Wayfarers by Barefoot Ragamuffin

Wonderful!

I try to be super flexible because fun things are always coming up. I school year round, but I try to give us a month in the summer between school years. We do a 4 day week for 36 weeks. I schedule tentatively ahead. For instance if one month was super busy, I know I need to get at least so many weeks in the next month to stay on schedule. Sometimes we school on Saturday if our week was busy.

Thanks OhElizabeth! I did read down a list of possible symptoms of Convergence Insufficiency and he said he sees double, so I recommended they go visit our local Vision Therapy clinic to get tested. Your post helps a lot. I will pass that info along. Heidi

I just wrote this email and sent it to Susan Barton, but I wanted y'all's opinion too (because I think Susan is probably biased to her program). I have a friend who wanted me to see if her son is dyslexic. I explained that I am not trained to determine dyslexia, but that I would give it my best shot. I am tutoring only one student, my first student, so I really do not have any experience at all. My friend's son, Jacob, is in 2nd grade. I gave him a reading level test (http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/Resources/40L%20Test.pdf) and he reads at a 3rd grade level. He also reads very, very quickly, with lots of mistakes. I gave him the Miller Word-Identification Assessment (http://www.donpotter.net/pdf/mwia.pdf). He read the holistic I and phonetic I each in 45 sec. So I had him read the holistic II page, which he read in 3'18'', making 26 mistakes. I did not time him for the phonetic II page because I wanted him to slow down and be more careful in his reading. I had to keep reminding him to slow down. He made 36 mistakes. I pointed to some of the words he missed on the phonetic II page and had him read them again, and he could read them just fine when he took is time and really looked at the word, sometimes sounding it out. The mistakes he made were exchanging letters, adding letters, saying a word that looks similar, and skipping words altogether. I attached my copy of Phonetics II with my notes of his mistakes. I gave him the Barton student screening, which he passed easily. I read to him a story to test his oral comprehension, which is fine. Then I dictated a sentence to him and had him write it. I cannot remember the sentence I dictated (I just opened a book and read him a sentence), but I also cannot figure out what he wrote! I've attached his writing sample. His parents said that he has the most trouble with the little words, he skips them, misreads them, can't remember how to spell them. His mother had a hard time reading when she was a child. It sounds like dyslexia to me, but not the typical kind. My current student has to sound out the three letter words and struggles with fluency; her reading is labored. Jacob's reading is not labored at all, though inaccurate. I'm not sure what he needs. I think Barton would help, but I'm not sure the entire program is necessary. Being unfamiliar with what is in each level myself, what would you recommend for a child like Jacob? Is there an efficient way to remediate Jacob?

I think this is a fun question I want to ponder a little longer. My first thought is a year of projects. Build something out of wood (furniture), paper mache (piñata), metal (I want a large metal chicken), glass (something to hang in my window), clay. memorize and perform a play, go camping for a week while studying constellations and fire-making, make and sell a craft at a fair, build a family website, take German together (we might do this), take karate together, go to the zoo and museums, volunteer somewhere... Eta: build a robot, make candy, take apart and put together a radio,

Heat just the water, then add the oats, cover and let sit. I do this for rolled oats and steel cut bc I don't like soggy oats.

I was thinking about going out of the box. Just do math and eltl, and throw all my other plans out the window, and using the library and interests for everything else. But I don't know that that would be a great idea for us. I think my kids would skim topics and not go for any depth. That's not something I value. Now last year was a radical year,and everyone turned out just fine. I sent them to German public school a grade level behind, so literally the only thing they learned was German. No history, science, math, or literature since they couldn't understand it and the math was a repeat. The cultural experience was completely worth it, but I also learned that a year doing little to no school is not the end of the world like it might seem.

ETA i don't know yet

Wild Kratts, Bill Nye, Magic School Bus, cooking with mom, and playing outside. :leaving: ETA: Oh, I guess he picks out science books at the library too.

Changed it completely.

My 2nd grader listens to the chapters on librivox or audible while reading along on kindle. My older daughters read it to themselves. I will read aloud to my new 1st grader next year. When they are ready to read it on their own, you can let them, or use it however you wish.

I love ELTL and RLTL. My dd11 used ELTL 5 independently and I think she wouldn't read the grammar lessons very carefully, and really started struggling with the grammar/diagramming. So for now we are skipping the grammar in ELTL and doing R&S 2x/week. But I love it. We will never move on. I know what I like and there's nothing out there that is better, imo. I've looked at wayfarers, but I've never done a program like that. I'm hesitant to throw out what we are using now to homeschool in a completely different way, but I'm inspired to look again. ETA I have my kids read the poetry out loud to me,and sometimes it is over all our heads, but we read it anyway.

I supplement the writing in ELTL when the child is ready for more. I either do it in addition to the writing exercises or I skip the writing exercises in ELTL, depending on what the child needs. Same with grammar.

Cle math 1 ELTL 1 RLTL 1 McGuffey Readers

Cle math 3 ELTL 3 (2x/week) RLTL R&S English 3 (odds/grammar only, 2x/week) Greek Myths /written narration Stories of the Pilgrims Prima Latina Apologia astronomy w/ notebook US geography

I like R&S better. I haven't used CLE LA, but I've looked at it. I think one of the benefits of R&S is that they have to read the lesson and write out their answers on paper. That just seems like a super important skill to have, imo, and R&S works great for that. We do only odds in R&S unless they need extra practice.

What Maize said. I school year round too. That means three weeks of school a month. One school week is four days for us. So that's 12 days a month, which is super easy to squeeze in around sicknesses and other things that come up. For 2nd grade and under I only do the basics, period. PLAY is way more important at that age than history and science curriculum for that age, imo.

Cle and I love it. I used math mammoth in 2nd grade with my two oldest, and I liked that too.

Latin

ELTL has a workbook you can use with their curriculum, and I do use that with my 2nd grader. But I add more copywork to her schedule by giving her a book on her reading level, point to the sentences I want her to copy onto a separate paper, and say, "copy that." So that's open and go :) I specifically want her to learn to copy from a book onto her own paper. I think mid 2nd grade is a good time to teach that skill.

No grammar. I would add copywork. My goal for my 2nd grader is to get her comfortable writing half a page of writing, hopefully onto wide ruled paper by the end of the year. Then have her read aloud a chapter in a book and narrate it back for both oral composition and reading practice.

My 4th and 6th graders are completely independent. CLE math, R&S grammar, ELTL, Classical composition, elementary apologia with notebook journals, MP's workbooks (famous men, 13 colonies), and various other books I assign written or oral narrations from.

Any Elementary Apologia book with the notebook journal. It's my kids' favorite subject. My dd11 is doing Swimming Creatures and is actually doing one of the experiments right now. She loves it. ETA: and she is reading Tiner's History of Medicine. It's more history than science.