anyone homeschooling in maine? my husband has a temporary work contract in the Lewiston/Auburn area and i'm wondering if it is feasible to homeschool for the few months we are there. it will probably be dec-mar.

i follow WTM pretty closely and have for the past 4 years. but i have a 9th grader that has always struggled with getting his work done. putting him back in public school isn't an option in our town since it's so horrible. i've thought about a private school, but want to him to put forth some effort before we dump a bunch of money into something he isn't going to do. does anyone have any experience with a project-based curriculum at the high school level? i love WTM philosophies, but all the writing and reading just won't work for him. any ideas? :confused:

we will be moving to montgomery in august, from california. we've never lived in the south. it seems that there aren't too many co-ops in the area. i would really love to find some people in that area that teach classically so we could get together on occasion, or even teach together. my children will be 12, 8, and 4 when we get there. we've been homeschooling for about 4 yrs.

Does anyone know how the brain is affected differently by listening to an audio book instead of reading a print book? Has anyone heard SWB's stand on this? Are they completely interchangeable without losing any educational value? I know that for younger children, it's often recommended that you read out loud to them above their reading level to help build their vocabulary. But what about an older child who can read just fine, but really rebels against doing so? Would the audio book serve as a solution? Or are they missing out on something by not reading it themselves?

i have WWE so i am looking for instruction on how to do writing for the middle and high school grades. sounds like the cd isn't completely what we heard at conference. just to be clear... the cd is susan speaking, correct? or is it just documents of notes from her?

Anyone familiar with the 'Writing Without Fear' CD that is sold on the Peace Hill Press website? I went to the WTM conference in VA a few weeks back and am trying to read through my notes. I have come to find that I didn't note as many things as I should have. I still don't see anywhere that Susan Wise Bauer has uploaded her powerpoint slide info. Is anyone familiar with the content is on this CD? I'm hoping that it is what she discussed at the conference.

i think if you're more interested in content than the curriculum suggestions, then you're probably fine with the 1st ed. my friend has a 1st ed and i have the 2nd and she is planning on getting the new updated 3rd ed. because her daughter is still young and she continues to review curriculum and change things every so often. for instance, because WWE was just released last year, it's not in the 1st or 2nd editions. but i already have discovered it, so i think i'll stick with my 2nd ed for a while.

i think it's important to know what your own educational philosophies are. when i first started homeschooling, that was difficult for me. i had never really had to define them before. but when faced with educating my own children, i had to decide what i wanted for them. i love CM philosophies, but coming from public school, there just wasn't enough structure for my children. they struggled. WTM has worked really well for us and because it fits my own personal philosophies, i try to follow it as closely as i can, without overwhelming my children. we don't follow all the time guidelines, but we do follow most of the subject suggestions and i use FLL and WWE, so they're learning language arts the WTM way. i have middle-school children that were in public school. i have a 1st grader that was never in public school. i can really see the difference in following WTM from the beginning, contrasted with the other 2 children that learned a different way.

well, we absolutely LOVE the apologia science books. i can't say enough good things about them. we have done the zoology 1 (flying creatures) and zoology 2 (swimming creatures) but i have all the elementary ones on my shelf waiting to be used. (christianbook.com was having a sale :P) i love the way you can skip around and not do the lessons in order if you need to - i.e. we saved the bugs and birds for the days we could go outside and explore in nice weather. i love that the experiments are all outlined for you. my kids read and do the notebook pages during the week as a group. my husband does the experiment with them on saturdays. i love that there is a website for extra stuff. it's the perfect format for us, and we will be using them ALL!!! and we too are eagerly awaiting the release of anatomy.

yes, i actually agree that FLL would be the way to go. i have all 4 levels and am also using WWE. I think they really are designed to go hand-in-hand. There might be some repetitive things with regards to copywork and such, but really the FLL is more parts of speech and learninng how to put the sentence together and the WWE will be more of the comprehension, narration, and writing skills. If you find that the lessons are the same thing on any given day, you could always skip one here and there. but as far as something that requires no teacher prep, this is it. and it's a huge part of why i love it. i also think it's really great for kids that are behind and need to build a good foundation. in no way does it make them feel less, but it teaches them to follow simple steps to get stronger.

we are planning on attending the WTM conference in williamsburg. i was wondering if anyone knows what the parking is like near the hotel that the conference is being held at. we're not planning on staying there. but i was just trying to get a feel of how difficult it will be to park there when driving in to attend each of the days. is there parking available in a hotel parking structure? or is there parking on the streets surrounding the hotel? and is it metered? thanks.

okay, this might seem silly, but i've never understood how to use those base-10 blocks. i look at them at the store and can't picture how i'm supposed to use them. i have bingo chips that i've used as counters for him, but how are the base-10 blocks better?

so, i think for me personally, based on hearing what others have said... i feel that diagramming is an important skill and i would like my children to learn it. but now where do i go from here? my son can get through his grammar sections, and seems to understand the parts of speech when i correct his work, but he could sit and stare at the diagramming assignment ALL day (and i mean literally!). how do i find out where the breakdown is occurring? he can diagram simple sentences - subject, verb, maybe 1 or 2 other things. but when he has to diagram the more complicated ones, i can't get anything out of him. i think it's worse than pulling teeth. should i make him practice labeling more sentences? should i make him do the non-diagramming sections over again? i'm not quite sure how to help him along with the diagramming.

he's currently in the singapore 1B. he whizzed through all the other stuff, and got to this book early and then just got really frustrated. so what i'm hearing is that it's ok to continue through the book and where the book removes the pictures and just has equations, then it would be ok for him to have counters of his own to figure it out with? this would be better for him than to go back and redo book 1A over and over again? and if he's still counting on his fingers, that's ok too? i just wasn't sure if it will click when it's supposed to, or if i should be going back and repeating something. i think he's really struggling with the tens/ones concept. he has a hard time looking at a double-digit number and separating the tens and the ones. so when the picture groups things to show how the equation should be broken down, he just counts everything. i think he's just not quite understanding the grouping concept. thanks for all the advice! :)

my first grader has always loved his math and has always sped through it. but now it seems we've hit a snag and i'm not quite sure how to 'review' or get him past it. he does fine with the work that shows a picture, and it asks him to add or subtract and fill in the answer. but when the picture is taken away, he has no clue how to figure out the problem. i'm wondering where he's falling short. is it that he just needs to do more of it and memorize the addition facts? or is there something specific that i'm not seeing that he needs to work on? he can count on his fingers, but he's been through all that this past year and it seems he should be moving on. i'm wondering what wasn't covered thoroughly enough for him. (we use singapore math)