:party: My son gets it, but it will be party time for me when he doesn't whine and complain about it!:glare:

We JUST started with the Chinese Abacus this week. I searched and searched for something and found very little and nothing aimed toward children. There is this for the Japanese Abacus, which is similar to the Chinese Abacus. Looks like a cute program, but it's a full coarse and I didn't want that. I ended up buying this book from Amazon because I knew my son would love the history behind it and it also comes with an abacus. I have written up lesson plans to go with it and printed practice sheets from the Math Mammoth website. I'm willing to share if you go that direction. One more and this one looks really good. I don't remember why I didn't go with it.

Thank you for that reminder! I was giving a copy of my states Grade Level Expectations and the writing section had me worried. I don't know why I even read that drivel! Most of it didn't make sense to me because it was written in language that would only make sense if you were teaching writing the schools way. Most kids aren't going to be creative writers, but yet the schools demand that be something they are not. If they can write a clear narrative and letter in elementary school then I think they are good to go!

I'm using the workbook this year, but last year we just did narrations and dictations from what we were already reading that day. It could have come from SOTW, Science or a chapter out of book we were reading together. I didn't spend a lot of time planning anything, I just looked at what we already doing that day and followed the weekly plan from the WWE textbook. I haven't decided yet which approach I prefer. It's nice to have it all scripted out, but on the other-hand it adds to the course load.

It's wonderful and complete! I love it! It can be difficult to get through in one year, but we just go at my son's pace. He started with 1A in K and is just finishing 3B this fall and that was working through the summer. He wants to learn how to us Abacus so we are taking a break to do that. He'll start 4A in January.

:iagree:

Allow her to ask you how to spell the words she doesn't know as she is writing. My ds8 is doing WWE3 as well and he needs help with spelling some of the words, even though his spelling isn't too bad for his age. He will just stop, look at me and say the word so I know he needs help. Also, we talk in depth about the punctuation before he starts writing. As he repeats the passage to me he also repeats the punctuation so I know he knows where the comma's are. If there is a word like 'there, they're or their' I make sure he knows which one and why before he starts as well. If the passages are too long take it a sentence at a time. Or give her the first word or two and see if she can remember the rest. Don't let her get frustrated! The goal is to be able to do it by the end of year. If she needs to take in parts and build up that is fine!

In the past I've had him do 2 pages a day and on the pages that are heavy with practice I cross out half of them. Now, I still have him do every-other problem on the heavy pages, but he works for 45mins and just gets as far as he can. This has helped on the days where math is taking longer or he isn't focusing as well as I would like. We both know it will end soon! :lol: Some days he gets three pages done, some days not even one. BTW, He is 3rd grade this fall and just finishing MM3b and will be starting MM4a after brief detour to learn the abacus and to better memorize his multiplication facts.

:iagree: Also, I've found that I sometimes need to log-out and log back in to get it fully recongnize the changes I've made.

Skip it! Once my ds8 has the definition or poem memorized we don't keep reviewing it. We are on FLL3 and it is reviewing all the definitions again. I read it once, have him repeat it and go on. I don't read it 3x and have him repeat 3x. Often he'll just start in with definition when I read it the first time and I'll just stop there. Same with the poems, he can memorize a poem in a day; once he proves to me he knows it I don't have him recite it every day.

:lurk5:

Oh dear! I don't think I want it sitting on my kitchen counter that long! I guess I could move it to the garage.

The books I have I'm afraid might be hard to find. This one is out print, but it comes with a great book with a bio on each president that would be good for a 5-year old. We also have this one that my son loves, also out of print for some reason. They both include President Obama. Another good resource is whitehouse.gov. I recently picked up a book at Borders on the clearance shelf, but it would better suited for older kids. ETA: Oh! and C-span classroom has a free presidental time-line poster. We just got ours a couple days and it is fantastic! Huge, but luckily we had the wall space. It's over 6ft long and about 2.5ft tall.

That is a good question! I cut back this year. Last year my son took resource classes at a local school and was there all day Thursday and half-day Friday. I cut that back this year to just one day on Friday. It was interfering too much with our school. So, this year he is at the resource school from 9:30 to 3:00 on Friday. He is taking 3 classes, Art, Chess and a problem solving/inventing class. Monday he has P.E. in the morning, Tuesday bible study with Grandma, Wednesday piano lessons and in the evening book club. It feels like too much and basketball hasn't even started yet, that will be in Nov sometime and practice will most likely be at the same time as book club, so we'll drop that temporarily. I'd like for him to be able to join Boy Scouts, but we simply can't take on anything else. And for some reason at this moment he is telling me he is bored..."Relax, its Sunday!! Go read a book! Go play outside!" LOL

Sounds like you have a marketable idea there! My son would love it!

Wow! that is great, thanks for sharing! I wish I would have caught the show on Dinosours this morning. I hope it's replayed.

This is the first science curriculum I've purcharsed and we are enjoying it! We are Lesson 4 and this is the first real experiment we have had to do. I'll give another try this week and see if we get a different result. My son really enjoys the end of unit folders. It's basically a unit lapbook of everything learned. I wasn't too sure he would like it, but he ended up spending several hours the folder for the first unit and he did a great job on it.

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Has anyone had any luck with this experiment? We set up it 3-days ago and so far nothing, but a crusty/crystallized piece of yarn. I followed the directions perfectly; we were able to dissolve close to 3lbs of Epsom salt in the 4-cups of water. I looked up another experiment that was almost identical and it recommended putting food coloring in the water to better see the development of the crystals, but still nothing. Just wondering if it is us or is the experiment just a bust? This is why I hate science! I want my son to enjoy it, but when we can't get these experiments to work it takes all the fun out of it. :(

My son liked all three, but he isn't much of a critic. He'll read anything I put in front of him. ;)

:iagree: This is almost 100% me. My dh works from home everyday, he likes to look at work well done and will help with special projects. For example, he took video of our butterfly project and they are going to edit the video this weekend. Other then that he is hands off. I asked him to look over this six page document I had to do of our goals for the year and what curriculum we are using; he flipped the pages and I don't think he read a single word. :glare:

This is what I told my brother-in-law just a few weeks ago: Latin is the root of all languages and many of our words come right from Latin, it reinforces grammar and teaches vocabulary. Latin is all around us, It is on our money, on our monuments and in terms we use everday like, AM and PM, lbs, ect, A.D., P.S.... Ok, that was two sentences. ;)

I checked other. We have a K-8 alternative school for homeschoolers that I use. They have about 250 students (part and full-time). The kids can take as little as one class or up to five, plus PE and Band. If they were maxed out on classes, they would have about 20 hours of contact a week. At 8 hours or more they are considered full time public school students even though they are doing most of their core classes at home. If your student is full-time you are assigned a supervising teacher (per state regulations), you don't have to file a letter of intent, but you do have to fill out a Student Learning Plan, which details your curriculum and yearly goals. They handle all the state testing for us. I have found the teachers, staff and principle to be pro-homeschooling, supportive and personable, but if that ever changed I would pull ds in a heartbeat. My son loves it and told us yesterday that he wants to go there through 8th grade and then go to regular high school. This fall he will be taking Art, Chess, an inventing class and PE. The last two years I passed off science to them, but I wanted to limit his time there to one day week instead of the two we normally have done.

I told my son the other day if he didn't focus on math and do a good job he would do ALL the practice problems, but if he focused he only had to half of them. It actually worked! :lol:

This is why I had my son take a science class the last two years. I didn't want to deal with all of that. Lord help me I'm doing science this year. So far our project list hasn't been too bad, but we are still on unit one. :glare: