DD is currently in a weekly arts class that is really process focused. They start each session with an explanation of how to use the materials (clay, water color, pastels), how to mix colors, or whatever it is that day. Then the kids just go for it. The results are......interesting to say the least. The teacher will go around the room asking the kids to talk about what they are doing/making, and providing help if requested. It's also a parent/child class, so that each kid has an adult right there to assist if there's a need. DD loves the class, and while the results are certainly less traditionally cute than the typical preschool craft, they are fully hers. She also can talk a lot about art now, and has a great respect for the materials and different things you can do with them.

I would use it again, without question. Different kids need different amounts of practice with reading to become fluent, and I have no problem finding extra readers at the library. Overall DD went from not knowing letter/sounds to reading at a mid second grade level in about 14 months.

Somewhere around the middle of LOE B, I started adding daily reading practice. Usually that meant finding an easy reader for her to read to me. We read through the whole library's very easy reader section. We continued through LOE B as we did this, and it worked really well. We did all the supplemental reading suggested in LOE too. Its hard to say exactly when the switch to smooth fluency occurred but we hit it sometime around the last few lessons of B. We also went through the lessons themselves pretty slowly. We'd do about 3 a week max.

I second the recommendation for Aish. Chinuch.org has some good resources too if you want to poke around it. There's also a MOOC on biblical hebrew with some good resources here: http://campusnet.sebts.edu/moodle/course/view.php?id=7429

There's also a game called Storymatic which can be adapted to a writing game. http://www.amazon.com/The-Storymatic-Classic-Includes-Activities/dp/B004PICKDS/ref=pd_sim_21_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=41NtcijQbAL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=1Z0YBDMWEEW6ESKNT5N9

Our next year is pretty wishy-washy. Baby 2 is due in August. We are also moving to an as-yet-unknown location in August. I have no clue what sorts of things will be available there, so it's a little hard to plan outside things. But.....here's what we are vaguely planning: 1. Continue to gain confidence/stamina for chapter book reading. I'd love to see her visual tracking improve for this too. 2. Probably some combination of Singapore 1b and year 2. 3. Ancient history. Mom made, kid approved :) 4. A reading list of some sort. I'm planning on letting her choose some major themes or authors, and we will go from there. It's also tricky without knowing what our library resources will look like. Goal will be the same as this year----100 non-fiction, 100 fiction picture books, 30-50 biographies, 100 chapter books, and 30-50 she reads aloud to me. 5. Science! This will probably be driven by where we are living. I'd like to do a year of environmental work---measuring ph of rivers over time, learning about how recycling works, and I'm not so sure what else. But she's been pushing for this, and I'd like to make it happen. I'm hoping we will live in an area where it's at least somewhat possible. That's about it---it's still technically a pre-k year for her, so I don't like to have her do formal learning for too much of the day, no matter how much she pushes.

First, I'd like to say that I share your loneliness. It can be very difficult feel like no one sees your child struggle, so no one can know how to help her. It's also frustrating because others (cough: my parents) say that all her problems must be bad parenting, because when she's with them (3-4 hour blocks 1-2x a year) she's totally fine. Right. We have similar issues with worries. The doctor always encourages us to keep the adult things from her, but it's hard because she's literate, and the adult world is all around us. Her current fear is associated with child slavery, which she found out about by reading the back of a bus. Adults assume that a 4 year old isn't listening, and will openly chat about frightening things in front of her. I sort of wish I had a kid that was afraid of monsters or something typical kid-like. We started therapy with her at age 3. Her peds recommended it when we were talking about her OCDish behavior. He isn't a gifted specialist, but he does seem to get her pretty well. He was the one that did the IQs (among other testing) diagnosed the giftedness and OCD, and helped us understand how that plays into her difficulties. He also helped her socially quite a bit by encouraging us to move beyond age-mates for friendships. Her OCDish behavior has greatly improved, but she still has the intrusive thoughts. She's able to express them a bit better, and having stop/reset points during the day has also helped. So for us, it's been worth it. It's helped her learn skills to cope, and us to learn more about her.

