I don't know Apple TV but you can by a little dongle that plugs into your Ipad lighting plug and will accept an hdmi cable Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I agree with the pp every other week would be better than just the first half. It does increase in difficulty but the steps are small. If you could look at the textbook, it gives a sample week and then says do the next 4(? or so) weeks like this finding your own material. So I took my 3rd grader just through the textbook doing each sample week, and skipping all the practice weeks, and we still got a ton out of it. The work book is great to do all the work laying it out for you, but if you don't need it all, the text book might be a better option Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My son and I were at a similar point where the phonics was progressing but the fluency hadn't come yet, we are taking an instruction break this summer and spending a couple minutes a day just reading, so he is still practicing phonics but at a lower level to work on fluency . I'm using the I can read it books that have short stories with lots of repeated words just trying to keep it short and help him feel successful Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't have a great recommendation, but I am also appreciating how the I Can Read It books are building fluency. The stories feel repetitive, but (duh) that's what helps, seeing same words over and over. We are taking summer as fluency building here, backed off of instructional level to build confidence. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Bernstein Bears Big Book of Science and Nature is my favorite preschool science book, we read it over and over. sorry not really what you asked for but one I would add to the collection.

I am planning on using Teaching the Classics and Windows to the World next year with a 7th and 8th grader, who I have for 45 mins twice a week (but flexible) I would like to focus on introducing analyzing literature and practicing with the shorter stories (not the longer novels). I would also like to focus more on thinking/discussing and less on the writing. (will do that somewhere else.) So I am taking down a little bit from where it was written to I guess. I have been reading through them and Jill Pikes syllabus that uses them together. I find it strange that she does one then the other. Would it make sense to do them simultaneously? I was thinking of using the video from TtC as an introduction to the WttW chapters,That way you hit the topic in both curriculums at the same time instead of in two separate time periods. Things that are repetitive are alittle easier to skip over that way. And you get several more stories to practice on than just doing one of the curriculums. I would follow the WttW sequence and just match up the chapters in TtC that correlate and looks like just the Setting chapter would be out of order (or something like that) Is this crazy? anyone done this? what is the benefit of doing it the Jill Pike way?

This is my 8th graders last year before public high school, trying to cram everything in, This is where I am today Bible - Lightbearers and SL100 bible book selections Math - BJU Algebra (hoping for key to algebra review over the two summers) Science - BJU Physical Science Grammar -R&S 8 Writing - Lost Tools of Writing or WWS1 and Grammar for middle school by Killgallon Lit. - some combination of Teaching the Classics and Windows to the World.( not doing much writing with this) Vocab - Word roots 2 Critical thinking - Building Thinking Skills level 3 verbal History/Literature - slightly slimmed down version of SL100 ( not quite so many books) - using some combintion of the Hewitt test with taking notes on study guide and the student study guide/ teachers guide from oxford press for the History of US - mapTrek maps I would love to add in stories from MP Am. Lit poety and short stories, more from an exposure standpoint than a studying standpoint though

OK true confessions here, I am attracted by CAW's more polished presentation. You are probably right its alittle too old for k & 1st. I have been struggling because everything I am finding for k or 1st is so based in teaching reading, that will bring out the fact they are at different levels, which creates oodles of issues revovling around their competive natures. so that is why I was looking at something more like geography. I could do science but that might be taken care of already... Help me understand BYL. I get the literature component, I do sonlight. I guess I'm hoping for more to DO than just talk about books. BeckyJo mentioned Notebook pages and activities.. I saw the art project book, that looks like fun DOING, where do the notebook pages originate from? Are they suggested in the daily schedule, is there something like student pages? I already have the travel diary and fun traditions files from CAW maybe I just add some of that into BYL instead of using CAW as jumping off point.....

