Singapore science is a great program and you won't have to dig through the library looking for books. If you use My Pals are here you only need the text, workbook (answer are included), and the Activity Guide. Levels 4 and 5 have a Higher Order Thinking Skills book as well. My dd asks to do this science. I would keep the levels of science fairly close to the levels of math because there is a lot of critical thinking involved in these books. So if your child is doing 3rd grade math do level 3 science. Hope this helps.:)

Thanks, I was wondering about this especially since I would not consider myself a math person. I was a C student in High school math but took all the math I could and tested into the Math major class for college. Singapore has really be a lot of fun and I have been honing in those math skills. Thanks again.:)

Am I missing something? On the yahoo group they discuss like mad how hard these things are to understand but they seem fairly self-explanitory. Am I missing something? They show the rods and the numbers that the rods are supposed to represent and you need to find the missing number--right? We just started these and I feel like I am either missing something or it is so simple that it is almost silly. So fill me in.:confused:

Yes, take a break. Check out some books on dinosaurs, play leappad, cuddle up and read together and enjoy yourself. I find that some of the best learning happens when we are not actually doing school.:)

I think of myself as more of a tutor and guide. I don't really sit up there with a chalkboard and lecture. I sit with my dc and explore together. When we sit and do written work, I am more of a tutor and I help read directions and such. But our teaching time is more of a story and exploration time where we make discoveries together.:)

Because it is good for you. :) Switching gears and toning it down has done wonders for us here as well. Before Oct it was rush, rush, rush and the last three months have been wonderful!

Thanks for posting this. My girls loved seeing all the kitties done up. Lol, the things some people can do with computers.:)

The eight year old change--backtalking, crankiness, surliness, questioning, etc. We've talked about it on the old board a few times. Basically, sometime between the age of 5 and 8 children realize that death can happen to them and they have to come to terms with that. There is often a lot of nightime and sometimes day time fears. Sometimes they will balk at schoolwork and even lose the ability to do basic math that they may have been able to do for years. It can be a rough time for the whole family. Hang in there. Spend time comforting and talking to your child. Ask questions and listen to what she has to say. When it is all over you will have a much more mature child who is now concerned about fairness, maybe wants to bathe more often, shows hers manners and is a joyful help most of the time. Hope it goes well for you.:)

1. Did you take time off after taking them out of school to detox--generally it is 1 month for every year in school? This doesn't have to be don't do anything but can be a do fun things/get to know one another again time. Like spending time outdoors on nature walks, playing games, talking and reading fun books together. 2. With an ADHD child you may want to read up on Charlottem Mason's idea of short intense lessons. They work great for my active child. 3. There is a book out there called Children on the Ball that you may want to check out. It is about seating options for active children. 4. Memory work--are you doing something sort of movement while doing memory work or just sitting there? With an active child but especially a boy you may want to divorce your memory work time to a period where you can get outside and toss a ball around, jump on a trampoline or do something that is active. We toss a small felted ball around at the beginning of our school day when we do math tables. 5. The first year is the hardest because you are learning how to learn together. The second year is better as you have learning styles figured out and are exploring what curriculum/materials work best. The third year it all really comes together. Hang in there--it is worth it. 6. At this age--getting in the 3 r's of reading, mathematics and penmanship in are the most important. Everything else you do is gravy. Look at what order you are doing your subjects in. Do you have the hardest thing first while they are still fresh? Are the 3 r's at the end? What is not getting done? What do you get the most complaints about (drop these or find a different curriculum if it is important)? I try to alternate between active/quiet and hard/easy work during my day. How much copywork are you doing? Is your child pencil-phobic and finding the copywork too much? Is your math boring or do the children like it? What do your children want to learn about? Would it work better to read to them at bedtime or naptime for the younger children? Are they getting plenty of time to run outside? Are you getting time to talk to other mothers who are supportive of your efforts? Do you have a regular routine or rhythm to your day so that your children know what to expect? Don't worry about posting your answers here. Just evaluate the situation and take a good look at what is working and what is not and adjust it. It may take some time for everything to work out well and you may need to give up some of your ideals about homeschooling so that you can better meet the need of you children. I learned that lesson this fall. We were plugging along doing Tapestry of Grace, Singapore Math, Science, Bible, Grammar and a bunch of other stuff and when we went on vacation I got a reality check and realized that we were trying to do too much and pushing too hard. So I pulled back and looked at where my children were really at and what they needed in a curriculum. We are happier now. Good Luck and I hope you have a wonderful homeschool journey.:)

