he's away for a month of training and next year he will likely be deployed for pretty much the entire school year (and following summer). Right now, every day we do read-alouds that cover history and literature, math (Finished BA2A, flying through MEP 2 with enjoyment), writing (mostly dictations I've made up that focus on spelling and punctuation), and reading (usually silent reading, but I make her read aloud sometimes.) With reading, she prefers picture books to chapter books. She can pick up most picture books and read them aloud to her younger brothers with appropriate expression on the first read-through. When we are at the zoo or science museum, she can read the signs and later tells me information she learned from them. She resists anything like narration. She will talk about what she read, but later, on her own terms. I haven't been pushing it because it's only Kindergarten and she's clearly learning, but at some point output should be required, right? Her play and our daily lives are fairly "enriched" but laid-back. She imagines many wonderful things, plays games that involve writing up signs or menus, and practices things like cartwheels and skipping rope. She'll sometimes grab a workbook and happily give herself assignments for an hour or two. We go on frequent field trips to the science museum and zoo, as well as other local places (lots to do in our area). We do science experiments, cook together, build and make things, and have lots of conversations, especially in the car. One recent conversation was about genetic problems that could come from marrying your brother. Another was about how a hero like George Washington could be okay with slavery (that thread comes up in many conversations) We also do some French, but that's better with dh around since he knows it much better than me. Next year I plan to continue on with MEP and BA because they've been working well. I don't plan to stop over the summer, just slow down some. We'll likely join the Y and work a lot on swimming. I'll probably sign her up for the monthly homeschool class at the zoo (and let little brother join after he turns five). I plan to start some logic, probably pieced together unless I find an awesome curriculum that fits (suggestions?) It's really the Language Arts stuff that I'm unsure about. Should I assign more reading? If so, how much? What should I do about writing? We'll keep dabbling in French, but it's not likely to get our full attention this coming year. She'll also continue weekly music class at church, which is fun but a real music class, not just cute kids singing. If it helps the child in question turns 6 over the summer. She has a brother who will turn 5 around Christmas (he works on reading and math, but mainly needs to improve his attention span) and a brother who turns 2 in the fall (who is a fairly easy kid but a bit of a wild card due to age). I'm a stay-at-home mom. We have money to meet our needs and many of our wants, but we prefer not to spend when possible. (Police officer/military salary supporting a family of 5). I'm good at being resourceful, and we live in an area with plenty to do. ETA: I'm grateful for any curriculum suggestions or suggestions of any kind, but what I'm hoping for most are resources that will help me create a road map of goals, or just ideas based on what goals you had for similar children at similar ages.

One reason that buy back programs work is that it reduces the number of guns available for criminals to steal. For example, my grandfather had several handguns that he had acquired over the years, as gifts, inheritance, holding them for relatives, etc. He didn't want them or care about them, just had them. One day, his house was burgled and those guns stolen. Now they are in the hands of criminals. A buy back program could have prevented that. Frankly, a lot of people buy guns thinking they are going to hunt, or get into shooting sports, and then don't have time. Or they get old and don't have anyone in the next generation who really wants to take those guns. Lots of these get stolen and later used in crimes.

This is probably good advice, but I have to add: please, please do not have her do this in a journal where these will become a little collection. The other kids are likely to notice, and if one grabs the notebook and starts reading aloud, things will get really bad really fast. Little scraps of paper that are immediately tossed out would serve the same purpose without looking to the other kids like she is keeping a log of their transgressions.

We thought about this, but his going to a camp in the middle of no where. Car rental places are like 40 minutes from where he needs to be. Plus, we really do need a new car by summer, so this just hurries it along a bit.

At the moment, I'm feeling better. Kind of excited to be probably getting a new car. We've been cramming 3 kids into sedans long enough.

Haha My kids are 1, 4, and 5. The five year old claims she'd be fine home alone, but...

My father in law is going to try one more long shot thing tomorrow. Driving him to training would be almost impossible. It's about six hours away not taking breaks, and we'd have to take the kids, so about fourteen hours in the car for me and the kids, plus he'd then be without a car and unable to go to the grocery, etc while there. And then pick him up at the end. I think that would be worse than car shopping, though it's so close to a tie that I've been considering it.

