My hard, hard headed child is in her room pouting right now. She is really behind in math; she's going into 4th and is unable to do 1st grade math worksheets. The main reason is that over the last 3 years everytime I have tried to work with her on math she has pitched one fit after another. She is not willing to put any effort into doing anything that requires she think. If she has to think about it it's not worth doing and I'm a big meanie for making her try. I'm making her spend the summer doing 1st grade math, trying to get her caught up. She had a friend dropped off at our house unexpectedly this morning. I didn't feel like we could afford the interuption so I let everyone know my kids had things to do reguardless of company. I knew it was going to be hard to get them settled into it, I expected that. BUt dd has just flat out pitched a rebellion. She's refusing to do her work, says no one loves her, everyone thinks she's stupid, and she doesn't want to homeschool anyhow. Part of the problem is her friend is a little jealous of my kids, because instead of going to school they get to go play sports, go on field trips, take sewing classes, do things they're interested in. They have a lot of freedom. So this friend tells my kids how lame homeschool is and how great and easy public school is. Now dd thinks if she got to go to school she wouldn't be stuck doing stupid math worksheets everyday. So I asked this friend what happens in her math class, what the teacher would do if she didn't feel like doing her work, what happens when she fails, and if she talked back to her teacher. The girl said she had to do the assignments she was given, finish them during class, she'd get in big trouble with the teacher or sent to the principal's office if she acted ugly about it. Now dd is mad and not talking to me.

We all have really short attention spans here. We may be really interested in sea life this week, and not care a thing about it next week. Instead we'd rather learn about rainbows, or stars or whatever. So I've learned to go with it. If I were going to plan things out, I'd just do a few weeks at a time, and be willing to keep those plans flexible so they can be adjusted to the kids interest.

I've taken as much as 6 at a time under the advice of a doctor. You can also take tylenol and advil at the same time or alternate. But I bet you'd feel better if you went to the doctor and got a shot and antibiotics. Surely they wouldn't send you home with that high a fever.

This looks rally interesting. I already have milk crates, so I think I'll pick up some big ziplocs and give this a try. Those of you doing this for preschool, what does your list look like?

my dd has allergies, has also had her nose operated on twice, and gets nose bleeds very badly. It comes from it being irritated by allergies, or the lining getting too dry. We were told to use an eye lubricant, put some on a Qtip and wipe it around inside her nose to keep it moist.

hmmm.... I was kinda thinking about sauting them olive oil. I may have to try this. Wonder how it would work with rice flour.

Oh, I wish we had a grill! That would be perfect! especially on these warm days. I'll have to do them inside.

How do you like to cook them? I have some thawed out and it's past supper time. I need to do something real quick with them and I don't want to fry them.

I wish he took naps. He never has, if he did he's stay up all night. He follows along with a lot of their lessons, and he has his own little lessons to do. It's when they are doing things he can't follow along with, and these are usually the things that they need my help with. He'll play real nice if he has something fun to do, but then his sisters would rather do what he's doing than what they are doing. Then if I send to another room, he tries to follow and gets locked out. Lots of crying. I have to get him settled down and busy doing something, and it's harder for me to do that and help the kids in another room. I keep chanting the mantra this too shall pass. :)

I understand your point. some of us have enough pride not to want to be on food stamps forever even if we had doritos and dr. pepper three times a day everyday. I don't see why. If the argument is that FS should only provide nutritionally sound food, and we can agree white bread is not, then why should FS buy it? Or bleached flour, or sugar, or any highly processed foods. I respectfully disagree. Sorry if I offended you, my intent was only to point out that it could get out of hand and that what is reasonable may be subjective. Yes, but if I have no money, and I can't buy snacks with FS, then where do I get the snacks to put in my purse?

My 4yo aggrevates his sisters while they do their school work. I've tried giving him things to do-- special toys, playdoh, playng with food stuffs, but what usually happens is his sisters get so distracted by what he's doing that they can no longer focus on their own work. They want to do what he is doing. :001_huh:

IDK. I"m not sure who you would tell or what you would tell them. Knowing DH tho he would figure if they managed to get all those cards, then it probably wouldn't do a bit of good to tell the people who gave them to them.

My point was, what one person may consider unhealthy and unnecessary, another person may consider to be a necessary component of a recipe, or just plain necessary. From there you could get really nit-picky and ask if you will allow people to eat white bread. It is not healthy by any stretch of the imagination, so why should they be allowed to buy it if not chips and coke? So restict them to only wheat bread. But wheat bread cost twice what white bread does, so would you then all an increase benefits to allow for higher quality food? And if you want to get right down to it, the only foods we really need to survive are water and vegetation. People who eat nothing but fruits/veggies/nuts are not only healthy but usually much healthier than people on a standard american diet. Why allow anything else at all? It's superfluous. Cut all dairy, meat and grains. No one needs them. Yes, I'm being extreme here. BUt as I said, I would really have to see what this restriction looked like before I could say if I was for or against it. No he couldn't see it coming. I'm talking about a severe diabetic who blood sugar plumets and sky rockets that fast. He's on a roller coaster and we can't afford the meds he's supposed to be on to control it. Instead we're buying the cheapest insulin available to us, and it doesn't do for him what the kind prescribed for him does. He does keep snacks with him, but if his snack is in the car, or he has eaten all his snacks already (or any of numberous other senerios) he may need something, and we're broke enough that we usually don't have the cash for that kind of thing.

