Thank you so much! I have much to learn! I will check out MUS.

We did not get a dyscalculia diagnosis.

Thanks for the responses so far!!!! My dd is 8 and has below level math scores on the variety of things tested...fluency, calculation, reasoning, etc. We have been doing Saxon. I do not feel it is a Saxon issue, but perhaps a working memory issue(?). Understanding dyslexia is all still so new to me yet. I read through the history on touchmath, bright light thank you for linking that. The article confirms some of my fears regarding touchmath, yet I see my daughter struggle to remember and understand how to do things that she seemed to understand yesterday, basic addition and subtraction overwhelms her. There is a disconnect somewhere that I hope we can work on. Does the Ronit Bird book provide a curriculum or a way to manipulate a curriculum to help in making the connections to understanding the concepts. Do you use it in addition to a curriculum?

We have a recent diagnosis of dyslexia. The assessor recommended TouchMath. After looking at it I could see my child responding well to it, but it only goes through second grade. What do we do after that? The multisensory approach will be important and I still like a spiral method (constant review is important, which is why I like the spiral method...not sure yet if it is the best with dyslexia). Any suggestions? After TouchMath we were recommended to use Making Math Meaningful but I am not finding a practical way to implement it. TouchMath users, what have you transitioned to? Thanks!

I am ready to get planning and am trying to decide between HSTonline or Homeschool Planet. I have been doing the Homeschool Planet free trial but one of my hang ups is that I cannot save the info to my computer. If I stop using it I would lose the info unless I print out a hard copy. If you have used both HST online and Homeschool planet which is easier to manage? Which do you prefer and why? I love the ability to sync my google calendar with homeschool planet but that isn't possible with HSTonline. Is it easy to shift assignments out if you miss a day with HSTonline? HSTonline is cheaper and you can download the pdf onto your computer but is it as easy to use as Homeschool planet? Thanks!

I am using PR1 with ds 7 and dd 5, and PR3 with DS 9. I am planning on doing all 4 levels. I am pretty sure we will do LR as well, but we shall see what God has for us at that time.

I wanted to confirm a pp comment too. We also test through the county school system and they only test Math and LA. It was the Iowa test! If you don't file as religious exemption, the school system will send you a letter that allows you the opportunity to test through the school system if you should choose to. It is freely given and proctored through the school system. The results take longer to get back (4-6 weeks), but it is free and you don't have to worry about sending your results in. The down side is that you only get the final results, you don't know what questions your child struggled with. I believe though, once the children are testing for 6th grade they then have to test science and social studies, but I am not clear on that yet as we only have a 4th grader and under.

:lurk5:

Thanks for the suggestions and I will check into the Reed stuff. Any other thoughts? Has anyone used Teaching tape technology? :bigear:

I am going to be switching from Singapore 4a/4b to Saxon (level will be determined based on a placement test later) this next fall and wanted a computer or dvd program to go along with it to teach my son. Have you used either teaching tape technology or DIVE and what do you think of it/them? CC recommends the teaching tape technology dvd's, but I have seen many use DIVE. I would love to hear thoughts on both and why I would want to spend more on teaching tape technology vs dive, or not bother. Thanks!

I am going to switch to Saxon next year from Singapore US ed for my going to be 5th grader as well. I am planning on finishing out the year with 4b and then will do the placment tests to see where he will be. There was a previous thread about this very question that you may find helpful. If I get a minute I will check that link for you.

I like to use the Evaluations as a discussion/review time that we do orally. I don't actually give it as a test.

Last year I did do TOG and CC together! However, I would agree with a pp that one will suffer and for us that meant the CC memory work. It wasn't too big of a deal for the kids to be memorizing different history sentences than where we were in history (although I would prefer it). I would personally prefer a TOG co-op with the Veritas Press Timeline cards and memory work added in. However there just isn't one in this area that I know of and I haven't successfully been able to get one going. CC is a good program and so is TOG. I don't think it would be crazy to do both as long as you were comfortable letting one go throughout the week. I would love to hear from someone that knows how to make it work though!

