95 percent of our books come from the library. They automatically track reading history. Each month, I take the list, and break it down by independent reads, read alouds, and designate fiction and non-fiction. I also have a poetry section. I bold favorite titles for the month. It's a pretty easy system. We typically have 500-750 titles from the library in a year. The record keeping system doesn't get everything (library sales, used book store finds....) but it gets most things.

DD is 4---we try to avoid any discussions we can. She's overly worried and anxious about everything, that it's too hard to help her understand the likelihood of these events. It's hard because DD can read things---billboards, road signs, and the like. It is so hard to explain things like human trafficking (on local billboards here) to a 4 year old. If there are trafficked girls in our county, why don't we just find them? There aren't really that many houses they could be hidding in. If everyone worked together, we could save these kids, right mama? No. Not right. I can only imagine her confusion and fear if we told her about any more. Her grandparents siblings were all killed in camps, so she has a sense that people do terrible things, and it has terrible consequences. There's so much awful in the world though, that at her age, she can't understand how to sort it all. I see no reason to expose her to any more than I absolutely have to.

Little girl: Everyone's a Christian. DD(4): Oh. Mommy, are we Christian? Me: No. [Walks back over to little girl] DD: It can't be that everyone's Christian, because we're not. Little girl: No, everyone is a Christian. My mom, me, my family..... DD: Ahh, I see. It's a quantifier confusion. Everyone means all. So if there is one counterexample, I can show your statement is false. You might mean most or some. I'd have to see surveys to know what was most accurate. Little girl walks away. And that is why I don't let DD listen in on the logic courses I teach. Because no one needs a 4 year old talking about quantifier confusion.

FWIW, I don't have experience with a teen. But I started OCD medication in my early 20s, and I credit it for a lot of positive changes in my life. I will say that the initial side effects were intense (it was like an out of body experience for a few days), but it helped me so much. I'd talk through everything with her psychiatrist. Mine also recommended NAC on the side. All in all, it stopped the cycle of thoughts/obsessions. Good luck. I may erase this later so please don't quote.

We have a bunch of the hard copy magazines we found used at a book sale---and by a bunch, I mean about 50 or so. DD really enjoys them. I like that there are teaching guides and vocab guides if I want to use them. So far, we've found them to be really interesting reading. Small note---the hard copies are old, and so some of the information is slightly out of date.

We love him here too. I only wish that his show was a bit more kid friendly so DD could watch with us too. I liked his episodes on civil asset forfeiture, judicial elections, standardized testing, and science research. We, uh, actually have a watch party for the show every week, and have friends and pizza come to watch with us. It usually starts fun conversations.

She's had PT, OT, SLP, and psych evals. She regularly sees a psych, OT, and SLP----OT and SLP are through the school though, so they are done for the year. We aren't sure what the spitting issue is exactly. It's similar to her potty issues. Since she can't see what's going on inside her own body, she doesn't control it properly. We've finally got her to spit large-ish foods like cheerios, but she still has no control for softer foods or liquids.

Is it normal for a child to regress when learning new skills? DD is dyspraxic, and was really done well with OT. She's finally able to put on her shoes about 60% of the time, and is almost able to get on her own shirt. Plus, you know, jumping and getting close to hopping. She's close to figuring out how to spit. Hooray for progress. But, it feels like as she progresses in some areas, other things are getting worse. Her sensory difficulties are increasing. She started flapping her arms again. She started chewing her hair. Is this normal? Is it a sign that skills are moving too fast for her? As a side note, there's a lot of change going on in her life---I'm expecting a baby in 2 months, and we are moving across the country in 3.

