For me, the investment is for the Socratic Discussions. I have had some experience as a student in classrooms where the Socratic discussion was the mode of teaching, so I know how effective it is. But it is difficult to come up with the questions to ask if you are not somewhat of an expert in the topic. TOG makes it possible to have essentially expert-led discussions with your children. If you don't have children who want to have that sort of discussion, then that might be a problem, and in that case, I would have trouble justifying the expense.

I totally loved :001_wub: FIAR with my first. I totally hated it :banghead: with my second. For me, the child is what makes or breaks FIAR. My first was a very auditory child who adored being read to, loved language, and looked forward to our FIAR discussions. She begged for it even on Christmas Day. Even though I got tired of doing it sometimes, I relished the fact that my dd was so happy. And I could not fathom not doing FIAR with any and all children. Then comes my utilitarian, get-to-point ds. He could not see the point in reading the book a second time, or even opening it up to look at the pictures. Perhaps it would have been better if he just complained, whined and rebelled. But no, he would actually try to like it. After all, everyone else in the house thought it was so awesome. We got through the first volume, and we were both so relieved when I shelved it after that. I was already doing SOTW with older sister, so he just tagged along with her, and he loved SOTW way more, because I bought the audio books, and he could play any story any time. For first grade, I would not do FIAR unless you have a child that really loves to be read to the same book over and over and who really loves stories and language and discussing things with you. If you have a kinesthetic learner, I would not even touch FIAR for 1st grade (unless you love coming up with kinesthetic activities), because FIAR doesn't have much for the kinesthetic learner. There are lots of curricula out there that are better for that.

I get wanting to try it out and see if it could work, but I am not sure it is a fair trial to have them doing school when their friends are still on break. It sounds like you are trying to duplicate what homeschooling would be like if it were a permanent decision, without giving anyone any leeway to adjust to the idea, evaluate curriculum and schedules, and make further adjustments. Even public school teachers spend a couple weeks at the beginning of each school year allowing for review and adjustments to all that is new. I think it is fair to say that most homeschoolers need a full school year before they feel like they sort of know what they are doing. I am not sure what the alternative is, though.

We like the Famous Children series, and also the Mike Venezia books.

It can be very hard to find them. I signed my kids up for activities hoping to find other similarly-situated moms, but no one ever stuck around long enough for me to get to know them. I met the majority of my homeschooling friends by signing my K-age children up for reading time at the library during the day. Pretty much only homeschoolers can attend those. I also know people who have met other homeschooling moms by attending MOPS. I took me a full year to meet enough people to form a group. I just kept a notepad in my purse and got their e-mail addresses as I met them. Then when summer came, I invited everyone to the park. Now that I know most of the homeschooling families in my area, I have learned that there is a certain portion of them that doesn't want to belong to any group. They are either very introverted, or they have a lot of children and just don't have the time for it. In retrospect, I am glad that I didn't restrict the group to homeschoolers, because I have made some friends who send their kids to school and still join us sometimes. And if I had restricted the group to homeschoolers, I would have excluded people who eventually did become homeschoolers.

I think it is a great idea for the ages of kids that you have. I started a play group when my oldest was 5yo. We just meet at the park every week. It works very well at that age, because there are people who are thinking about homeschooling whose children are not old enough yet to homeschool and who are looking to connect with others. Some things to consider. Do you really want to restrict it to homeschoolers? Most parents of children your kids' ages have not decided yet. Some of the people in our group started out wanting to homeschool but then changed their minds. And others who weren't planning on homeschooling ended up homeschooling. IME, most people with preschoolers do not want to commit to a weekly event. There are about a dozen families in our little group, and we usually have only a couple of families show up. The turn-out improves when we plan a structured activity or field trip. But I think that is because we don't do them all the time, so they are viewed as more special. I created a Yahoo Group so that I can set up automatic reminders, and the group can easily communicate with each other. I also tried a FB page, but not everyone was willing to be on FB, so that didn't work out so well. You really need to be prepared to do all of the work. There are a couple of moms in our group who like to plan an occasional event, but I decided to just make it a play group, because I knew I couldn't handle being responsible for more than that all on my own. If you are willing to do all the work, you might want to figure out a way to give yourself a break now and then. Take off for the holidays, have seasons where you only meet every other week, etc. Homeschoolers are notoriously fickle about activities. I have seen my friends go elsewhere to co-ops or other structured activities and worried that I wasn't doing enough, and my laid-back play group would fall apart. But what happened instead was that those families couldn't keep up the pace that those activities required, and they have all gotten off that bandwagon and come back to the play group. Know that you may see some transience in your group, but don't let that discourage you. What homeschooling kids need is time for free play with friends, and what homeschooling moms need is time to connect with other moms. If you give them that, they will generally come back.

It is perfectly appropriate to diplomatically tell her that you are willing to answer sincere questions, but that it is inappropriate for her to question your adult decisions for your own children. Then the next time she asks, just ask her whether she really wants to know the answer or whether she is challenging your decision to homeschool.

Thank you! More to check out . . . :auto:

Yes, she loves, loves, loves history. I read the lit books from TOG from the UG level to her last year (Red Scarf Girl, Breadwinner, House of Sixty Fathers, and the like), and she really loved them. I realized that she will be reading these types of books on her own next year. :( I do have a number of book lists, including Honey for a Child's Heart. I think she would like Alcott, a great suggestion. And I do have an anthology with short stories from different countries. I should get that out, too. And I will have to check out the Shakespeare suggestion. It kind of scares this mathy mama. :scared: I had not heard of God's World News. That looks interesting. But I am not sure it will work for this LDS family. We listened to A Wrinkle in Time on audio, and she liked it, but I really hated it. Perhaps it was all the weird voices. :tongue_smilie: Thank you so much for your awesome suggestions. I will be hunting some books down now.

The first lesson (your sample) is not a very good representative of lessons. It is just the foundation, something you want to continue to reinforce throughout other lessons. The rest of the lessons are substantially longer and usually have more than one demo/activity. There are also supplemental writing activities and book lists for each lesson.

I don't think you can very much about this. I cringe, too, when I see my dd spelling things incorrectly. But I want her to enjoy her writing and share it with me without being afraid that I will critique her every word. You do what you can to teach them on the other end, refrain from requiring them to do anything that would require spelling words wrong, and hope for the best.

So how do you use this to choose books? It looks a guide to teaching literature.

Can you tell me more about that? I must have missed that thread.

I have spent the last 3 years trying to get dd9 to read something other than American Girl books. And in the last 6 months, her reading has completely taken off. The day after we went to the library last week, she had already finished one 500-page book. :thumbup1: I had planned on having her do more of her own reading for history and literature next year, so it looks like that will be doable. But this child loves to be read to more than anything else in life. It is what makes her feel connected to me and loved. So it needs to remain a tradition and part of our daily (or at least weekly) routine. But now that her reading has taken off so, I am having trouble finding books to read to her. I still have ongoing read-alouds for the two kids together, but I still want books that are just for her. I would like to continue to read her things that she might not read on her own. But I am not sure how to narrow that down. My own reading background is pretty sparse. The books I am finding seem to be better for her to read on her own. Surely I am not the only one that has been in this circumstance, so I thought I would pick your brains. How did you go about choosing read-alouds for your already avid readers? Lists of books would be great, but I would also appreciate your philosophies, as well.

At that age, it is not hard at all to extend a lesson for 2-3 weeks. Attention spans are very short, and even when my dd was highly interested, we rarely could get through a lesson in one day. We never supplemented, and we still needed at least 2 weeks for each lesson.

If you want him to be independent, then try dictation software. It kind of makes me cringe to think of messing with his writing style. :tongue_smilie:

Perhaps depends on how well he knows his English phonograms. If he has known them well for a long time, then I don't see a problem with learning Latin. OTOH, maybe learning Latin spelling will help with his English spelling. Tough call to make.

If he is doing a lot of independent writing, then he is going to be spelling a lot of things wrong. The more he writes the wrong spelling, the more apt he will be to continue to use the incorrect spelling. Well, at least I have seen this with my dd. If I get lax about making sure she knows how to spell something before she writes it down, then I will surely be remediating that wrongly spelled word for the next year. My dd doesn't write as much as your ds. (She is quite happy having it all in her head at the moment.) But I think if I were in your place, I would try dictation software. That way, he could get it all down and really focus on his style without being encumbered by spelling and mechanics. Meanwhile, I would do spelling, dictation and narration separately. I know we haven't spoken about narration yet in this thread, but it occurs to me that written narrations are where the student begins to put together all of the broken-down writing skills. For the sake of simplicity, you could do all of that with SWR. Or you could do a combination of SWR (spelling only) and WWE (narration/dictation). I did the SWR/WWE combination with dd9, because the sentences she came up with using her spelling words were always way too long for her to write. I am trying to go with the straight SWR with my ds6, who doesn't have the asynchronous writing issues that my dd9 had. Yes, exactly. You scribe for him, or use dictation software. If you want to tailor the dictation to his spelling ability, then use the dictation passages provided in the SWR Wise Guide. But if you want interesting dictation sentences, then WWE might be a better choice. Another possibility is that after you scribe for him (or use the dictation software), you could use his own composition as a studied dictation. But you would only use 1-2 sentences rather than making him write the whole thing.

First of all, I think that this is quite developmentally normal, even for a NT 10yo. I remember reading in TWTM that you should not expect spelling be applied in composition until 4th grade. So I think it is safe to say that the issue would tend to be even worse for a gifted child whose vocabulary and composition skills are well above grade level. I have actually talked about this directly to my dd9, explaining that what is in her head is way ahead of her output abilities. I try to show her the big picture and how we are going to get there. As much as she hates SWR, she does see that it is one key to bringing her output level up to her mental composition level. And when she is writing and asks me how to spell something, we always, always think-to-spell and use phonograms and not letter names. Yes, it can be laborious, but her mind must be trained to think in sounds and not in letters. And IMO, a poor speller who is resistant to doing this is resisting because it is hard, and he really needs it all the more. I think that you are on the right track by separating spelling and composition. Recording is one very good way to do that. You could also scribe for him. You might consider getting him some dictation software. At any rate, I would not have him do any writing where he would be spelling a lot of things wrong, because that will tend to work against his spelling instruction. It is also normal for memory to fall apart while writing. There is so much to remember! Dictation is a very good way to improve memory while writing. Of course, if he spells everything wrong, then that will not work. I have used WWE with good results. I would write the words that I thought she would have trouble spelling at the bottom of the page so she wouldn't practice spelling errors. You could utilize the dictation sentences provided in the SWR Wise Guide. Or you might try studied dictation. Please do not try to change his writing style for the sake of convenience! Do your best to separate those skills, and when he is ready to put them together, he will be an awesome writer. I remember reading a post (or probably several) by OhElizabeth talking about meeting your child where he is at with regard to writing. She talked about how her 8th grader was flying through WWS and getting so much out of it. It has taken a lot for me to internalize that (and I am still working on it). But it is so freeing for both mom and student when you stop trying to get him to do grade-level assignments, and just let him fly with his strengths while buttressing those weaknesses.

I understand wanting to avoid writing. I have a dd9 who is pretty writing averse. Unfortunately, if he doesn't write his spelling words, then you are giving up one of the ways to cement the spelling into his mind. Have you considered doing SWR with large-motor writing? A white board, perhaps? Or even a salt box? I like the arrangement of SWR words in which you don't see similarly spelled words in the same list, but then you "collect" similarly spelled words from different lists into reference pages. It is a good way to study the patterns of the language without having a "crutch" for the spelling test that one will not have during composition. The think-to-spell method is very effective for my student. Many words just have to be memorized. And if you are following the normal SWR dictation procedure, then the student is repeating a word's think-to-spell pronunciation 5 times in a day, including once while he is writing it, and once while he watches you write it. My dd9 is not at all a natural speller, but I can see a huge difference when I stick to SWR. She generally goes up one entire grade level in the first 3-4 months of school in the fall. It is sometimes hard to justify the time required, but when she can spell at or above grade level, it makes all the other language arts easier, composition in particular. And for a writing averse student, making it easier is very valuable. I have been known to give chocolate as a reward for doing spelling with a good attitude. :D

Well, I think that if you are in the habit of saying, "But where?" or, "But why?" you are putting her on the defensive. You are making the point that she is wrong right off the bat. I know it is really hard to be positive when she is so far from the answer you are looking for. But if you want to avoid butting heads, you have to start from a place of encouragement. "That is right! They are in West Africa. Very good! Now, can you remember what country in West Africa that they live in? That's okay if you don't remember. Let's see if we can figure that out." All said with lots of smiles. "Can you find the part in the passage where it tells us that? That's okay. I am here to help you. I am going to read the first paragraph again. Will you raise your hand when you hear it?" You see, this is more about the teacher-student relationship than it is about her skills or willingness to try to answer the question. She needs to know that she is not going to be a big disappointment to you every time she attempts to answer your question. You need to reward any and every attempt, even if it is not what you are looking for. I have been watching my ds6's baseball coaches for 2 seasons now, and these guys get kids. Even when they do horribly, these great men find something to praise. They miss the ball, and they say, "Good, hard swing!" They drop the ball, and the coach yells, "Way to stop that ball!" And as a result, my ds loves, loves, loves baseball. He lives for that praise from grown-up men. As teachers, we need to create that same feeling in our home, so that our children will know that we will be pleased with their very best efforts, even when they fail.

We are only slow because we have been so institutionalized. We have all had to learn for ourselves how wrong our academic paradigm was (even if we already knew the existing one was wrong).

I would recommend learning a bit about Socratic discussions. This is where you guide your child to come to her own conclusions. In your example of asking her why we put clothes on hangers, saying "that is where they go" is a perfectly appropriate response. She has learned to obey you. You need to praise her for that. But then move on to saying that there are several reasons for putting them on hangers, asking "What would happen to them if we didn't hang them? Where would they be if they weren't hung up? If you wanted your favorite shirt, would you know where to find it? Does your room look nicer if your clothes are on the floor or hung up?" She may not be able to come up with the fact that they would be wrinkled, because she may not notice or even care at all whether they get wrinkled. But with enough leading, she should be able to come up with something, such as we wouldn't know where they were, or they would get dirty, or the room would get messy. The trick is to keep asking slightly more leading questions until she comes up with the answer herself. You have to be careful with expecting her to come up with the answer that is in your head. I have a hard time understanding why your answers to the question of why we hang clothes were better than hers. Hers was just different and based on her own experience and unique values. What you want to do is to acknowledge her answer as a good one but stretch her to see the same question through another's eyes. You are right that in order to do this, you have to resist the temptation to give her the answers. It does help to use certain curricula. I agree that WWE is wonderful for helping the student to give answers in full sentences. For math, I use CSMP, which has a wonderful script for posing Socratic questions. For science, BFSU has a strong Socratic philosophy. For spelling, SWR has a Socratic leaning. TOG utilizes a Socratic philosophy for the older children. I am sure that there are many more good programs out there, but those are the ones that have worked for us.

I have one dc who naturally loves to be read to and another who could take it or leave it. With that one, it is imperative that reading aloud be just a normal part of his routine. It is just what we do at that particular time. We start and end the day with a read-aloud. He is allowed to do just about anything during read-aloud time, except read something else. Audio books in the car are helpful, too, since he is a captive audience. I also put a lot of effort into finding books that will be highly interesting to him. Funny thing is that if I give him a choice, he will never want me to read to him. But very often, once I am reading, he asks me to keep going.

I have one dc who naturally loves to be read to and another who could take it or leave it. With that one, it is imperative that reading aloud be just a normal part of his routine. It is just what we do at that particular time. We start and end the day with a read-aloud. He is allowed to do just about anything during read-aloud time, except read something else. Audio books in the car are helpful, too, since he is a captive audience. I also put a lot of effort into finding books that will be highly interesting to him. Funny thing is that if I give him a choice, he will never want me to read to him. But very often, once I am reading, he asks me to keep going.