Ds 8yo knew 5. I was just rereading Jim Trelease's Read Aloud Handbook last night. He says you need to understand about 90% of what is on a page to figure it out. Words you don't know require something like 12 encounters to increase comprehension. Don't panic. Forge on! It sounds like this is the first time she has had this level of challenge with the words. Happens. I think Wordly Wise 3000 has some online games. That might be a fun way to focus on vocab and check out the program.

Didn't they recently publish Getting Started With Spanish? If it is as nice as the Latin version, that would be a nice, low-stress supplement. We like Salsa here, too. Check resources from your library. Ours has online access for Muzzy and Mango. They also have a lot of "First 1000 Words" books, board books, and children's stories translated from English (which is nice if you are all learners). There are a lot of internet resources for teaching beginning Spanish, playing vocabulary games and even worksheets. I would not recommend the slowly-through-a-textbook approach. I've tried that and it doesn't work well for this age group. They aren't ready to order at restaurants, indicative themselves to strangers or conjugate verbs, and those are all early, foundational things in textbooks. I've had the best luck doing something small but different everyday. Watch Salsa on Monday, read a boardbook Tuesday, online something Wednesday, etc. Keep it fun to keep her enthusiasm up. And so it is fun.

We took a short spin through the Sentence Family after FLL2. It was a cutesy re-introduction to the pats of speech. They will get lots more practice in the next levels. Mine are approaching the end of FLL3 and are getting it.

Not a book, but what about the Henry Fonda movie 12 Angry Men? It is almost completely about the jury deliberation of a fictional murder case. I remember being blown away the first time I saw it.

I listen to a few of the podcasts you listed and I also have browsed through the archive of the BBC podcast, In Our Time, which has historians on discussing whatever (seemingly random) topic the show is about. In the credits, they always mention that BBC has a wide variety of topics available, so perhaps you can find something that interests you from that side of the ocean. You listen so consistently, have you thought about working casually on a foreign language? There are podcasts available in other languages that are geared toward learners (I use a Spanish one). Let us know if you find any gems!

Doesn't Grammar Revolution have that? She has a nice website. (Sorry no link. Power outage killed my router)

We like wood. I wouldn't get less than 155. That seems to just barely be enough.

For me, the distinction is in the ability to make eye contact. When I'm knitting a simple project I can still make conversational eye contact in a way that my ds - who is probably about as skilled at Angry Birds as I am at knitting - can not. Similarly, holding up a book says, "not right now" whereas casually turning pages on your lap alternated with long looks around the room might be, "please, someone, talk to me."

I agree with Farrar, we have the same situation here. I broke out fact practice from regular math and we spend 5ish minutes 3x a week. My dc will get stressed if I put too much emphasis on it. I try to give a timed quiz once a week with a small reward for passing and no penalty for not. I also allow 4 seconds per problem, which its more than most guidelines. Whatever. They are learning them now, and we can keep practicing for speed if necessary. Meanwhile, math continues into new territory and once in a while we see places where it would be faster if they had all those facts down.

We alternate lessons with 100EZ, which dd is not enthusiastic about, and Progressive Phonics , which is free for the printing and she likes.

Yes. As you get more fluent it is not hard to adjust to different accents or slightly different vocabulary. An American can generally get by in England without much trouble (insert funny anecdote).

Ed Emberley books? They are a little busy for a 4 y.o., perhaps. You could photocopy a section of the page and enlarge it?

If you order a burger at a diner it is just a patty on a bun. You have to specifically request pickles or lettuce if you want them. :-) They also have an interesting lingo all their own. "Burn one, take it through the garden and pin a rose on it" is a burger with lettuce, tomato, and onion on it.

I've been mixing in printable readers from Progressive Phonics. Their format is parent-read/child-read so it is easy to re-read the sentence up to that point for flow. Also, the early ones rhyme. Sounds like you have a lot of readers already, but they are free-ish, so you could check them out. For the variety, if nothing else.

Another kids book I've looked at was by Lucinda Guy. I can't remember the titles, but she had one for knitting and one for crochet. I found them at the library. You have some great responses already, I wanted to add that if you have a "local" yarn shop they tend to be really, really helpful, I bet you could arrange for an hour of someone's time to get you both started. You wouldn't necessarily have to commit to on-going lessons. Also, a nice project to startith can be a hat. It can be made in a circle, so no going back and forth necessary, and it is smaller than a scarf. Another nice project is a patch-work type blanket. It can be done in small pieces which makes problems easier to fix and the pieces can have different patterns which is a great way to add variety. Lastly, either craft is awkward and feels totally foreign until suddenly it doesn't, so stick it out as long as you are enjoying the challenge. I hope you and your dd have fun!

I'm biased towards data, but I say definitely graph it! Then it isn't your perception against hers. Also maybe have a plan, like one month at the higher level to see if you are right?

Maybe he is reading the instruction manual trying to figure out how to shut it off.

Great replies already. I want to caution you not to get too caught up in providing a different thing each day. This is just speaking from my own experience of getting overwhelmed trying to have something different for lunch and dinner (and breakfast?) every day. When dh and I packed lunches we did have basically the same thing every day. When it got boring I would be motivated to perk it up, but we always ended up back at the default lunch. That made it easy to have the ingredients on hand, and required minimal thought in the mornings. Hope you find whatever works best for you!

Homeschool share has a bunch of lapbooks and lapbook pieces. I started by doing a few of the pre-k lapbook for my dd to get a feel for how they work and how they are assembled. When we were doing the free SOTW lapbooks I started using ideas from Homeschool Share to make our own pieces in Power Point to replace some in the free book and to finish the lapbook for SOTW2. I haven't found the free pack to be as useful.

I want to put in a plug for Walnut tea from Essencha. My MIL gets it for me from a store near her. I love it. I think you can buy sample sizes, but I've moved up to the mega-cannister.

What level of WWE are you using? I thought the first level just had them tell you one thing they remembered. How did that part go? This kind of learning can take forever (from the parents' perspective). The help you are giving sounds good. Slowly make your questions more open-ended. Perhaps you could try reading them one really detailed sentence and then ask them what is the main idea, what are the details. I would start with a sentence from the selection, but you might be able to use their sentences eventually if they need it.

Visitor Drill makes WAY more sense for homeschoolers than a fire drill. It should almost be mandatory. I wonder, what would you charge for your 10-minute cleaning service?

Visitor Drill makes WAY more sense for homeschoolers than a fire drill. It should almost be mandatory. I wonder, what would you charge for your 10-minute cleaning service?

Least favorite of my triple posts.

For Latin we are using Getting Started With Latin. It is pretty quick, you could do it orally and 3 days a week is fine. Gentle intoduction that you might be able to fit in. I have a block of time Monday afternoons where I notionally rotate between art, composer study, nature study. If we do each once a month I'm happy. If we don't get to it I'm not stressed.