My children are 9, 8, 3, and 10 months. I want to get up early, but honestly it's usually between 6:30 & 7:00. My girls (8 & 9) get up between 7 & 7:30. The 3 year old sleeps in a bit, usually until about 8:00, but not always. The baby is the wild card. :-). I aim to start school at 8:30, but it's usually closer to 9:00. The girls have chores, piano practice, and Bible study to finish before lessons start.

So no one requires your children to double-check their own work?

I have BW and have read maybe half of TWJ. I'm doing The Arrow with both of my girls (Thimble Summer and Caddie Woodlawn). I love doing the individual reading with each of them but find it extremely difficult to schedule. With WWE, FLL, and MCT (I'm crazy!), it's probably overkill, though. My eldest will be in 5th next year. We've also always used WWE. I honestly mainly use BW for inspiration and as a reminder to not be do controlling, lol. ;-). For next year, I'm thinking we will eventually end up in WWS, whether at the beginning if the year or sometime later, right now I cannot say. I'll keep thinking about and trying to apply the "BW philosophy," though, because it tends to calm me down.

We use RightStart Math, so I'm almost always sitting across from each girl, talking with her about the HOW of the problem--RS is designed that way. What I'm talking about is the practice problems.

Proofreading is what I'm after. I'm talking addition, multiplication, subtraction here--the practical aspect of it. Do you make them re-do every problem? (I mean, do you make them re-do their work to check it?)

Thank you all for sharing. My eldest is 9 and will be a 5th grader next year. I love reading all your great ideas. Keep 'em coming!

That's wonderful!

How do you handle having your children check their math work? Do you have a process? Do you actually TEACH them how to do it? At what age?

If your logic-stage homeschool is thriving right now, can you share ONE thing that you think is the reason? If things are going well in your homeschool, WHY? :bigear: :bigear: :bigear: :bigear:

My solution: have more children so you really do need to keep it. ;-) (Kidding. . .I'm kidding)

Here's this week's Odds & Ends.

We finished Because of Winn Dixie this past week and finally started, to my girls' great delight, The Black Cauldron by Alexander.

We have both but mainly use Netflix for kid stuff and old tv shows. However, dh and I did watch one if my favorites tonight, You've Got Mail, on Amazon Prime.

I enjoyed Wonder when I read it last year but haven't shared it with my children. We haven't read The Great Brain books. Thanks for the recommendation!

Thank you, Crimson Wife. That's what I needed to know.

Thanks for the insight! I'm just looking for a way to consolidate some things. One of my big faults (if you can call it that) is that I have a hard time choosing just one curriculum. I'm enjoying MCT and my girls like it well enough, so I'm trying to do it AND FLL. I like that it's a playful way of looking at language. Anyway, I appreciate your opinion!

I've been through Grammar Island and Sentence Island with my 4th grader (GI last year and SI just finished today), and she finished Practice Island last week. She loves doing the 4-level analyses on her own, but frankly it's hard for us to get it all in--the reading of the books, I mean. We took a break in FLL 4 to do SI, but I wonder--would it be okay to just purchase Practice Town and have her keep going with the 4-level analyses? (She does one a day independently and we discuss.) Is Grammar Town just a reiteration of Grammar Island, or does it really bump it up a notch in terms of content? Also, does anyone use another source for engaging, compelling sentences for 4-level analyses? (I'd think of my own, but I'm tired. :rolleyes: )

Anybody? Anybody? Pretty please? :huh:

After a lengthy absence from the WTM forums, I'm back for more inspiration and insight into moving with my eldest dd from the grammar to the logic stage. She's a current fourth grader with a May birthday. We've used WTM recommendations for almost everything, and PHP stuff for language in particular. She is currently in WWE 4 week 12 or 13 (I'm not looking at my plan book right now). We've (of course) gotten off track a little with SotW, so we're in chapter four of volume 3 instead of where we "should" be, which is volume 4. I've had both my girls do narrations--sometimes oral and sometimes written. After looking back through WTM yesterday, I decided that I need to require my eldest to write her history narrations each week, and I need to require longer narrations. Today after she read chapter 4 section 1 in SotW 3, I specified that she write two paragraphs--one about Nobunaga and one about Hideyoshi. Here's her first draft. I've retained all her spellings and constructions: I congratulated her on a good two paragraphs (the second one begins "Hideyoshi planed") and suggested she include some sort of transitional information about how Hideyoshi came to power. She then concluded her last paragraph with this sentence: Where do I go from here? I know we could do a lot of superficial work on spelling, etc., but what about in terms of the actual writing? How would you proceed?

So at what grade/age are you using this? (Or maybe after which curriculum?)

I've only peeked at this a little, but it looks great!

You good folks are way ahead of me, but at least you're making me think about it. :-)

I suppose my real goal (were I to do these) would not be to check reading comprehension, but instead to work on composition. I think that narrating over an entire book at this age is asking too much. Does anyone else do something like this for the sake of composition, not comprehension?

Thanks for all the responses! I didn't realize this thread was still alive. :-)

I finally finished mine, such as it is: http://www.hopeisthewordblog.com/2014/02/09/odds-ends-4/