How do you get your legs to look nice? I'm not always the best one for getting all girly, but I have noticed that my legs never have that smooth, feminine look to them. It bothers me more when I go out freshly shaven and notice how silky other women's legs seem compared to mine. So what am I missing? I feel like I grew out of all the gangly teenage stuff except the weird legs! and this 33 year old is ready to fix that, if it's something that I can fix!

Ok so I had to tell her that we weren't going to finish the whole project today and that she had to go outside and play. Then I read through what she kept calling her "report". (I already wrote the whole report, mom! I just need to do the timeline!) Except for spelling and spacing issues, it is actually a pretty good report, included all the important facts, some of the "interesting" facts and is quite complete (two full pages of writing, wide ruled paper, and a third page of dates and notes for her timeline) So is there any benefit to the contrived "book report" questions that kids are required to write on in the public school if she can produce something like this without any instruction? I think I might come up with some specific questions to ask as thoughtful extensions, like, maybe what would you ask him if you got to meet him for lunch? or, what board game do you think would be fun to play with him? (the report was on Mozart, btw)

She's 8 Sent from my XT1056 using Tapatalk

Instead of giving the regular history assignment today, I pulled a random biography off the bookshelf that she had not yet read and basically told her to read it, take notes and write a report for me including a timeline and that it was due on Friday. She's now been working for nearly 2 hours straight, on the last few pages of the book (it was a pretty easy level book for her) and has 3 pages of notes. She's been working steady through her siblings playing without a break in focus except to ask me if I could help her get what she needed to put together the timeline when she was finished. This from the kid who can't write 3 sentences on a free-write topic of her choice without moaning and groaning. So how do I take that and not box it in with preconceived ideas on how a report should look? Obviously I want to refine what she's doing and help her learn to put it together nicely, but this was kind of off the cuff and I'm not sure how to guide her. Is there something I should be looking for to help me (some curriculum or something like that?) or is this just something I need to learn to do on my own and keep giving assignments like this? I really expected her to read the book and have something like 4 incomplete sentences scrawled across a page and left abandoned on the kitchen table as she ran off to play...

No, I don't have zometools, we used to have a fort building kit that was similar but huge, and she would spend hours building forts with it... the dog chewed on several of the ball-connectors and she got frustrated because she couldn't make anything with what was left.

The reading and comprehension stuff I've got updated assessments from last month from the QRI-3, and have her reading fluently with comprehension at 6/7th level. I've given this test to many many kids over the years as a former special Edu teacher and have never given it to a kid who reads ahead of level so that was kind of fun for me. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

So I've been spending some time rethinking each piece of our school day and asking my daughter about each one. I've turned math into a three pronged approach - grade-level skills from math mammoth at an accelerated pace, challenge problems that force her to think outside the box but without the computation piece, and games to reinforce computation skills. She's thriving at this and as frustrated as she gets with the challenge problems, I've never seen her so proud of herself and so excited when she figures one out. She asked if she could read science herself and have me quiz her and after trying that this week I realized that I was spending far too much time talking about concepts when she could learn them much faster without my chatter. It's time to allow her more self-directed science study I think! For history, I have no good solution for this year other than to just finish the last few chapters, but I am going to try something new for next year and she specifically asked to go back to ancients, so that gives me a good starting point. Regarding test scores. Here's a quick rundown of what I've got and my thoughts: Verbal comprehension: 112 Perceptual reasoning: 98 Working memory: 99 Processing speed: 91 subscore percentiles: Verbal comprehension: similarities 95% vocabulary 75% Comprehension 50% Perceptual reasoning: Block design 16% picture concepts 75% matrix reasoning 75% Working memory: digit span 63% letter-number sequencing 37% Processing speed: coding 9% symbol search 63% He gave her full scale at 102 and when I asked how much any of it might have been impacted by her inattentiveness, he said no more than a few points at the most. Thinking through this as I type, I can see that she should be able to read and understand texts higher than "grade level" and my application is assume nothing but instead to allow more self-directed learning and check comprehension with higher level questioning. She has good abstract reasoning skills but poor spacial skills so don't expect her to be an architect but I should allow her to learn in a way that allows her to make more of her own logical conclusions, so more discovery-based learning...which falls nicely in line with self-directed learning. working memory - all I've got here is that she's capable of learning.. not sure there's more I need from this one anyway. Processing speed - good at spotting patterns but other than that, this one is probably too far from accurate to extrapolate much due to the massive changes in her attention and ability to focus. Am I on the right track?

