My history hater chose not to read it, but his brother ended up reading more than half of it aloud and they both laughed their heads off 🙂 We will be buying more - thanks again for the recommendation.

I would think Rod and Staff might fit that category 😉

Hi, and welcome to the WTM boards! One of the big changes between the 80s and 90s and now, in my opinion, is that nowadays there are so many all in one packages out there. It's very hard to do everything well, and while purchasing a school-in-a-box program can be a good way to ease into homeschooling while you're finding your feet, not many people stick with it long term. These forums are named for a book by Susan Wise Bauer and her mother Jessie Wise, explaining how to homeschool in the classical method. It has been revised and updated numerous times so that it continues to reflect currently available resources, but the method comes from the 80s and even earlier when Jessie was homeschooling Susan and then Susan was homeschooling her own children. I highly recommend you get hold of a copy and read through it. It will give you a solid, proven approach and excellent annotated book and resource lists in every subject area. All the best in your homeschool journey 🙂

Classical Academic Press has some online games and a card game called "Clash" available here. I haven't personally used them - we're not far enough along yet! - but I understand this is the content they used to have freely available on the now-defunct "Headventureland" site. Another one my kids like for any kind of short answer content is "Kaboom". Get a bunch of craft sticks and write a vocab word at one end of each. On several sticks, write "Kaboom!" instead. Put them all in a cup and take turns drawing one out. If you can translate the word, you keep the stick, but if you draw a Kaboom! stick you have to put all your cards back. First to 5 or 10 wins. We use this for times tables and sight words as well 🙂

Does anyone know of a children's version of the Song of Roland written at an easier level than H E Marshall's Stories of Roland Told to the Children? The language in that one seems a little archaic to me. Looking for something suitable for a 5th grader to read; bonus points if the 3rd grader would also be likely to enjoy it.

Hi, and welcome to the WTM forums! In your shoes, I'd start with WWE 2. WWE 1 begins the child copying a short sentence two days a week and telling one thing they remember, any one thing at all, from a short reading the other two days. You're clearly beyond that level. WWE 2 moves into dictation two days a week and summarising passages the other two days. The questions in the book guide the student to identify the main points and the scaffolding is very gently decreased over the next two years, so that by the end of WWE 3 the child is able to read a passage of a couple of pages' length, then summarise it accurately in 3-5 sentences. If you find WWE 2 is too easy you can always move a bit faster (eg complete every second lesson until you find the part that challenges her), but it's better to start easy and gentle and give her lots of experiences of successful narration than jump in a bit too hard with something she's already hesitant about. FWIW, I've been really happy with WWE for my kids. The readings are intrinsically interesting and enjoyable, the "lesson" only takes about 10 minutes, the dictation work has improved their spelling (we don't use a formal spelling program), and the steady incremental work builds really strong skills. If you're looking for a history program, you might consider Story of the World, also by Susan Wise Bauer. Its activity guide has scripted comprehension questions that guide the child to identify important details in complete sentences, and sample narrations so you can see what an acceptable answer might look like. It doesn't replace WWE but is a lovely complement and a very fun program. Best of luck as you make plans for the coming year!

Sorry about my confusing wording. I got that idea from Inside Higher Ed, at this link: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/15/stanford-professor-goes-public-attacks-over-her-math-education-research It doesn't name the journal but I presumed it must be a Stanford-owned paper because were the ones rejecting it. From the link: "He said via e-mail that the essay was prepared for publication in a journal and was scheduled to be published, but "the HR person at Stanford has some reservations because it turned out that it was too easy to do a Google search on some of the quotes in the paper and thereby identify the schools involved. At that point I had so many other things that I had to attend to that I didn't bother to make the corrections." He also said that he has heard more from the school since he wrote the essay, and that these additional discussions confirm his criticism of Boaler's work."

