Today is pretty light. :) Fold laundry Weed the garden Make worksheets for another 3 chapters of LOFred Vacuum the ceiling fans Sweep the floors (definitely after the ceiling fans!) Sort yarn to give away Work on community group stuff Work on volunteer stuff Get a bag together to go to the thrift store tomorrow.

I'd also like to gently point out that just because you don't see it, doesn't mean he's not feeling guilty or bad. My nephew became very adept at hiding embarrassment and guilt, having it manifest eventually as clowning around or 'brushing it off' rather than dealing with it publicly. He'd beat himself up in private, though, making a cycle of trying to identify self-worth and not feeling worthy unless he's making people laugh. The idea of making amends is a good one. Around here we say "sorry isn't just a word, it's an action." Sincerity will come later, the goal right now should be twofold: creating appropriate behavior, and learning how to make amends when we screw up. You can't force someone to feel but you can certainly teach and expect them to do the right thing.

From what worked with my oldest and many of my friends' kids: 1. Movement. Have her run to start her day and alternate lessons (no longer than 15 minutes at the table) between moving and sitting. If science is a sit down subject, history has to be full body incorporated. If writing is sitting, grammar has to be moving. (Writing Tales actually has movement built in. Woot!) Moving Beyond The Page does lots of projects and different things with their book studies. 2. Visual aids. I use dice and a timer. Roll the die, work for that many minutes (or do that many problems) and then get up for that long. Repeat ad nauseum. It sounds like it'll take longer, but it often takes 2 hour problem sessions down to 30 minutes. 3. Add movement/therapy aids to sitting. Yoga balls bounce away and are a distraction here, but putting a resistance band on the chair legs to bounce feet against helps. Smencils, thinking putty or squish balls..whatever doesn't make you go insane or cause her to focus more on the toy than on the work. As soon as the toy takes first place, take it away and replace with a different, less distracting aid. 4. Touch, talk, listen. Important things - TOUCH to get your child's full attention, TELL her in few words, LISTEN to her repeat it back. 5. Routine, routine, routine. Don't allow for distractions to start off your day: no tv, video games, etc. until the weekend or at least day's end. Adapt to strengths when organizing - use open containers instead of closed, make things easy to put away. 6. Have her make a plan each day. I used a simple word doc in a sleeve for dry erase markers. Plan to do, what order, check off when accomplished. It's a bridge to helping her learn how to be accountable to herself.

I think it's a 5yo thing. We started working on one value a week: patience, respect, kindness, politeness...and sit down together, listing specifics for that value. What does it mean? How do we show it? Examples? That's then put on the wall along with the others. Anytime there's bad behavior we go back to the wall and figure out which one he's having trouble with. The corrections are right there, too, so there's less teaching and more reminding at this point. Holding him accountable to what he knows will help build the self control we're really after.

We like Duolingo. It's free, online, has an app, and is quite a bit like Rosetta Stone. It allows us to "compete" against each other, though, or at least let me check to see who's doing what. They have nearly all the big European languages, so if your kids like it they can do French, too, without getting a new program.

I think as long as it looks cohesive, it'll be fine. A lot of buyers, I think, would be willing to overlook minor things. Our rooms were painted hideously when we moved in (who does olive green walls for a kitchen??), but had the flow of the room not been okay, we would have passed.

We have Besta. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S19057529/ I think you can use the same doors with Billy (maybe?) but the handleless flat panels are a godsend with toddlers running about. We have two single shelf sized doors on each bookcase, leaving the top open for books, and a smaller Besta case in between with the 'big kid' stuff hiding inside and the toddler stuff on top.

I would tell her. Technically, I wouldn't have to, since she, her husband, and the rest of the neighborhood would have heard me dressing down the 7yo immediately. But after the fact, yeah, I would tell her - stressing that is NOT normal, expected behavior.

We did 100EZ, but different. We used plastic tactile letter tiles to build and smash words on a small white tray. (the letters had raised arrows so the sounds were introduced with him tracing it with his finger). I didn't go directly with the book. The activities were too long for his attention span. We split them up, made word cards, relaxed a bit.

Proper manipulatives help. They really, really do. Why do you divide fractions the way you do? Wouldn't it be helpful to learn it along with a tactile representation that shows exactly why so you don't forget why you're doing it? (and how?) Children learn first with concrete objects and then move into abstract. I don't believe all manipulatives are created equal (i.e. wrap-ups are fine memory aids, not for teaching) but the goal is to build understanding first for the abstract work later.

That's how it was when I grew up. However, I honestly don't see it much different than what my son is doing the first time through a class - online class, for state credit, self paced will take him 4-6 weeks/semester. He's taking it over the summer between his public school classes because he has no desire to waste an entire year on an easy subject.

Go deeper. I wouldn't start on the WTM curriculum for 1st. Not exactly. Many accelerated kids are asynchronous, and you have to adapt to that. Find ways to build logic skills. Spatial, abstract..check out Critical Thinking Company, Timberdoodle, and ThinkFun. Build childhood skills. Jump rope, using imagination, throwing a ball, swimming..check out lists from Montessori practical life, Charlotte Mason habits, and Klutz books. Go deeper in topics. If she wants to learn about Japan, find Japanese cartoons, books, food, simple kanji/hirigana/katana. Make homemade puzzles, origami, etc. The goal is to build the skills necessary for a 4yo/5yo, while maintaining that high level of enjoyment of learning. The sit down curriculum work can wait for maturity. ETA: I have a well-read 5yo. He doesn't always know how to do things that are "frivolous" to him. For example, up until a month ago he would only build with his legos if he had instructions or a plan to look from. It took courage for him to abandon the 'right way' and choose to let go, building whatever, and it took dad showing him it's okay to not know exactly what you want to do or how to do it. That's an important skill, moreso than knowing. There will come a point where he won't know or have a clue and trying, using his imagination and creativity will be important for him to push through.

