I can see why it is frustrating you Jean if you're not use to it and/or had little warning about it. I'm not sure how it is more inconvenient or rude than anything else either wedding or gift wrap wise other than it is not the usual way to do things - lots of people complain about how the usual way to do wrapping papers and wedding stuff are a pain and if it was typical to do things other ways they would likely do so. As long as it worded nice like 'if you want to buy us a present please do so...' I do not get how it is any ruder than any of the other gift requests common these days. But then, I gave up on wrapping paper years ago because it was such a wasteful pain spending nights doing it and the gift bags we use are far better (and my partner and I eloped partially to avoid the usual stress and pain of weddings so didn't deal with presents other than the few some friends and family gave later). Haven't asked anyone else not to do so though now that I've thought about it the only ones who still use wrapping are my very old fashioned in-laws and even then only for their rare nonhandmade stuff. Cloth and other bags are way more popular here or that may just be the people I know. For wrapping - tea towels, normal towels, pillow cases, blankets are good for bigger thing (asking a small child to go get a blanket and them finding massive thing under it was priceless last year). These storage bags made from recycled materials make great reusable gift bags and very easy to use and durable (my kids each have a jumbo one from this site which we use New Years and Children's Day - each of my kids have one.). Or just tagging part of the gift. There are lots of ways that are easier than wrapping paper once we get used to it.

For multiplication, I teach that we're making something [x] times as big rather than in groups because I want to avoid the false concept that I was taught that multiplication is simply repeated addition which can cause trouble in more advanced maths as it did for me. I often use the visual of stretching something to make it bigger like dough or cloth. It happens to give the same answer as repeated addition for some numbers which makes it a quick trick for repeated adding which is fun to discuss and useful but I purposefully try to avoid putting the two together when teaching. So for a string of multiplication, we're making 4 5 times as big, then we'll make that twice as big, then we'll make that 8 times as big. For multiplying fractions it is the same - we'e making something [x] as big as the original - it just happens to be 1/2 as big which makes it smaller than than a whole number that makes it bigger just like multiplying by 0 makes it 0.

I recommend having a look through tripomatic.com for London so you can go through all the touristy stuff and your leisure and price everything and see it all on a map so you can group what you like together (because one can end up going from one side to the other...or riding up and down the Northern line all day...or maybe that's just us). Its also good for finding tours which are great for touristy things. We've been there a few times, last time was December of last year... If you like planes/machines than the RAF museum is a must see though it's a bit far from most of the touristy bit (lovely trip up the northern line on the tube and a walk, during the tube ride there was still an old police box that amused my eldest cause obviously it looks like a Tardis). For art, the Inivia international art gallery is nice smaller one which was lovely for us when we went. The Tate Modern is bigger and this summer is having giant slides which you may enjoy. Duck cars on the Thames river is good touristy fun. I would recommend the British Library, it's always a nice trip for us (and close to the St Pancras station so good for us getting out of London) If you go to Big Ben or the London Eye (giant expensive ferris wheel - haven't been on it due to certain family members having vertigo and it takes too long to not do as a family) , you'll be close to the London Aquarium as well as Cleopatra's Needle which is a good bit of history/discussion of colonization. I'm not a fan of the British Museum because it tends to be really really busy even for a London tourist spot and it's hard to get around with a group of small kids or with mobility problems or when carrying much (and my partner, who is a Brit trained as an archaeological scientist, and I spent more time discussing how certain items were taken/stolen from where they come from and how little of the stuff in the British Museum is British than anything else but we're dorks about that)...but you may enjoy it if you are trying to do all the touristy stuff. Cutty Sark is good now as is the Royal Observatory (having fun jumping over the line....) and other things in Greenwich. The Olympic Park, London Zoo, Kew Gardens...There is tons to do, we've been there a few times mostly do to business/our youngest being part of a medical study at St. Thomas and Guy's which is across the river from the parliament buildings, thankfully we don't have any in the foreseeable future as it seems to get more overwhelming each time we go, but hopefully you guys have a good time.

What I've done for the last few weeks or so is Advanced Code Workbook from OnTrack Reading with my older two. It is what it says on the cover and it is helping us work through some confusion my older two had with bigger unfamiliar words and helped me to explain the different and particularly rarer sounds certain dipgraphs make in an orderly fashion with plenty of examples that they could deal with easier (they now get adorably excited when they find a 'new sound' of a letter or dipgraph before I point it out that we hadn't listed yet). The instruction book in on the website to have a look through and gives a good feel for it I think though as it arranged in threads that run concurrently so I read through it a few times then took a notepad and made a day by day outline of what we're doing to help me while the kids took to it quickly. It could be done to suit whatever pace works for you and your student I think as long as you have a good look through the pacing notes that help guide how to put the four threads work together. The website also has some tests to help pin point issues which I found helpful. It's already having some benefits here (including noticeable improvement in spelling which has always been tricky for them). That alongside more reading and penmanship is our focus for the summer.

Piper...which I think I prefer to my birth name (which I no longer go by). All I can think of that website is that it would be great resource for writing stories...

It follows the research in other areas like the citizen's income research in Canada that giving people's resources makes things better. Researchers have been saying for many years that giving/allowing poor people to have money and/or resources and they tend to make their lives better which somehow some groups in power still find surprising and keep wanting to cut such things... I think the reporting on the issue and general line the media is putting on it is creating is too...individual centered since I can't come with a better phrase and places a barrier to real change both because it makes it sound like it couldn't be expanded (it's hard enough to give aid as it is) and because it ignores the root of their poverty has a lot of to with us/the West rather than a lack of things (Africa is still the most resource wealthy continents which is why so many Western corporations are there...). It ignores the root that these countries and therefore these people are so poor even with aid because the aid Western countries - governments and individuals - give is minuscule (which a lot of these research is trying to justify expanding because so many want to cut it) compared to how much is taken out in resources by Western countries, because many Western countries are taking ridiculous unjustifiable money and resources out that is not being properly challenged. It's practically handing them a cup of water while taking out a tanker of water and dumping our rubbish to pollute another tankers worth and bigwigs keep questioning why poverty is still happening. France for example still takes money from the countries it colonized and has just last week said it is considering writing off Haiti's debt which many pundit applauded ignoring that that 'debt' France made up over 200 years ago after the Haitian Revolution when the enslaved people of Haiti freed themselves and kicked France out and France decided it was owed money for the 'loss' of those enslaved people - and they are still paying France for that. And that's governments, how much corporations take out and are protected by those governments from paying tax in the countries they take money and resources out and often reduce well paying work for local populations is obscene and disgraceful. And that's alongside Haiti being hit by the US after the US pushed for a cull of their pigs, an important food source there, and replaced them with pigs that take ae much more expensive to care for and are less effective for meeting their needs, but make the US more money as Haitians are required to buy from them to maintain their food production now. The media plays up how generous the West is when it forgives debts and and gives and ignores how they got there much like the media likes to play up Somali pirates ignoring that those groups starting by trying to defend themselves from Western countries and corporations trying to dump toxic waste in their waters. I like this and other research showing that resources given to individuals does more good because for some time aid has been more wrapped up in trying to do projects that are more beneficial for the companies doing it than the people who need it and it helps to break the classist ideas that giving to the poor is a waste/that the poor would waste it, but until we can properly pull governments and corporations to account for their actions and rebuild the systems so that local populations get properly compensated and gain the benefits from the resources they have themselves, I don't think the actions that this type of work is suggesting is going to get very far, sadly. And sadly it's just going to get harder if TTIP or similar gets through as they give corporations more power (it's ridiculous enough that corporations can try to sue countries for not allowing access to natural resources as it is without giving them rights to sue over profits if a country tries to protect its resources or people instead)...

Hobby Group they made with some other local kids is free other than transport to their friends' house or food when they come here every few months. They do sports and gaming and tree climbing and such through this depending on what they decide this week - or what the older kids decide that the younger kids can do and will go along with ;) St John Ambulance is £6 each per month plus their uniforms which were about £25 each for A-8 and M-5 who are Badgers and just over £40 for two uniforms for O-10 who is a Cadet. The uniform costs will go up once they're old enough to train to be a Cadet First Aider as they require special hi-vis coats for when they do events cover (which O-10 is very excited about becoming but is still a few years off for him as they need to be 14, I think) plus transportation costs which so far are pretty low as it is just down the road from us but will go up once they can and want to volunteer for events cover. They do so much there that it's good value for money on top of being able to learn how to do so much good with others. We did a BSL family course last year, but that was funded by a local charity group so only cost transport. They're continuing with the local practice group and an online course which will be a few bob. O-10 will hopefully be joining the kids course for BSL this autumn after he turns 11 which will give him much better practice and leads to qualification in it. They do local workshops for other things but I don't spend much on that, maybe £50 for each of them in a year - but that's likely to go up s they get older for other things. For now, I teach music and art, but my eldest is likely to need more in the next year or so which I haven't found prices for locally yet. So, not very much, less than £500 a year for all of them, but I foresee this shooting up in the future when more opportunities are available to them.

