Bummer, sorry that happened to mess up such a good day. I would think it would not hurt it to slowly back it out of the garage onto the driveway where you could change it and put the spare on.

Rosie, I'm so very sorry the loss of your son. Praying that you will be lifted up and given strength to get through this. Lea

I am very thankful for this board also. I am constantly using the search function to find out more about curriculum or a problem we may be having. I always find something that helps me. This board really is awesome.

I tried both of these and hated them so much I refused to use nasal sprays for a long time. I finally tried nasocort and stuck with it because the taste is not nearly as strong as the other two. It is also over the counter now. I take Zyrtec year round aliso. In the spring, summer and fall I add Singulair and it seems to really help me a lot. Singulair words differently than Zyrtec, although I can't explain how. These three things seem to make a difference for me. Good luck finding something that works. Allergies can be miserable.

I wish I had known and truly understood how much better it would be for me in my 50's if I had stayed fit and stayed out of the sun:). I know we hear it often but you just don't really understand what it is like until you are experiencing it.

In the situation you describe, I would definitely help them out by giving them the van. I would be careful to not go overboard when I selected a new-used car for myself though,

What is required in high school is really dependent on where you went to school. I went to school in a very small town in Oklahoma. I took high school biology and chemistry and never once did any kind of experiment at all. We read the book, listened to the teacher talk and answered questions. Our tests were open book, fill in the blank sentences straight from the book. Our teachers were coaches. It was really a poor excuse for a high school science class. I went to a junior college for 2 years before transferring to Syracuse University for a major in Computer Science. I didn't take any science classes at jr. college but did take comp. sci. classes. I took Astronomy at Syracuse, 2 semesters, and that was the end of my science. If I had wanted to transfer straight from my high school to SU, I don't think I would have been accepted and, if I had been, I probably would have failed the first semester. Jr. college was necessary stepping stone in this situation, but I did go on to be very successful in my career. If I had been interested in a more serious science career, I would have had to concentrate on those types of classes at Jr. college before transferring to a 4 year university. Just another perspective. I wish all public schools provided the level of high school science required for 4 years universities but they do not.

I have two 8YO boys and neither of them will consistently say they like school. More often you hear them saying they don't like it or hate it or they will just generally moan and groan about it. Once in a while, one of them will say he really likes school. This is usually after a couple of days of having no planned activities and the neighbor kids are not available to play. But, generally, they would rather not do school. What would they rather do instead? Play. Play. And more play. Pretend, play games, pretend something else, go outside and pretend something else, play games, play with neighbors, pretend and play some more. That's it. Nothing else. Play and pretend, Legos, dress up clothes, etc. (Oh, and also play games on the Kindle and watch TV, but we limit it quite a bit. One likes to read a lot but the other one only wants to read about Lego/Chima/Power Ranges/etc.) One of them usually loves playing any kind of sports. They were very excited to be signed up to play baseball for the first time this season. (They have played a lot in the backyard but never on a real team.) They loved it at first. They have games on Tuesday nights and practice on Saturday mornings. The last two Saturdays, one child has complained that he doesn't want to go to practice. Last Saturday he said he only wanted to play the games, not go to practice. They used to love to play baseball in the backyard with mom and dad. Not so much anymore. Maybe this is normal for their age (I need to read up on this age group) but I keep wondering when they will eventually be passionate about something enough to really work hard at it. It seems that anytime something fun becomes any sort of a requirement or leans a bit towards requiring hard work/effort, they no longer want to do it. I am going with this is just part of the age. I hope that is right. I understand where you are coming from though.

Well, this thread has been enlightening for me. I clearly need to be a bit more discerning. We read a ton of books around here. I just finished reading Caddie Woodlawn myself because I had seen it on so many lists and I have it sitting out because I know one of my sons would enjoy it. Is it not historically accurate? If not, I find that disappointing (yes, I guess I am naive). Thanks for opening my eyes. (I just finished Emma, Jane Eyre and My Antonia also. Are they all considered historically accurate?) I missed out on so many of the classics when I was young (pretty much all of them!) that I am excited to read them with my sons. We have done a lot of both, the classics and also historical fiction. But I am not excited about reading a historical fiction that is way off historically, unless I can see that clearly and discuss it with my sons. Funny, we recently read Little Lord Fauntleroy and we were all talking about how he was depicted as such a perfect child and that no child can be that perfect in every way. If it is an obvious thing, I don't mind as much and my sons can even pick it out at times too. If it is more subtle and is going to hide it's way into our memories, confusing our ideas of a time period, then I would not want to read it even if it is a good story.