We have done wordly wise (3-8), vocabulary from classic roots(4-6) and word roots(1) from Critical thinking company. My daughter(7th grade) thinks she learns the most from Word Roots. it requires more mental engagement and has a stronger focus on building the words so you tend to remember what the parts mean better. VfCR didnt feel like enough to me. we completed one per semester and I dont feel there was much retention, just not enough interaction with the material. I see vocab as an independant subject, so if you wanted to spend some time in teaching and review and talking more about the worlds it would be a good place to work from, but check out Word Roots, do some of the exercises yourself to see which is more challenging. It is taking us a full year for level 1

I was thinking of doing Winter promise Children around the world with my 1st grader and a K friend who we do school with 3 days a week for about an hour. So obviously we wont have time for everything. I am looking for something that I can do together with them that will downplay that they are at different levels (this is big issue), but still let them have fun and learn together. What resources would you use and what would you not use with this age set from CAW? Thanks Dudley

Is it a change in previous behavior? Has she had strep throat lately? Long shot, but there is some overlap in symptoms of PANDAS. thought I would throw that out there

We definitely use the textbook as a workbook. Most of the time it is just plain easier because you can circle a word instead of write it down, or add a period when the directions say "write the word before it then add the appropriate punctuation mark". Sure there are occasionally times when there isn't room , like when you have to compose a sentence or diagram one. Then we keep a notebook or just write it on the back of our weekly schedule page. but that happens rarely. We also do lots of it orally too. But the books are usually less than $15 so it's cheap enough to feel worth the price to lighten the writing load when I am just using it for grammar.

Key to algebra book one also covers negative numbers, adding, subtracting , multiplying and dividing.

My daughter has been doing IEW for almost 5 years. She writes an adequate paragraph from a Key Word Outline, She has that down fairly well. She struggles alittle with language. It just doesnt flow easily and needs a bit of editing to make sense.When she tries to say something in a different way it is basicall the same. But I find what she really struggles with is creating when there is no structure to write from. And also the assignments that require some higher level thinking skills. She does writing "class" with a friend 4 days a week (the other mom teaches cuz I'm terrible a writing myself) She will be in 8th grade next year and will go to public high school for 9th. (her friend will be in 7th but is a strong writer) For my older son we used WWS1 and it seemed to work well in helping understand the structure of writing. But it seemed to lack in the "Invention stage" So I was looking at Lost tools of Writing because how it says that helps alot with the invention stage. My brother in law says it gives good tools that they can access to begin the writing progress. I liked the sample video I saw alot, but worry about implementing it. (we are no prep kind of people) We would probably just sit and all watch the teacher video together then attempt the lesson. And I worry that it could get alittle to repetitive. It just feels bigger and scarier to me. I like WWS because it is laid out exactly what to do each day. and There are teacher helps so that even I feel like I could teach it. I just dont know if it is enough for getting her over that hump. Would Level 2 be better? Is there any sort of exit test for WWS like there is for WWE to see if she had the skills alreadly for level 1 and we could go deeper with 2? Do you think one of these would work? or work better? Is there another program out there that you would suggest? Thanks dudley

We have really enjoyed Logic of English with my son. We started with MFW K when he was almost 5 I find that it makes learning the sounds fun. You can lean more towards learning about the topic of the week or more towards learning the sound and blending. Pick and chose what interests you. This year (6yo) I found LOE We started in B and am now doing C I'm loving it for my active boy. He is not near as eager to read as it sounds like your son is, but LOE knows active boys!! There are so many different activities to engage them. He even wants to repeat activities that I would expect he would have had enough of because of the effort to do the reading , but he likes the challenge or fun of it and wants to do it again! I have skipped the handwriting exercises so far. But may start to include more as his handwriting develops. We use a white board for the spelling part but you could use letter tiles too. Logic of English will walk you through learning phonics yourself too. I use the AAS app to practice learning the multiple sounds that some of the phonograms have I didnt use Level A so cant speak to that.

I was going to suggest sonlight Intro to world history core too. My son is in K this year and I created a quick run through history with Usborned First Encyclopedia of History and Long,long ago , VERY low key. The problem I'm noticing with my little set up of using the Encyclopedia is that there is no story to tie it together and to draw him in, nothing to hang the information on. Next year we will use Sonlight core B (Intro world history part 1) Which uses Usborne book of World history , Usborne Time Travelers. but really uses Childs history of the World as the spine. I've used it several times with my older kids and never had a problem with them not being engaged in first grade and I really enjoy the Childs history of the World. They do have a B+C which does go all the way through world history in one year, but think that is recommended for 2nd and up.. Doing it over two years lets you pause on a time period for alittle and do some fun stuff and read some really good books.

