JustAnotherMom

My oldest is a homeschooled 1st grader and she is getting burned out. I'd like to do some kind of age-appropriate science project that won't take forever or make a horrible mess, tall order I know that's why I'm asking for help! We are getting close to being done with her work for the year, but she's ready to be done for the year and I thought something like this might help improve her attitude. Ideally, this would be a project that her 5 year old preschool brother could participate in as well, he hates being left out.

I'm also open to other general suggestions on getting her motivated for this last little bit. I know a big part of her problem is that she's really doing things that are primarily review. She is honing her basic math skills and really needs the practice, but she's not really getting into new things right now. She also reads well above grade level, but we feel it's important for her to have a good grasp of the basics in the core areas, even if her books are written below her reading level. She also has benefited from the material as it has reinforced the need to read carefully rather than guessing. For these reasons I really want to get her through the textbooks we have been using.

I basically used more of an unschooling approach last year for Kindergarten, but it left some gaps I wasn't happy about. We enrolled her at the beginning of this year at our local school, but had a number of problems with it and took her out after about a month. She loves homeschool and regularly says how much better it is than when she was in school, but in that short month she went from begging me for more schoolwork constantly to fighting having to do any schoolwork. She has improved some, but we are back to really struggling like we were with homework and when we first went back to homeschooling. Another mark against us, the area homeschool groups are really winding down right now so we don't have the opportunity for some of the activities she really enjoys right now.

I'd love some ideas from other homeschoolers to get us through this final stretch.

My daughter is six and has always done just fine with our cats. We have 2 females (half-sisters) completely indoor cats. The cats have their own space and have always loved the kids in the past. She actually snuck up behind my daughter and deeply scratched her ankle while she was washing her hands. This scratch was very deep and bled for a while.

My daughter hasn't done anything to provoke her, but the swatter is the more dominant of our two cats. My four-year-old son does unnerve the cats a bit and is home more since he's not in school yet. He is actually rougher with the cats than his sister, but not mean, he's just a typical rough and tumble little boy, but the cat isn't swatting him.

She also hasn't swatted at my husband or I, so we can't figure out why my daughter is the target. The cat has never been like this before. She even hissed at the neighbor kids while we were out of town and they cat and dog sat. My daughter is the one who usually lets the dog out, but the dog and cats all like each other and really don't fight. This cat has always been skittish, but usually has just hidden if she didn't like something, now instead of running and hiding she is attacking.

We got both cats as kittens from my parents around 5 years ago, just a few weeks apart.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. If it doesn't quit we are planning to get a squirt bottle for my daughter when she is around the cats.

This is my third child and my first to decide he is completely allergic to clothing. We can't get him to keep his clothes on most of the time and right now it's still too cold where we live for him to run around in next to nothing. I have been using the safe diaper pins to pin the zippers closed on his sleepers, but I don't have enough of them for him to wear them all the time and even with the overnight diapers he usually has leaked on them by morning, so just doing that all the time isn't an option.

Has anyone with a similar child found a good solution? Once summer hits I'll probably just live with the problem unless he keeps taking his own diapers off. He's sneaky about the diapers and waits until I'm in the bathroom or equally distracted and cleaning the diaper contents up is getting really old!

He's a sweet little guy and frankly puts his older sibs to shame in most areas, with the exception of this little stunt he has been my easiest child by far. My older two both tried this about once each and never did it again after a mild scolding, but no age-appropriate consequence has swayed this determined little stinker.

Help me out! I'm getting sick of continually scrubbing the kid, the carpet, the house, etc. when he decides to go au naturel.

About a month ago we got a couple of avocados. The had a really good flavor so we decided to sprout the seeds so we could plant them. We toothpicked them and put them in the top of a water-filled cup, just like you used to do in grade school. We after a couple of weeks they developed nubs on the bottoms, but no roots have ever started growing.

Has anyone done this recently? Neither my husband or I have tried to start an avocado since we were little kids. Do I just toss them or should I give them a little longer, or did we miss an important step in this process? Let me know if you have a suggestion, we were really excited about trying to grow our own avocados this year!

Thanks!