I have worked through lesson 64 with DS6, covering short vowel sounds, consonant digraphs, and 2-/3-consonant blends. He WILL NOT agree to go back and review lessons we've already completed, and I feel like he needs more practice before moving on. Are there any readers that I can use for him to read to practice these lessons before we move on? We are currently reading through Frog & Toad together, but he would prefer to read more stories completely on his own. I have previously borrowed a ton of so-called 'phonics' based readers from the library, but the majority of them contain only a few words on each page for him to read, with me having to read the rest. He wants things that he can read entirely without help. Can anyone recommend some titles to me? I was looking at the readers that go along with AAR, would those work? Thanks!

My 9yr old has an older Kindle fire. The camera is okay for his stop motion app. We have the 'kids' package, which came with a thick foam protector that is great - my kids are always dropping their tablets and we haven't had one break yet. Get wireless headphones, if you can as the headphone jacks broke quickly.

Oh, crap. As someone who is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, this is not something that I need. I've put 10lbs on, per kid, over the last 9 years. I'm already struggling - 20lbs more would not be good.

Yup, that's me. I totally should not have any more babies...my mental, physical, and emotional health would suffer. I'm still mourning the baby phase. I still have baby fever!

My baby is 2 today. He's our last (planned, on-purpose) baby, and now he's not a baby anymore. He's still in diapers and breastfeeding three times a day, but there are signs that both of those things will be over soon, too. I'm a bit melancholy this morning... Please tell me how great it is to be out of the baby phase - I'm going to need it today!

PREACH!

I will have DH check this out today! That would be so much better than buying a new one...

It isn't drying full loads of laundry. First, it was just big loads of towels. (I would just run it twice, DH would dry half a load at a time.) Now, it's not drying the jeans in a medium-sized load of kid clothes with two pairs of DS6s jeans in it. I figured I should start gathering information if I was going to have to replace it soon, so that I could be on the lookout for a good deal.

My dryer is on its way out. I'm going to start looking for a new one, and figure I'll replace the washer at the same time (they came with the house and booth look pretty old). Do you have an absolutely awesome washer/dryer that you can recommend? FWIW, I have five sons, four of them are young. We cloth diaper, but probably not for too much longer. (DS23mos is showing signs of wanting to use the potty.) I'm looking for: reasonable price, easy enough that DS9 can continue to work it on his own, durable, and can do large loads of towels/sheets as well as small loads. Can stack or be side-by-side. Gas dryer is a must. Thanks!

DS9 will get the flu shot, he has every year, and his last full-blown PANDAS attack was 2 years ago. DS does usually have an uptick in behaviors when he's sick, stressed, and even when he's lost a tooth. However, I would take a mild exacerbation with the vaccine over the flu PLUS a full-blown PANDAS attack any day.

We will definitely have a very strict budget, focusing on durable, simple, and easy-to-clean. We expect the majority of the budget to be eaten up with updating the electrical & plumbing, replacing the rotten floor joist, and (hopefully) swapping the toilet and the sink. The toilet is wedged in between the tub and the door, and if you open the door, even a tiny bit, all you see is the back of the person sitting on the toilet. ? If needed, I will do demo & finish painting. The rest gets farmed out to professionals. ?

Did I mention that the bathroom, like every single other room in this house when we bought it, is PINK? So much pink...

We are selling (finally!) the condo that we have been renting out for the last three years, since we moved around the corner in to a single family home. We will be left with a good (to us) chunk of money after all the bills, fees, and taxes are paid. I have what I WANT to do with the money and what I probably SHOULD do with the money: WANT - paint the exterior of the house (this is DH's want. the house is peeling badly) and gut/renovate/bring up to code the main bathroom that 6 people use daily (it is tiny and original to the house, circa 1948; their are no working outlets, the light over the vanity doesn't work, the tub is badly etched, there is water damage along the top of the tub/bottom of the tile wall, the floor joist between the tub & toilet is soft due to previously fixed leak, the window needs to be replaced, and I firmly believe that the positions of the toilet and sink need to be swapped) There would most likely still be money leftover from the house work. SHOULD - I still owe a significant amount on my school loans, from my undergrad/master's/doctoral courses. I could pay off 1/3 of the total. FWIW, I have recently started teaching part-time as an adjunct, and my plan was to use that money to pay off my student loans faster. We already put any money from yearly tax returns towards the loans. Also, I *loathe* the bathroom. Ugh.

We tear out one week at a time. I hole punch the papers and put them into a binder, and then I work from the book and he works from the binder. I'm doing this with WWE3 (DS9) and WWE1 (DS6) now.

