I tried that with my lefty, showing her how to use her right hand for righty scissors and left hand for lefty scissors, but she refuses. She is strictly a left-hand scissor user, no matter what.

Oh, no! I only bought two bottles of glue! I'm sure I'll need more! Must go back to the school supply aisle...

It's 4.97 right now on Amazon, a 47 percent discount. And don't be fooled by the so-called 120 pack. It's not a true big box. It's a tin with a couple of 48 packs and a 24 pack. Shysters.

It's not actually army-related. Sorry about the confusion. That's just what they named the line. It's got cute ones like a picture of an egg and bacon, and it says "I'm with Awesome!" Stuff like that.

Maybe he would like Mead's Loyal Army line? http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/213093/Mead-Fashion-Notebook-Loyal-Army-8/ http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/789225/Mead-Decorative-Pocket-Prong-Portfolio-Loyal/

No, no, I agree. All crayons MUST be crayola. Any other kind gets thrown away in my house. And have you seen the 96 pack? It's so awesome. I've had one for years. I don't use them much, but I like owning my crayons.

Actually, that's not true. Most scissors claim to be for both handedness, but the blades are still in a righty position, so it's difficult to cut with left hands. Fiskars makes true lefty scissors. The blades are reversed, so a lefty can actually see what she's doing. (My dd is a lefty. So am I but I learned to cut like a righty.)

Goodness! Kids get out in May here. So sorry!

Walmart has finally started having their school supply sales. Am I late to the party? I must resist the urge to go to Office Depot for cuter supplies. There is nothing wrong with 50 cent composition notebooks. I only bought 4 but I'm hoping they'll get more colors in. I reallllly wanted to buy three different types of colored pencils. Did you know they make erasable ones now? When did that happen? How good are they? I put them all back and settled for one pack of Twistables. And the dividers were soooo tempting. 5 tabs, nice and plastic and write-on-able. So much better than the ones you stick the little cardboard into the tab which falls out. ... must resist... already own plenty of dividers... must resist My formerly (currently?) homeschooled dd starts private school next month, so my school supplies must conform a bit. But I am enjoying color coding EVERYTHING. Can we say I put pink and purple mechanical pencils in her pink and purple binder, along with pink and purple highlighters and pink and purple sharpies and pink and purple sticky notes? Oh yes I did. Same for her yellow and green binder. Same for her blue binder. Same for her orange binder. Ah, color coding.

Beyond Balderdash Twister

Hire a wedding planner and give her a very small budget? I really think professionals can get the most bang for your buck, plus ease the stress on you.

Just like you say "We homeschool," when asked what school your children attend, you can just way "We homechurch." You may get follow up questions, like What is that? (just like you would for homeschooling) and you can either explain or pass the bean dip.

I looked at some Horizons 6 math on Rainbow Resource, and I don't love it the way I love the Pre-Algebra. Before you conclude your dd isn't ready for Pre-Algebra, check out the Pre-Algebra book. I have found that it seems like a big review of all the math that came before. Any holes that need to be filled easily can be. If you have done nothing with decimals before, you might have to teach that part a little harder, but honestly, decimals aren't that hard. Although, I am very comfortable teaching math, so that may prejudice me a little bit.

I would assume so. We only started Horizons with Pre-Algebra. I'm sure there are samples online of a little bit of it. If you live near a Mardel store, they tend to carry Horizons math.