I consider myself a Sonlight'er, though it may not look like that now. For me too, the catalog gave me the confidence that I needed to choose to homeschool. And Sonlight held my hand for many years. I have most signficantly used the history/lit/bible portion, but I have tried the LA and Science early on. I have used preK-100, then send my kids to public high school. I have used the schedule as a tool that I have greatly appreciated. It has opened me up to many books I would never had chosen, but loved. It probably pushed me not only to enjoy different literature, but also raised the bar for how much to read. At times it was too much but it always felt like the heart of our school time. Most of my kids loved to read and loved to listen to books. I have bought a few cores new when I was short on time, but mostly I have found the books and many IGs used I have 5 kids so over the years I have had to adjust and combine some to make everything manageable. This can be very tedious to some, but I found I really love taking the schedule they give me and adapting it to my kids. It is so helpful to know what is a reasonable amount to expect to read each day.and have a good starting point for how things fit together. I'm not the kind that feels i need to check each box everyday, instead I look at it more at a week at a time I have used the discussion questions and narrating to varying degrees. Really that is just a part of teaching that I haven't fully developed in myself yet. I could think of some ways these could be more useful, but it would probably still come down to me as the teacher figuring out how to engage my kids in a meaningful discussion. Sometimes i wrote the questions right in the book so it was more fluid, but didn't have the time to keep that up..I have found in the middle school years I want to add things to history to make it stick more, SOTW test/maps, study guides for History of US, but that is mostly so they can be more independent and still retain something, probably because I dont excel at the discussion and listening to narrations. Eveyone is different, but for me , this is what I needed and what I love.

If you could handle skipping second half of American history I would skip it and go on to eastern hemispheres. For the younger ones for that year I would just add in a couple books and activities at their level, and have fun studying the countries together, while the older ones go deeper with the eastern hemisphere explorer. I've done something like that years ago.(maybe twice?) At first I stole some stuff from mfw ecc, but I didn't like mfw near as much as sonlight! I used some of their books as a jumping off place and I found "People around the world" by kingfisher and usborne "introduction to Asia" that were good resources while the older kids were diving into the encyclopedia. You can involve the little ones in some crafts from the EHE too. The 3rd grader will probably listen in on read alouds, but I would add some or switch some out/in for the 1st grader. I can try to find what I scheduled and send it to you if your interested. This is probably the easiest core to adapt to multiple ages. The tricky thing here will be readers for the 3rd grader... THEN, the Next year I would start the 2 years of world history at both levels, I don't have the time to do two full cores so I either combine them or get the olders to work more independently, The two world history levels don't match up extremely well, I do what I can. So: Year 2 Eatern Hemisphere add in for littles Year 3 world history part 1 B & F Year 4 world history part 2 C& G Year 5 American history D or D/E , 100 This is usually where I send my kids to high school so don't have experience after that. Forgive me if my letters are off I am more familiar with the old grade number system they had

I second the NOEO suggestion. I loved it because it was SO doable. Many days the 4-6 level had Usborne 2 page spread reading. Sometimes I just read it with the kids, sometimes we outlined it, sometimes we just wrote down vocab words after reading. Depends on the kid and the time availible So really you can take it to what ever level you want. But it also added living books too, more so in the 1-3 grade level, but the 4-6 has some. And boxed experiments were great when you have no time. For some reason it was the science curriculum that I could just get done. I did all three topics in level 4-6 and felt that it was a thorough and organized covering of science topics and felt it prepared my kids well for going to the next level in science. You could easily do this with a 4-6 grader and depending on the 3rd grader they could join in. you could add some of the books from the lower level for them to maintain interest. One thing I wish NOEO had, was something that tied it all together a little more to get the information to stick. The sample of Elemental Science seemed to do something like that, but i didn't like their coverage of the material quite as much. and it wasnt quite as simple and open and go. On of the scheduling things i did before NOEO was to plan a experiment week, where i made extra effort to do the experiments, because sometimes they just take lots of extra energy and clean up, setting aside a week to have extra time and energy to focus on that helped it to happen

