Thanks so much for the responses. It's nice to know it's not just her that prefers these friendships, and that it doesn't always turn out badly. I'm hoping she is able to find a supportive and appropriate group when we move.

Alice in Wonderland, The Phantom Tollbooth, and all the Winnie the Pooh tales (DD still walk around singing tiddly pom), anything by Louis Sacher.

Math Reasoning is really fun. We also get the BIg Workbook of K for DD to just play in. She can do it whenever she decides she wants to do school, and I don't really care how she's doing/what she's doing. It's usually findable on sale for like 5 dollars (for 300ish pages) and is colorful and fun.

DD is finally finding her social groove. She had been very quiet, and unwilling to play with other children until we started just letting her play with kids of any age. It's been great for her, and her closest friends are 7-9 year old girls. The girls seem to enjoy her company, and she can keep up with most things. Over the year, all the girls have gotten closer, and they've gone from just hanging out at the park to having dance parties, sleepovers....typical stuff. I'm just worried DD isn't really ready for all this. As it is, we don't let her sleep over (she JUST turned 4), and unlike the other girls, she can't walk to the park by herself. We aren't even really willing to leave her unsupervised with the girls, though we do usually hold far enough back to not be hovering. I don't want to be exposed to things too young, but I also don't want to hold her back from the first kids she's ever been really friends with. There's also a natural end point to these friendships----we are moving in about 6 months, so I don't really have to worry about what happens as these girls become teens. But for now, do I just keep going as things are? Encourage her to find age-appropriate peers? Anyone deal with this?

I completely agree with PP. A sounds like it would be a good fit. Learning ALL the sounds for each letter was really helpful for DD's reading and decoding skills. B assumes the child knows long/short sounds for the vowels, and it's heavily taught in the last 1/3rd or so of foundations A.

I feel lucky that my parents have always been willing to help me with medical stuff. When I was first married, insurance companies could have a cap on the amount of prescription benefits you could use in a year. It was equivalent to a single month of my medication. That's it. We were able to get some assistance through various programs, but not enough, and the medical expenses cost more than our rent plus food plus car plus gas for each month. My parents could easily afford to pay, and did. After about a year, we got better insurance, and they stopped helping us. There was another instance that they helped us financially. I was extremely ill, and hospitalized for several days. Some of the doctors at the in-network hospital were out of network, and thus I got slammed with bills. I negotiated them down, but still we struggled to pay. My parents graciously helped out again. I doubt they would pay for living expenses for any of us, or help with other sorts of bills, but I don't know. It hasn't really come up.

My DD is vaguely aware of different developmental speeds. She knows she's a good reader, and has a sense it is unusual for her age. Her best friend is a fairly normally developing 7 year old. DD does all the reading when they play games, and can use numbers a bit faster (ie during Sorry, she can eyeball 11 spaces and/or figure out the best ways to split). Her friend never makes her feel awkward about it, and DD does it in a natural non-braggy sort of way. On the other hand, DD's gross motor is super behind, and her best friend is super ahead. So when physical things need to happen, her friend takes the lead, and helps DD along. Mostly it comes up when she is in a same-age environment. She really struggles that the other kids her age are not able to have conversations like she is. She assumes everyone has the same vocab, or at least if they don't, that the normal response is to ask for a definition of an unknown word. DD to peer: Hey do you want to play marsupial? I'll be a wallaby. What marsupial do you want to be? Other kid: looks blankly at DD. DD: Would you rather play reptile? Or my favorite recent one: DD: Let's play siren! Other kid: starts running around making fire siren noises. DD: No, like the Greek sirens. I'll trap you with my song, and you'll have to figure out how to escape. Other kid: Blank look. Sigh. So she doesn't really know she's "advanced" but she does have a sense something is different about her. I'm sort of hoping to avoid letting her know any more for as long as I can.

Fine motor and gross motor activities, sensory activities. I second the endorsement for Kumon books. I saw Building Thinking Skills by the Critical Thinking Company was already mentioned. They have a TON of great books for pre-k level, including basic logic and other reasoning books. They are really fantastically fun.

We use Logic of English. We started around the same age as your DD, and we found it effective and fun. There are many different types of games included, most of them physically active in the lower levels. We are at the point now where she can do easy readers, so we add in some of those as well. We tried 100EZ before Logic of English, and she HATED it.

We use homeschool skedtrack which is free, but a little clunky to use. It does automatically re-schedule things due to missed days, and you can easily print a day view/week view if you like that sort of thing.

I'd just like to say I really appreciate this thread today. We've had a rough few weeks here too. I'm hoping it's just the weather change, and we'll perk back up soon.