I just got my PR 1...my son asks just about every day when we get to use that "blue board"! We have a road trip coming up and so I am going to do some major DVD watching to get us started. We do like TOG here!

:bigear:

Tina, You asked where I am right now. I am sticking with TOG! I feel like I would end up tweaking too many aspects anyway with HOD and TOG is very easy to make fit MY weekly schedule, and as you said make CMish. HOD looks like a great program, but I am going to stick with TOG. I also decided to do PR!!! I was hoping to start in January but I still have to wait. Now I am hoping to get started a bit over the summer just to get a feel for the program and to get my ds9 able to go into PR3 with others is PR1. That is currently where I am and I feel pretty settled about that decision right now. Mrs Beers is coming to my area for the homeschool convention so it will be great to check it out and talk to her more in person, but it will be hard to wait that long!!! If I buy at the convention can I still use your affiliate info Tina? I have been watching to find it used, but it just isn't happening for me. Thanks for everyone's help walking me through this.

Good questions!:bigear:

Tina, I would love to get my hands on this curriculum just so I can really understand it!! So, if I do go PR 3, will it be clear what tunes to bring in and when for the spelling words? I would just want to make sure that hopping into PR 3 with only PR 1 experience would not make it a challenge for me as a teacher to help him understand what is going on. I am hoping to start PR 1 in January with my 1st grader so that could get me a good start before tackling PR 3 with my 9 yo in the fall (plus I would probably go ahead and have him work some through PR 1 in the summer just to get a good start on it-but I say that type of thing most summers and I just don't get to it:glare:). He will be doing 5th grade work in the fall. Perhaps doing PR 3 for 5th grade, then PR 4 for 6th grade, followed by looking at the Latin Rd for 7th, would that be about right? Katrina, I am sad to say that my poor son's grammar history has been a lot of jumping. I have not been strong in grammar (although I am certainly learning) plus I was not even sure what type of methods I would like to use to teach it. Ds 9 started out with Sing, Spell, Read, Write, then we did Abeka Phonics and Grammar/Writing, then we did EG for a couple of months which I quickly dropped for MCT Grammar Island. MCT was wonderful and was the first curriculum to give ME a broad understanding and appreciation for grammar. It brought it all together! But I needed more handholding (because of my weak grammar history), and I found I was making up songs for memorizing rules. This year for 4th grade he is doing Essentials through CC and I use Shurley English to fill in some things that he is not getting in Essentials. He is using IEW for writing. LOTS of jumping though. Despite all of that, my son is doing great in Essentials! What I would hope to gain from PR is to fill in any gaps that I have created from jumping, and for him to grow in his reading/writing ability, and ability to apply what he has learned across the board so spelling is not separate from grammar and from writing. When I look at the PR samples, from what I can understand of them without actually having it in hand, I really like what I see. The OG method will be new to me but is important for us to try and see if it will help my 1st grader right now. I do not want to jump anymore if possible and AIO really appeals to me!!!! Thanks again for all of the help!!! I know of no one doing this curriculum around here so it is very helpful to have forerunners willing to share!

This is a quick note because I need to take kiddos to basketball. So, Katrina, from what you are saying, do you suggest going through the whole program with him, from the beginning? My son is 9. I like the idea of doing the program, but I am not super interested in laying down other curriculum to bring him up to speed when spelling hasn't been a struggle. Could I possibly have him learn the sounds and rule tunes over the summer without going through level one and two and jump into 3 and 4 able to apply them Tina? I know we are supposed to do it from the beginning, but I really don't want to give up that much time at this point when he is not struggling. I am glad that we can benefit from the other aspects of the curriculum even if we can't benefit from the spelling (although that would be nice too), because I am very interested in the whole thing (I will certainly use your affiliate info Tina!) Thanks Ladies for you helpful advice! Wendy