This year, on our second loop through SOTW 1, we finally did the chicken mummy project. I was completely engrossed from the first moment; the kids, mostly more grossed out. However, it was such a great learning experience and I wanted to share some pics and extra details for others who could benefit from them. I was surprised how much good conversation came from just repeatedly gathering around the chicken to change its salt mixture. We talked about food spoilage and preservation, bacteria, the mummification process, the importance of religion and ritual to the Egyptians as connected to the amount of time and resources they devoted to it, differences between our and their burial customs - heaps of stuff! Because it was still going when our reading moved on to Assyria, Babylon and Greece, the kids were prompted to compare the civilizations in a way they may not have been otherwise. The instructions in the activity guide were pretty clear and easy to follow. There were a few things I wish I'd known before we started: * It took longer than 40 days. Actually, I think it took about 10 weeks in the end. * It took a LOT of salt mix. I guess we might have changed the mix about six times all up, and it uses a couple kilos (4 pounds?) each time. * It is critical to change the salt every time it gets wet, and that really does mean after one day and then after two more days in the first week. Our friends neglected to do this and theirs is still stinky now, whereas ours never stank. * The squeamish kids never really got over their squeamishness. It helps to provide disposable gloves and to be willing to do the "touching" parts for them. * It would make a good science project. If I'd had the kids weigh the chicken before we started, then again each week, we could have tracked how much water was being drawn out. We could also have compared different kinds of mixtures/different conditions to see if we could find a faster or more efficient way to dehydrate the carcass. The highlight for my kids was the ancillary stuff. They loved painting "coffins", collecting grave goods (a bag of chicken feed for instance) and making amulets. The chicken is now sealed in a series of coffins within a styrofoam "sarcophagus", and I am planning to keep it hanging around in our store room for four years and then let them "excavate" it on our next round of ancients and see how it has lasted. The pics: the collected amulets and grave goods the kids came up with; two shots of the dried but unwrapped chicken - see how scrawny it looks, and how yellowy the remaining fat/skin is? Those are changes from the process; and the wrapped chicken, ready to be interred in its caskets.

Only in this thread have I realised how many of your posts are edited moments later... 😄

If you click into the link, he clarifies that by "HR" he doesn't mean human resources, as is usual, but human research. Like an ethics gatekeeper, I assume. If he had really lost interest, why did he then edit the paper after all (the quotes don't appear on his website version) and publish it?

I got that idea from Inside Higher Ed, at this link: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/15/stanford-professor-goes-public-attacks-over-her-math-education-research Sorry if my reference to "Stanford" was clunky. Am I right in understanding that Stanford did indeed put the kybosh on his article though, and is it reasonable to conclude that they did in fact "care" whether he published it? "He said via e-mail that the essay was prepared for publication in a journal and was scheduled to be published, but "the HR person at Stanford has some reservations because it turned out that it was too easy to do a Google search on some of the quotes in the paper and thereby identify the schools involved. At that point I had so many other things that I had to attend to that I didn't bother to make the corrections." He also said that he has heard more from the school since he wrote the essay, and that these additional discussions confirm his criticism of Boaler's work."

@Not_a_Number, I'm not sure whether I can productively discuss the research with you. I feel hampered by not knowing enough about US standardised tests and information gathering practices - I don't know what measures are available to assess whether the intervention worked, and I don't have access to the raw data, so for now I am simply noting that Boaler and her team created tests, that the actual class teachers from the three schools considered those tests and agreed that they reflected material that was taught to all three classes, and that there might be a problem there, as raised by Milgram, because it appears that no common higher level content was taught to all three groups. Milgram's article is suggesting that a lot of measures were available to the researchers which contradicted their research, which I imagine would be the substance of his professional misconduct charge, right? But since that was investigated and dismissed, I take it that Stanford doesn't share his opinion. When I suggested that Stanford had a say in whether he published his paper, it was because he submitted it to them for publication, and they rejected it on the grounds that he included quotes from the relevant schools that were readily discoverable by a Google search, which could have resulted in the schools being publicly identified. He says (in response to her bullying accusations, I think) that he declined to remove the quotes for privacy because he was too busy, so after a few years (her research published in 2006, his article in 2011 I believe?) he just put it on his own website. As to removing your quote, you added the request to not be quoted after I had already done so, as I was typing my response to you. I didn't deliberately quote you against your wishes. However, I might be doing so now: you talk about not wanting to be quoted "trashing" someone that you know in real life, and then you go on to trash him further, in the same attacking-the-person style that first caused me to write to you. If you are worried about leaving a trail of words that seem slanderous or unprofessional, perhaps it might be best to not post such words in the first place.