I'd have him do the second half of Algebra and start Geometry at the same time. You can work on both without hiccups, just treat it like an extra class.

Little Passports now has a little kids edition for world study, but we like a simple approach at that age. Two books, Zoom & Looking Down (& Rezoom if you are so inclined) are both wordless, but they provide a look at the world in sequential pictures: a bug on the ground, a boy looking at the bug on the ground, a magazine with the boy looking at the bug on the ground... Combine that with the Tower Of Me - a set of nesting blocks that you use one by one. Each week, spend time on a different part of the tower: 1st (smallest cube): Me - the child's picture, birthdate, age, likes, dislikes...all about him. 2nd: Family - the pictures of everyone who lives with him. 3rd: Street - Picture of your house/address, what's on the street (mailboxes, funny car, neighbors..whatever) 4th - neighborhood. 5th: town 6th: county 7th: state 8th: country 9th: continent 10th: planet Nesting blocks are pretty cheap, and you can adjust the order however you need. Don't have anything for neighborhood? Skip it, and add solar system at the end. Because it's so sequential, the child can look back at previous weeks and see where he is in relation to the rest of the world.

I revert to a no-tolerance policy when we're working on nipping behavior. Right now my 5yo is working on self-control (not slamming things, hitting, etc. when he's angry). A lack of self control is given an immediate consequence. If we're out, we go home. If we're at home, he's sent for quiet time. If he's just had quiet time, he's sent to play alone out of the family room. This is not my kid who is motivated by traditional sticks and carrots. It has to be immediate, swift, and point at the problem. When he gets it I'll ease up again back to one warning, maybe two. You can't control the other kid, but you can set limits in how you will let yourself be treated.

Depending on the brand, yes, shelf-stable milk tastes like regular. Parmalatt can take a bit to get used to, but Horizon makes single serving packages, too. You can make/buy soup mix and reconstitute it with water or milk. If you're still hiking it's fine to add the water and carry it along for a bit until you make camp. Not the lightest method, but if you can have canned foods with you (beans, veggies) that would be great, too. Keep a bag of rice, some potatoes, and dry pasta to add to the pot for extra oomph. Mine like to roast potatoes at the edge of the fire in tin foil. You can put together a quick chili if you use a shelf-stable soy option for the meat or go for a 3 bean style.

I had my 4/5 yo home this year. The first question I asked myself each day was "how can I teach this with movement?" Seriously. How can I introduce writing....with movement? How can I introduce math...with movement? What should our goal be this year? I settled on a year of exploration. We discovered new places to visit (what child wouldn't want to have a picnic and read about Linnea in a water lily garden?), new things to do, and writing and math worked themselves in through strewing, intentional exercises (like washing the table or drawing with a spirograph), and answering questions. We explored other countries and cultures. I spent about $30/mo averaged out - the bulk of that on Little Passports with some on reusable supplies (manipulatives, puzzles, tools) My now 5yo doesn't believe we did school, btw. He though we were playing all day. :) He reads, writes, and does math quite well for his age after that. You have looked at two different types of support - one, where you are enrolling in a school and they keep records for you. The other where you follow your state's laws and use the curriculum however you want. In kindy you probably don't need the first. It can be helpful in high school when transcripts become necessary, but even then you can choose to do without it.

When we read fluently, we tend to predict text. A beginner reader has the desire to read fluently and tries to predict. Just keep on doing what you're doing. Eventually, it'll even out. :) A habit of guessing can be helped along by having her read nonsense words - gub, shamp, welimo...it helps them not feel the stress of fluency and focus on the sounds again.

My list would include: Cheaper By The Dozen (and Belles On Their Toes) Rilla of Ingleside. This is even better if you pair it with something like Usborne's stories of WWI. Dr. Doolittle

Salt, and paint. We went through a lot of both. I made our own clay for pots, coins, tablets..out of salt dough. I might invest in a good set of markers, both regular and calligraphy if I was doing it again. Lettering looks so much prettier with the calligraphy markers.

We used level 2 Ancients. I just went back and saw they changed it, thank goodness. Some of the lessons were monotonous and overkill - making 3 pockets in a row and the like. But having had a second look, I found the other problem we had: lesson scheduling. "Read two chapters a day until it's finished" or creating an appropriate amount of daily/weekly work. Given that there's now 72 instead of the odd 87(from what I remember), it would stand to do 2 a week, unless one lesson had a lot of work and another had very little... I know there are people who use it and love it. I read rave reviews before we started with it. The first two weeks even went okay. It just didn't end up being our cuppa. I like simple.

Yes. Every morning, everyone is responsible for going to do chores (bed, clothes, teeth, hair) to get our day started. I like to be able to pick up and go on a whim.

We ended up with Creek Edge Press task cards. I wanted something flexible, secular, no workbooks/textbooks, and cheap. LOL There were about 10 activities per card that ranged from researching to making projects, or two a day/about 1-2 hours on history. My kid had had enough with the coloring by that point, so I had him do many of the tasks digitally: creating powerpoint presentations, digital artwork, videos..and we used WWS to do the writing portions.

Try Patricia Polacco books, too. They're small, but meaty. Or the 39 Story Treehouse, Sideways Stories for Wayside School........did you know Harry Potter is coming out as an illustrated edition?

Yes, but we tied it to the theme of the program and let HO dictate the content of the assignment for the most part. However, the History Pockets nearly killed us. The sheer amount of cutting, pasting, coloring for a middle schooler was ridiculous. We stopped using HO after one year.