I found the same thing if I search for a book and then click on the hyperlink on the book title. I think that page is intended to offer the details on the book maybe a synopsis. but nothing more than that, I did email them and ask what was up with that. I even tried Internet explorer. But if you have already picked a book. I didnt have any trouble taking the quiz. and the other parts of the site.

I have used bookadventure.com for making sure my kids were comprehending when I didnt have the time to sit with them or ask them questions about it, it gives a 10 question comprehension quiz for most any book in wide range of reading levels. I tried a few quizzes myself and found them tough if I hadn't just read the book. It felt more straight comprehending and less literary, but it helped me know if they were struggling, was simple for the kids to use and provides some insentive through points earned for right answers

We have done r&s english(grammar portion) since grade 3 and would be in 8 next year. My daughter has already learned far more grammar than I ever did. She is heading to public school for 9th so I'm trying to decide if it is worth the time to do level 8. There are just so many things I want to squeeze in in this last year together! What would be the benefit to finishing it out one more year? Thanks Dudley

Hi, I taught my daughter to read using 100 EZ Lessons, then she went to public school for 1st and 2nd grade. When she came home I chose to use reason for spelling, because we were doing it with another family. (I would have chosen SWR) She was an adequate speller so I was fine with it. She reads independently a lot, although her choice is lower level books like babysitters club. She struggles through an occasional harder book that is assigned in Sonlight. Last couple years I thought it was just a vocabulary issue, since language was a little slow in coming to her. So she has been doing 2 vocab books for the last couple of years. Then today, just for fun a gave her a quick reading test I saw here. As I listened to her read the words I noticed her errors were decoding issues. Sloppy sounding out, not changing to a soft c or g , or not putting the syllable or accent in the right place. Then it dawned on me, she has never really had any phonics instruction, beyond what they may have had in 2nd grade( which I doubt was much). So, she heads to public high school in a year and a half and I want her to not be handicapped by lack of phonics to read at a higher grade level. (the test put her about 9th grade) Anything you would suggest to help with sounding out big words?? I prefer something short and sweet, but that we can move through fairly quickly since she is already a good speller and reader. Independent would be a bonus, but really not expecting that. Maybe she needs to work on syllables? or Spelling rules? or advanced phonograms? Just more practice? I used megawords 4 for my oldest and i probably would have looked at that more heavily but it has long books and many levels, wouldn't be able to cover in 1 1/2 yrs. Found something quick online but its basic premise was cut the word at each vowel and use the short sound if that doesn't work try the long sound. Didn't seem helpful enough. I am using LOE foundations for my youngest and so was considering Essentials for her, skipping everything but the phonics. But that focuses on spelling rather than reading. does that matter? it is expensive, but i might use it for the youngest, thus making it worth it..... Thanks Dudley

If you look at the Singapore math practice books on Amazon you can see that the first couple of pages are a summary of how the concepts are taught in that book, which might be helpful..... short and concise. I dont use that book, I use the singapore workbook, US edition. and I don t know if the practice book follows the same sequence as the workbook, It might be enough to help you feel confident to teach it... I dont know, it was just a thought. on how to save some time in the teaching learning curve The HIG has the answers though, which saves time in checking answers.

Yes Singapore is definitely low clutter, fewer problems, and strong in mental math. Easy to teach? all depends. I'm strong in math so Im probably not the best to ask. Generally I just give instruction for a very short time when they open the workbook, or when they get stuck or when I know an important concept is coming up. I make sure that we do extra practice when multiplication comes up. (like I hit the 3s hard the week they are introduced with flash cards or something. ) As the teacher you just need to understand their method, particularly behind the mental math and how to thing about word problems visually. I disagree with combining kids in math, I feel it is an independent subject that should be worked at at your own pace, dudley