We do the same thing you do. We have two 8YO sons. They each get 15-20 minutes a day on weekdays but they watch each other so that is 30-40 minutes of staring at a screen. On weekends we let them have double time. We have 1 kindle for them to play on so they can't play at the same time.

I have two 8YO sons who also have friends in the neighborhood that go to p.s. One of my sons has always been very challenging to school. (He has been challenging to raise also, going through stages of throwing big fits.) Just after Christmas, his bad behavior during school really ramped up, to the point that he was really disrupting our school day and I was having a very hard time getting him to do anything. It was also really impacting our relationship in a bad way. I finally decided (in tears) that they needed to go to public school because I felt it was my only choice if I wanted to have a good relationship with him. In retrospect, I think this is what he wanted but either did not know it himself or did not know how to tell me or something. Dh agreed and I took them to school and signed them up. They went for one week and all four of us agreed that we liked homeschooling much better, for many reasons. Since this happened, he is like a different kid when we homeschool. I received a lot of negative comments from a lot of people when we decided to do this, which really only made it worse for me, since I was so very sad about the whole thing and it was not what I wanted at all. But in the end, it turns out it was the best thing we could have done. We all learned so much from it. All this being said, I would not have sent them if they were just expressing curiosity about p.s. They had done that and I had talked to them about the differences already. I had struggled through it with this particular son to a point where I felt that I had no other choice. Fortunately it turned out great for us in the end.

