Thank you!!

Don't count down - count up. "Do this 100 fact sheet - try to finish in less than 20 minutes!" Start the timer. It takes the child 13 minutes. "Try to beat yesterday's time of 13 minutes! Yay! You did it in 12!" Keep on working until you are fluent!

I have one kiddo whose natural gifting is NOT math. We have taken a PreAlgebra class this year at a university model school, but I think we need to do some review before starting Algebra. I am looking at Derek Owens for this summer. Some of the topics she definitely knows and should breeze through. Others, though, she is shaky on. How easy is it to personalize DO PreAlgebra to speed through some topics and really focus on others? I am having a hard time figuring out what exactly the course looks like. You watch a bunch of short videos, then do the week's work? Is she going to need to watch all the videos, even if she already knows that material? Can she test out of some areas and skip the videos and homework on those topics?

I would hit it from a couple different angles. Name them different things so she doesn't think she is doing all math all day. It's all in the perception. 🙂 - Math Facts - math is going to be awful from 4th grade on up if you don't have the facts down cold. Apps, games, and such for five minutes a day, and a speed drill (100 problems, mixed operations) once a day. We time the speed drill and then try to beat the time each day. Every missed fact adds 3 seconds to your time. One of my kiddos started at 18 minutes because she was working every one. She is now down to 2 minutes, but it was a hard slog! So print the speed drill, and tell her you will time her and hope she can finish in 20 minutes with 100% accuracy. Almost every kid will be much faster. If she does 19 minutes, tomorrow set a goal of something less than 19 minutes. Eventually you want to get to under 2 minutes. Keep doing them daily until you are firmly at that goal. - Key To booklets - work through Fractions, then Decimals, then Percents. We do this in the car first thing each morning, along with a Math Minute and a Reading Detective. One of each each day, and we call it a "Brain Warmup." - Khan Academy - don't enter a grade level - just work through from the bottom up. She will fly through Early Math, kindergarten, 1st, etc. This will identify where the holes are and help fill them. - Math Mammoth for your true curriculum. Use their placement guide. Kids who are behind need LOTS of math. You don't want to move on to algebra until arithmetic is 100% solid!

How long would you expect a 7th grader to take to get through Getting Started With Latin? Let's assume 20 or so minutes a day, 4 to 5 days a week. Is this a one month thing, or six months, or a full year?

Thank you so much - off to search!!

My 7th grader is taking First Form Latin 2 days a week at a university model school. She is getting a decent grade because we work the recitations a LOT and so everything is memorized cold. But she doesn't truly understand the translating due to some minor learning challenges. I would like to do something (somewhat fun if at all possible) this summer to shore up the understanding before she goes into Second Form next year. She won't care if the book is too young for her if it is fun. Can you suggest something that really clearly explains HOW Latin conjugations and declensions work, and provides lots of practice? Bonus if it comes with a video or DVD, and an answer key for me!

Thanks!

Can you recommend a good book or a documentary about Versailles? (I found several that were painfully boring - need an interesting one!) This would be for upper elementary / middle school. Thanks!

We just did IEW as it's own separate thing. It kinda went along with our history, but anything that they learned history-wise was just a bonus.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

We will be doing Mystery of History Volume 3 (The Renaissance, Reformation and Growth of Nations) this year. What are your favorite movies related to this time period?

Each summer, I delete my kids' Khan Academy accounts and have them start fresh with a new account and work from the very beginning up. It took my kids 1.5 to 2.5 hours (spread over a week) to get it done from Early Math through about 3rd grade. It's a good review, and points out to me anything they are struggling with. They keep working 20-30 minutes a day through the summer, and just get as far as they get. I quietly hope that they finish next year's grade before the school year starts, just because that exposure makes the next year easier, but I don't say that out loud. I just want them to keep plugging away each day with no pressure. It's a change of pace from the school year that keeps it fresh.

Can you suggest an easy-to-understand version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream for a child with minor learning challenges? Best friends have it coming up this school year, and she will want to know what it's about so she can participate when they are talking about it. This is for a kid who just finished 6th grade, but has some minor delays, so is more like 4thish.

Even kids who do great up until then will often start struggling in fourth grade math if they don't know all their math facts cold. The problems become more than one step, and having to hold your place in a problem and go over to the side to figure out a fact, then go back becomes cumbersome. Fractions are a nightmare for kids who don't know their facts. If you know them, the concepts make sense, but if you don't, it is confusing where those "random numbers" are coming from. I would do math year-round for a while. I would do math facts separately from math curriculum. Call it something else. "Fact Mastery" or something so that the kid doesn't feel like he is doing math all day. Hit it for five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the afternoon or evening every single day until he knows every single fact cold. Even if you aren't quite at the level where this is really needed, you will be there soon and don't want to have to stall out and backtrack. Future math will go a lot faster with those facts memorized. I would NOT do Beast Academy with a non-mathy kid. It's really focused on having the child figure out the concept themselves rather than teaching. It is phenomenal for my naturally mathy kid, but it would absolutely defeat my others.