PSA 2: There's a sequel----More Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School. :)

I also found that teaching reading was a bit of trial and error. We started with 100EZ and stopped at lesson 9. My kid hated it. Luckily, we just got it out of the library and returned it quickly. I'm sure it works for some kids, but it was a no go here. We changed to Logic of English, and DD LOVES it. She calls it Dragon reading, and she is reading very comfortably now. We are continuing with the program (which is currently a bit behind where she's reading) to make sure she has a great foundation in phonics. The nice thing is that many programs have the first few lessons free online as samples. So you can try out a bit and see what works well for your child.

We poke around this site a bit: http://www.piday.org/topics/news-and-events/. There are some fun suggestions. DD loves pi day! She can figure out her own pie she wants to make. It's also a bit of a double celebration in our house, because it's Einstein's birthday. DD is his 2nd cousin 4 times removed (I think that's right---it's on my DH's side)---super remote, but it she thinks it's really neat.

Here's a link to an explanation of guided reading levels. http://www.scholastic.com/parents/resources/article/book-selection-tips/parents-guide-to-guided-reading And here's a place you can find the level of a book: http://www.fountasandpinnellleveledbooks.com/ I find that my child doesn't progress smoothly between the different levels. There's a chunk of levels that are appropriate for her at any given time, usually a band of about 3 levels at a time.

We prefer using guided reading levels. I find they are more reflective of what my child can read.

Thank you all so much! I just assumed because they said no, it was well, no. The phrase habilitative services is completely new to me, and has been really helpful in guiding me in searching policy documents and state laws. OhElizabeth, sadly we are no longer in Ohio, we are temporarily in California. We might be back in Ohio starting in August, so that's really helpful information for then. The doctors seem fairly unsure as to WHY she's having these issues---we don't have a clear diagnosis. It seems like her vestibular system didn't develop properly, her muscles don't respond the way other children's seem to, and as a result she is EXTREMELY cautious in movement, causing snowballing sorts of delays. It would be nice if there was a clear diagnosis or reason for all her struggles. One of my biggest frustrations is that we have to move every year or 2 for my husband's career. Insurance changes, state laws change, and it feels like we spend our whole time in a new state getting services in place, and then we have to move and fight all over again.

DD was assessed for motor delays. She struggles with movement, balance, and coordination, and has since she was a baby. She was in help me grow in Ohio for about a year, then she caught up a bit. At 4, she's showing clear delays again. Insurance denied PT treatment because her condition does not meet medical necessity because it "is not caused by illness, injury, surgery, or birth defect." Which is true. But the doctors think it is necessary. She can't coordinate to dress herself (not even a shirt or socks let alone buttons/zippers), can't hop, can't potty train....the list goes on. I'm not really sure where to go from here. We are having her assessed by the district for an IEP as well, but they don't offer services if it's only physical. I'd really appreciate any thoughts you might have.

1. Touch my eye. Or see other people touch theirs. 2. Spell. It's getting better as I teach my kid to read with phonics, but I still really struggle with spelling. 3. Read Hebrew. I've been trying for oh, 25 years or so. My mind cannot get the letters being backward.

Thanks all for the great suggestions and thoughts. You all have given me plenty of good ideas to work with :)

We tried it, but DD had a really hard time with it visually. She found the hand drawn shapes/numbers in the lab books very hard to manage. I think visually it was a similar issue she had with MEP.