I have two Bengals. One is a 15 year old male (Dancer) and the other is an almost three year old female (Tink, Tinky, Tinker, Tinkerbell - they were both already named when I got them). Dancer had a same-age half sister (Zoey) but she died about three years ago and soon after we got Tinky. I was devastated when Zoey died so I got another one that looked just like her but, boy, her personality is quite different. They each have their own, very unique, personalty. Dancer is the most awesome cat ever. He loves people and has never, ever scratched or bitten anyone on purpose. When my sons first came home from Russia at 14 and 15.5 months old, Dancer was immediately their buddy (when he felt like it). He would lay on the floor and scootch forward so his head would be under the ottoman so they wouldn't smash it and then he would let them crawl around and half over him, play with his tail and 'pet' him (they were closely supervised though). One of my sons was his special buddy. They would lay next to each other on the floor and my son would suck his thumb while hold Dancer's tail in his other hand. So Dancer has always been a real sweetie to people but he would attack Zoey for no reason. The first few years, when they were young, they played together all the time and slept together and everything. But at some point he started attacking her for no reason and I never understood what that was all about. It could have been because she was my shadow and he was jealous. He has always been the cat who loves and accepts everyone whereas my female Bengals have been more my shadow cats and not so open to others. Zoe was a sweet kitty to everyone but she did not have any patience or tolerance for the boys when they were little. I had the cats long before I had the kids. The cats had been raised in a quiet home with no kids and just little ole me. First I got married and they both very quickly attached quite nicely to my husband. No problem there. Zoe even grew to really like him and would sit on his lap in the evenings. Then the boys came along and Dancer was happy with more people but Zoe was not too happy about them. At first it was fine because she could easily get away from them but, as they grew, it was not so good. They thought it was funny to poke at her and tease her when she was laying on the back of a chair, for instance. She would fight back and put them in their place a few times. They quickly learned that they would end up with scratches and bites if they messed with her. They were 5 when she died so she never really got to a point where she cared for them a whole lot. I don't think she ever really thought of them as kittens though because she would never really go after them and chase them down but would just defend themselves. Enter Tinkerbell. She is a mess! As much as I have warned the boys and scolded them and grounded them from playing with her to try to prevent it, she does think of them as kittens and will absolutely go after them if they start teasing her. She went through a biting phase where she would really bite a lot, much more so than Dancer and Zoey ever did. It took me quite a while to get her to a point where she is sweet to me consistently and I can trust her (most of the time) that she won't bite me. She even licks my fingers when I am petting her now. BUT, she gets very angry when we go on vacation and then she is a biter again when we get home (to me). We hire my brother to stay at our house when we are gone but she still is angry with me when we return. A couple of months ago we had come home from being away somewhere. I was sitting in my bed with her next to me and was petting her and she was purring and kneading the bed. I can't remember why but I moved her over a little and she didn't like that so she got up to leave. As she was walking away from me, still on the bed, she quickly turned around and bit the living daylights out of my arm. She broke the skin in two places and it immediately started swelling. By the next morning it was so bad that I had to start antibiotics right away. We were out of town for two nights last week and she tried to bite me the first night back again but I was ready for it. She can be so very sweet and playful and is most of the time with the people in our house but she can also turn on a dime, while still purring which is the strangest thing, and very suddenly attack. The only clue we get when she decides to do this is that the black part of her eye will get really big all of a sudden. It makes me really sad because I so wanted her to have the sweet personality that Zoey had. She does love being with me and follows me around a lot though, which Zoey did also and I missed that so much when she died. The other bad Tinker thing is that from the very beginning she has had this thing for attacking poor old Dancer. When she was a kitten, I was worried he would hurt her, although he never did. Now she is big and heavy and he is very thin and light so she can really get him. All three of my Bengals were indoor cats, although Dancer had always wanted to go outside so badly. I tried the lease/harness but he was not happy with it and having been outside only made him want to escape the house even more. He tried to escape every time someone open a door for many years. We now live in a community that is more in the country, although it is a housing development, and every house has about an acre of land. I finally decided to let him go out because I knew she had made his life so miserable. He is the happiest cat in the world when he is outside. It is really funny to watch him and he has also brought a couple of mice to the house. He runs all over the place. We also have a big open area across the street with trees and a pond so he goes over there too. He seems to be very careful around cars and I hope he stays that way. He has gotten locked in people's garages twice. Both times I put out signs and found him, although the first time it took a week and I really thought he was gone for good. I will miss him when he is gone but I am glad he has had these years to be an indoor/outdoor kitty. It has really made him a happy guy. My one piece of advice is to be very very careful when you change your kitty's food. Mix the old and new foods and switch her over very carefully and slowly. A couple of months ago I decided to switch Tinker over to one of those Blue foods (Blue Mountain? can't remember now) because she is over weight, which I have a hard time understanding because Dancer and Zoe had never had this problem. Anyway, I had switched Dancer's and Zoey's food before and never had a problem, although they went from grain to grain and not to a more heavy protein food so maybe that was the difference. Anyway, Tinker had a very bad reaction and came close to dying, even though I switched her over somewhat gradually, although clearly not nearly gradually enough. She was in the hospital for a while before recovering. I can't remember now exactly what she had but I know her stomach became very painful and she stopped eating. As she was recovering the vet put her on one of the higher quality grain foods (a different one than I had been using) and I just kept her on it. So definitely be very very careful when switching your kitty's food. If I knew how to attach pictures I would include some. Dancer is a dark cat with black and dark brown spots and green eyes. Zoey was a snow leopard and she was really beautiful. She had a lot of lighter colors in her coat and a white undercoat and white underneath with lighter brown spots and her eyes were more hazel. Tinker is really beautiful. She is also a snow leopard (if you google bengal cat snow leopard you will see similar pics) and she has green eyes. When Dancer walks across the yard he looks so wild and almost majestic. They are really beautiful cats and they really carry themselves differently than other cats (I have had cats all my life - big cat lover here). I am sure you have already read about them and know they can jump higher and run faster than other cats. I am still amazed at how fast Dancer can run when he is outside. He still has a lot of playfulness in him at 15. Sorry this is so long. I hope you and your family will love your Bengal and have many fun years with her.

A wonderful room spray that, when inhaled, makes everyone kind, considerate, well-mannered and hard working. What lovely days we would all have then:). Oh, and a cook. Definitely a full-time cook.

I have not read all of the replies so forgive me if I am being repetitious. My 8YO son has been diagnosed with OCD also and a number of months back he went through his worse time with it yet. We have found a lot of help for both him and us from this child's book on OCD, What To Do When Your Brain Gets Stuck: A Kid's Guide for Overcoming OCD by Dawn Huebner which we ordered from Amazon. It really helped him understand OCD much better and not feel so ashamed about it. It really helped the whole family understand it better and it gave us all some tools to help him with different issues that would come up. It took us a while to be able to obtain an appointment for our son so this book was really a life saver for us. He was already using many of the tools successfully before we finally got in to see a doctor and this is the very book she recommended. We also gave him Melatonin at night which seemed to help him a lot. Even though we had a wonderful therapist, I really didn't think she helped him that much, if at all. I think the book and us working with him to remind him of which tool to try, to encourage him and cheer his successes has helped him the most. We were at a point that we thought he might have to start using some medication. But he is very successfully managing it himself for now, although it doesn't sound as if his ever got quite as bad as your daughters is now. It is likely that they will have to deal with it throughout their lives so giving them some strong tools to use is certainly critical. My heart goes out to you and I will be praying for you and your family. (I am also the one to be awakened and it is so very hard on everyone.)