We don't do anything big, I pick dinner and dessert and the kids make cards and pictures (came down to a pile this March during our Mothering Sunday that continued to grow during the day), and we cuddle up to watch a movie together (usually Brave - proper Mother's Day movies for their ages are few it seems). We run a social group on Sundays and Wednesday for our local geeky disabled people so I don't to do anything else big on Sundays or I'll get too worn out and I don't have a desire for more. Cuddles, cards, and cakes are all I want :laugh: We typically send a card and small gift to my mother-in-law (my parents are not in the picture). I used to send my in-laws picture mugs for Mothering Sunday and Father's Day but after a couple of years I found they kept them displayed them rather than used them and didn't want to clutter their house anymore so we now send picture cards instead usually with some consumable treat the kids pick. We tend to do proper lunches with them once in the summer, for our grandparents weekend in October, and sometime during the New Year. We typically send my partner's grandmother and my grandfather photo books which they enjoy, especially now they that are too poorly to cope with all of us at once/travel over here.

I don't know much about Literary Lessons for LOTR, and in a quick look through I saw comparatives to Beowulf and Arthurian legends in the table of contents (along with '3 ancient epics' that aren't specifically listed). So I would bring in more Arthurian legends that are at his reading level (Sir Morien's tale is a personal favourite). Beowulf would probably be stretching it for 8th grade, especially alongside Lord of the Rings, but if you wanted to include it there are likely ones with the Old English and Modern side by side that could work well-- Grendel by Gardner might be a good fit especially for pleasure reading though the author is not British (and there are dozens of movies if you just wanted to give familiarity if it isn't there already). For the world building bits, The Blazing-World by Margaret Cavendish (1666) would be a good classic book and is one of the earliest English/British books that would fit in that type of fantasy world building so a good way to show the history and compare through time. Aphra Benn might also be a good writer to look at. It could be interesting to compare and contrast it to modern British writing about the real world like Londonstani by Sautam Malkani [about London now] and Anita and me by Meera Syal (1997) [About the 1970s]. Bringing in Wilfred Owen and other poets of World War 1 and World War 2 might be good for discussing Tolkien's personal history (and fit in with the poetry bits of Literary Lessons) as would works by regional writers like D H Lawerence as many find regional influences in Tolkiens work (which could be also compared to Anita and Me as there is regional overlap between Syal's work and Tolkien's though obviously not at the same time). Having been recently looking at our own British Literature recommendations for the English Lit GCSE here in England, British Lit seems to be to be stuck in a very sad image rut with very narrow viewpoints. For a fuller idea of Britain and British literature, I'm trying to find and would recommend others try to find short story collections from demographics outside of the normal reading lists. There are many classic and modern ones, I hope to get some time to look through more of them soon to find some for us and to recommend to others.

I am an autistic adult with autistic children so I am going to answer your question from a different angle. Many of the others touched on how to go through the medical side and resources (though I would advise not to use Autism Speak's resources. While it is one the largest charities about autism, they are pretty much entirely a cure research group that uses a lot of scaremongering to get funding and myself and pretty much every autistic adult I know wishes they would stop as they have been harmful to us). While the medical side can be helpful, the vast majority of the professionals are neurotypical and looking at the spectrum and SPD and other similar things from the outside. The medical model goals are usually to make autistic children seem as neurotypical as possible. On one side this has helped develop coping techniques for dealing with a world not designed to accommodate those differences when you find good therapists and on the other side a lot of autistic adults have PTSD due to bad therapies that used aversion training, compliance training, and so on to the point that some research considers them comorbid. I'm not against the good therapies or trying to turn you against that route, I just want to give you some red flags to watch out for because some medical professionals can be intimidating and/or charismatic about what 'needs' to be done when there are alternatives like floortime and group social skills and many other things as well as connecting to alternative communication methods if those are needed or preferred. My recommended first step, alongside any therapy choices you make, is finding local groups with autistic adults as well as groups with autistic children (both would be great but even harder to find).That's my recommended first step for any disability. As someone who grew up disabled, having role models is important for all children (a lot of disabled kids grow up thinking that we'll either die or be cured because we don't see disabled adults - I was very convinced I would die before adulthood and still get surprised that I am an adult) and the best way to find out how to interact with your child is by trying to do so on their level which you're likely already doing and by finding an adult who has been there who is willing to talk about what it is like to give you insights that are easy to overlook. I've had this myself - even though my eldest and I are both autistic, we're still very different: I have very sensitive hearing and get overwhelmed by it easily while my 10 year old is sensitive to sound and loves it and seeks it out and enjoys the feeling of making sounds and we have to regularly compromise on this (which is easier as he gets older). For resources you can use now, I recommend NeuroWonderful by Amythest Schaber - she has a blog and a youtube including ask an autistic channel where she answers common questions on relating and helping. She is very good at helping to explain the whys that are easy to miss from the outside. She has quite a lot on interaction and self regulation in many of her videos and how many of the things autistic people do that others do not understand is about trying to do that. For emotional resilience, I recommend Emotional First Aid by Guy Winch - it's not specifically about the spectrum but it gives good tools that I've found really help those of us who struggle emotionally. I think it will give good tips for what you and your other children can do and what you can teach her to do for herself as she gets older. Also stim toys are a great way to help with self regulation as they can help channel the frustration into something more pleasurable for everyone. A stim toy can be anything that can be used in a repetitive fashion that stimulates the senses and brain - tangle toys are really popular here. It would depend on how she is currently trying to regulate - if she's vocally or verbally doing it (yelling, sound effects, phrases), things that can be safely chewed that she enjoys will help and if chewing on things is an issue getting safer things to chew can work. It depends on her needs. Making sure any communication difficulties are met is another big thing for emotional resilience, it's hard to cope with emotions if we can't express them well, and is obviously a big thing with interaction. So, in short, my first steps are connecting to the autistic community near you (even if she isn't, we're great fun :hurray: ), NeuroWonderful, and stim toys to help with self regulating alongside Emotional First Aid by Guy Winch to help give you a plan, and checking for communication difficulties that will hinder her emotional wellbeing and you interacting with each other. That's all I can think of now for first steps but if you have other questions I am happy to try to help.

London has black taxis as public taxis, though most were covered in ads the last time I spent time there but were the same public taxi shape. There were some bright pink and purple taxis spotted on that trip because of the ads on those taxis during out last trip. We used to have a mix of black and yellow for public taxis (the ones that line up in taxi ranks or can be hailed from the road - private taxis which are just normal cars with signs must by law be called in advanced here) here (East Midlands, England) but they all seem to be yellow now. I have been in a black van taxi and purpley red private car cab. My favourite was a black van taxi that had little lights in the ceiling that entertained the kids all the way home. I found out afterwards from my partner (who is a night manager at a hotel so calls and deals with taxis a lot) that that one is locally well known and several other people there new of it but neither of us had heard of it before then.

Great list of ideas Momto2Cs - though we always double check which wildflowers are okay to pick as there are many endangered ones around here - some are just very rare or are greatly needed by endangered wildlife that we also avoid but there are a few that are so badly endangered that they illegal to pick here.

My 10 and 8 year old who used to have lovely writing have both lost it somewhere to the point my 5 year old, who doesn't remember the name of many letters, has cursive writing that is neater most of the time... :confused1: We did cursive from the start and I know they can do better, mostly I think they're just out of practice as I got lax with writing when they were doing so well and I was trying to catch the 8 year old up with maths and keep up with my 10 year old in maths when he was trying to race through 3+ maths pages per day happily while I was ill last year. I did some reading around as well as tried to remember what helped me when I tried to improve my handwriting when I was a bit older than them (I had a similar drop off after teachers got lax about it when I was in school and it stayed poorly until I pushed myself to work on it on my own years later). We also discussed their and my goals for their writing and agreed that nice, comfortable, mostly automatic writing was a high priority. So I've put maths more properly in its place, moved writing to the first thing, and ask they give me 10-15 minutes of their best before they race ahead with other things they find more interesting. I also bought pencil grips (the CLAW ones in medium) so there would be no confusion over how to hold a pencil and use a softer drawing pencils (6B I think they are) so they don't have to press so hard to see. We do arm exercises as a family for ~5 minutes (big circles, big under curves/smiles, big over curves/rainbows, slants, Xs, loops, writing funny words and their names big in the air). Then they all take turns writing big strokes on the whiteboard in whichever colour they want and we discuss the muscle groups their using and which letters they use it for. Then - on recommendation from Tanikit on this board on the Handwriting: expectations thread - just getting plain paper rather than lined and focusing on letter formation which has been a big help. I give them a set time and they can stop earlier if they can do it 8 times neatly in a row. We go though the strokes as they write (my brain was filled with 'understroke up, over, understroke down today). The 5 year old typically passes a letter after a day or so (which is unsurprising as her penmanship started being typically neater and she just had penmanship lessons last autumn and she's still keen on writing), the older 2 are taking a bit longer but getting there. Mainly it seems that they think they know it and rush after the first couple so it gets sloppy. Having them point out the issues with the letter seems to be helping it sink in better than just them saying that's sloppy and continuing on - the stopping and discussing it pulls them out of a sloppy pattern. The set time to focus, adding a bit of fun to it, discussing how they do it and the issues with what they're doing when it goes wrong, and taking it back to just thinking about and working letter formation which the plain paper has worked really well for has really helped in the few weeks since we've refocused. I'm hoping once we get into new habits on it, we'll then move back to copywork and expand things further but for now this back to the start approach is working well for us. I'm also hoping to add in more art soon, particularly drawing and origami, which I've been told has helped others with their handwriting issues and just generally more good fun (I got quite narrow focused when I was at my sickest). I hope the best for you and yours on this, handwriting seems a tricky skill for many. :grouphug:

White is the designation that the elites took for themselves when they developed race as a social construct in order to excuse their inhumane behaviour during chattel slavery and colonization and to bring poor people of similar ethnic backgrounds together to slow down slave revolts that were often joine an supported by impoverished Whites. The White elites use(d) the systems of society from stories and religion and science, even coming up with psuedoscientific terms like Caucasian (obviously from people who had no idea of geography as the Caucasian peoples of the Caucasus mountains covers several ethnic groups which wouldn't come under the social construct of White now and especially not then when most of Europe didn't), Mongloid, an Negroid along with science ideas like slaves who ran away and wanted to run away had a mental illness (drapetomania), to law and forcing poor White to act as slave patrols to divide people. This history is often washed away and without it we loose a major piece of why this social construct has so much power over our realities and how it was built into the systems all around us like fish in water. The problem with colourblindness is that it treats racism (and any other oppression based on identity) as an individual thing both as a problem and as a solution and that is a major problem. Racism is a powerful social construct just as money is a powerful social construct and it is built into the systems and it is in the system that it must be recognized and dealt with. As Stokely Carmichael said "If a white man wants to lynch me, that is his problem. If he has the power to lynch me, that is mine. Racism is not a question of attitude, but a question of power." Colourblindness not only makes it an issue of individual attitude, it says the only way to treat people humanely is to ignore and erase parts of people. I don't want people to erase my identity, I just want the same chances as everyone else no matter what my identities are. The common colourblind cliches of 'I don't see colour/I don't see race/your colour doesn't matter to me' well, it does to me and it hurts when people say it doesn't matter. It's my history, it's my heritage, it's been passed down a rather painful twisted family tree to me. In a world that uses White as default, White beauty as default beauty, where trying to find, work on, and fight for us to be represented in media, in history, in reading lists, the most common thing I hear from White people is 'Well race doesn't matter, why does it matter to you'. To paraphrase Junot Diaz, monsters in our stories often do not have reflections and many people are living fighting against the feeling they are monsters in a society where if we are represented it is twisted. I am Metis, my children are all lighter than me (odd genetics that they all have very similar skin and hair colour when their father and I do not) and I've long thought on discussing these issues with them as their heritage will differ greatly in how society will treat them. I used to write on social issues academically/professionally, though race was never a focus of mine, it is of many of my friends who I have sought help from over the years. Personally I find 'What If All the Kids are White?' by Louise Olson Derman-Sparks and Patricia Ramsey great for the early years, though it was written for a classroom setting there is much that can be applied at home (good for if you struggle with how to do conversations that we've never been taught to do) and Uprooting Racism by Paul Kivel for older ages as it covers history (though US-centric) and action quite well. Another very important thing, I think, is the concept of mirror books, and wider media, and window books. Mirror books are those that reflect us and window ones show us the lives of others. It is often brought up (and I think it was on this thread) what to do if one is in a very White area or one only has poor interactions with a group and unable to regularly experience others or be regularly part of goo more diverse communities and an answer that is often overlooked is finding media about and preferably written by people of those groups to get a wider window of ones picture of those people. No one is going to have people from every group in their regular social circles nor are the people we have in our circles there is answer all those questions we and our kids will have, but there are many books and other media that do answer these for those interested in seeking them out.

Personally, I view religions as part of world/worldview philosophies and treat them as such (mostly because I've spent far too much of my studying them personally and academically and professionally previously). The only one I can really form an opinion on is #4 and the main reasons I think they are excluded is because currently both the media and general education systems around them in the West has created a false dichotomy of Christianity vs Atheism as the worldview philosophy debate - and that debating them is the most important worldview debate - and an even more false image of Eastern philosophies including Eastern religions as monolithic, one dimensional, psuedo-hippie views to be consumed, not taken seriously-- and one can't debate or discuss something with someone who has only seen or seen consumed on that level nor will one really think to debate it if they only see and know that view. You can't get any real dialogue when ones view of another is 'they're really peaceful and unconsumeristic and look at my cool tattoo!' (that was seriously a thing when a Brit went to Sri Lanka with a tattoo and got turned away because it was disrespectful and a lot of people thought that they should be grateful that a White Brit is interested enough to get such a tattoo and one could not really explain to people who didn't want to see beyond this media image of Eastern religions that these sorts of things were consumable rather than taken seriously by many many many people). Much the same with Judaism or Islam where the main media portrayals are with victims/villains and angry-deity-relations of Christianity with history and foods or music to consume, there just isn't enough depth or understanding of the real differences between Judaism and Christianity or either with Islam in general Western media and knowledge for most wider public to include them in most conversations in the West unless you already know the other people understands because then one spends all their time explaining things - and often being ignored - rather than having any real discussion. So any debate without the depth of understanding that is most likely to happen right now is based on stereotypes and poor understanding and those who do know will long grow tired of trying to explain to people who want a debate, who want to be right rather than learn anything. For lots of people for who this is important or have studied it this isn't something to 'debate', not everything is really debateable when really one wants discussion or even better real dialogue about worldview philosophies that those kind of debates where someone wants to win just are never going to get to. Or that might just be me and those I know who have gotten too old for those kinds of debates :lol:

Riots and general large property damage aren't really the same. There are large cases of post-sporting events this last year and in history that have had large property damage but they aren't really comparable to what is going on Baltimore. Police have never gone easy on such things even when they are civil and even in the few cases where looters have not taken advantage (and that ignores COINTEL and similar where police and government agencies have put their own people into protests to distrupt them and made them more violent to give them more public sympathy and excuse when they become violent on people). It''s odd how the police are excused for being violent from being scared when their collegues are hurt (even though the myth that policing is the most dangerous profession has long been disproven it keeps coming up in the media as all important - and laughable when people like medical professionals daily have to deal with face violent people without that sort of backup), but the people in the community who are seeing their families harmed and murdered without justice (and seeing those loved one smeared by the police and the media even after proof of perjury and foul play by police) are not given them same consideration. Riots are the language of the unheard. Over 5 black men have been killed by police or in police custody by Baltimore police just this month. Baltimore has a very long history of police violence - there are eerily similar photos comparing recent events to those decades gone. In the US, the average is 3 black people are killed by police officers or in police custody every. single. day. And the vast majority of their families are silenced and the officers unpunished and in many cases rewarded. We have repeated cases of proven perjury by police officers, police offices planting evidence on people, and people filming police officers (which is legal in most places) being badly hurt and arrested for trying to hold the police to account. Nothing is being done. Rosa Parks was an activist, she was a trained professional who was repeating previous events by several other black women who were fined or otherwise thrown off the bus. She was specifically picked because they thought her appearance would appeal to White people. Her actions were only a small part to bring people on side. Her 'sitting on a bus' was a carefully thought out part of a campaign that was part of a far larger action. Absolutely nothing came out of her just sitting on the bus, it was only that alongside a lot of other action including the bus boycotts that lasted over a year, along with Black Panthers patrols because black people were not being protected by police. Those people sitting at the lunch counters were often professionals as well who had been trained by their collegues to withstand large amounts of abuse so they would withstand them. Those people at the lunch counters often had often had the police sick dogs on them, their peaceful protests often had power hoses turned on them. No one has gotten their rights recognised by sitting on a bus, at a lunch counter, or asking nicely and the current history that teaches that them sitting their is what changed the status quo of White supremacy in law is doing the current generations a lot of disservice because that is not how change was won.

I find it telling that I see many people, particularly in the media, are saying this to the rioters, but no one is saying this to the police. I mean, they beat someone in custody so bad his spine snapped, the current rate in the US for a black person being killed by a police officer or in police custody has risen to a staggering 3 people per day. 3 black people every day has been the rates since just before the beginning of the year - that is a staggering amount of violence and the police who are doing that seem to think their violence is solving something... And that's before we get into how the media portrays the events vs how people on the ground are. The media often portrays these things as aimless and violence for violence when it is one group of people and something else entirely when it is another. There have been repeated far more random riots after sports matches that created far greater amounts of property damage in the last year with very few batting an eye - some in the media even chuckled it off as good fun, and yet people pushed to the brink after over 5 deaths of black people by Baltimore police in the last month alone seems that are being silenced and justice unserved seems to be repeatedly being told they need to be "more civil". Personally, the ways things currently are, I think something big and disruptive is what it is going to take to change anything.

OnTrack Reading might be worth a look for you. It has free assessments on its website that might give you some more clarity and the advanced code workbook is clear and unbusy from the student point of view and designed to worked on in part with an instructor and part by oneself. It takes a bit of time to wrap ones head around the teacher's instructions (or it may be my brain - I wrote out on a notepad the lesson and solo work for each day to make it easier for me as the book has four threads, some of which go together at different times). I've found it explicitly gives information to students that helps make things click that many others programmes imply or just don't though the 'mapping' (saying each sound while writing it in the first three threads and each chunk in the fourth) which is important part of the programme may be a bit awkward at first. The notepad I did had it being possible to complete in about 60 days of lessons everything going well. Also, Mature Reading Instructions book set are great as common high school books/stories that have been turned into phonics books for older students starting from 'starter level' and going through. I've linked the UK site as it was the one I knew with more detailed information and extra free resources to go with it but I've found the ebooks at least are available in the US (link to the starter set out of 5 sets of books). I wish you the best with this lovely thing you are trying to do :)

Sadly, there aren't many community events here either. I've found a riverside walk for the week after which is as close as I could get. As a family, we do a lot for Earth Day and make it into a whole Earth Festival that lasts until May Day. We pick themes for each day and make lists of potential ideas and activities and then pick from those. As my kids are all still pretty young, we usually go with an elemental theme like we are this year: Earth, Metal, Water, Air, Wood/Plants, Fire, Space, Environment, and Community (Community leads nicely into May Day history and discussion for us). So for Earth, they came up with soil, lava, tectonics, solids, how metal and plants come out of the earth, ceramics, and activities like playing with clay, potting some plants, making a compost box, terrariums, ceramic and pottery making, and soil cleaning. We will do a couple this year (clay crafts, digging in the soil and maybe making a compost box if we can finish sorting out the rest of the garden first) and I'll save this list for when we brainstorm together next year. We also like doing a few trips (riverside walks, forest trips, do our own park clear up, even a garden center can be good if you hve one close). We also have a pile of Earth Day and environmental books that are brought out. Our top ones are Earth Day: An Alphabet Book, Thank You, World by McGinty, Earth Matters (Made with Care), Earth Mother by Jackson, Earth: 50 ideas you really should know, The Declaration of Interdependence: A Pledge to Planet Earth, and Maya Christina Gonazalez's books My Colors, My World and I know the river loves me, and Call Me Tree which are bilingual English-Spanish books with lovely artwork and writing. Also there are plant and animal masks and 'elemental' playsilks for fun. We have a list of nature movies like Disney Nature and other documentaries as well as Wall-E, Ferngully, the old Lorax film, and so on for them to pick from. We also have a playlist including the Earth Anthem by Abhay Kumar, Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, and as many kids' Earth Day songs I could find on youtube :lol: That and videos of local animals and plants to help connect.

We do penmanship separately. It's one of our priorities for our kids to have good writing that is as comfortable and automatic as possible for them, that they and others can read. I teach cursive, I intend to add manuscript later for filling in forms. The why is because this was not something given my partner or I. For my partner, writing is still very painful illegible exercise to do damage along the sides of his hands and because he was taught by a left handed much older sibling so writes with a crook even though he's write handed. The importance of handwriting was dismissed by my parents and I can still recall starting college and writing rows of letters in my off time because I was so tired of having poor handwriting and it is still not as neat, comfortable, or automatic as I would like over ten years later when I write far more than most people. I cannot think of a single benefit not having it as a child gained me and it is has caused many problems. I want my children to have and be able to enjoy this life skill as much as I would any other.

I would also recommend: Seize the Moment by Helen Sharman and Finding Where the Wind Goes by Dr Mae Jemison alongside the previously mentioned Chris Hadfield's book. Lots of biographies and autobiographies of astronauts to be found.

It's hard to give a general rule about the UK in education as England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have different rules and systems. Scotland's cutoff for starting is different to England, Northern Ireland starts earlier and so on, all have different end of secondary qualifications, I've been here 12 years and I still get confused as do many of the British people I know. It's like comparing state to state rules on state governed things. The MEP programme is based on England's system which is, as said, the kids in the year tend to be younger than their US counterparts. Reception is for kids that will turn 5 that academic year whereas typically Kindergartners have already turned 5 when they start, but for both it is their first year. My eldest is Y5 whereas a friend who has a child with a birthday the day before him is in 4th grade. There is no reason for not having a primary child a year+ behind - my eldest is Year 5 by birthday but is in MEP Year 4 as we started using it when he was older. There is little concern with it (I constantly remind myself...) especially as Years 7 and 8 have a lot of review and can be compressed (and some skip them all together). Some sites strongly recommend it as it is based on a Hungarian system (who start school at a later age and the system was meant for those ages). I'm currently using Y1, Y3, and Y4. With my 5 year old who is using Y1, I sit with her and we work though the lesson plan together mostly as written. It doesn't take much time most days especially now that she's gotten use to some of quirks of MEP (the tables, certain puzzle types, and so on). I'd say she is done usually in less than 20 minutes even if I add in additional maths games. This year my older 2, who are right now in the final third of Y3 and Y4 books, do things differently (finely tuned over the last year and will likely be turned further...) but it really works well for us right now. They work on the worksheet independently after breakfast while I'm getting ready/working with M-5, my eldest particularly likes wrestling with the material himself before coming to me, then in turn they come to me for one on one maths, I check their work, then I go through the lesson plan, double check the Review, Core, Extension of the lesson, and see if it includes any new material and we do that plus anything they need more work on. So if they did perfectly on one section and have done so on that type of stuff previously, I'll likely drop if there is a separate identical type problem in the lesson plan, but if they're struggling with something, I may add more in like Maths Trainer for maths facts (also good for adding onto review days if there is a problem area or an area they want to work on). It would depend on the child, this is the first year we've done this semi-independent method and I don't think I'll do it before Y3 for the younger ones, but now that we do it this way it has made a world of difference to how long things take and frustrations. My Y3 child is an early riser and is usually done with her sheet before I even get up. My Y4 is a late riser and dawdler, especially as I tend to do one on one work with him last, but now with a timer for him to beat and his tangle for stimming, he's usually done well before the timer goes off (it's set to 45 minutes, he now usually has more 10 minutes on the timer when done even with his dawdling unless there is a lot of new stuff). I would say active teaching time isn't so much, I don't think I've ever done any maths teaching or games that has been more than 10 or so solid minutes and certainly nothing like an hour but giving them problems, waiting for them to finish and discussing obviously takes up time as well on top of actively teaching it. My Y4 does take up more time than the younger ones, but mostly because he really enjoys talking about maths and the pattern he sees and often figures out the extension work idea before I can give it to him.whereas my Y3 students just wants to get the skills because she knows she needs them and move on to other things (I also take longer reading over new stuff for him as a lot is new to math-poor me and I know he'll want to talk about it). I don't think MEP (or any maths) is ever completely independent, but there are ways to make it more independent that just going straight through the lesson plan which is designed for classrooms and how to do that will differ from family to family. It does take time, but really, I've found giving independent reading lists and activities for other subjects for them to do while I'm doing maths with another far better for us so Y3 can go read her books while Y4 is talking my ear off on what pattern he's found this time.

With blocks (wooden cubes of various sizes), she can do up to 8 or so without counting. Today with sticks drawn close together on the page, she could do up to 4 without counting. If she is asked to add the 2+ picture groups together, she will count them regardless of amount even if she knows how much is in each group and could add them without counting if written symbolically.

I hadn't thought of her being tired or thirsty as even on days off, she would not be able to tell me what numbers over 5 are called or read a maths equation with numbers over 5 reliably without doing the counting up. We can read through the a set of problems and she will do the count each and every time she gets to a number more than 5. We do one page of MEP a day as the first thing after breakfast. For the last week or so, she's been doing one revision page (which has no lesson plan or other activities with it) and sometimes a block game if she finishes quickly and asks for more which she does regularly. Today's maths was maybe ten minutes with a addition section with sticks, continue the pattern section, filling in a table with numbers adding up to 8, and a word problem with drawings (Kate bought 3 cakes, Bob bought 2 less...) with no block games as she wanted to go fill the back of the page with a picture. She enjoys maths - as long as it doesn't involve reading the problems out loud or saying what bigger numbers are called she is a happy bunny and liked doing a bit extra to answer people's questions. Her frustration with the labels and my confusion on how her mind is working that she can count up to the right number just by looking at a symbol without a number line or other guide is what I'm looking for help on. I figured her counting from one was normal and only brought it up as someone mentioned that counting on was developmentally normal. She isn't really counting on in maths, she is counting up when dealing with picture groups or when she's trying to figure out the name of a number over 5 when looking at the symbol. The latter part is causing her frustration. She sees 7 blocks and writes a 7, ask her what it is called and she will give a frustrated look before counting up to 7. Take the blocks away and ask her to write a seven with no context gets mixed results.

Thank you all for your help & time. I'll look at the LC board. I agree that her maths skills are good especially from where she was 6 months ago when we started formal maths (she's picked up the 8 year old's perfectionist panic/flail/guess habit when faced with things unknown which was an issue for a while), it's simply this label barrier I want to help her with - the look on her face when I ask her to read a maths problem out loud or ask 'what's this number called' or the frustrated tone in her whisper as she counts up again and my difficulty in seeing shows to me that it is bugging her and I'm having difficulty understanding why and how she can count up to the right number name which makes it hard to help her which is why I'm looking for input. We do do most the lesson plans for MEP, though right now we're doing the revision pages on numbers up to ten which doesn't have lesson plans. She counts pretty well for her age, but knowing the name of numbers over 5 outside of counting is a block that is frustrating her as was her knowing the names of the letters of the alphabet. We have tons of counting and alphabet books, she struggles with doing so out of context. She actually will only count on in maths with encouragement and reminders, she prefers counting from one when doing things like 'add these two groups of sticks' as was a problem in today's maths.