yeah, I've tried that, but if she feels like she doesn't need to go, she'll fight me and cry, saying she doesn't need to go. Only to have an accident 10 minutes later. I had success with a timer and asking if her was still dry every hour, allowing her to go when she needed to and giving lots of praise for dry pants, but after a couple good days in a row, she slips back into being wet. The frustrating thing is this is the child who potty-trained herself, super easy, when she was two and a half.

I'm pretty sure this is what's going on with my 5 year old daughter who has a language delay. I feel like the anxiety is what is causing the frequent accidents. Sometimes it's fear of a spider in the bathroom, other times I don't know - fear of the bathroom itself maybe? I have a toddler potty seat that I might try putting in the living room to see if she'll use it. I'm at a loss to know what to do to help! She'll poop in the toilet and has regular bowels, once a day. She says it doesn't hurt to pee, but I have an appointment scheduled with the Dr. to be sure there's nothing else going on physically. I'll literally catch her sitting on her foot, with a puddle of pee under her. I'll send her to the bathroom and she'll change her clothes and clean herself and the floor up. I don't punish her for the accidents but I make her take responsibility for cleaning up but it doesn't seem to make a difference. So how do I work with her? I have trouble because of the limited verbal feedback due to the expressive language delay, and It's not healthy for her to continue this way though! I'm sure the pediatrician will have advice too, but I'd love to be able to do something NOW, this weekend, to make a difference for her now that I feel like I've figured out what's going on and I thought maybe there are moms on this board who've dealt with this before who might be able to impart some wisdom?

ok, I'll see what I can come up with, thanks for the encouragement!

Interesting thoughts on History - I need to ponder that some. Math - yes, that's a great way to describe her except that I have trouble figuring out how to give depth conceptually without making things too difficult algebraically. I've done poorly at helping her develop math interest, and I kind of feel like I've killed some of that eagerness. She used to LOVE math, but now she has an attitude and fights me over it every day. The in-between time has been me trying different curricula to figure out how to address the fact that her computation skills are lagging behind her conceptual skills and I didn't know how to handle that. And the focus the past couple years has been so heavy on math fact mastery.

that's an interesting thought process, I'll have to ponder that some more...

The pond ripples is a neat idea, I've never seen that before! Yes, she's 8. Thanks for all the ideas, I'm going to check into those books too.

ok, that's a valid point. Subjects that are working for us: Language Arts - Michael Clay Thompson, Island level and she loves it. science she is enjoying but we tend to put our own thing together. we are learning earth science this year. Spelling - we are doing essentials of spelling and it's a quick lesson each day so she's willing to do it, and she seems to be improving her spelling, at least some, so I'm ok with it. Art/music - we are enjoying these this year, we finally found a way to get to them each week. Subjects that we are not satisfied with: Math - she doesn't like math. so I've dumped the McRuffy 3rd and am filling in with some math mammoth and zaccaro and plan on doing beast 3 next year... but math is such a fight. She is super quick at all new concepts, but takes a long time with computation. she has learned to avoid thinking mathematically and thus has trouble with problem solving. History - totally boring, she doesn't get the point and only puts up with it because she loves coloring and can color a corresponding history page with the chapters in SOTW2. That and the maps are about all I can get out of her for history. I'm trying to look for a "big picture" history program but not sure what direction to head for that.

OK so I'm still thinking through this, even as I type... Is there a way to get a big picture overview and then study the parts more in depth? Over several years? Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

I guess it does kind of sound like I want to rush it, really I guess it just seems the timeline is not sinking in at all, like she's not getting a picture of what happened even just this year in our history studies. For that matter, I can't get the picture either. Maybe just working with a time line is the best and hopefully over the years it will sink in. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

We are nearing the end of SOTW2 and our eyes are glazing over. What started at the beginning of the year as interesting, has quickly become a timeline that is too long and complicated to keep in our heads as visual spacial learners, and so nothing is sticking. I would love to be able to do a 1 year overview of history that allows us to get the timeline into our heads in a way that we can see the patterns and retrieve chunks at a time to understand the impact of an event/person. Right now everything seems to be taught as dates/names/places and while we try to connect everything and are putting the events that seem most important into our timeline book, I'm realizing that right now the only benefit we are getting from history is a moral discussion of what is occurring and map reading skills. My daughter loves the coloring pages and can answer the comprehension questions...but there's gotta be a better way to do it. Before I try to invent the wheel all over again I thought I'd see if anyone knows of something that already does this?

Hi all, I'm relatively new on these boards and have spent a great deal of my time gleaning wisdom for my middle children, but I have a question now about my eldest. She is 8 years old, and at age 6 she was tested with the WISC-IV and another test for ADHD and was diagnosed as average intelligence and severely ADHD. The Psych we went to blew off my questions about her academic achievements and at the time we were in the middle of a difficult pregnancy so we put her on the recommended medication and basically survived the school year. This summer we used an intense OT regime, went off meds, and everyone was blown away by the improvements. The pediatrician still has trouble believing that we don't have her on meds. So we maintain a sensory diet and she would not qualify as ADHD if we were to pay for retesting, I'm sure of it. In the meantime, I read David Sousa's book "How does the Gifted brain Learns and I'm left unsatisfied again with the test results that I have. The extreme attention issues we were dealing with when she was tested make me feel like I can't trust any of the scores. She showed some strengths and some weaknesses but I don't know how to even guess at what her true strengths and weaknesses are now that shes's able to focus. I don't care about having a "gifted" diagnosis. I don't want her in anything that requires it, I just wonder if the subcategories would help me as I try to meet her potential academically. I have little doubt that she's gifted, and she fits the description of a visual spacial learner o a T. I don't have the money to get her retested formally, but I wonder if there's a cheap or free test I can administer that would give me some idea of her specific intellectual strengths/weaknesses? Or should I focus my time and efforts on learning more about the visual/spacial learning style and focus on synthesis level learning?

So would it help in this case to put letters and words on red or green paper? Sent from my XT1056 using Tapatalk

So a question. Let's say the issue is processing, where the brain just doesn't translate letters/sounds properly. What is the other way into the brain? Or is there? How does a program, like Orton-gillingham for example, or Barton, work with these kids?

If I want to use Ronit Bird as a K level math curriculum for my daughter who struggles (It was recommended here a little bit ago and I'm just now getting around to the math portion of my research!) do I want to start with the Toolkit book? And I already have c-rods, is there anything else I need?

interesting, thanks for this resource!

Thank you for this comment! And thank you to all who have given me great strategies and ideas. I have a lot of info to think about and process and in the end, regardless of what decision we make as a family, I have learned a lot and appreciate each person's input!

Yes it can. And we have a family history of celiac, so it's a possibility. I never thought about abdominal pain being a possible cause for not liking pants - and if the pants are at all snug at the waist, he refuses to let me button or snap them and I never could figure out why.

I really should do this. My gut reaction is to not do it, because I don't want to see what would happen. He's got two older sisters and a younger brother and he plays nicely with them (well, mostly nicely, typical sibling stuff) and he's especially attached to his closest in age sister. When they have friends over, he plays with them too, but I don't see him directing play, interacting on his own outside of sibling stuff or parallel play. Without watching him play at the park without siblings I can't know for sure, but my gut says he'd play by himself or throw a fit for me to play with him. He'd be lost.