I love reading these threads! It's so much fun to see how everyone has such unique and interesting kids. DD(4) went from sounding out words to reading easy chapter books. It's an exciting transition. She still loves being read to though, so I'm still doing a lot of reading aloud. She's also started working out multiplication and division ideas, which is neat to watch. And though her penmanship leaves something to be desired, she's a pretty good speller, and has started writing letters/notes. She has a keen interest in space, and we've been lucky here to find a few supportive adults. We've stumbled on some who work for the Berkeley observatory, and she's allowed to go about 1x a week (with me of course) to watch them work, and just listen to their conversations. When we were on the way home one week, she asked me a fairly good question about multiverse theory. If there are multiple universes, what is in between them? What's the separation made of? Because if there's nothing between or no separation, then they should be all one universe and able to interact. I love that she thinks things through, even though I don't know all the answers. She completed her first sportsy class without being asked to leave. She has sensory difficulties and dyspraxia, so we've had trouble finding appropriate sports activities for her, even at the rec center level. She's been kicked out of basketball, dance, gymnastics....sigh. But she just completed a 12 week dance class, with a wonderfully understanding instructor who allowed her to use a buddy like system to help her understand where she needed to move and how. I'm proud of her for persevering through something difficult, and continuing to try to find places that she can fit. Overall, it's been a great year. I'm sad we are leaving Berkeley, where we've finally found support for her interests and a bit of a groove. I often feel it's unfair to her to make her move so much, but it is what it is. I've been trying to convince her a new home has new opportunities, and I'll try to convince myself of it as well.

One of my sisters was born severely premature---like at 23 weeks. Once she got passed the initial year or so of being severely underweight, she still had problems gaining. It's not just an issue of how much a child weighs, or how much fat there is. At a certain point, you worry about things like bone development, muscle development, and the like. My mom took her to a nutritionist that specialized in premie low weight kids, and got lots of great ideas. She has grown into a healthy, well developed adult and she's now taller than I am. I agree with PPs who say you should go. Not just as a CYA (but I'm crazy paranoid too, and would go to CMA), but also to start the process of figuring out what is going on with her. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's a sign of tapeworm, or some hormonal imbalance.

DD is a year younger---but is 4 turning 5 in the October. She's working on a lot of 1st grade materials, but we are still calling this year pre-K. Her working level is separate from her grade level. I plan on keeping her with her age mates for purposes of assigning grade level.

Amazon. They had a bunch of different options, but the one we got was under 10 dollars. I let DD pick it out---she liked that it was small and pink LOL.

DD has SPD and in some ways it looks like ADHD. For her, she has trouble concentrating when there is noise around her---to the point that she becomes fairly non-responsive. OT has been great for DD, as has giving her more control over her sensory experience. She has headphones that cancel noise that she can carry in a cute little bag, and she puts them on whenever she's overwhelmed by noise. She also has a weighted compression vest that helps squeeze her when she's feeling overloaded. Both have been awesome for her. Everyone's brain works differently, feels differently, experiences the world differently. There's nothing "wrong" with a kid that has SPD---just different. OT helps the child acclimate to the world in a way that makes it easier to interact in a positive way.

I have a Chromebook, and I love it. It works great, doesn't have any load times, and does everything I need it to do. We also have an older desktop for more intense computer stuff, but most day-to-day things can be done on the Chromebook.

My DH has several academic publications, and is always happy to send over a PDF of his paper. He typically doesn't have a hard copy available.

We have not been impressed. The questions are not particularly challenging, novel, or interesting, at least in the early books. The story also seems random. But your mileage may vary.

For some reason, teaching compound words taught DD how to break down big words into little parts. If she seems overwhelmed by the word, I'll sometimes help by covering up a part of the word, and slowly revealing it.

People might disagree, but I'd focus a lot on developmental milestones. Gross motor, fine motor, speech, language, and problem solving. Look at typical standards, and find activities to encourage those domains. Strong fine motor skills are needed for later writing, speech/language skills for reading/literacy/phonics, gross motor for health and self-regulation, and problem solving for later cognition. Obviously not all kids hit all milestones at the same time, but noting where your child is struggling and working on those areas can really help later development.

