Check out http://www.zaner-bloser.com/media/zb/zaner-bloser/spellingconnections/practice-pages.html for lists and practice pages for 1st through 8th grade.

Umm... now I may need a new keyboard, and the carpet beneath my computer chair needs cleaning. I should have known better than to take a sip of tea!

Ours went like this... :D:001_smile::boxing_smiley::willy_nilly::banghead::banghead::toetap05::leaving: And now I'm cooking dinner, prepping for family game night (Pirate FLUXX, yay!!) and hoping that tomorrow is a better day. It didn't help that today was DS 3's first day of "school" (he's been demanding it for weeks!) and he has the attention span of, well, a 3yo.

I don't think they're volunteers, though I could be wrong. I've listened to quite a few different stories and poems from Lit2Go. The readers were different, but the recordings were all very high quality. The reader who did Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is particularly nice. :001_smile:

We start our school year tomorrow, and I have changed things up a bit since I first posted. I figured I'd bump this thread just for fun, and to see what everyone else has planned and/or if anyone has made changes to their original plan. :D History -- SOTW, many Scholastic resources Geography - The Complete Book of Maps & Geography, various Scholastic resources Math -- RightStart C/D, Menu Math 2-3, Algebra Readiness Made Easy 3, Math Word Problems Made Easy 3, and Practice, Practice, Practice! Time, Money, & Measurement Science -- WTM-style Chemistry, Chemistry for Every Kid, Basher Books Chemistry and The Periodic Table; spring/summer 2013: Detective Science Unit Study Fine Arts -- picture study: da Vinci, Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir; (very casual) composer study; How to Teach Art to Children Handwriting -- Scholastic's Cursive Writing Practice: Inspiring Quotes & Cursive Writing Practice: Jokes & Riddles Writing, Grammar - WWE 3 workbook, The Big Book of Ready-to-Go Writing Lessons, FLL 3, Daily Language Review 3/4 Spelling/Vocab -- home-made spelling using ZB Spelling Connections 4/5/6 lists and vocab using ZB Word Wisdom lists Latin -- Matin Latin 1, GSWL Logic & Critical Thinking -- Analogies 4-5, Blast Off with Logic series, puzzles from KrazyDad Typing -- Dance Mat Typing, possibly keybr if he's ready Poetry, Literature, Reading -- informal poetry study using A Child's Introduction to Poetry and online resources, Peter Pan, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, A Wrinkle in Time and sequels, The Dark is Rising and sequels, Five Children and It, The Railway Children, The Mouse and the Motorcycle and sequels, The Borrowers, and Little House in the Big Woods, plus free reading using reading-response trifolds All of the Scholastic ebooks were acquired during Dollar Days sales, which just goes to show how awesome they are as budget stretchers. I don't even want to think about how much I'd have paid if they were full-price! :D

Ok, so this site isn't new. It's been around a while and linked here several times, but I thought it needed to be repeated while everyone is hip-deep in planning (or is that just me?) Lit2Go This site is FULL of great audio recordings of classics, everything from Beatrix Potter to William Shakespeare. There are a lot of authors/writers I haven't heard of, or haven't had a chance to read before. I'm burning The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to disk right now, have Peter Pan already done, and will be doing The Secret Garden and A Little Princess next. That's not even counting what I have loaded onto my little cheapy mp3 player! If you need free audiobooks for your lit this year, or even if you just want a break from reading aloud yourself, check this site out!!

I got it, and just sent you a reply. :) .

. Reached the limit. Glad I could help!

Sorry it took so long to get back to this thread. First impression of the Money Games Kit: I'm underwhelmed. Seriously underwhelmed. It's basically a pretty re-packaging of the money section of the math games book with the laminated coin cards and a few cardstock appendix pages (unlaminated) of number cards. If you already have the games book and cards set, like we do, it's a waste of time. I still love RightStart as a program, but I'm disappointed in this "new" product. We'll be going back to fake bills/coins and Scholastic's Menu Math to do our money learning/practice.

We did Instant Habitat Dioramas in 1st, and while I loved them, DS did NOT enjoy coloring them. They were too detailed. He liked putting them together, doing the worksheet, and discussing them, but getting him to color them was nearly impossible. Just a heads-up in case you have reluctant artists like I do.