I am probably going to be doing PR 1 for my 1st grader...I am just waiting for the financial go ahead from my dh. What do you PR users recommend for my older son? Mrs Beers recommends that he do Bridge. He is above grade level in reading and spelling. I am sure that he could benefit from going through the earlier levels of PR but I honestly do not really want to take that much time to bring him up to speed. Should I go ahead and just do the Bridge to Latin Road, or is it possible to do PR 3 or PR 4 (since I would be using it for all of my lower children) without doing the spelling component? I wouldn't mind using the spelling component, but again I just don't want to take a bunch of time working through the first two levels just for spelling when he is doing fine with Spelling Power. Will I miss anything grammar and literature wise from the previous levels that would be vital? From reading previous posts, it sounds like if he does PR 3 and 4 he wouldn't need to do the Bridge and since I will eventually have my younger children going through the program I am trying to see if there is a way for him to jump in without having to go through the first two levels to save the expense of the Bridge which we wouldn't be using with other children I think anyway. Perhaps just finding a used Bridge copy and then selling it when he is done will be the best thing all around? Any thoughts? Thanks!

I have LG and UG students. I do not plan out a daily reading schedule. Instead, for my UG student (who is doing 4th grade work), he knows that he has three days to do the reading and it is up to him what he reads and when as long as he completes it in time for discussion. He enjoys the reading and so it is not a problem. Here is our typical weekly layout: Mon.- Read Tuesday- Read Wed- Hands on activity/ Geography Thurs.- Read Fri- Literature worksheet and Oral discussion with mom (I use the UG evaluations as a springboard) or written narration My UG student also does Quizlet.com for the vocabulary words from TOG a couple of times each week. He loves quizlet because he can race to beat his previous times. For my LG 1st grade student, I will introduce on Mon (or whenever I squeeze in reading time with him) read the general info page for ALL levels and then read when I can throughout the week with him. He also participates in the geog and hands on time. I do look through the units before we get there and have an idea of what I want to have the kids do for hands on and writing time, so there is "planning" with that. I did do MFW Adv. a couple of years ago and found that I ended up tweaking the schedule anyway so for me TOG works and it helps my son learn how to figure out what he needs to read each day. I will say that I have thought about switching to HOD briefly because it plans out everything for you, but it wasn't TOG alone making me feel that way. I have enjoyed TOG very much (of course no curriculum is perfect). The thought of planning every subject for four children began to scare me, but I have worked through that and am sticking with TOG and will be adjusting other things instead.

The draw of HOD for me is having everything pretty well planned out, and I do love the Bible and devo section I have seen in the RTR guide. One of the reasons I chose TOG initially though was because of the fact that I could have all of the kids in the same time period. I am not sure how I could combine my children in HOD. If I combine I will have to be planning out some of the subjects anyway, it just would be less than what I have been doing. At this point I think I am going to consider sticking with TOG, borrow my friend's RTR HOD guide and just use the Bible and Devo section for my 9 yr old ds next year. I may just use the LHFHG guide with my K'er next year as we will be doing American History anyway next year and it would be one less to plan. That may give me a good idea as to how much tweaking I would do with the HOD guide. As for PR...the DVD aspect concerns me, but I am very interested in giving it a try. I am going to talk to my hubby and see if I can even get started on PR1 in January. Anyone selling one used?

Thank you so much!!! That was what I was looking for to see some samples other than what I could see through her DVD sample. I completely missed those samples!

Thanks for the responses! I have much to think through. I do realize that PR or AAS may not be the thing that is going to work for my son, but I am interested in trying it! I just have to figure out which one. I wish PR had some samples online (not DVD). You would think with the number of people who need to have a paper copy in front of them, the company could make so much more money by supplying that!! Just so people don't have to take notes!!! Thanks for helping me see though that I could do either with TOG or HOD!!! That helps me feel like I don't have to quickly make that decision.

:lurk5: