Giving him challenging academics doesn't necessarily mean he has to be on the bleeding edge of what he is ready for all the time. Nor does it mean that he needs tons of extra work just because he can do the work. Providing challenge is not in how much time we spend doing school, it is in what we spend our time studying when we do spend time on academics. An example would be doing one challenging math problem that he is proud to have figured out vs a page full of problems that are dull and boring and just mean to drill a particular skill. If he likes Reflex Math and ST Math, great, you could let those be treats for getting his required lessons done. As someone who suffers from severe anxiety, I have to agree with this 110%! Memory problems with anxiety are horrible and tend to cause more anxiety which makes the memory problems worse, it becomes a never ending circle. My anxiety isn't connected to learning in general but I can only imagine the stress he feels when he knows he knew the answer before but cannot remember it now and then feels like he failing to please you and dad because he's struggling to remember which causes more anxiety then he gets more anxious trying to remember the strategies he's been taught in therapy to manage the anxiety then he feels like he is failing again because he can't remember that at the moment either... the mind of an anxious person is not a pretty place. I would say your priority right now should be to find his love of learning again at a pace he can handle.

Once upon a time they used to recommend infrequent bathing for kids with eczema but now the common advice is daily bathes, eczema friendly soap only as necessary, followed by eczema friendly lotion is fine if it is well tolerated. If the eczema is severe or just not getting better, then daily bathes may need to be reduced to every other day or every few days. It can't hurt to try reducing her bathes to less than daily. I agree with the others who said to cut all your dairy, it sounds like that could be a possibility. You will need to cut all dairy and check labels religiously. Milk and milk products can turn up in anything. If your dh is allergic you probably already know the drill.

If bathing her everyday and moisturizing her immediately afterwards isn't helping, I would try less frequent bathing. It's a toss up on this one and really depends more on the kid than any tried and true advice. Some kids do better with daily bathes and lotion, others do better with once or twice a week bathes and lotion. It's certainly worth trying less frequent bathes and see if it helps. Oh also, are you washing her with any kind of soap everyday during her bath or just a bath, soap only when needed?

Since no one else in the family has eczema, I would seriously look into allergies, both contact and food. Do you use dryer sheets on anything that touches her? Her clothes, your clothes, sheets, blankets? More often than not, dryer sheets are the cause of laundry soap allergies rather than the soap itself. If you are using dryer sheets at all on anything, you might try not using them and then re-wash everything that frequently touches her without dryer sheets. Give this a while (a few weeks at least) before you decide this isn't the problem. Dryer sheet residue can be hard to get out and is even in the drum of your dryer. It will take a while to get it all out of everything. You can use vinegar in the liquid softener dispenser of your washer to help with static cling. We had to use free and clear laundry soap and no dryer sheets when we had babies in the house, they all had pretty sensitive skin when they were little but once they were older toddlers/preschool age we could go back to normal soap and use dryer sheets again. If she still has the eczema rashes after you try all your options with laundry, it's time to look at foods. If you breastfeed, it will be what you are eating of course. If she's bottlefed, you may need to go soy or hypoallergenic. I had one bottle fed baby that had to go soy to control his eczema, one where I had to cut out all dairy and then when he was a year old he had to have soy/almond milk and still has to have it at age 10 and one who had to go hypoallergenic formula when he was an infant and then almond milk (still couldn't do soy) at a year old and now at age 5 he can tolerate dairy but only in limited quantities. Weepy eczema rashes are eczema rashes that have become infected, usually with staph or yeast. The best way to prevent it, since frequent bathes just make it worse, is to find out what her triggers are and reduce or eliminate the rashes.

If institutional school wasn't working for him, why are you trying to emulate it at home? I'm really not trying to be snarky or anything with that question, but if the fast pace and long days were causing him stress at school, the same type of schedule at home isn't likely to produce different results. I certainly wouldn't expect a third grader to be done by noon unless they were either a) extremely studious and loved doing school work or b) they started their school work at 8am or earlier. But I also let them spread their work out through the day as long as it all gets done. If they have some interest project they spent the whole morning working on but don't get around to doing their math until after dinner that's fine with me, as long as it gets done to the best of their ability. If a topic we read about in history catches their interest and we watch a bunch of videos and visit a bunch of websites to find out more and they write an entire notebook page about it because it is interesting to them, then I would let copywork slide that day. No reason to insist on the copywork if they wrote more than I would have asked them to copy on their own free will. As someone else mentioned, you have three maths going according to your list and two sciences (BYL and Discovery Education) plus coding which I consider to be part math and part science. Is that where he excels, math and science? Is that why you have it doubled up so much? Is there any way you could drop down to just one math and one science that you do regularly and use the others as a supplement or in an interest driven way? If he is interested in coding, could he pursue that on his own outside of his required school subjects? Similar to an extracurricular or afterschool club? There is rarely a reason to do multiple full curriculums in tandem even for an accelerated child. My accelerated daughter didn't need more work, she needed more depth. She needed the freedom to dive deep into a topic in content subjects and to go at her own pace in skill base subjects. She needed to be able to move on and not keep practicing when she grasped concepts quickly. She needed to be allowed to fulfill her curiosity about a topic before moving on to the next. Giving her multiple lessons on the same subject from multiple books that might not always line up and teach the same things would have just overwhelmed her just like any other kid.

I remember reading Great Expectations in public school 9th grade English class back in the early 90s, for what it's worth. It was regular A-level English class, not Honors, AP or remedial. if that gives any perspective.

We are getting a "do-over" of sorts homeschooling our youngest who is 15 years younger than our oldest. My biggest change is not being so much in a hurry with him to get to formal school work. Lots more play, far fewer worksheets. Our little guy has fantastic number sense but I don't think that has anything to do with how we're approached math education with him. He just has a knack for numbers. He has been playing with Dragonbox Numbers and Big Numbers for a year or so now. We did some of MEP Reception this year. I just found Gattegno and it is exactly what I've always needed and never knew lol! We've been slowly working through the first Gattegno Math Text and it has been wonderful for him. No worksheets, no printables. Just Cuisenaire rods and graph paper and the Gattegno texts as a guide. Simple and very effective for him. I plan to integrate some MEP still as well but I feel like I've finally found my perfect early math that I wish I had when the other kids were little! All that said, I don't think any curriculum can actually create mathematical minds. If you manage to find the approach that works best for any particular child, they will have an easier time of it but there is not an approach that will work for every child. Out of my older three children who all had pretty similar early math experiences with Right Start and Singapore Math mostly, only one of the three excelled at math. Again she just had a natural knack for numbers. The other two did well enough to pass without much trouble but math was definitely not their strong suit. I can nurture a nature talent but I cannot create a talent where it doesn't exist, KWIM?

It has always hurt my hands to write with a pen or pencil and paper. I did eventually build up endurance for it but it always hurts and is getting worse and worse the older I get. I have always had arthritis since childhood. I rarely write on paper anymore due to pain. Typing and certain styles of drawing cause less pain than the controlled movements needed for writing. I would rule out anything like arthritis as well as having a OT look for dysgraphia. I would also question the age appropriateness of 8yo third grader taking notes without a model to copy. Is he about to be 9yo any time before next school year? Either way, I would consider him a young third grader if isn't already 9 at this point in the year. Most third graders, regardless of age, are just learning how to take notes and copying from a model to do it. I wouldn't expect a third grader to be able to take notes from dictation only. They just don't have the skills and experience necessary to even have a chance to be successful at it. All that aside, I would have him start competing with himself to build his endurance. Set a reasonable goal for the number of words to copy at first in a single sitting. Praise him like crazy for getting closer to the goal and doing more than he did last time. Once he can copy a reasonable number at a reasonable speed consistently, start doing it from dictation. If it is found that he is dysgraphic or has another reason for handwriting problems, make sure to adjust your goals for him to account for that.

Google Play Store Inventioneers Kids Logic Memory Puzzles by Espace Publishing (They have several themes, we have the cars and trucks paid version) Traffic Hour Todo Math Where's My Water Plants vs Zombies (Not everyone's cup of tea but we enjoy it, even our 5yo boy) Ice Cream by Magma Mobile Scratch Jr by Scratch Foundation (make sure it's the one by Scratch Foundation and not one of the spin offs made by other people) Amazon App Store Phonics: Fun On Farm by 22Learn (if you have one still learning to read)

We have the original Vol 1 and 2 audiobook SOTW with Barbara Alan Johnson from when the audiobooks first came out as well. We weren't crazy about Jim Weiss either in Vol 3 and 4. In fact, the Weiss volumes were barely listened to but my kids would go back and listen to the Johnson ones just for fun.

My oldest daughter got lice from her 2nd cousin when we took a vacation to visit family. She had never been to public school ever when that happened. We bought the shampoo and the nit comb. Followed all the instructions to the letter. Heat treated and sprayed everything. She still had lice after we finished the treatment as per the instructions. I called her pediatrician and the nurse told me that its only 50-50 that the shampoo will work. She told me to slather her hair in mayonnaise, making sure her scalp is well coated, put a shower cap on her and a pillow case on her pillow that I don't care about. Have her sleep with the mayo and shower cap on and then rinse with warm white or apple cider vinegar in the morning. Then wash as usual. Then put some vinegar in a spray bottle and spray her hair every day for two weeks while going through with a nit comb. The ped's nurse told me that dd will smell like potato salad for a few days but the lice will be gone. It worked like a charm. We didn't have a problem with lice again until 5 or 6 years later when my younger daughter was in public school. The first time she got them, I did the mayo/vinegar treatment and they were gone. She got them again 3 months later and I took more drastic action that time. I did the mayo and vinegar again to initially get rid of them but I figured lice was probably so prevalent in this school because all the kids hang their coats on hooks that allow the coats to touch each other. Since I couldn't really do anything about that (and pulling her out to homeschool wasn't an option at that time) I read up on what I could do. Turns out lice do not like hair that has lots of hairspray or gel. So everyday she had her hair done with hairspray or gel in it. I tried to do mostly up-dos with her for a while, all kinds of wild pony tails and cutesy hairstyles that I watched youtube videos on how to do them. But any bit of hair that was loose like the tail part of the pony tail, I would spray the hair brush with hairspray and run it through her pony tail a few times. It wasn't enough hairspray to make it stiff but I could definitely smell the hairspray in her hair. Of course, we had to wash her hair every night but we never had a problem with lice again despite them going around the school like wild fire. If you are a reasonably clean family to begin with and stay on top of watching for lice when they are going around, it is possible that you can contain the infestation if it happens. All three times we've had to deal with lice, only the affected child had them. It didn't pass to all six of my kids like the chicken pox, colds or pink eye did. Lice are gross and I'd rather not deal with it, but it's not the end of the world either.

I gave up on handwriting curriculum a long time ago. I just teach them, as you are doing with your three year old, by showing them how to correctly form letters and then slowly build up to writing their name, then words, then short sentences. Then we just do copywork for practice. Some kids just have atrocious handwriting no matter what you do. Boys seem to be more prone to this than girls but my oldest daughter had horrible handwriting until she was in middle school and started to care about having "pretty handwriting". My younger daughter wanted pretty handwriting from the start and put more effort into it at a younger age. My oldest son eventually had messy but legible handwriting. My second oldest ended up being dysgraphic and types more than he writes now. My younger boys both have decent handwriting for their ages, go figure. :laugh: They were all taught handwriting, more or less, the same way. My oldest two were my guinea pigs that had to go through several handwriting curriculums before I just started doing my own thing.

Yes, it does deal with pronunciation but not to the extent that a child that struggles with pronunciation would need, at least in my opinion, having had 3 out of 6 kids need speech therapy, one of which is still in intense speech therapy for apraxia and at age 5 we still have times where we can't understand him. For a child who has normal, age appropriate mispronunciations, like still saying "lellow" for yellow and "busghetti" for spaghetti in kindergarten, yes the pronunciation work in LOE will be helpful. For a child who still consistently makes errors that are not age appropriate, something more intense on pronunciation will be needed. You said you can understand him 95% of the time, is that because his speech is correct 95% of the time or because he makes consistent mistakes (always or almost always mispronounces the words the same way) and you just know that when he says "X" he really means "Y"? You also said he sounds like a two year old, can strangers who have never met him before understand 95% of what he says or do you often have to translate for him like you might have to do for a two year old? A four year old should be 95% to 100% intelligible to both family and people he has never met before like a cashier in a store. Some mispronunciation still is normal but it shouldn't interfere with his ability to communicate with anyone at this age. If you have to translate more than just a word here or there every once in a while for strangers, then it is probably time to at least get a speech evaluation. No, you can use whatever handwriting you want.

Yes, they did get to the point of being conversational in Japanese. I wouldn't say any of us got to the point of fluent but it was on my to-do list to become fluent if we had done a second tour there instead of coming back to the states. We could go to the local playgrounds (which are everywhere) or to the beach and they could play with the local children and have a conversation with them. We really miss living in Japan, I would go back in a heart beat if I could.

We lived in Okinawa, Japan for 4 years and homeschooled. We were military, not ex-pats, so a little different but living abroad in and of itself was a huge learning experience for my kids. We were part of a homeschool group that welcomed military and ex-pats. The local Japanese elementary schools regularly invited our group for culture days where we got to spend the day seeing what their schools were like and the school children got to spend time with native English speakers. Most schools (in Okinawa at least, I can't speak the schools on Nihon (the main island where Tokyo is) but I can't imagine it would be much different) teach English as a second language from the time the children start school. Most Japanese can speak at least a little English and are happy to help a foreigner who shows interest in their culture and language learn more about it. Any area with lots of ex-pats or military is more likely to have locals that speak at least a little English. It is when you go to the more remote areas that you better know at least a little Japanese. Japanese b&m schools are very selective usually. It can be hard to get an American student enrolled if they did not start school there from preschool age. They usually require that a student have a decent grasp on the language at the very least and even then it can be hard still. There is a reason that most Japanese students have afterschool tutors, the competition to get into the good schools (not just the best schools) is brutal. Living abroad is one of the highlights of homeschooling my older kids. I would love to make that opportunity happen for my younger kids.I would recommend living abroad and homeschooling to anyone considering the opportunity to do so.

The fact that you are asking how long this should take implies to me that despite being advanced for his age, he is probably still a pretty typical first grade boy in mind and body. First grade boys are not known for their ability to spend lots of time every day doing seat work, which everything you listed would be seat work around here unless we modified it to make it more suitable for a first grade boy. Math lesson would be hands on for the most part. I may have him write for 1 maybe 2 regardless of his ability to write unless he wanted to write more of them. 10 written problems in a single lesson would be too many for any of my first grade boys (I have 4 boys and 2 girls). Lesson would be capped at 20 minutes no matter if we finished what I planned or not. Read an independent reading book would be part of quiet time in the afternoon around here. Not a part of our school morning. Language activity or worksheet, provided the worksheet was short and sweet, maybe 10 -15 minutes. Listening to picture book or encyclopedia page, no more than 20 minutes, less if he is a particularly wiggly first grader. One page of non fiction or summary, if he was balking at doing the writing himself, I would write for him, even though he could do it himself. Or we would share the pencil, I would write some and he would write some. Making him write a paragraph on his own in first grade just because I know he can is just not a hill I'm willing to die on. I want my kids to enjoy writing, not churn out content at a young age just because they are physically capable, kwim? If they like to write, I would include free writing as part of our week, but not require content writing in first grade. Map work, coloring page or vocabulary words, 5 - 10 minutes tops in first grade. If it is taking longer than that (provided we're not dealing with a behavior issue) then it's not an appropriate activity for that particular first grader. Map work and vocabulary words can be done orally. For a child who can already write well, coloring pages are busywork in my opinion so I would make it optional for that student. So all total, I would say about 2 hours worth of work, done in no more than 20 minute sessions spread throughout the day. 3 or 4 sessions in the morning, 2 - 3 in the afternoon, preferably none of them back to back if I can help it. If he's balking or extra wiggly that day, shorter lessons and/or I do more of the writing for him. My goal is for him to learn, not to produce a student made paper trail. Not all learning has to produce a paper trail to be well learned.

I agree with the others, academic development is rarely linear. Just because he is "behind" now doesn't mean he won't make a huge leap in the next 4 - 5 years. He is learning at his pace and has a teacher who cares enough to make sure he masters the material, not just able to regurgitate the information on the test. Unless you have to test for your state homeschool laws and those test scores could affect you ability to keep homeschooling, I wouldn't worry at all about what grade your child is in and where he is ability wise in comparison with his age mates.

My ds's SLP homeschools her daughter and she participates in band through the public schools. We also have equal access to sports and activities through the public schools here. Even if your state does not have those kind of concessions for homeschoolers, I would talk to her band director about it. If your school or district has never had anyone ask about it before, it might help to have the band director on your side before you approach the principal or school district about it. A band director is usually pretty willing to help out a good student to keep them in band.

My older kids liked to watch the Irasshai videos after we moved back to the states from Japan to help remember the Japanese they had learned while we lived there. They were upper elementary/middle school age by the time we were back in the states. I don't know if it was interesting to them because it had context for them or if my kids were just weird. Both are possible lol! But I do think the videos could be done with say ages 10 and up maybe.

It depends on your child and your goals and her goals. Not all kids are ready for Algebra 1 in eighth grade and unless you are wanting or needing her to get to Calculus or above in high school, I wouldn't worry about it. Most kids do fine on the PSAT with Algebra 1 in 9th grade. It's usually the fact that they haven't had geometry yet or have only just started geometry in 10th grade that messes with their math score. If she's not mathy, I wouldn't worry too much about trying to rush her. Maybe supplement a little PSAT geometry prep in 9th grade. That's what I would do with a non-mathy kid.

When my second oldest son was 2 weeks old, we had to travel for the military. It was only a 3 hour drive but it ended up being about a 5 hour trip stopping every 45 - 60 minutes for diaper changes, feedings and all the other baby care things that needed doing. We had to make many trips over the years in the military with infants in tow. The longest trip with a baby in tow was flying from Japan to the east coast of the US with two layovers of only a couple hours each (so no spending the night in a hotel). It wasn't the highlight of our overseas tour by any means but we all survived. If you and your daughter can tolerate stopping every hour to hour and a half or so to take care of baby needs, you will probably be fine. It will be a longer trip than if it were just you and your daughter but not unmanageable in my opinion simply because at that age, they sleep a lot anyways.

Instead of having them waste your instructional time, let them waste their free time correcting their work. If they ever took an outside class, they wouldn't be correcting their work on the teacher's time, they would have to correct it on their own time. Schedule math time just before a break or at the end of the day or just save corrections for the end of the day. That way it's not your time they are wasting, it is their time. Of course, this assumes they understood the work and are just making silly or sloppy mistakes. Alternatively, you could make a chart where if they get, say 90% or better, on their math the first time, they get to add a star to the chart. A week's worth of stars gets them some kind of privilege like extra screen time or later bedtime on the weekend for that weekend or something like that. My kids all went through a phase like that of just trying to get it done and not get it right. For some of them, making them use their free time to fix the work did the trick. For others, rewarding careful work in some small way worked better. It all just depended on the kid in question and what was most motivating to them.

:iagree: Being the type of student I am, I would probably sit and figure out at that point if it was worth losing class participation points to do the homework at home like I was suppose to. Or if it would be better use of my time and energy to just not do the homework at home and do it with the rest of the class during the next class time to get the class participation points. In my experience, college professors don't care what you do during class so long as you are not disrupting the class. They have already been paid or are guaranteed to be paid whether you learn the material or not. Their job is to teach the class, it is the student's responsibility to make sure they learn the material.

Count me in as one of those who made those file folder games lol! My older kids don't really remember the file folder games but they remember fondly the books we read when they were little. There is such a huge age gap between my big kids and my little kids, but they can still bond over those stories. I wish I had listen to the little voice in my head that said not everything they learned about had to produce a paper trail to be valid when my big kids were little. Paint, playdoh, blocks, playing outside and read alouds really is plenty for kindergarten. There is no rush to get to chapter books, there really are plenty of fabulous picture books out there to read until they are ready to transition to chapter books.

I dissected worms out of curiosity when I was 5 or 6. It probably would have been a lot more humane for the worm if I had been allowed something sharper than a plastic butter knife... probably would have been more interesting too if it wasn't mutilated from the blunt knife.... Anyways, I would absolutely let an interested 7 year old do a dissection with lots of supervision and plenty of help. I can't remember how old my oldest son was when we did our first homeschool dissection but he was less than 10 years old which means that his siblings were even younger and they all gathered around the table to watch and participate. Even my animal lover was interested in watching and finding out what it looks like on the inside. He knew that he didn't have to kill the animal himself, it would already be dead when we received it so he was ok with it once he knew that. Over the years we did worms, starfish, perch, cow eye, jelly fish, frogs, and several more that are just evading my memory right now. We also did owl pellets several times which might be a gentle introduction to dissection since you are just picking out bones. We also had a few virtual dissection kits and books with the acetate pages that you can lift the layers to see pictures of the different body systems in the animal featured in that book. Those were always a hit particularly with boys, both my own boys and any of their friends that came over, lol.