:iagree: DS regularly encounters words he doesn't know, and he has a habit of just rushing a word or skipping it instead of breaking it down. Once that mispronunciation is in his head, it's extremely difficult to get it out. (For example, he's been pronouncing "abdomen" as "abmoden" since he was 5.) Even though it takes more time out of our day than entirely independent reading, I insist that he reads aloud to me.

I'm hoping that typing will help with writing. There's definitely a disconnect between input and output going on here. He will intentially choose shorter words, despite having a good vocabulary, simply because it's easier to write them. He can read a chapter of something in a few minutes, then spend three times as long telling me all about it and about all the zany/fun/creative ideas it's sparked in his brain. Then he'll barely write ten words on paper. He'll be starting back up with BBC Dance Mat typing soon, then on to something else once he's got all the keys down.

Nice! It looks like there's a new revised edition coming out on July 17.

My responses in purple: Also on the list to examine. Maybe I just need to lock myself in my sewing room this weekend and read read read?

:grouphug: My DH is in a skilled trade and has a reasonably specialized subset of skills within that trade. We face layoffs and the financial unknown as a regular occurrence. When the economy tanked, it took a year for things to affect us due to the way the projects he works on tend to be funded. We'll probabably be "recovering" for a few years after everyone else moves on. So yeah, BTDT. It never gets easier. And another :grouphug:.

We don't have an ipod or ipad, but I do have a Kindle Fire, and we use the dictionary feature all the time during read-alouds. I'm not sure I want him playing with my precious by himself, though, even supervised... :D Maybe we can save up for a Kindle of some variety for his Christmas present this year. In the meantime, I'll second the question about electronic dictionaries... is there one that's better than others? And thanks for the advice. We have a lot of other things going on right now, and this really threw me. I'll get used to it eventually, right?

(Sorry this is so long, I just don't know what to cut!) I'm not sure that I belong here, but I'm having an issue with my bright 8yo DS that doesn't seem to "fit" on the general K-8 board, and any way I try to phrase my question, it sounds like bragging even though that's not my intent. At the very least, I might not have to self-edit as much over here. So, care to help me with my freak-out? Background: Me: Labelled "gifted" in 4th/5th grade, I was in a pull-out program until several cross-state and cross-country moves in quick succession led to someone losing my school files. My mother refused to advocate for me at the next school, so I was put/left in regular classes through the end of high school. I was BORED OUT OF MY MIND. Most of my "gifts" to this day are creative and language-oriented, though I'm a terrible underachiever. (Just ask all the people who nagged me about "living up to my potential" :glare:) DH: He's extremely intelligent. MIL says his IQ tested at 160 as a child. I don't know if that's exaggeration, but testing upon entry to the US Navy seems to back it up. He had a miserable experience in school, where his only "accelleration" was being given extra work (at the same level) in addition to his regular class work. In some cases his attempts to be creative and get engaged in something at a higher level were actively squashed. If I had to describe him, I'd say he's globally gifted. Our combined experiences with school are what led us to decide to homeschool any children we might have. Enter The Boys: DS 8 and DS newly-3. Both bright, curious little guys. I'm told they'd probably test as at least mildly gifted (and in DS 8's case, ADHD as well), but I've always just accepted them and tried to meet them where they're at. Until recently, that's been pretty easy, but now I've hit a point with DS 8 where I don't know how best to help him. (And yet more background, annoying though it is...) DS 8 was the baby who wasn't a prodigy, but was always right at the front of the curve for milestones. He learned to talk early, great vocabulary, ALWAYS talking and asking questions. He didn't read early but soon after he turned 5, I took a sanity break from even informal teaching and he went from sounding out CVC words to reading solid chapter books in the span of a couple months. I had to remediate some bad habits with Phonics Pathways (and still have to fight him sometimes when he comes upon a word he doesn't recognize) but he mostly taught himself to read while I was busy with other things. He's done this plateau thing several times, mostly in math. One day I'm beating my head against a wall because he just. doesn't. get. it. A week later, it's like a 1000 watt bulb went off over his head and I'm suddenly struggling to figure out what happened. Anyway, by the time he was a late 1st grader, he was picking up The BFG, Trumpet of the Swan, and similar level books *for fun*. He's very VERY creative, and a hilarious storyteller. His writing leaves a bit to be desired, but "it's HARD" and he'd rather be reading/drawing/creating/playing/anything than doing something that takes that level of physical effort and concentration. He's also a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to "getting things wrong" so he freaks out when I use pen while correcting his work. I tested him with the DORA last August as a 7yo rising 2nd grader. He maxed out the Phonics, High Frequency Words, and Word Recognition subtest scores. His Oral Vocab subtest score was mid-5th, and his Reading Comprehension score was mid-3rd. He'd have done better on that last subtest, but he had trouble with the "can't go back to check the passage" part and kept freaking out. The only score close to grade level was spelling. That particular ability has taken a HUGE leap in the last two months, and similar leaps in others, to where I'm now scrambling to figure out where to place him in pretty much all of his language arts subjects. I'm not sure I want to go the DORA route again, but my MIL has offered to administrate the ITBS/CogAT. (That's a whole other thread, though...) We're currently doing a "school lite" schedule with only math, grammar/language review, and a huge helping of logic, problem solving, and analogies while I figure things out. DS is RACING through the analogies. He'll be done with Scholastic's Analogies 2-3 by the end of the week, and we just started two weeks ago. I've had to limit him to 4-5 pages a day to make the book last until I can get another ink cartridge and print out Analogies 4-5. He's also already on lesson 14/15 of Logic Countdown, which we started last week. (I'm hoping that he'll slow down once we get to the "all statments" and "no statements" sections, but who knows?) Here's the problem... all of the grade-level and just-above grade level work I'm giving him is too easy to challenge him, but he's starting to hit a wall on higher level work. He just doesn't have the vocabulary and in some cases the necessary context/life experience to keep going at this pace. For now, he's been asking me to define words he doesn't know and can't figure out on his own. He isn't keen on picking up my old collegiate dictionary, and I don't blame him, the print is microscopic! For the context issues, I've just had to explain what the word/sentence/reference means. To be honest, I'm getting burned out, and tired of feeling like his personal walking dictionary/thesaurus/encyclopedia/reference set. I don't want to rein him in, though, when he's finally showing his true abilities (instead of taking the easy road so he can go play sooner!) If I add a vocabulary program to our studies, he'll probably have a nuclear meltdown, but he needs *something* and sooner rather than later. Add to all this that we're extremely financially strapped and can't afford any more school purchases for a while, and I'm ready to pull my hair out!!! If you've made it this far, I applaud you, and appreciate that you've made the effort. :D Now... how do I manage this without driving myself completely insane? 'Cause right now, this is me: :willy_nilly:

