When my son was 3 I bought some math manipulatives - base 10 blocks and fraction circles. He just played with them, but with that play, he made some connections as well. I think if I were doing it over, I'd have also gotten Cuisinaire rods and the Miquon workbooks - more just for play again.

Go to User Control Panel, then on the left side, under Settings and Options, there's Edit Signature. You can write whatever you want.

I've got a TI-84. I imagine the commands would be similar. Just calculate 1-Variable Statistics. Keep scrolling down with the arrow keys to see the rest of the stats. After n, it gives min, q1, med, q3, max.

Other - son's allergies made homeschooling the safest choice for him. At this point, academics is becoming more of a concern as well. I think he'd be bored silly at public school in his grade level and there's no way I'd let him skip a grade. He'd already be the youngest in his grade level. We had begun considering homeschool when he was 5; the anaphlaxis just made the decision that much easier.

He was very proud of them. What was so strange to me about the situation is that I consider myself very much a feminist and very against traditional gender roles (odd that I ended up a SAHM... but it really is all about choice). Yet when ds wanted the boots, I hesitated. I hate that I hesitated and that I really had to think about it before getting them. It's really something to see how very aware we are of gender roles. I hope we can make more changes so ds wouldn't even think before buying his son pink boots :) Dh had no problems with the boots either.

When my son was about 2 year old (maybe a bit younger), I took him to get new shoes. He found some pink Hello Kitty boots and fell in LOVE:001_wub: with them. They were cheap, so I went ahead and got them (slightly hesitantly). He put them on and walked through the mall with them. I've got wonderful photos of him wearing his pink boots with a HUGE grin on his face. I'd say get him the backpack and enjoy his excitement :)

Don't know the date, but yup, the traditional bulbs won't be around much longer. On the plus side, the LED bulbs are starting to come out. Sounds like their "flicker" is much less, so maybe they won't be a migraine trigger. And although they're still pretty expensive right now, they don't have the mercury issue.

I believe the diagrams are the same.

The CFLs we have work fine in our ceiling fans. I love them! :)

We noticed with my son when he was about 3 months old. Milk can be in all sorts of things. The clear issue was with mashed potatoes and gravy from a restaurant. Didn't think that milk could have been used with that. Oops! It's a learning experience if it is an allergy - and your son may have a much milder allergy. You learn to read labels! Until you see the dr, you may want to cut dairy out of his diet and see if you notice any difference. There have also been a number of threads on food allergies that may give you additional information. The best book I've found for general info on food allergies is Food Allergies for Dummies. You could see if your library has it if this is an allergy. And there are a lot more products and cookbooks now to avoid dairy :)

How wonderful!

With ds's milk allergy, since I nursed him, I had to cut dairy out of my diet. When I had milk, he had blood in his stool immediately after nursing. :( At least now you can get Enjoy Life chocolate bars. I missed chocolate!

:iagree: with both posters. We started with Island level (all books) in 3rd grade this year. We're also doing AAS and WWE 2 (getting closer to finishing & starting WWE 3). We'd done some grammar before (parts of speech mainly with Schoolhouse Rock). Going through Grammar Island helped quite a bit with the basics and Practice Island is reinforcing things. We are also using Rex Barks occasionally since I do intend to do sentence diagramming later on. I haven't used FLL, but it sounds like the Island level would be plenty. We do use the Poetry book and Building Language. I really enjoy the poetry (although we aren't getting to it as often as I'd like).

Under Manage Prime Membership, it shows me when I've paid for Prime membership (on new page). It shows when I'll renew and there's a "Do Not Renew" button. Then there's a big blue box that has "cancel membership" and information on how canceling works. The prime membership can also be shared with family members, so that can be nice. If you're on a trial account and don't have these settings, I've always had very good help when contacting amazon. I've worked with them via email alone and had them call me. Very good service every time.

It's a classic. My recollection is that my sister enjoyed it a lot (regular check-outs from the library). It wasn't one my son got into :( But it's excellent.