I think I might consider finding out if there is a possibility of moving her back to K now, rather than waiting. She would sure benefit more from moving now than struggling through the rest of the year. Since she has already noticed that she is the youngest and she wishes she was not, I would explain to her as others have said, that she is actually K age and that is why 1st is so hard. She would probably feel relieved. I would not try to after school her to get her up to speed for 1st. I think you would end up having to do that A LOT going forward. They already have to put in enough time at school and with homework. Spending even more time struggling to keep up with kids who are a year older when you are not quite ready just doesn't seem fair to her.

They always knew that at the end of the lesson, after they had counted their cards, they gave them back to me and I put them away. I would add them back in with another lesson when I wanted to review them. Between the sheer number of words they go through and all of the sentences, they didn't really notice or, if they did, did not have an issue with it. It has been a while now but I may have also told them that we had to review so we would remember better. I do think reviewing may be a little less noticeable using cards though because it is harder to keep track of them when you go through so many.

My sons used to start whining when i would get the OPGTR out. So I start making up index cards for the new words they would learn in each lesson, one word or sentence on each card. if I thought I might forget something I needed to teach, I would make a little note to myself on the front or back of the card or on a separate card. Then, when it was time to do phonics, I just pulled out the cards, told them the new information for the lesson and had them sound out each word or read the sentence on the cards. If they sounded out the word or read the sentence correctly, they got to keep the card. If not, I would put it last and give them another chance at it. They loved 'winning' the cards and would count them when we were finished to see how many they had 'won'. When they were a bit older and reading better, I was able to stop doing this. I think they then understood that, even though the lesson had a lot of words in it (and probably had looked overwhelming to them before) many of the words in the lesson were for the teacher. We were able to finish the book with no problem and they were reading at a 4th grade level when they were in 1st grade. It is an awesome book if you can make it work for you. I would personally drop ETC. I don't think you need both OPGTR and ETC and it just adds more writing, which you also already have covered. Just one less thing to fight about (I have a son like yours:).

Yes, they probably will and lots of other people probably will also. I'm OK with that;). (Actually, I probably am a little crazy:). I found the information about withdrawing and it is pretty easy in Oklahoma. There are so many people who homeschool here that I would guess this won't be the first time they have seen this kind of thing, although we might have set the record for shortest time trying public school:). Really, we have learned so much from this week that I think it was totally worth it. I think it will make me a better homeschooler.

bump for the update in original post

Thanks Polly. Much appreciated.

Thanks Arcadia. These are great ideas and they give me a place to start. I am still so in the negative mind set about this that is hard to think positively and these are definitely positive ways in which I could make a difference and help out.

Thank you for your sweet words Colleen. I can't help but hope one or both of them will want to come home after this semester but you never know. I will still be hanging around here because this place is just "home" for me:).

Update: After one very long week in public school, our entire family is in agreement that we need to go back to homeschooling. We have discussed the problems that sent us to try public school and many different solutions we are going to put in place to hopefully put our homeschool back on a more positive track going forward. I am so relieved; this has been such a hard week for me but it sure has given us all a much greater appreciation for homeschooling. Our public school elementary is a very good one, the people were all very friendly and our sons have not had any problems with other kids or teachers or anything (of course it was only one week). But I absolutely hate that they spend 7.5 hours away from home each day (on the way to school, at school and on the way home) and only 5.5 waking hours at home with us. I hated all of the different things we had to squeeze into that 5.5 hours and how hectic it was to get it all done. And I hated the homework, both helping with it and seeing the busy work they were wasting their time and energy on. So I am very much looking forward to bringing them home. We have all learned a lot from this little experiment. I am going to write some notes about it so I can read them the next time things get tough. Now I have to figure out how to let the school know that they won't be coming back after tomorrow. Does anyone know what is required in Oklahoma to withdraw from p.s.? Original Post: The good news is that my two sons (both 8 YOs) were tested yesterday using the Woodcock Johnson test and I was very pleased with the results. Math Results: We have been using CLE Math and they were towards the end of LU 206 and they scored 3.0 and 3.5 on calculations and 3.1 and 3.8 on applying the problems (word problems, I think). This score means they are working at a 3rd grade level; one son is right at 3rd grade level with calculations and applying the problems and the other is 5 months into 3rd grade level on calculations and 8 months into 3rd grade level on applying the problems. Language Arts: They have both completed both FLL1,2, WWE 1,2; AAS 1 and 2, and probably most importantly we have always read aloud a lot from classic books, as recommended in WTM. They were also required to read-to-self every school day for 30 minutes. They had to pick from classic books that I had preselected. In reading fluency they scored 7.6 and 7.8. Letter/Word recognition: 5.2, 5.5 Passage Comprehension: both scored 3.8 Spelling: 2.4 and 2.2 I was concerned about spelling being so low but the lady giving the test thought it was pretty on target for their age/grade. I will admit to not following AAS teaching instructions to the letter and we had not covered spelling since before Christmas. We were trying some other spelling programs but I could tell they were not working as well as AAS so I was just getting ready to switch them back to AAS. Also, I was always a bit confused about how people could move through it so quickly because we sure could not. I don't know if that is because my sons are not natural spellers or what, but there you have it. Overall, I was very pleased with their results. The bad news is that my sons are now enrolled in public school and their first full day will be on Tuesday. They did testing yesterday morning, were assigned to their classes at lunch time and spent the afternoon with their class, although it is a three day weekend so I think they did not get to see what a real afternoon in class will be like. I did not want them to go to public school and I am very sad about it and have cried buckets. One of them was very determined to go and had decided to fight me on everything we did. All of his friends in the neighborhood go and he doesn't have any friends who are homeschooled that he can play with every day (he is very social) so he really wanted to go to p.s.. The other son had/has very mixed feelings about going but he had also had a bad attitude about doing school at home for a while. The upside is that we do have very good schools here and I was impressed with what I saw there. I also think they were assigned to good teachers. It still breaks my heart though. It feels as if someone close to me has died. We had just started 3rd grade in everything except math and it was requiring more work and longer days (a bit, not a huge amount). I spent so much time on school that I already almost don't know what to do myself. It is also very hard to hand over the responsibility for their education to someone else. And when Tuesday comes along and the bus picks them up at 8:30 and drops them off in the afternoon at 3:40, this house is going to seem so empty and quiet. I suspect (maybe hope?) that at least one of them will want to go back to homeschooling after this semester at public school is over. I had always thought that I would not do that, one in p.s. and one homeschooled but now I know I would if one was miserable and wanted to come home. In the meantime, I have to find a life and I am not sure yet what they will look like. It is hard because I always felt that I had a very important job with home educating my children and now that is gone and I don't see anything really that important for me to do around here. I have no desire to go back to work but I may look for a volunteer position somewhere. I will have to pray about it. Thanks for listening. Enjoy them while you have them.

We had a terrible day of homeschooling yesterday. I was looking up requirements for sending them to public school last night while I was crying my eyes out because I love homeschooling, feel it is a privilege and I love spending the time learning with my two sons. Dh talked me down off that cliff but I have had a bad headache all day because of all the crying I did. And then today, ds that has such a temper problem didn't like it when I told him to take a book to read to piano lessons so he can read while his brother had his lesson, then they would switch and brother would read while other son had lesson. ds had a major meltdown (he turned 8YO iNov 11) and started throwing library books at me from close range. His anger has been a constant problem and we have tried just about everything we can think of. We may have to resort to some kind of medication. And last, but not least, I am feeling achy and have a low grade fever (99) and this is the third time this has happened to me over the past couple of months. The first time I had it for probably at least a week and a half. The second time was shorter but I can't believe it is happening again. Other symptoms: I am very tired, feel a bit achy (not the extremely painful achy from the flu), my head hurts and my the palms of my hands get very hot at times. The hand thing started the first time the low grade fever started and has not gone away. Low grade fever normally ranges between 99 and 99.4. Wow! That is a pretty big whine and I really needed that! Thanks for letting me get that out.

Ruth, I really like your approach and believe it is just what I am needing in my homeschool. Thanks for sharing. Could you explain how you measure/graph attitude per subject? I think this, along with the words per written per day would be really good for my youngest. And I am going to start working with both of my sons on setting their own goals. Thanks so much!