We did spelling 3x a week, writing (WWE) 3x a week, handwriting (cursive) 5x a week, and logic not at all.

Thanks for replying! I think DS is going to fly through the first half of the book if I don't keep an eye on him. I'm hoping the second half slows him down!!

Bump?? :lurk5:

I finally picked up a copy of Logic Countdown to go with the two sequels a board member sent me. Now I'm trying to figure out how to work these into my plans for the coming school year, but I'm not sure how to do it. In general, how long did each book take, especially the first book? Did you allow your dc to self-pace, or did you plan out a schedule for them? :bigear: TIA!

Between my own purchases and receiving lots of school supplies from a recent purge of my SIL's, we don't need much. Printer ink Printer paper Graph paper Mechanical pencils I'll definitely be watching the sales for great deals.

Please do a LOT of research on African clawed frogs before you invest in one of these kits. We have a frog named Alex, but we purchased the kit knowing he would be a long term pet. Better to know ahead of time what you are getting into, than to be surprised later when your cute little tadpole becomes a frog that takes regular care like any other pet, and the kids are no longer interested in helping with the work. If you go into the project with open eyes, understand proper basic aquarium and water quality maintenance, and don't mind a pet that could still be around when your kids move off to college, I highly recommend the grow - a - frog kit.

We are just now switching from special ruled paper to wide ruled composition books at the end of 2nd/beginning of 3rd. DS is having no trouble with printing. For cursive, he's still using the special sized lines on his copywork pages (from Scholastic). It won't be too long before he's able to use ruled paper for that, too, though.

We've only done the one year of spelling, and I've never formally taught him the phonograms. I'd be hard pressed to name them myself... I was always advanced in language, and was a natural speller, too, so I never paid attention to spelling in school. Too boring. Is there a good list somewhere (free, of course) that I could use to teach *myself* the phonograms, in case I need to explain to him the reason for a certain spelling? Off to Google...