[So, what is your 1st Grader reading independently right now?]

She will be 8 in April and we are currently working thru Frog and Toad together. Audio books have helped her confidence, but she won't try to read a whole book on her own yet. Almost 11yo DS didn't read alone til he was close to 9yo. He still doesn't love to read, but is now reading The Whipping Boy for schoolwork and enjoys TinTin before bed.

 

I'm always shocked at how early some WTM kids are reading. Neither of my kids were developmentally ready to read in 1st grade. But their comprehension from all of our read-alouds was off the charts. I just add my two cents here for reassurance for those who are stressing over this early/late reader thing. :)

 

Pam K in NC

[Do you use a scheduled/prepared curriculum or do your own thing?]

This is a great thread! I've been visiting the WTM boards almost daily for about 7 yrs now, but I'm not a regular poster. I like this new forum, but I have to get used to it!

 

My oldest is 10 and we've just about everything you can imagine! For "boxed": most of Calvert grade 2, Sonlight book lists and the new 3-5 LA

 

Maths we've tried: Saxon, Rod and Staff, RightStart, Miquon, Scott Foresman, Calvert, Spectrum

 

This list is embarassing enough so I'll not finish the list of everything else we've tried. :(

 

10yoDS is a "late-blooming, reluctant-reader student" so I have continued to search out just the right things for him. Needless to say, I've spent 100s of hours every year doing research and have spent tons of money. And he's still not catching up to "grade-level." No surprise there after all the curriculum-hopping. I'm finally coming to the conclusion that the "right" thing just doesn't exist.

 

So this year I found out about Time4Learning from an old homeschool friend in MA. At first, I was horrified at the idea of sitting kids at the computer for schoolwork. But then we tried it and it was perfect for us! The kids love it because they have more control over their lessons. They love the games(lessons) and they actually remember more because they enjoy it and it catches their attention. I sit with them and we actually enjoy working together at school time.

 

I thought for sure this was to good to be true, so I printed out the lesson plans and compared them to our state's standards. I found that Time4learning goes way beyond what is covered here in my state. Now I recognize that is not what most classically-minded folks would use for comparison, but I have to go with what works for us, right now. I love WTM, but all my grand ideas for how it'd work in our house have proved to be failures. Just because WTM spells out how *I'd* like to learn, doesn't mean it's the best for my kids. This has been a very hard lesson for me.

 

I will still supplement with SL Core 3 history, reader lists and read-alouds, handwriting, science experiments, and maybe IEW next year. But T4L has lightened my load tremendously.

 

I wrote this long post with the thought that maybe someone else in the Hive Mind has felt this way and may benefit from my reassurance that it's ok to do the best you can, even if it's not the most popular(or even close to what you expected)way of homeschooling.

 

PamK in NC

ds10 and dd7