One thing to note is that certain insurance companies are very suspicious of ADHD dx as an adult. They may make it difficult for you to get the medication without a psychiatrist signing off, or a significant history of medical records showing symptoms consistent with ADHD. You should certainly bring it up with your doctor, but know that insurance can be a hassle with it some times. I've helped a close family member who was diagnosed as an adult, and I've seen what a huge difference the medication has made in his life. Good luck!

We do sticker charts for attitude/behavioral stuff, including attitudes towards school work. It's semi-flexible, but it's only three things for her to remember to do---listen, use nice words, and help. That pretty much covers everything I want to cover with her. Not stalling is part of listening. Not complaining is part of nice words. Cleaning up is part of helping. We don't do weekly rewards, but we reward every set number of stickers. That way even after a bad day she still has motivation to get better the next time. Rewards are variable, and can be anything from a color bath, to a family playground trip (with mom AND dad), to picking a family meal for the week, to picking out a new book. It works for her, but she's obviously much younger than your kids- so YMMV.

You all are, as always, fantastically helpful. Thank you so much!

That is so neat for your DD. I hope she keeps enjoying these connections. It can be so exciting to find someone else who loves the things you love.

You completely aren't a failure! I think this is a totally normal stage, and it will be good for him to experience consequences at this point in his life than later. I remember in 6th grade I used to do the homework for math class in the 5 minutes before it was collected. Like, all the homework from the night before. It took me a long time to realize that was not ok. Basically, it took the teacher deciding to collect homework at the door before class one day. Natural consequences right? And a great learning experience for me. So feel free to be disappointed. But don't feel like a failure.

I am thinking about getting my DD a kindle-type product. She does not do very much screen time at this point due to sensory issues. She doesn't use tablets at all, will occasionally watch a video for 2-4 minutes on a phone, and basically cannot watch TV. She does love reading, and I am intrigued by the possibilities a kindle would offer. Basically, I'm looking for an e-reader only that is not backlit. I think that would fit her sensory issues best. She doesn't need anything color. I want it to be easy for her to use. I also want to be able to have very large text. Would the Kindle for Kids be a good fit? Is there a way to keep her from accessing books that are in our account? Not that we have anything wildly inappropriate, but I'd like to be able to section off books that she can read from all the books I buy.

Thank you all so much for the kind words and support. You've all been so helpful in giving me good ways to think about this. I'm sure I'll feel much better about it once she starts and I get to enjoy a clean house :)

We decided to get some help with cleaning every other week. I feel really embarrassed because I feel like if I am home, I should be able to do it all. My husband is being really supportive, but I still feel guilty. I have always been terrible at housekeeping, but it's even worse when I have to work a lot. I'm hope with my daughter during normal work hours while my husband works, but I work nights/parts of weekends. Does anyone else feel embarrassed about needing help with things? I just feel like a failure.

We did speech therapy with my DD when she was 18 months old to 2.5 years. She was a little different. She didn't babble. She didn't make any attempt to communicate with us. We talked to the peds about it and she had no concerns. But it just felt....wrong. We took her for an assessment with the county, and learned a lot about her. Expressive speech was way behind (bottom 3%), but receptive was off the chart---equivalent to a 4 yr old at 18 months. We were also surprised to find her gross motor was also bottom 3%. So we started speech therapy and PT. By a little over 2 she was talking in paragraphs, and has pretty much still not stopped talking. She never did go through the babbling phase, and I'm guessing even without intervention she would have spoken to us eventually. We are still dealing with the gross motor stuff---she'll catch up, fall behind, catch up, fall behind. It's frustrating. Ultimately, kids develop differently, but if it interferes with a kid's ability to do what they want to be able to do (and developmentally should be able to do), that's when I seek help.

I'm excited for the Muppets.

1) Reading through all the Agatha Christie books in chronological order. I'm currently in 1938. It's been an interesting look at how attitudes change during the 20s and 30s so far, and I'm excited to see how WWII changes her writing/style/themes. 2) Working through Totally Chill: My Complete Guild to Staying Cool to see if I can find things to help my easily anxious DD. 3) Watching ALL the debates. Because it is an awesome way to work on reasoning/logic issues. And election season is like my football season.

That's awesome. Congrats!