Yes, I did read it. It's difficult for me to evaluate. Do you know that Milgram officially made a charge of professional misconduct over this, that Stanford formally investigated, and that they found in favor of her - ie that there was no such misconduct? So he turned to writing and self-publishing this article to try to get some traction. Here is the conclusion of their investigation, as published at insidehighered.com: "We understand that there is a currently ongoing (and apparently passionate) debate in the mathematics education field concerning the best approaches and methods to be applied in teaching mathematics. It is not our task under Stanford's policy to determine who is 'right' and who is 'wrong' in this academic debate. We do note that Dr. Boaler's responses to the questions put to her related to her report were thorough, thoughtful, and offered her scientific rationale for each of the questions underlying the allegations. We found no evidence of scientific misconduct or fraudulent behavior related to the content of the report in question. In short, we find that the allegations (such as they are) of scientific misconduct do not have substance." (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/15/stanford-professor-goes-public-attacks-over-her-math-education-research) When I read the Milgram article, I can see that he doesn't understand qualitative as opposed to quantitative research, that he's happy to claim "stories" and "letters" support his case but never quote them or show me where to find them, and this is harder to define, but I get a feeling of nasty glee from him, that he was really enjoying sticking the knife in to her personally. Perhaps it's because his piece is uniformly negative. There are positives to her research, but he provides none. None of this helps me to believe that he is a more trustworthy evaluator of her study than she is. And you yourself said that you "can tell she sincerely believes what she's saying", which means that although she might have been mistaken, she did not deliberately obfuscate a failed experiment. I also see that even though he's a professor at the same university that published the study, he has been unable for 10 years to get enough support within the university to have his piece published, or to have hers censured in any way. Stanford has not been concerned enough about his claims to have her make any changes. She has accused him of academic bullying, but that too seems to be unsubstantiated, and her attempt to paint him as calling children from racially diverse backgrounds "pickaninnies" (his comment used that word but in fact decried that view, not supported it) seems disingenuous. I'm left with two adults who have diametrically opposed views about how to teach math, both of whom are unwilling to admit that they may have only some pieces of the puzzle, or that their opponent has any pieces at all. I like having the option to add her stuff to our math program. I think it makes it stronger. I would not want to subtract anything from our program though - I'm not "going full Boaler" or arguing for radical departures from traditional methods. My concern was that your original comment dismissed her and labelled her a "zealot" without evidence. I see now the source of your opinion, although I am not persuaded by it. I predict that California's implementation of her approach will be neither the silver bullet she hopes nor the nuclear meltdown he hopes - and I do say that he "hopes" it because he seems like the kind of person who would gladly sacrifice a generation's education if it meant he could score points off his rival. If he really cared about truth he would have written his article more carefully, and would have jumped through the hoops needed to have it published after Stanford rejected it.

Thank you for this. That whole adolescent slanging match between Milgram et al and Boaler was disappointing. It seems to me that there is plenty of middle ground that they might agree on if the relationship between them was not so toxic. He raised some legitimate questions about her research, but has apparently been unable to get his article published except on his own website (the one you linked) in the intervening 10 years, and Stanford itself doesn't seem to be persuaded that he is right. I am thankful to have the skills and freedom to educate and advocate for my own children. A whole school system is such a complex and unwieldy thing to improve or reform; I'm glad to be able to cherry pick resources and approaches from others and immediately see the fruit of them. It must be frustrating for Jo Boaler that it's almost 20 years since she conducted that research yet it's only now beginning to see major implementation, and just as frustrating for Milgram that in 10 years he hasn't succeeded in discrediting her in the eyes of Stanford or the state of California.

