I second the natural oils. Find some that are high in vitamin E, like apricot kernel oil, but even a cold pressed olive oil is bursting with E's. My tip is to eat fruit and vegetables that contain lots of vitamin C (or take a supplement). Vitamin C is pro collagen. That means its on of the building blocks that your body needs to make collagen ( part of what makes skin elastic). Zinc and magnesium are some of the minerals that the body needs to help the skin be elastic. I highly recommend a nice relaxing soak in a bath with Epsom salts added. It help relax my tired body and also stopped me from getting craps in my legs.

I came across this transcript of a speech The Australian author Men Fox have at a conference in New Zealand. Sounds like she advocates teaching children to read early. Why aren't more prominent authors like her? http://www.memfox.com/the-folly-of-jolly-old-phonics.html

Hi I've already been on these forums for a while, but being a proud mummy I wanted to introduce my son, (who is almost 6 weeks old). He decided to come early (He was 36 wks 5days), but he was already full term weight and size. Being about 1/3 Italian, friends of ours affectionatly nicknamed him Ferrari Baby, because not only was he early, the delivery was also speedy. So as I start on my EL journey, I want to have a cyber name for bub, for when I actually start blogging and posting all the things we do. So in the theme of his nickname, I finally decided to give him the cybername of Enzo (After Enzo Ferrari). Still trying to think of a blog name in that theme of things especially as EL kids race through the basics. I'm so glad to finally begin teaching.

@PokerDad I've been away from these forums for a while. Bub decided to come early and things have been hectic since. I've really enjoyed catching up and seening your progress with your LO. It has give me renewed inspriation to start with my LO. I haven't really done much with him and he is nearly 6 weeks old. I'm going to start being more consistant. Thanks so much for taking the time to share.

Thanks so much. Looks awesome.

Hi Shazz thanks for your sharing story, glad that you found something that helps. I for one noticed that my skin has become more sensitive to things like perfumes and chemicals since becoming pregnant. Both my husband and myself have sensitive skin and due to his occupation as a tiler my husband has extreemly dry skin on his hands.  We use some of Grahams Naturals products as they don't contain any petroleum based products and they have been the best so far. The have creams and other products that may help to sooth eczema and other skin conditions. http://www.itchy.net.au/ The link if you want to have a look for yourself.

please keep up the progress reports Pokerdad. Your journing has been inspiring to me thus far. I'm definatly going to try the mimic the vowel sounds with my LO. Can't wait just a few more months for me.

I have a story to offer to provide you with another reason for offering only well written books to your own kids. When bank tellers are learning the job they are never shown forged currency or given them to feel. They only handle real money and are told what makes up a genuine note, they get used to what is genuine. So as soon as they are handed a forged note by a customer they can tell just by feel that it isn't genuine.

I for one know my own writing style was influenced by the books I read as a child. I read the Chronicles of Narnia from the age of ten and it was from then on that my own writing improved. C.S. Lewis was a professor in Literature and so was J.R.R. Tolkin. I believe that all the reading I did helped me to become a good communicator through the written word.

I think part of whether you homeschool is definatly about yourself. If you find fulfilment, love learning yourself and really enjoy teaching your child from home then you'll be a happy Mummy. When kids are young, when mummy is happy with a situation they will be happy with it to. Obviously there is more to it than that, but for the few years my mum had to homeschool us she found it such a hassel (She balked when I told her I wanted to homeschool my future children), and at the time that affected my attituded towards homeschool.

My young SIL has been homeschooled for the past 2 years and the first year her mum found it such a struggle and couldn't get all the housework done that she used to (a big thing to her). That 1st year little SIL voiced so many times that she wated to go back to school, even though she had no friends there and was bullied there. Now MIL is vey happy with homeschool has adjusted to it and SIL is also happy with it too. Maybe its a chicken and egg case but I think Mum being content has helped SIL to have a better attitude.

Some friends of ours started homeschool just over a year ago and the mum was so excited at teaching her kids. She had no big adjustment issues (the kids did miss some friends). The kids are so excited they can learn what they are interested in. The eldest boy who is about 9 is interested in WW2 at the moment and he can rattle off facts about the war that most adults don't remember. He'll also tell you about all the vehicles and weapons that were involved in the war. The daughter has never been to regular school and says things like mummy I want to learn about butterflys tomorrow. Mummy has to research for an hour or so the night before but daughter is up early in the morning eager to begin learning. They are in Europe at the moment and spent time learning about Europe before they went. Now they are there, everywhere they go can be a classroom.

The temperment of the child will come into play as well. In regular school I was bored a lot. I never learnt good study habits because I got good enough grades without trying too hard. Good enough was enough for me especially in subjects I didn't like that much. But for the subjects that I did enjoy I would read further ahead in the text than what was being taught eager to learn all I could. If I had learnt good study and memory retention habits, I would have retained that knowledge much longer and also not found  Uninversity such a struggle. I was so used to cruising, by the time I got to uni I didn't know any other way and had no skills to draw on to study effectively. I barely passed and never found a job that used my degree.

I've never seen a Montessori school in action and don't know how good they would be at encouraging the child who is capable but doesn't have the drive to push themselves (in regular school teachers don't push because it's easier to have children all on the same level). In my opinion it is important for the child to have the skills to seek out knowledge for themselves, and to have  the hunger and the skills developed to persue excellence in whatever they are interested in before they reach high school. Whichever school environment you can find that will do that for your child then use that one.

DadDude your writings on H's progress has been inspirational to me also. I've been eagerly anticipating teaching my LO the love of learning. So much so I started to watch some programs on Albert Eiensten and Steve Hawkings and their therories. I don't rememeber much physics from High School. Sadly I'm a few years away from teaching things like science though.

I'm not sure where I stand on manipulatives yet but I do like your point Mandabplus3, it makes sense to me (i also really like the Marshmallow Maths concept of using everyday things to teach maths). I'm a very hands on learner myself (a problem when my homeschool require large amounts of reading) and could only grasp concepts when I understood their real world application. I find this approch to teaching comes naturally to me. That said I also believe I was a bright child, I loved that maths had rules. It seemed very logical to me. I picked up fractions without too much difficulty (apparently a hard concept for children). My mum only had to cut up and apple for me once to show me that 2 halves equals a whole etc. I have seen other kids shown various real world versions of fractions only for it to take them a whole month to grasp the concept. Then again maybe I had seen fractions at work my whole life (having a brother only 2 years younger we were always cutting things in half to share) and I didn't need much prompting for me to connect the absract with the concrete. Maybe thats the key lots of early exposure to the practical applications to maths.

Thanks Krista, I wish they had something like this when I was growing up. Would have made scripture memorisation much easier. I still remember the "Ten Commandments" song my younger brothers learnt in Sunday School over 15 years ago. I was already a teen and so was too old for sunday school. My mum was one of the teachers so it played in our home a couple of times and stayed with me. Comes in handy for bible trivia. I'm sure I won't have any problems teaching my LO in a few years, as baby was kicking up a storm and moving around in the womb a few moments ago when the music played. I enjoyed the music as well.

Sorry I forgot to add, If the child is highly sensitive emotionally, a change in the family, (like a new sibing, a favourite relitive like grandma dying, divorce or even something that is causing a great deal a stress to the childs parents), can impact the childs development. The child can't filter out other people emotions or may feel loss deeply and at an early age dosen't have tools to cope, so they retreat to an inside world to try and process things. I don't know how to put a like in to another thread but the Highly Sensitive Child thread will have links to help determine if the child is highly sensitive or not.

Albert Einstein didn't talk until he was 5 and when he did, it wasn't baby talk but normal speach (I think he talked with a stutter for a while though, I believe when an uncle gave him a compass when he was 6 he couldn't stop talking about it, thats when his dad asks a friend to teach Albert about science). Sometimes children are so busy absorbing the world around them that they don't talk until much later. So Perhaps lelask your friend has a genius in the making.

That said I agree with KL with LR and the crawling. http://youtu.be/HJc36xV4nX8 Here's a youtube video about the sucess this family has had with their 3 children. I do not agree with calling autisim a brain injury but I have read and heard in previous places that early intervention help children to intergrate into society better when they are older.

also agree with skippy on the loss of skills. http://youtu.be/QFr7p8PAwlU Youtube video of a yale lecture from a doctor doing research on how autism presents in infants and young children. Its long but I found it it be very comprehesive. Dr. Kasia Chawarska said that some children developed normally up to age 2 1/2 but that it usually presents around 18 months.

Thanks for your reply nellie. I found the whole idea behind signing brilliant but was unsure how early you can start. The Australian website recomends 6 months but I thought if you are already starting with reading earlier it would make sense to start signing around the same time with a few key words like milk, mummy & daddy. So thats my plan at the moment but we'll see what happens when little one arrives.

Thanks Skylark for posting the article. I'm having problems convincing my husband to speak german to our LO after birth. He speaks it at a 15yr old level due to immigrating to Australia at around that time. He thinks it will be too difficult for him to do. He still uses his german sometimes when speaking to his mum (who stuggles with english from time to time) and to friends and relatives from Europe. He has friends where the husband speaks swiss german and the wife spanish to their kids. The children are very intelligent, speaking english to us like other children their age.