I love my husband and really am not angry, but I'm stressed! Our car stopped working a few weeks ago, and it was no biggie. My husband didn't need his for work, do I have been using it while he's been poking around, slowly diy-ing fixing this thing. Today, the part he thought it needed came in, he put it in, and... no luck. He went and got another part... no luck. Now he, his dad, and a brother are messing about with it. None of them are mechanics. All this would be fine, except he leaves tomorrow for a month of military training, and he has to take our only working car! It's not the end of the world. I have the first few days figured out of how we can go without a car, and we're planning on buying a bigger vehicle soon and have set aside the funds to do so. But the stress! I hate car stuff, I hate big purchases, and I hate my husband being gone. Now it's all happening at the same time. If he had just taken it to a mechanic three weeks ago! But I can't be too angry because not only do I love him, his ability and desire to play handyman has saved us lots of money over the years. Gah! Anybody have recommendations for a used 7 passenger vehicle and how to go about buying one in cash? I'll be relying on my parents a lot to drive us around/watch the kids, I guess. I'm serious about wanting car buying tips. Any advice on how to choose something that I won't be blaming myself for in a couple of years?

I agree you made the right move. For parents who don't know what something is, just seeing a book over and over lens credibility to it. Had you just taken it, a new mother may have later seen it at a bookstore or wherever and thought, "oh, I should get that. I keep seeing it everywhere."

My kids are still way too young to know what the future holds for us, but our state is currently very open to letting highschoolers, including homeschoolers, start college early on the state's dime. My husband and I have talked about under what circumstances that would be beneficial. I like that starting early could give young people time to double major in two very different fields, perhaps one that is a passion and one that is more practical. I like that starting early could give someone, especially a young woman, a little bit of "cushion" when making decisions about graduate degrees and starting families.

For all the curious, we were questioned by two different individuals involved in running the study, including the Dr, why we were interested in participating. I don't know which answers would have disqualified us, but they were very glad we had "good" reasons, and that I had read everything thoroughly and the children arrived understanding what was going to happen and ready to ask their own questions. We actually live in a large, fairly international city and they only need about 20 kids, so they may be able to fill their need with kids who are likely to travel to third world countries in the coming years.

My kindergartener was in public school first semester, which was a bust for us. She went in and came out at the same level, academically speaking. For math we just finished Beast Academy 2a, and now we are circling back and doing MEP 2, which is pretty much perfect for her at the moment. We are doing 2 lessons a day right now, but I plan to slow way down when we hit multiplication. For writing/spelling, I loved the idea of Dictation Day by Day, but it was just too outdated, so I made something very similar that is working really well. She also plays lots of games that involve writing menus, maps, signs, etc, so I don't feel a need to make her wrote a lot for school. She reads really well, so we just make sure to read some every day. School made her kind of resistant to this, but if it has mermaids, she loves it. For science we read, do Mystery Science, play with science kits and Snap Circuits, and visit the local natural history museum where we are members. For history/social studies we read a lot and do read alouds like Story of the World and What your First Grader Needs to Know. Plus my husband is a police officer and National Guardsman, so we have community helpers down! For music she songs in a choir and I'm teaching her a little on the recorder, mostly to practice reading music. For art we look at imagines of famous art and discuss, and she occasionally works on a project. My husband also gives her drawing lessons occasionally. We get lots of literature though read alouds. For example, my husband is reading them from The Children's Chaucer for bed time, and I'm reading The Secret Garden at breakfast.

Aww, thanks, Catwoman and Jean. And thanks to everyone who has weighed in politely. I really enjoy seeing different points of view. Good thing,too, since I have a tendency to wade right on in to deep waters.

Thanks, all. I've decided to go with Facebook for now, but as I meet moms that do something different, I'll see about adding something. I hope to use Facebook to get a regular park day going, and after that I can set up something else to announce when and where it is.

It may be unusual, but my mom's a nurse who would often sign us up to participate in medical studies, but we also learned to research potential side affects, drug interactions, etc for all medications before taking them. My personal threshold for my kids is that if the worst likely side affect is something annoying and the worst possible side affect is still moderate, we'll do it, even if it gives us no immediate benefit.

Yes. I would expect those who hate/distrust/whatever vaccines to also hate/ distrust/whatever vaccine studies. I would not expect that from those who are not anti-vaccine. After all, they have to go through trials in order to be approved. I would expect a range of levels of curiosity, from "huh, not my thing" to "never thought about that before" to "that's really interesting." But I would not expect those who willingly benefit from vaccines to react viscerally against the idea of participating in testing, especially not after hearing a brief explanation.

It's hard to do studies in countries ravaged by disease. For this study, they need a population of children in good health who have not yet been exposed to the disease and probably won't be during the trial and who can return to give blood samples at specific points. That's a tall order in a country without safe drinking water. It would be great if they could do the study there to help more children sooner, but it would be very hard to control for all those factors. Also, our family hopes to someday spend significant time in a country where the disease is prevalent. So we may eventually benefit from the approval of this vaccine for children.