I was going to say, I scoop mine with a large cookie scoop and bake them like big meatballs on a tray. I based them with a mix of ketchup & barbecue sauce, so they are tangy. Yum! I'm going to have to make them this week...

If you Google "WWE and WWS Susan's updated recommendations", you will find a PDF with multiple progressions through writing programs, from 1st grade through high school. This might help?

Well, MIL can't come over on Tuesdays. Also, the afternoon times would have us getting to the school at the same time as the upper school lets out for the day and leaving when the lower school lets out. That means the parking lot will be crazy and there will probably be no where to park. So, it will have to be mornings. Boo.

Excellent point. Thanks.

My MIL comes over once per week, fairly regularly during the school year. She's been in Seattle the last 3 weeks, helping out my BILs family, so I hadn't thought about whether she can help. If she's able to come over on Tuesdays this year, he could do the Tuesday afternoon speech time, and I can leave MIL at home with the other kids during nap/quiet time (which usually isn't so quiet one she gets there). I'll have to ask her.

Unfortunately, because he gets his services through the school, he can only attend when she sees the other first grade students. (He attends in group, not individually.) I don't have anyone else to help by driving him; DS22's work schedules vary wildly week-to-week. We did skip a few months after my youngest was born. I am hoping that this will be his last year in speech, so I don't want to cut it down too much. I'm thinking about only one afternoon rather than the two mornings...

Don't get me wrong, I *totally* get that I have a great deal of privilege in this situation. It's only 14 weeks, and then both soccer and the adjunct classes will be over. We are blessed that I can possibly use some of my paycheck for help. I am just sick, extra sleep deprived, am severely change-averse so it seems extremely overwhelming right now. Thank you for your advice and for letting me vent.

House cleaning help is a good idea - I would have to do it without DH's knowledge, because he would try and do it all for me on the weekend, and that would just stress him AND me out even more. I will make sure that we do math/spelling/handwriting/Latin get done everyday. I will also read to them every morning from our literature list. But, I think science and history are going to have to be bare-bones in order to keep them. Did I mention that we are trying to sell our condo that we used to live in and had been renting? So, that's going on, too. UGH!

Last year, our school weeks had 4 'regular' days and 1 light day per week. On the light day, DS9 would do just two subjects and DS6 would attend speech therapy at the local public school, then we would go to the library. It was lovely. Everyone here does better with routines, including me. This year, I took an adjunct professor job two nights a week. At first, It wasn't going to interfere with school at all but they asked me to take on an extra class, so I'm leaving earlier in the day. So, I moved some stuff around and we would have two short days, two long days, and our library day. Okay, we can do this. Yesterday, the new speech therapist emailed and asked to see DS6 two mornings a week, on the mornings that I teach. (It was that or afternoons on non-teaching days, and I'm NOT taking 4 kids out of the house during nap/quiet time. No way.) So now, my schedule looks like we have two extremely short days, two extremely long days, and a regular-length day; a couple of 4-day-a-week subjects might need to be 3-day-a-week subjects now. Oh, and lets not forget soccer one night a week plus Saturday afternoons for DS9 and Sunday mornings for DS4 and CCD on Sunday mornings for DS9 & DS6 and DS9 is learning to be an alter server at the Saturday afternoon masses.... Oh, and hey, there's still housework to do! And planning for my adjunct classes! And, someone still has to make dinner... My schedule is a disaster and I suddenly feel so overwhelmed. I should not have taken that job. Everything else would be manageable if I wasn't leaving the house two days per week after lunch and not getting home until after bedtime. My husband also has an adjunct job (in addition to his full-time job) on the days opposite that I teach, so Monday-Thursday I don't see him except to say good morning and good night. On top of it all, everyone in the house, except DS22, is sick with a rotten cold and miserable and no one is sleeping well. I just need to make it to Christmas vacation... ::cry::

Last year, DS9 read through the entire WTM reading list for 3rd grade, using recommended abridged texts (and using audiobooks for the poetry selections). A few of the stories he really enjoyed, so he listened to the unabridged versions on Audible. I think I only read one book from the list to him all year. This year, DS6 will be joining DS9 for literature. (I am keeping them together for history & lit.) I am trying to figure out a balance of *me* reading some titles out loud to them both (abridged or unabridged versions) and having DS9 read some titles on his own. DS6 is just learning to read, and DS9 is completely capable of reading many of the unabridged versions - he's a voracious reader for pleasure and reads well above grade level. Has anyone been through this already? Would anyone have any advice? Are there some books on the WTM list for 4th grade that I should completely avoid in the unabridged versions, for whatever reason? Some that should *always* be read in the original? Should I just pick a handful off of the list and read them *all* out loud in the original? Thanks for any help.