:iagree: Although I really do minimal prep. I spend a few minutes at the end of a section (while the dc are putting together a notebook page about the lesson) to decide what we are doing next and will I need any props. There is a lot of flipping around in the book, though, so depending on your personality you might want to get the paperback. It covers K-2, so that helps with the $25. We'll do the book over first and second and then carry on with the next book. There is a Yahoo! support group also.

We enjoyed all 3 Mysterious Benedict Society books as read-alouds (lucky you have such an independent reader, they are long). There is a 4th out now that we haven't gotten into. The story centers on 4 children who are parentless for a variety of reasons and all are incredibly talented in their own ways. There is suspense and some peril, but nothing too disturbing (although who am I to judge that for your family? :tongue_smilie:) I, personally enjoyed one of the Haddix series on recommendation from the Children's librarian, but it was juvenile enough (too many happy coincidences) to keep me from picking up others. However, your 10 yo might not be so bothered. There was a fair amount of action and suspense. This was the series set in the future where no one is allowed to have more than 2 children, so 3rd children are all in hiding. If he likes Fantasy and is reading at YA level, I can not recommend Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men enough. The little blue guys speak with something like a Scottish accent - hopefully not too hard to read? Strong female character, some magic, allusions (and illusions), the Wee Free Men like to fight and drink but they are a bit embarrassed about it. I just finished the first "Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place" book by Maryrose Wood. I'll be checking out the second. One PP recommended The Giver by Lois Lowry which was great. Set in the near future with a Big Brother government. There is a loose sequel (or two?) if it strikes a chord. The Sisters Grimm books are good, but perhaps a little below his level. There is a fair amount of fighting bad guys, and the whole series is a spin on fairy tales. Entertaining. Happy reading!

I want to put in another vote for Miquon. We didn't use it then, but I would have if I had known about it. I have it now and pull ideas from it to present topics from another angle. It is colorful, uses C-rods a lot, has some teacher presented ideas and some workbook pages.

Not only is it great that she is reading, but I love the Ivy & Bean books, good choice!! :D

This is so true. Some people use the summer to finish up whatever didn't get done, while others use it as a continuation of the year. I tend to think of it as a continuation of the year and almost begrudgingly lighten the load to avoid burn-out, but I'm starting to rethink this a bit. To what end? We risk burn-out even with the somewhat lighter load, is it truly necessary? It is nice to see what other people do and try to give myself some perspective.

I just read an interesting book about pre-history in the Americas called Before Columbus. It changed some of my ideas about what things were like before the European explorers arrived. It is still a little over my dc heads, but I will use some of the things I learned to lay the ground work for our study of American history. This is (I assume) the junior version of the same author's adult book, which I have not read.

I just finished putting together a Microsoft document that has labels and pictures to accompany the Burgess Book of Animals. Although we read the book last fall, we are discussing speciation in Science right now so I printed it and we've started putting it together. The scope is limited (mammals of North America - although now that I think about it Mother Nature never taught about people), but I would be happy to share it if it suits you. It is mostly an assimilation of preexisting web resources. It occurred to me this morning that I ought to cut out a bunch of construction paper leaves to mount the pictures on, so that might slow down assembly. :D

It does "place emphasis on the rule". We don't, so much, not for another couple of years, but it does! She has 44 separate categories, each with a particular rule (I think she calls them Spelling Generalizations). If you follow the program as written, you would say the rule (some of which are lengthy) and your student would write it down. Then you focus on 10 words in that group until they are mastered and then you move on. IIRC there are about 10 levels and each level has groups for about 25 rules, so some rules you see every time you go through a level and some rules show up more infrequently.

One thing I thought was helpful was the History of the Earth Timeline. They used toilet paper (too fragile), I used fabric scraps (not worth the effort), my Dad used a roll of register paper. We unrolled it down the hall, and then on through most of the upstairs. We read (highlights from) a section of The Beginning, by Peter Ackroyd and then walked along the timeline. Having it all laid out helped impress how long a period we were discussing.

There are a lot of good theories here! Lately, I have been enjoying the thought that our history, science and foreign language studies, despite not being our primary focus, will have continuity from year-to-year even in the elementary grades.

We'll do math all summer, but with two days a week set aside for something different - a game, or a lesson from a different program, etc. Handwriting will get some much needed attention this summer, but just a bit every day. Other than that we will ease our schedule down, have a light July, and then ease it back up in August to a full schedule in September. There are two weeks of travel scheduled, those may be totally vacation. For the most part we just keep on going from one lesson to the next. :)

Posts like that always send me to root through my bookmarks, often rediscovering things I've totally forgotten. Sadly I didn't find any free "Artist Study" curricula (I could use one also), but I did find a few things you might use to supplement whatever you come up with. If you are in a modern mood, MoMA has a set of lessons and you can filter by artist. This site as a bunch of PowerPoint slide presentations, mostly set up by period. The quality varies. The National Gallery of Art has these guides that make me want to go there (11 hours by car) just to use them. Perhaps if you make any road trips this summer... Here is an online image gallery. I don't know what is required to join, but they've got a large collection. If you study Picasso you can make your own Picassohead. There are lots of "Art Appreciation" ideas, but that is so vague and the quality so varied. I hope you find something (and then share it :D)

I remember learning CSMP in 4th grade. The rest of that year was a sad waste of time, but I went to a different class for that and remember that we had little magnetic minicomputers and magnetic dots. I've looked at the site, and like one of the PP would like to add some of that into what we do, but too much math, too little time! Surely I could squeeze in some of the worksheets as a variation on math-fact practice though.... (off to see if I can find the sheets I printed a while back) :D

I generally agree, in fact I had started to think that perhaps I got the wrong book - perhaps the YA version or the abridged one. Yes, I think it has made me more carefully with terminology, and I also try to be sure to discuss alternative solutions, but reading the Let's Play Math blog pointed out those same ideas. I was disappointed to find it relying so heavily on anecdotal experiences. I couldn't take it too seriously after a while. While I like anecdotes for illustration I was hoping for some more actual studies to flesh out the ideas. Perhaps the author could have found competent and incompetent teachers from the same cultural background? I realize that a side point was that China does a better job teaching and screening teachers, but it seemed that the main goal was to discuss better approaches to teaching children (including using better teachers) and that the cultural aspect distracting. Maybe this is just because I was reading it with an eye to improve my teaching of children

Sorry, it is probably me. On a "normal" day we do math, then when they are done we do spelling, then maybe squeeze in grammar. Then we take a break for an hour or so and reconvene for lunch, after lunch we do 2 more topics and take another break, then maybe a last thing in the afternoon if needed. When I start to dread trying to keep everyone moving along with their work, sometimes it helps me to change around the order a bit. So, we do the part where I need to be there and then they finish up (when possible) on their own. For instance, we will do the math lesson and talk about it and then I give them the review/practice problems they need to finish but we put them aside for spelling and then I do the grammar lesson and give them copy work. Then I'm done for a while and they can take a break when the math work and the copy work are done. Of course it isn't usually this black and white. This doesn't necessarily help them stay on task better, it just removes me from the nagging role (for the most part). Clear as mud? ETA: I want to apologize again because not only did you spend time re-reading my post, I'm not really offering a solution just a different take on what you are doing. Sigh.

One thing to consider is that SOTW 4 covers a time period with a lot of war and disruption. I bought SOTW4 when my dc were in K thinking I would just cherry pick some topics to discuss and I just couldn't work it out. Once we talked about the Glass Palace I was at a loss for topics that they could pick up on (ETA: not too politically complicated) and that weren't too violent. You are talking about a first-grader, so this may not be an issue - you're the best judge for your kids. I switched direction and covered pre-history for a year, loosely tying history and science together. You could do this with whatever suits your family's beliefs. Even if you do this, your oldest would go through the cycle at least twice, and by the third time you may be doing more in-depth studies and not the full cycle anyway. Just relating my experience.

When I'm starting to get a little crazy about the nagging coming out of my mouth I try front-loading the parts where I need to be there. So, in the morning sometimes we will do the math lesson and the grammar lesson, and then they can take a break whenever they finish the math facts worksheet, and the copy work (or parts of them, or one of them, or whatever makes sense for that day). Meanwhile I try to do something in another room for a while and pop back in after 10 minutes to see if everything is going OK. Then it is not nagging it is a reminder. :) I can repeat this pattern at lunch time if needed.

Everybody's experience is different, that goes double for twins! I don't worry about having them narrating separately, I just alternate. We'll be narrating for a while yet, and I think there is value in hearing other people do the same task (assuming everyone is paying attention...) Mine are fraternal and so far we have been able to stay in the same level for all our programs which is convenient. I do try to watch closely to see that both of their needs are being met - that one isn't being pulled along faster than they can truly pick up the material, or conversely that one isn't coasting on material that is too easy. I don't have it all worked out yet. I love, love, love to hear them (and their younger sister) all playing together during our breaks. Unlike one of the PP, I think building a strong, life-long bond between them is one of the best things about homeschooling. I hope it works! :001_smile:

One thought is that you could teach French for one year because it is something you know. That would give you a feel for where it fits in the day, perhaps spark interest in your dc in learning a (any) language, and there is carry-over, right? You learn vocabulary, the concept of noun-gender, some conjugating, cognates and false-cognates, etc. and all that carries over to some degree even if you switch opportunistically to another (romance) language. Plus, if you are teaching it yourself, it might be helpful to keep it as easy to teach as possible. If you decide to go with Spanish or Mandarin, you might try to find someone to come to your house to teach it for an hour once (or twice!) a week. Graduate student? Spouse of graduate student? Adult education teacher with daylight hours on his/her hands? It is a low-key way to start, they can plan activities and topics, you can often get a reasonable price, with more flexibility than a formal class. Then you can supplement on other days with your own activities - computer program, books, games, stories, whatever. That way it will definitely get done at least once (or twice!) a week. :D This is another area where it is good to have thought about your goals. Fluency requires some serious dedication and resources. Functional knowledge of the language probably requires persistence over time more than anything else (?) Building a store of vocabulary is still valuable and maybe just needs a variety of exposure... I'm sure there are other possible goals I'm not thinking of.

I agree with Farrar. Kitchen Table Math is a scope and sequence all the way through elementary math, with one or two ideas for each topic. If you are planning to use MUS, you might want to stick with Family Math (which I'm not familiar with) and books like Peggy Kaye's Games for Math book. Those would give you game ideas for introducing topics and getting kids excited about math using games and conversation. Check your library for other, similar books if you can, that is a great way to start math education!

I found a book at my library called Picture Book Activities by Trish Kuffner that has a lot of good ideas. It is worth checking for, I think she had sample 5-day and 3-day schedules in it.

Oh, that would be great. Penmanship is improving, slowly, but I had been regretting not having ds in particular do more coloring in the bygone days. Hunter this is an excellent point. Art in particular has vague goals for me. I guess I would like some level of appreciation and then some higher level of confidence than I have in my own abilities. :D I'm going to try some of these ideas and see if anything clicks. In the meantime... :lurk5:

I tried to teach from Drawing with Children a year ago and it was a disaster. I just didn't get it and in retrospect needed to have and give a LOT more hand-holding. The book may be enough for some, but not us. That said, I later found this website with lesson plans. It may not have fixed the issue in our house - but yours sounds more enthusiastically artistic. If you do return it and want to try something other than the drawing books once in a while I've bookmarked but never tried these videos from Jan Brett. Might be just the thing for a rainy fall day (assuming you live where it rains in the fall). I was flipping through the What to Draw, How to Draw book linked by a pp and my kids wandered by and said they wanted to try it. SCORE! Thanks.

When they made the switch to digital, we didn't switch. My DH missed basketball and football, but not so much anymore. We moved and the previous owners left a huge projection t.v., so we use that for the occasional kid's video, fiction or non-fiction. I'm pretty flexible about that. Whenever I'm tempted to sign up with cable (or some other option?) I start to think about how much $/hr t.v. would cost, or, how much would I need to watch to make the $/hr feel reasonable. Either way, I usually decide to put it off for another year or two.

Thanks! I am always on the prowl for new, free, Spanish resources. The link looks interesting, but the lessons seem geared for adult learners. I could use some brushing up on my own skills, though, so I'll check it out. One of these days... Can I assume you have also found Salsa and First Step in Spanish? Both are free video series from different PBS stations. Another favorite site is Teaching and Learning Spanish. She has other websites for kids listed down on the left-hand side. I have NEVER been able to spend enough time looking through this site. Your kids might particularly enjoy her older posts with some key translations for Pocoyo, like this one. Disfrute!