We went through the lists to around H three times with my oldest before reading kicked in. I would take her so far and then go back to the beginning again. This year with both I decided to do something different. We are just concentrating on the phonograms and the spelling rules. Once reading is fluent then we will start the lists again. Basically, I am "introducing" a phonogram or spelling rule twice a week. I make up a silly sentence about it and draw some visual clues to help remember the sounds. Then I post them on the wall so my dc can see it. Then the other days of the week we review the sounds/rules with flashcards and I bring out a sheet of paper and we try to think of all the words we know with that sound in it and then we put it in a book for them. I think the most important thing with children under 3rd grade that you are trying to teach to read is to just learn the sounds for the phonograms and play with words when you have time. Good Luck.:)

My husband composts and says the best book on the subject is called Let it Rot! Basically, we have 2 bins in the back where he puts coffe grounds, fruit, veggies, grass, and such. It has to be layered and turned as well. Check out the book.

The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World is worth buying and taking with you. It has a lot of neat ideas and tips in it. With staying on site and using Disney transportation you should be able to "rest" in the afternoons. Hope you have a great time!:)

No, it's going in our buy a lot in Hawaii fund. They will get to live with us when/if we move there. That is reward enough.:)

Yes, I love making schedules and use them for a guide not as a rule. We use Circle time as our framwork and for February it looks like this: Circle up (we have a special verse that I use to start it) Rhythmic drill--we toss or roll a ball and work on math facts and counting or anything that is chanted. Seasonal poem for the month (by the end of the month the poem is memorized) Weather report from my oldest dd Math poem that leads to Math exploration/teaching time ( I use my Singapore math text, manipulatives and stories to teach about new topics and explore math) A movement verse (we get up and stretch) Phonics/Spelling rule introduction 1 to 2 days a week and the other days are for flashcard review of phonograms/rules learned. A story on Mondays that we will use in composition later in the week. We move to the table at this time. My youngest does Earlybird math while my oldest does copywork Singapore Math workbook for my oldest Form Drawing on Mondays/Tues she composes a summary of the story read on Monday/Wed & Thurs she illustrates the summary and then the next week copies the sentences she composed as copywork Minimus Latin--a short lesson each day, flash card review on days when there is no new words introduced. Creative time--We do a weekly topic. This week we are painting, two weeks ago we felted, next week we will do science with magnets. At bedtime we read about math, science, history, fun and literary books. I do have our months scheduled out and pretty much have 3rd/1st grade all ready to go. I like doing units for each month so that we are working on similiar things during the course of a month. Like in Math right now my oldest is doing addition and subtraction strategies with rods while my younger child is learning about addition and subtraction. We don't always line up but it is nice when we do. Good luck on your schedule. A word of advice--take the best from all of us and leave the rest. Don't let yourself get stressed because things get off. If it is important you can do the next week if not you can come back to it another time. :)

We use Singapore here with just the Text and workbook. But I use the book Teaching Mathematics in Rudolf Steiner Schools by Ron Jarmon for ideas on how to enrich our math lesson in a fun way so that we are getting a similiar experience to what they do in Singapore since math is interwoven into the day. My oldest has done Earlybird and 1a/b then we switched to RS A, B, and part of C before going back to Singapore for 2a/b and now she is doing 3a. My youngest is working slowly through Earlybird. Currently, I am dividing math into 4 parts that are working very well--rhythmic drill, instruction/exploration, workbook and review. We use circle time to framework our day and rhythmic drill is one of the first things we do. We generally toss a ball back and forth to work on counting and math facts. You can do a variety of things for rhythmic drill and have it totally divorced from the school day. You can do it during playtime while your child jumps rope or jumps on the trampoline. You can walk it forwards or backwards, skip or jump rope. The instruction/exploration takes place in the middle of our circle time and generally I either have a math story, the text book and manipulatives and we act out math problems or explore the manipulatives and write down our observations. The workbook portion takes place when we move to the table and do our written work. I assign my dd so much to in the Singapore workbook. The review is something that is not connected with SM or our schoolday at all. I make binders for my children of old workbooks I have found at garage sales and worksheets I print off the internet. These consist of language arts and math pages that are generally a review. They are mostly too easy and stuff we have already covered and they are allowed to do the pages in any order they want. They turn them into me once a week so I can pulled out finished pages and add in new pages. These are fun for them but they also include dot-to-dot, mazes, coloring pages and such. So basically, we use singapore as our main text but we do fun enrichment so that they can take ownership of what they are learning.:)

I think you would have a lot of fun with the Family Math book for introducing topics and exploring math. We really enjoy Singapore here with both of my dc one of whom is mathy and the other is not. We have used Earlybird to 3a here and only used the texts and workbooks. I let my mathy child pretty much just have the workbook but if there is something new or something that she is having trouble with we take our time and use the textbook and manipulatives to learn the material before doing the workbook. My non-mathy child is working slowly through the Earlybird books. Because Singapore is 6 months to a year ahead of most programs you may want to have your son take the placement test. It is different from most math programs but then again it is very clear and not as muddled as many math programs. You clearly know where you are going in Singapore math. They do do a variety of topics in a level and there is very little review but they do a good job of explaining the whys and the different ways to find answers. If you feel like your child needs more help or wants more to do then they also have the supplemental books like Extra Maths (more of the same from the workbook--I will use this with my non-mathy child), Challenging World Problems (just word problems--we used it orally), and Intensive Practice (for the child who loves math and wants more of it at a deeper level). There is also a Home Educator's guide that has teaching ideas, games, mental math sheets and a schedule if you think you need the support. You may want to see if someone in your area is using it and will let you look at the books. They generally resale fairly close to retail value but it is a good solid program. Hope this helps.

I majored in English specifically in British Lit and Creative Writing. I started looking at writing programs a couple of years ago and found things to not be what I wanted or what I wanted to be too expensive. So I found out about a book called: Composition in the Classical Tradition. The book sells for around $85.00 but I was able to interlibrary loan it. This book was written to teach a college course. Between this and Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition you have all you need to create a composition program through the end of high school. Personally, I took tons of notes and outlined my own version of the progymnasmata that was tailored to meet the needs of my dc. Currently in second grade we are reading fables and my dd is dictating them back to me as precis (summary) writing. She then illustrates and copies what she has composed. Both books have lots of useful information on both creative and serious writing. Hope this helps. :)

My Ped is a homeschooler--his wife runs one of the local groups and is a major support to us all in my area.:)

I have a pink Hello Kitty purse that I always get compliments on because it is sooo cute. In the summer I generally go with a Hawaii themed or Straw bag purse for the summer fun of it.:)

I didn't have it done because 1. I don't know that I could have held my head still for 2 minutes without fidgeting. I am a nervous type. They don't put you under for this. 2. I was afraid that my children who were very young at the time might touch my eyeball and that it would get infected and I could lose my sight. My dc have actually gotten me in the eye numerous times despite the fact that my glasses are in the way. 3. I would not have had only about 5 to 10 years without glasses before starting to have reading glasses and after watching my dh going from perfect eyesight to having to have reading glasses everywhere I can tell that it is more of a pain than just having bifocals. Good luck--check it out well--make sure you get a top doctor who has a proven track record and knows what they are doing. :)

My girls say that you should name her "Cutie-pie." Dusty would be a nice name with that layer of coal dust. She is very pretty.

Pizza! There is breakfast pizza, dessert pizza, veggie pizza, cheese pizza, meat lover's pizza, all sorts of wonderful pizzas out there that I don't think I would get bored.:)

Have you looked at Language Arts Through Literature? We used for 2nd grade: Spell to Write and Read--mostly just going over the phonograms and spelling rules using trigger words that incorporate the sounds to help us remember them. And then we would do notebook pages where we would write down as many words as we could think of with that sound. Aesop's Fables--I would read 1 per week that we would summarize. Copywork--the trigger sentences and our summaries. Sometimes math or history sentences. Grammar--we started out with Easy Grammar/KISS Grammar combo but it was too much. We just talk about grammar in copywork and other places right now. For third we will use Ruth Heller's books as a jumping off point to make a grammar dictionary. Hope you find some great ideas and have a good year.:)

Thanks I've been looking for something like this to use this summer when we are done with Fables.:)

That's wonderful. So happy for you. I wish you great joy in your new addition. :)