At that age, my son started enjoying the humor of the Sandra Boynton books. But Not the Hippopotamus and Blue Hat, Green Hat were some of his favorites.

It sounds like the cell phones would be most useful and give most peace-of-mind. I know what you mean about committing to a 2-year plan, but it can be useful for the sign up benefits. You might even choose to get a phone for your son for calling relatives. We still have a land-line, but we use the cell for all long distance calls and since many relatives are on the same system, we get free calls to them. I think regarding the Wii vs Kinect system, you'll want to take a look at the games that you think your family would play and the games that your children's friends are playing. The XBox is generally a more "adult/teen" gaming system than a family gaming system while the Wii is generally a more "family friendly" system. If the kids have friends who have the same system, they can play online with them, so that might help in the decision. I'd lean towards the cell phones first (with maybe the DS or iPod for your son if he doesn't get a phone), then a gaming system for the family (Wii or Kinect... but look at the games to help make the decision).

Be careful too. Some of the nondairy creamers do contain milk products, so they're dangerous if you have an allergy.

My son has reactions to albuterol (personality changes), so he uses Xopanex when needed instead and it helps him. Glad you know a bit more and hope you get more useful information and start to feel better!

I don't have the book, but if you don't get a reply, one other possibility would be going to a bookstore and getting it there...

I am aiming for roughly 15 min of practice each day. When I see us having difficulties, I have ds work on notebook paper or I print out a page for him to trace.

:iagree: If you need allergy shots, that'll be done by an allergist (or sure should be IMO). So get the info from someone who really knows about allergies. Ds had skin tests done this summer. He has food allergies and the first round of testing really hurt him a lot. The second round went better but he did NOT want to get it again. So although I've heard from a lot of people that the skin test wasn't too bad, it was very bad for my son. :( But we learned more about his allergies (not only does he have some severe food allergies, he's allergic to all pollen, animals, and other stuff). We saw the reactions that day but we needed a separate appointment with the allergist to go over the results and make a plan. In our case, we're not getting shots for now! Instead, we're managing the reactions with asthma medication and it's working. When we've had issues, we return to the allergist. We didn't do any RAST testing because the food allergies have always been clear. We only did the skin testing because we were seeing symptoms (apparently ds has "silent asthma"). So I'd get a referral to an allergist and see what testing they recommend and have the testing done in their office. Good luck!

I have been teaching at the cc for (eep) over 14 years now. I don't know if it's the economy or what's been going on in high school, but this semester seems to be my worst group - mainly in terms of general preparedness and willingness to work (I've had as bad attitudes before). Our school district doesn't assign grades lower than a 50 (sigh) so students are used to being passed. I'm lucky that administration doesn't give me a hard time in any way about pass rate. Students drop my class and fail my class. We do have departmental attendance policies, so that if a student misses 2 weeks of a 14 week class, they're dropped. Of course, that varies according to instructor enforcement, so my students are often surprised that I'm going to teach the whole class time and I won't be absent. :glare: I have some students who don't have the textbook - semester ends in 3 weeks. The college has a policy on no phones in the classroom, but students have them anyway. It's generally not a big deal in my class since I make a big deal about it at the start of the semester, but I chose not to address texting with a few students this week because it just wasn't worth the effort at this point in the semester. I do try to focus on the students who are there to learn, but I've been getting more and more worn down recently. I think I'll be taking a break from teaching outside the home for a while. I'll miss the money but I'll enjoy the time off! I don't know if I'll have my son take courses at the cc in high school or not. I think I probably will for lab science.

Glad you got good news!

When we do the 4-level analysis, I have my son put prepositional phrases in parentheses. I also have him draw arrows from adjectives, adverbs, and prep phrases to the words they are modifying. I also agree that diagramming gives something more that you don't get in the 4-level analysis. We're using Rex Barks as well as Practice Island to see how diagramming works. I think a combination of both is good.