I would say I am familiar with her *products*, and have a passing rather than thorough understanding of her ideas. She is a former UK classroom teacher who is influenced by Carol Dweck's ideas about growth mindset. She wants students to understand that maths people are not born, they are made, and all students can achieve a high standard if they are supported and continue to work hard. She opposes tracked classrooms, and her UK research showed that not just the lower performing students but also the highest performers improved significantly when given low floor, high ceiling, open problems that are creative and visual, as compared to similar socioeconomic level classes using traditional teaching. She doesn't say this, but perhaps this is about the deeper learning that takes place when we are highly engaged with an idea and use collaboration and discovery methods to learn? I use her product line of "Mindset Mathematics" books as a supplement to our main Singapore curriculum. You couldn't use them alone - they de-emphasise calculation in favour of patterns, visuals, area, graphs, and data presentation. However, I really appreciate how different they are from Singapore. My most mathy and perfectionistic kid gains a lot from her emphasis on process, from having to explain his ideas to other kids, from being invited to roll around in a math activity for the joy and beauty of it rather than to complete an exercise. My most artistic kid enjoys the visual nature of her stuff and the connections to the art/music/language parts of his brain. I tutored a low achieving kid for a year and she appreciated a chance to feel successful in math because the work wasn't particularly tied to math facts or place value, which were the gaps for her that we were filling in that year. I agree with her that understanding data/statistics/information is increasingly important in our culture today, and that it has not had a corresponding increase in prominence in math curricula to this point. As a liberal arts major, I have not needed higher math for college or work or life, and it seems sensible to me to offer kids a chance to pursue other kinds of math than calculus, but I am not in the US and am not aware of plans to "do away with Advanced Math in schools" as the OP references.

@Not_a_Number, I see you as someone with a lot of math knowledge and someone who can also contribute from the perspective of a math educator. This is at least the second time you have attacked Jo Boaler as a person without referencing any of her actual ideas (I recall expressing my dismay when you did so under your previous name, Square 25). I would be genuinely interested to hear what it is about her ideas that you disagree with. I write this as someone from outside the US, where math is integrated and it is normal to keep all students together until the end of grade 10, before providing four tracks in grade 11-12.

How about using summer to introduce multiplication and get a jump on learning his times tables with a game-based program like Kate Snow's Multiplication Facts that Stick? That will be a key part of his schoolwork this year and in my experience, kids who haven't learned the facts to rock-solid automaticity begin to struggle with later problems (multi-digit multiplication, division, fractions, ratios, percentages...). Too much brain power needed for the harder stuff is being diverted to trying to figure out 9x6. (She also has programs for addition, subtraction and division facts if those are a better fit for your child's current skills.)

If you go with the business math course, you might consider reading The Lemonade War along with it (https://www.amazon.com/Lemonade-War/dp/0547237650/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=lemonade+war&qid=1621575208&sr=8-1). It's a novel about a brother and sister whose sibling rivalry spills over into duelling lemonade stand businesses, and it deliberately introduces some business vocab and sales techniques.

Surely there's gotta be a Shakespeare title in there. Othello? Macbeth?

Have you checked out http://materamabilis.org/ma/ ? It's a Catholic curriculum in the Charlotte Mason tradition. It might take you a little while to get your head around the levels (they don't correspond exactly to grades) and layout (a realllllllllly long document for each level), but it has suggested resources for each subject, hyperlinked if appropriate, and arranges them into a 36 week plan as well.

A sudden rush of warmth to your foot on a ten year old thread is usually a sign that there are ZOMBIES nearby. 🧟‍♀️

I'm sorry you didn't love it (but glad you found that out before spending money!). There is a chat box running during the live discussion but that is never recorded, so isn't visible in the samples. Perhaps they're not the best option for your family, but if you do want to look a bit further, you might check their website in a week or two - they will advertise their summer classes sometime before the end of this month. From memory those run in the weekly format you're looking for, but just for a month or so - last year I think they had the Penderwicks, Lord of the Rings and... I can't remember the others. A Jane Austen maybe? Hope you find something that fits your needs.

OP, your choice of the phrase "the Singapore approach" is a good one. The content of Singapore math is essentially the same as is taught in classrooms around the world; it's the method of teaching that is different. Teachers in the US value their professional freedom to introduce material the way they like, whereas Singapore teachers are given a particular way to teach each concept (including, as a very basic example, their concrete-pictorial-abstract approach). Not just "teach them this" but "teach them in this manner". I can't speak to whether it is true that Dimensions is "less authentic", but if that is true, I would expect it to be a comment on whether the teacher supports are present and whether the material is presented in the Singapore style, rather than a comment on how rigorous it might be.