For butter, Earth Balance is wonderful. It tastes good and it bakes fine. If you can't find it, I believe it's either Parkay or Blue Bonnet sticks that have no dairy in them at all, but they do have hydrogenized something which is why I avoid them. But in a pinch, they work. There's also a squeezable margarine, whose brand escapes me, that is dairy free. It's also Blue Bonnet or Parkay or something like that. I haven't seen Fleishmann's be dairy free for years, but it used to be their Unsalted Sticks were dairy free. Again, highly recommend Earth Balance. Our local Walmart carries it. For ice cream, try the different dairy free options. Some are made with coconut milk, rice milk, or soy milk. Chocolate tends to hide the weirdness of the flavor (in comparison to dairy) a bit better than most other flavors. Oh, and most sorbets are completely dairy free. I had some Haagen Daaz Raspberry sorbet awhile ago. Yum. Plus, there are Italian Ice popsicle/ice cream things that are usually dairy free. I believe they are called Philly Swirl. My dd loves them. Minute Maid pushup popsicles are also dairy free, as are all plastic tube type popsicles.

My dd is allergic to dairy (and eggs and peanuts, actually). For years, I kept my freezer stocked with homemade cupcakes that we could take with us at a moment's notice. I also kept it stocked with homemade pizza. Sometimes the pizza had no cheese. Sometimes it had Tofutti Mozzarella (would not recommend this for someone who has actually eaten and enjoyed real cheese). The pizza always had tons of pepperoni. Even now, we can usually order a cheeseless pepperoni pizza from just about anywhere, and it is fine. However, right when you start, you might look up ingredient listings on those. I believe Papa John's Original Pizza Crust has no dairy at all, and that's what we went to for years until we figured out that she could tolerate any pizza crust. As far as the taste, if the crust is good and there's plenty of pepperoni, it is fine. Obviously the more expensive pizza places will tend to have better crusts than the less expensive. We prefer Papa John's, but we usually get Little Caesar's.

Honey Lemon Herb (the herb is Rosemary) Chicken

Does your insurance have a nurse hotline? Mine does. I fell down some stairs once on vacation and really hurt my foot, but wanted to avoid an ER visit if it wasn't broken. So I called the nurse hotline and they asked a bunch of questions and were able to advise me. It turned out not to be broken, although it hurt for a long time. But the three day car trip home helped me stay off it :)

My dd seemed to require a mastery approach to math until this year. We had done Singapore Math and some of the Key to books. She turned 13 in September, and we started Horizons Pre-Algebra in January (which is spiral), and she's doing great and retaining. So, yes, I do think kids' learning styles can change. Yea! I don't have any specific experience with Saxon, although it's size and black and white pages turn me off. But lots of people love it. Just because it's worked so well for us... have her check out Horizons. It's colorful, and doesn't try to do too much at each lesson. Occasionally they introduce more than one topic during a lesson, and I will break up the lesson into more than one day. So it's sort of like combining mastery of one topic with a spiral review. HTH!

I don't use public showers, so take this FWIW, but I have terrible eyesight. I do not wear my glasses in the shower. I could not see if there were hair in the drain or not, and honestly it would not occur to me to look. I'm sorry it's gross for you. I do not leave shampoo bottles or wrappers, for instance when I'm leaving a hotel room, but the hair thing isn't even on my radar.

4th grade? Oh, you have to do The Sentence Family! And maybe some Schoolhouse Rock and Grammar Tales. Oh, or that Grammarland book by Nesbit.

My 7th grader got over her writing hump this year. She no longer cries if you ask her to write a paragraph. She also is really getting Pre-Algebra. It is wonderful to see. She still hates math, but she is getting it. She loves to solve for x. Joy!

No. Get a beta fish. They are easy and hard to kill. Snuggly animals can come later when kids are old enough to be responsible for their care.

plentyoffish.com and chemistry.com. (I think they met through one and ran into each other, internet-wise, at the other. Then they started dating in real life. Got married about a year later. Perfect for each other. I know of another couple who met through match.com last fall and just recently got married. Nice Christian folks. So I'm thinking the internet is your answer.

Based on all the above info, I agree that it's probably environmental in some way. Yea, you can let your daughter eat again! My mom gets hives on her face if she gets hot from working in the house or the yard. Just another random thing to add to the conversation. Best of luck! Oh, another question: Does Benadryl or Zyrtec help? Maybe start taking Zyrtec daily?