So if color is such a big deal to her, does she love art also? (Just curious.) I've never met anyone who is good at science but not math, and then good at writing on top of that. I would love to see what that looks like firsthand.

I wonder if I will turn into you in 13 years. :) I think I might already be a curriculum junkie, and if money and space were no object, I might just buy everything on the market, even though that's a lot more stuff now than it was 15 years ago. It's encouraging to know that your approach worked, since I am inclined in that direction myself.

It might be normal behavior, but it definitely isn't reasonable. I agree with the PP that it might help you to try to find out if she's just being dense. Sometimes people just don't realize what is obvious to other people, especially if they have no experience in business.

So, you had a well-stocked library already for the first? How did that happen?

Ok, I have other stuff to say, but I have to respond to this first of all. Find something hard, hard, hard. It might not be hard enough. Then look for something even more complicated. I say this because I was one of those bored-out-of-my-skull gifted children. I loved learning, and I always wished for my schoolwork to be more challenging, go at a faster pace, and just generally be more difficult. And just assigning more problems (I'm thinking about math here) is no good. Five really hard problems was way more fun than thirty easy ones, no matter which takes longer. I finally had a class in my senior year of college that I would call difficult. It chewed up my brain and spit it out, and I loved it! I finally had to learn something that I didn't completely understand the first time I read it. It sounds like your daughter enjoys a challenge. I would give her more than she bargained for, so that she can learn to keep trying when something is difficult. And if it just doesn't work out after several tries, you can save it for a couple of years, right? BTW, my parents never worried about "what will she do when this comes up in school and she already knows it?" They just answered my questions (pretty thoroughly too) and encouraged my curiosity. I would have been bored in school anyway, because everything was taught too slowly in school. As for the general question of letting her choose her curriculum, I think it is always good to give children more freedom and more choices gradually, and choosing her entire curriculum is a big jump unless you have let her have a lot of control over it in the past.

I used to get very dry hands as a kid (now I use lotion all the time, and my skin is less sensitive anyway). Once I put Vaseline all over my hands b/c they were so dry, and they turned red (no white nails though). When I looked closer, I realized that the redness was because my hands were covered in tiny, tiny cracks, that for some reason weren't visible until I put the Vaseline on them. It only hurt a little bit, and the Vaseline made them all better by the next morning. Now that we have Aquaphor, that works even better.

Adriana, I have also started forcing myself to read certain classics, and it helps to listen to them instead. (CD, cassette, or mp3. My kids can't read at that level yet.) I usually knit while I'm listening, so that even if I hate the book, at least I made progress on a sweater in the meantime.

It's too scary for my kids (6 and 5 yo), who were terrified by UP, btw, but my husband and I love Time Bandits.

:iagree: The main thing that keeps me sane (more or less) is laughing whenever possible. My dc are only 6 and 5, so that means that I laugh at a lot of stuff that I actually think isn't funny, just silly and immature. But laughter eases pressure and creates a bond, so I look for it everywhere.

RightStart Math, Math-U-See, Miquon, and did someone already say Saxon?

I think you should make one for yourself and see if you like it. If it's not better or worse, just different, that will give you a clue about who might prefer them and who might not. (For example, that "hanging onto the water" thing is not much of an issue for me in Denver, but somewhere in the southeast, it's likely to be a much bigger deal.

They are Myers-Briggs personality types. Type Talk was my introduction to it. It explains and categorizes personality more clearly than any other system that I have seen.

Supposedly, I am Anne Elliot, but I've never read Persuasion. In Myers-Briggs terms, I used to be an INTP, and I have turned into an INFP. Last time I took a test, I had zero T answers, only F answers, and I used to be almost that far over on the other side. Weird.

I love her too, not least because she refuses to let Hollywood tell her she needs to be no bigger around than a pencil. As for Marianne, I think the end of the book implied that she grew up. She always loved Colonel Brandon, and learned to be the lady of an estate, which Austen always makes sound like a serious management job, if it's done right anyway. She would have made me nuts at 17, but I agree that you'll not find a more loyal friend than someone like Marianne.

The "ETA..." part is exactly what I was thinking as I read the previous paragraph. I always felt so sorry for her while she was being so noble and stoic, having everyone misunderstand her and think that she had no feelings, when the truth was that her sense of propriety made her master her feelings. I think she is one of the most admirable characters that I've ever seen in a book.

:iagree::iagree::iagree::iagree:

I went to public school, but I think I was effectively homeschooled, and school was where I went to be bored for six hours a day. My parents, bless them, taught me so much just by answering my (endless) questions that I didn't learn anything in school until they put me in private school for third grade. (And in math, I think it was still 4th or 5th grade before I learned anything new.) The situation was obviously not ideal, but it wasn't the end of the world either. I hated school, but I still loved learning, my problem with school being that I didn't learn anything there, plus I was always getting in trouble for being off in my own mental world. All of that is to say that while I don't know why you are doing the public school thing, it can be ok, and I hope it turns out that way for your kids. :grouphug:

My 6yodd lately asked me to teach her to write in cursive. (She's been printing since she was 3, I think, obviously not very much at first.) So I got some paper with the lines spaced for little kids, with the dotted line down the middle, and started showing her how to form cursive letters. I show her three new ones every day, have her copy them, and have her combine them. We haven't gotten through the whole alphabet yet, but I'm sure we'll have to review all this before she's sure of it. The other day I remembered that people buy programs for teaching and practicing handwriting, and I started to wonder if I'm forgetting anything. I'm thinking, "This isn't rocket science, so I don't need to buy a program. I'll teach her, and have her practice, and that should do it." Am I missing something? Maybe it's different if you have a kiddo who doesn't want to do it. My dd has always enjoyed writing and drawing, and I think she thinks cursive is pretty, so she's pretty motivated. Even on days when I get flak about doing other subjects, she still wants to learn more cursive.

I have dd6 in 1st grade at home, and ds5 in preschool at the public school. The driving definitely makes our lives more complicated, and I cannot wait until he is done with school so that our schedule can be what we want it to be. (OTOH, he loves his teachers and so do I, so we will miss them.) But it seems like driving him to or from school is always interrupting something.

I absolutely loved that book. But I would not in a million years describe it as light or fun. Funny, yes; in fact it's truly hilarious much of the time. And it is romantic. But like other people have said, it's not light by any stretch of the imagination. It's not like a Jane Austen novel either, though. There's a lot more action and less analysis than in an Austen novel, and I would say it should be rated R for both sex and violence. (I don't remember what the movie was rated, but it wasn't nearly as good as the book anyway.) Also, I like a book that tries to confuse me. Not by making no sense, but by requiring the reader to pay attention and remember things.

What would he be selling? Is it something fairly vital? Necessities will be easier to sell than, say, luxury cars, with the economy the way it is right now.

We don't have a set schedule; it wouldn't be good for my sanity. The main way we differ from unschoolers (as I understand unschooling) is that we have a defined list of subjects, determined by me (though I allow & sometimes seek input from the kids). For each subject, I choose curriculum materials, which we follow more or less closely. If we had a child-led arrangement, we'd have a Disney princess/Lightning McQueen curriculum, and no one would learn any math. All in all, it looks nothing like school in a classroom.

Advil is one kind of ibuprofen. Tylenol is the brand name of acetaminophen. You can alternate between Advil and Tylenol. And if you go with Claritin, watch for side effects. I can't take that stuff b/c it makes makes me cranky (understatement), counteracts my AD/HD medicine, and makes me want to eat everything in sight. It's worse than not being able to breathe. We have great luck with Benadryl.

:lol::lol::lol: Isn't their sense of timing absolutely exquisite?

Mine would! And my girl is worse than my boy!