Hi, and welcome to the WTM boards! This particular sub-thread is not as active as some of them, which might be why it's taking a while for someone with direct knowledge of your program to chime in. We use Singapore (the old US edition that doesn't have a K level) and love it. I will try to respond to your question in general terms! Singapore is a spiral program, so it does revisit each topic each year, adding a bit more depth each time. My grade 1 book checks that they recognize numbers 1-10 and can count that many objects, then moves into adding where the answer is less than 10, and by the end of the year has them adding and subtracting numbers within 100. Each year, there are usually a couple of things where my kids struggle. Sometimes I stop and hang out there until they understand it (eg bedding down how to subtract with carrying in 1st grade) and other things where I keep moving on in the book but add in practice on the side (eg addition/multiplication facts). Recognizing a particular arrangement of dots is called subitizing, and it's an important skill that comes with repeated exposure over time. Can he reliably count 8 objects? Does he recognize the numeral 8? If not, I'd set aside the program for a while and do lots of counting in daily life. If so, I'd probably move on. Next year in the grade 1 book you'll encounter addition facts. That might be a good time to get Kate Snow's Addition Facts that Stick book (available as PDF here in the Well Trained Mind store), which also uses 10 frames, and revisit the idea while practising addition. She gives some ideas for helping kids quickly subitize the 10-frames, and provides lots of fast, fun games and some simple worksheets to help kids painlessly learn their facts.

Oh congratulations! It is so exciting when all that ccccccc-aaaaaa-tttttt stuff pays off and suddenly they're off and reading!! Some that were a hit in my house at that age were: My Father's Dragon (Ruth Stiles Gannet), Boxcar Children (series, easy, but first book is especially easy), Little House in the Big Woods, Encyclopedia Brown (series), A Bear Called Paddington (series), Beverly Cleary's Ramona books (Ramona the Pest and others - these are a higher lexile than some of the others on this list). My boys did not like, but I think my daughter will like, Kate Di Camillo's Mercy Watson series, Eleanor Estes' The 100 Dresses. Enid Blyton is a British author from almost 100 years ago who I loved as a kid, and although I can't stand her now, my own kids love her too 🙂 You might try The Enchanted Wood/The Magic Faraway Tree/The Folk of the Faraway Tree (sort of episodic, and available as traditional chapter books or as large format, thick, colorful illustrated versions). The Famous Five or Secret Seven could work too - these are series about groups of children who solve mysteries, and are very formulaic. New readers will not find them repetitive, but rather will be able to follow the story easily because of the familiar characters and predictable sequence. Note that some of her titles have not aged well and might offend modern sensibilities - she has old fashioned ideas of what boys and girls can do, and some unfortunate racial/social characterizations (dishonest gypsies come to mind). We discuss rather than avoiding these, but YMMV. I underrated the value of continuing picture books with one of my kids, and wish I had kept more of those in the mix for longer. Early chapter books are deliberately simple, and many quality picture books have a higher lexile score (one measure of text complexity), packaged in the perfect length for a single sitting read. Have you seen www.openlibrary.org? They have scanned in books, which you borrow virtually, and you still turn the pages just like a physical book. It could be a good source for picture books while your library is semi-closed. Consider authors like Patricia Polacco, Cynthia Rylant, Beatrix Potter, William Steig, Jane Yolen... Fairy tale anthologies could be another source: if the stories are familiar, she'll be able to handle more difficult versions. Anthologies can be a good stepping stone to longer books. They're episodic in nature, so you don't have to follow a plot arc through the whole thing, but they have the "heft" of a bigger chapter book and can help kids feel more confident with longer books. The Usborne Young Reading series was the "gateway drug" for one of mine. It sounds like your daughter is already beyond many of those, but do keep them in mind for nonfiction and simple classics. Their versions of stories like Beowulf or Robin Hood, and their history and biography titles, were great options for independent reading when mine were in that 6-8 year old bracket. Some examples: Beowulf, Macbeth, The Gunpowder Plot, The Story of Slavery. We bought this box set: https://www.amazon.com/Usborne-Reading-Collection-Confident-Readers/dp/1474927807/ref=sr_1_21?dchild=1&keywords=usborne+young+reading&qid=1620445026&sr=8-21 Happy reading! 🙂