On applications I have filled out, it ask who all is included in your case then in another spot it ask who lives in your house that is not included in your case. It seems like you could apply and let them know that although your DH is still living in the same house with you that you are seperated and have no access to his money and still be able to get FS.

I've not read completely thru this yet, so forgive me if I'm repeating anything here. We are part of the working poor, and we are on food stamps right now. And it's not for the fun of it. I think if you were to regulate it you would get into some really hairy stuff. Here all groceries are taxed. With foodstamps you can buy any food items except hot food (this is changed during times when there is an emergency, like after Katrina) If no one can buy pop or chips does that mean that I can never again have fritos with my homemade chili just because I honestly don't have a dollar to spend on generic corn chips? Could I never again make a crock pot recipe that calls for adding sprite or coke? What if you're diabetic and you're in line buying groceries when your blood sugar crashes? Can you not buy a candy bar? (this has happened to us before) 3 out of the 5 people in my household have special dietary needs, it gets really expensive. The WIC here does not give vouchers, you go to a warehouse house and pick up shelf stable milk and powdered eggs. One of my dd's cannot eat a single thing that WIC offers. If FS were regulated in the same way, I don't know how we would feed her without loosing our home or having our electricity cut off. I've seen abuse of FS. Where my husband works her sees people with mulitple EBT cards and hudreds of dollars on each-- and no reason for them to have them (yk, like people he knows are not supporting families). They know how to work the system. I've seen people go thru the check out line with buggies full of koolaid drinks, cases of coke, and chips and cookies with out a single piece of nutritious food. This while I try to figure out how I feed my family brown rice instead of white, or get a little more produce than a bag of apples or a head of cabbage. I understand the frustration of seeing the system abused, but I have some concerns about it being regulated. I guess I would have to see how it was regulated before I could say if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Our schools start at the first of August, so if your's start around that time them you may want to start checking right after the 4th of July. You have to be quick around here. Once they mark crayolas down to a quarter those things will vanish in thin air.

We were told to switch to showers till we got completely past the UTIs. No bubble bath at all. Also dont' drink carbonated beverages, just plenty of water. Now on the other hand, I had a UTI once from drinking too much water. That's all I drank was water while I was pregnant (and occasionally juice). It had me peeing too much, and everything got irritated.

I only like sunny days if it's in the 70's and there's a cool breeze. It's in the upper 80's here and I go outside for a few minutes and come inside a crispy critter. I love a good storm, and rainydays inside curled up with a book are some of my favorite. Give me a cool crisp, overcast, gray fall day and I'm happy.

My dd started getting migraines when she was 5. It's all allergy related- both food and enviromental allergies.

OK, I'm having a 'well duh' moment. LOL Why did I never think of typing? THat would probably take a huge amount of stress off of her. I wish we could get her some sort of therapy, but insurance wont pay for it and also we'd have to drive such a great distance to where we would get therapy, that there's just no way we can do it right now. Another question. When other people, both her firends and adults, make comments about her handwriting, what do you say?

ROFL! That's pretty good!

If anyone has similar problems, what do you do? My dd (8) has visual perception problems and her handwriting is horrible. She prints and letters are barely recognisable, lots of letter reversals letters and words are all different sizes. And we've been working on it constantly for going on 3 years. She rubs her eyes a lot when she reads and writes, it's really frustrating for her. She needs vision therapy, but it's not available. I have been told that when you write in cursive it reduces the likely hood of reversing letters, and that dyslexic children really should be taught to write in cursive because the letters start at the bottom line. So I tried teaching her cursive and we really worked on the formation of letters. It was torture. That sooooo did not work out. Would it be best just to let her keep printing? How important is it that she learn cursive? Is there something out there that might help?

I'm completely unfamiliar with this program, but I've been given the book. I've only flipped thru it so far. Would you all mind answering some questions about it for me? Is this a complete LA curriculum? Does it need to be supplemented with anything else like spelling or writing? If you had a child going into 4th grade that has never had structured LA (she's unschooled herself thru literature and reading, but we ended up missing out on spelling and learning to write well) would you say this would be more at a 4th or 5th grade level? It says 4th-5th grade on the back so I don't know if it's meant to be one or the other or if it's supposed to cover 2 years. I bought writing tales and spelling workout d & e for her. Now I'm debating on what to use.

Book Samaritan rocks!!!!!!!! :D I ended up having a much smaller budget for books this year than I anticipated, so I bought the books that were most important to me that the kids get. Then I wrote the book samaritan and asked them for the things I couldn't afford. I just got the greatest package in the mail! Really, there was some very nice stuff in there. Science books, phonetic readers and manipulatives, music and art books. And a couple of math books for kids who hate math LOL I know exactly what I want to do with our old books. I'm about to go thru my books and see what all I can donate to them.

My dd went to K in public school, of course at the end of the year they had a graduation. Now when people ask her why she's not in school she tells them, very seriously, "I graduated already."