DD alternates between being super focused on reading to being super focused on math. We kinda go along with whatever she's doing. For math, we have Mathematical Reasoning (level A...Kindergarten) by CTC, which is helping her work on the physical writing of numbers. It's doing nothing for her actual math understanding as she understands all the math, but she enjoys the pretty pictures. We also use the Bedtime Math app, and she is fairly able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide with that. I'd like her to start working on more formal/textbooky math so that she actually learns her math facts in an organized way. I can't figure out what level to start her at or what curriculum would work well. She's 4, and has some fine motor issues. Her big problem with double digit addition and subtraction is lining up the numbers and writing clearly. She can easily do double digit addition and subtraction with an abacus. We were using MEP, but the writing was too small for her to manage and she hated having to repeat things she already knew. Thoughts? I was thinking Singapore might be a good fit because it's bright and colorful. I don't really think I want to skip levels because I want her to have a really strong math foundation in case she wants to do anything mathy in her future.

I've actually seen something like this in the teacher's section at our local dollar tree. They had a pack from National Geographic of maybe 25 cards per pack?

With my kiddo, she goes through spurts of work and dives deep when she dives in. I try to provide what she would be interested in, and help her find resources as she goes. Though I like a good schedule of what we will cover in a day/week/month/year, she is not really on board with that yet. At 4, that's fine with me. One example is her reading---she jumped from reading books with pictures to randomly reading part of the Wizard of Oz in about a month. She had been spending tons of time flipping through books and muttering to herself, and apparently something clicked. I'm glad I didn't push her to do any other school-y work. She knew what she needed. In terms of building discipline for academics, she does have (what I feel) is an appropriate list of things to do each day. Mostly she hits them without me having to "assign" anything, but sometimes I do. She has to do something with fine motor, something with gross motor, and read me a story. That's....it.

When we had similar issues with DD, her pediatrician was able to recommend someone locally that specialized in dealing with gifted kiddos. He's been perfect for her. The pediatrician had experience in dealing with gifted kid issues, and had sent several kids his way over the years. She was also able to help speed up the process of getting an apt. Good luck :)

DD is also a pretty sensitive kid, and I can sometimes be surprised by the things that upset or bother her. I think a lot of early childhood literature (especially classics), can be really tough on her emotionally. We generally try to avoid books that upset her, because there are enough tough things to deal with in daily life. There are also enough books that are randomly upsetting that I see no real reason to expose her to ones I know will bug her. Dahl is a good example of someone whose books I love, but who I know DD would be very upset by. We still find plenty to read. I want her to see stories and reading as pleasant and happy as much as possible. The time to challenge her while reading is, for our family, much much later. There are so many gentle stories out there that we can enjoy. And as she is growing, she is getting a bit better with this. But it goes up and down with what's going on in her life.

One of the things I was really glad I did for DD's PK3 was come up with a long book list before the year started. It helped me make sure we had quality read alouds (along with just following her lead and letting her pick books). We've discovered great authors, enjoyed stories we might have otherwise missed, and really dived deep into some non-fiction subjects. The second thing we enjoyed was storytelling. Every week, I'd ask her to tell me a story and I'd transcribe it. She still asks me to read it out loud, and it's fun to see how her language developed over the year. It wasn't really overt teaching as it was letting her think about storytelling and how we share ideas.

1) Congrats on the upcoming baby. 2) You might want to see if your local parks and rec or county park system has a summer challenge. Ours used to----it involved hiking on a number of trails, finding certain plants/animals/locations, and you got a patch or something at the end. It could be a fun way to do a science/nature study if yours has one. If not, you could search for nature hunts. Note: the goal was never to take anything OUT of the park. You just found it and checked it off. 3) What are your plans for meals after the baby? By 6 and 9, your husband could help your kids get involved in meal planning. Reading/following recipes, making sure meals have certain components.....measuring/math That's all I got for now. We are in a similar situation come August, so I'll let you know if we come up with anything else :)

I might use something like "storymatic" to adapt for fun writing/other assignments. We play with it a lot, and it could easily be adapted for written assignments. You could also think about picking up a Spectrum workbook. We've used Language Smarts from Critical Thinking Company, but I think that's probably more than you would need. My DD loves Foundations too---she's going to be so disappointed when we finish out D. She is so attached to "dragon reading" that she got me a statue of a momma dragon kissing her baby dragon for Mother's Day.