It seems like the article is focused on large group long term studies of situations where children (as a group) are pushed into early academics regardless of if each individual child is ready. Those studies may not have as much application to a homeschooling situation, where children can go at their own rate, and adjustments can be made on the fly. The fact that many children are not developmentally ready to read at 5 is certainly relevant for broad education policy, but less relevant for figuring out if any particular child is ready to read at 5, and when an individual child should begin instruction. For example, the Suggate research (Suggate, Sebastian, P. 2012. “Watering the garden before the rainstorm: The case of early reading.†Edited by Sebastian Suggate and Elaine Reese. Contemporary debates in child development and education. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. pp. 181-190.) which was cited showed that early gains in reading will even out, but that was when the early reading group had to devote significant (2-4 hours of class time daily) to reading and phonics instruction. The time spent on phonics/reading was not efficient, and did not lead to long term gains. The social-emotional concerns from early reading also seem to be linked to the lack of play-time, not necessarily the reading itself. At least some studies have shown that the advantage early readers have remains (see Stainthorp, R., & Hughes, D. (2004). What happens to precocious readers' performance by the age of eleven?. Journal Of Research In Reading, 27(4), 357-372. ) That study showed that while the development of reading and literacy skills tends to follow a clear path those who started prior to age 5 continued to be further along that path by age 11. Reading accuracy and speed were both significantly higher for the young reading group than for the normal reading group. Interestingly, the study did show that advantages in phonological awareness (a literacy standard often tested around grade 3) were not maintained, the authors attributed this to the fact that there is a pretty clear ceiling to phonological awareness, and thus, it was not a great comparative measure. The other issue with early readers losing any advantage is the fact that the schools often don't provide support at the child's level. Once a child meets the standards for the grade, often the school will consider the job done, and not provide additional challenge or development activities. This is compounded by the fact that there is limited funding for advanced students, and that gifted/talented screenings often don't start until 3rd grade, leaving early readers to spend 3-4 years just sort of hanging out. This is not to say that kids SHOULD be reading early, or that significant time should be devoted to teaching a child to read who is not developmentally ready. But there certainly are studies to show that supporting early reading (when the individual child is ready) can lead to long term benefits for the child.

We've done a lot of different things---mostly we are sort of held back by DD's fine motor delays and difficulty writing. So we go through some vaguely age appropriate books and work books because they let her practice writing her numbers. But for actual mathy things, DD has loved math mysteries---we found a book from the library but I can't remember the name off hand. I sort of remember them being like this: http://teacher.scholastic.com/maven/ Bedtime Math has also been good for DD. There are 3 (or 4) different levels a day, and you can figure out which level is best each day. DD likes to hear all the questions, so we start at the easiest and work our way up each day. It seems similar in theory to LOF. There's a short story, and the math connects with how it would be used with the story. We failed in trying LOF---DD just focused on the parts of the story that she found upsetting (A 5 year old can't take care of himself, mom. I'm worried about him. What if he's sick? What if he needs to get a doctor and doesn't know how to get there? What if he can't reach to open the door and there's a fire?)

There is an earlier book in the "It's Perfectly Normal" series called "It's So Amazing" which is a bit more tame. The books are very comprehensive, and we love them.

They had a secular option (just 1 bundle) last year I think, but I found it easier to build my own bundle through the site as a custom build.

So glad to hear the meeting went well! Here's hoping for a great 1st grade year for you guys.

Thank you all for the suggestions. Part of the problem is that her "play," if not otherwise structured, would just involve her sitting for hours and reading books. Pile after pile of books. She'll sometimes make up complicated stories she wants to dictate to us, but almost always her play is reading based. If we want her to do something like puzzles, crafts, playgrounds, we have to force the issue, and somehow link it to books. (Let's go to the playground and play Phantom Tollbooth! You can use your scooter to get around Dictionapolis.) We typically do most formal-ish work in about 30-45 minutes a day, not counting work that she has to do as part of her OT or speech. Saturdays I let her read as much as she wants. It's a party. It's a fair point that I could probably do anything educational-y with her after I get home. It's not like it takes all that long at her age.

Our current intention is to homeschool DD(4) based both on her advances and delays (ie she has the speech of a 2 yr old but the grammar and language of a 9 year old). I am doing all the homeschooling at this point, totally interest based, but semi-structured. I've been surprised at how fast she's moving along---she reads/comprehends at about a 3rd grade level, can add/subtract most numbers if I help her with the physical writing, and is starting to get multiplication/division. She has an IEP for gross motor, sensory, and speech issues, and we take her to the district 1x a week for therapies only. Here's where things get tricky. DH's job ends either the end of July or the end of Sept, and he doesn't have anything lined up for next year yet (he's been trying). His field hires in year long cycles, so if he doesn't have anything by the time this job ends, he's pretty much out of work for a year in his field. That would mean I would have to go back to work. DH feels he can't homeschool DD because he doesn't know how to work with her, and I agree. He hates watching her struggle (having trouble fitting in a puzzle piece---he's your guy!), and learning is all about the struggle. She often doesn't want to know the answer to something---she wants to know how to think through something. He views any frustration as a stopping point. I guess if I go back to work, we'll send her to school temporarily. But I'm afraid that she'll be hopelessly bored in a K classroom, and it's only going to get worse. Should I seriously slow her down? How?