Kasher is the verb form of kosher---it means to make something kosher. Some appliances are easier to kasher than others---an induction stovetop would be pretty easy, a microwave is usually pretty easy too. Also, they may have brought a crock pot with them. And due to restrictions on cooking on Sabbath/holidays many observant Jews have a nice stash of cook-free recipes. The marque might have been an eruv---it's a way of marking outdoors so that you can carry outside on the Sabbath. Normally, you aren't allowed to carry items outside your home, including keys, a sweater, diapers, even a baby. You couldn't even push a stroller. So if they wanted to be able to be outside at all with things, I'm guessing that's why they built the extra structure. In regards to food, there's a lot that you can eat from regular stores. As other's have said, most fruits/veggies are totally fine. Many other products are available in regular stores with a heksher (kosher symbol), although different people will accept different symbols.

We made a list from a bunch of different sources, like Sonlight, MBTP, and other good K lists. It's vaguely arranged by topic in order of MBTP readings---that's the curriculum we are using as a spine for the year. Some are picture books, some chapter books, and we add to it pretty much every week based on random things we find in the library. I'm open to anything you think I might be missing! Food How to make an apple pie and see the world (LA) Usborne interent linked children’s world cookbook (SS) Penguins Mr. Poppers Penguins (LA) (chapter) My season with PEnguins (SCI) A is for Musk Ox (MBTP) Family love Little bear (LA) Boxcar children (LA) chapter Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers (poems) (LA) Hondo and Fabian (MBTP) climate/plants How plants grow (SCI) Usborne Weather (SCI) The little island (MBTP) Animals Put me in a zoo (LA) What do you do with a tail like this (MBTP) trees Where the flame trees grow (LA) (11 stories) great Kapok tree (SS) Tree of Life (Barbara Bash) (SCI) We’re going on a leaf hunt (MBTP) Bravery Mirette on the high wire (LA) (Paris) My father’s dragon (LA) (China) chapter Lost and found Word Wizard (LA) The bee tree (SCI) Fireflies (MBTP) habitats The house at pooh corner (LA) chapter Usborne--wild places: mountains, jungles and deserts (ss) (may need to buy) But NO ELEPHANTS (MBTP) Math/puzzle solving The best vacation ever (LA) Dragon’s Scales (LA) Millions of Cats (MBTP) Poetry The llama who had no pajama (100 poems) (la) Science verse (SCI) The real mother goose (MBTP) Siblings Beezus and Ramona (LA) chapter Owl babies (MBTP) Women’s clothing You forgot your skirt, Amelia Bloomer (SS) bloomers! (SS) Apples Johnny Appleseed, Story of a legend (SS) The seasons of arnold’s apple tree (MBTP) Ancient animals dinosaur dreams (LA) archeologists dig for clues (at richmond) (SCI) Dianosaurs big and dinos small (MBTP) creativity A Big Ball of String (LA) Harold and the purple crayon (MBTP) Pioneers Roxaboxen (SS) Blueberries for Sal (MBTP) Travel A fly went by (LA) Rain (MBTP) Space comets, stars the moon and mars: space poems and paintings (LA) If you decide to go to the moon (SCI) I want to be an astronaut (SCI) Arts Linnea in monets garden (LA) Night in the Country (MBTP) conflict Butter battle book (LA) Sami and the time of troubles (SS) Librarian of Basara (SS) Marshmallow (MBTP) Change A bad day at riverbed (LA) Happily ever after (LA) (chapter) When I was little (SS) Issac Newton and the laws of motion (SCI) Umbrella (MBTP) outwitting others Paper bag princess (LA) 4 gallant sisters (LA) A grain of Rice (SS) Clever Katya (SS Jump frog jump (MBTP) Helping If anything ever goes wrong at the zoo (LA) Mary on Horseback (SS) (3 stories) Small acts of kindness (MBTP) Standing up for others The hundred dresses (LA) (chapter) (poland) 20 and 10 (SS) Communicating Dr. Doolittle (Africa) (LA) chapter Jambo means hello (SS) Knut: how one little polar bear captivated the world (SCI) Zin Zin Zin a violin (MBTP) Friendship Meet Danitra Brown (poems) (LA) Richard Scary book of please and thank you (SS) Little blue and little yellow (MBTP) Villages The children of noisy village (LA) (Chapter) Little pear (SS) chapter george washington’s birthday (MBTP) Girls to the rescue Girls to the rescue (3 volumes) (30 stories) (LA) The Serpent Slayer (18 stories) (SS) The quilt story (MBTP)_ Goofy A pizza the size of the sun (poems) (LA) June 29, 1999 (SCI) Exploring the unknown/blindness? 7 blind mice (LA) Out of Darkness (chapter) SS An extraordinary egg (MBTP) African culture Story of Ruby Bridges (SS) Africa is not a country (SS) Nelson Mandela’s Favorite African Folktales (SS) (Africa) greedy zebra (MBTP)