khall
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Posts posted by khall
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We're using book 1 of Spelling Wisdom and so far it's the only thing that has worked with ds9. We had previously tried Natural Speller and Sequential Spelling and both were big flops. I'm actually seeing him retain and implement what he is learning with Spelling Wisdom, so that's been a great change. I was quite amused a few weeks ago when he was in the middle of taking the spelling section of the Stanford test and he looked up at me and said "hey, that's one of the words from my spelling " He then proceeded to give me the whole quotation that it came from. :lol:
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for our soon to be 3rd grader, we will be using
Oak Meadow 3
Grammar: 2nd half of Serl's PLL
Math: MEP 2B and 3A, Singapore Intensive Practice Book 2A
Spelling: Spelling Wisdom
History: A Child's History of the World
lots and lots of books
Spanish: LiveMocha.com
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The not-so-good librarians say lightly that they're just "stocking what people are reading." :( "We only have room for so many books." Limited room is a good reason to aim for quality over quantity!
Well, as both a homeschooling mom AND our local children's librarian, maybe I can shed some light on this for you, since so many of you are saying that your libraries only have twaddle....every week we are required to print out the list of the books that have not been checked out for at least a year and we withdraw them from our shelves. We (the staff members...but there are only 4 of us) look through this pile and rescue anything we think is worthwhile by checking it out ourselves so it falls off the list of "has not been checked out". Of course this means that I usually have out about 35 books from a strange assortment of SL cores and AO years :lol:, but this is how I've managed to keep many of the good ones in the library. However, it is so frustrating to do this and then see that the books I've rescued rarely go out. It seems that 9 times out of 10 the kids come in and constantly ask for Horrible Harry, Junie B. Jones, or the most recent DVDs. The books that get checked out constantly are the ones that are in no danger of being sold at our used book sales, and the majority of our patrons are definitely NOT checking out Newberry Medal books! Unfortunately, we really do have to cater to the majority, but if you want to keep the good books on the shelves....CHECK THEM OUT!!! :D
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I had downloaded the math placement test from their website (merely out of curiousity...to see what the expectations were) and they called me a week later to "see how the test had gone and help with appropriate placement"......ummmm, we didn't actually take the test, I was just looking!
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We love the books from Tin Man Press. They have some very inexpensive ebook downloads if you wanted to just sample what their material is like without actually purchasing one of the books.
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I'm almost afraid to post this because I know so many people love this and use it quite successfully but we really disliked CLE LA.
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It should be fairly obvious what kind of speller they are once they are reading fluently. You'll know for sure if you have one that is NOT a natural speller. For us, dd7 can spell most words that she is able to read and seems to intuitively understand most "rules" without having been taught any (similar to the person who said her child spelled "omitted" because that's just how it should look). We don't even do a spelling program with her. She's a much better speller than her 9 year old brother. No matter what, he can't spell. I think that's strange because he reads extremely well. But he's constantly adding extra letters (today he wrote "never" like this: naever), or confusing or maybe overgeneralizing with the rules (spelling money as monney because while he was writing it he vaguely remembered something about doubling consonants before vowel endings and thought it would apply). He often confuses vowel sounds or mixes up consonant blends. I'd have to say that if you have a child who asks you how to spell....every....single...word when they are writing, then you don't have a natural speller on your hands!
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Has anyone noticed typos in the material you bought from Queens? I just received a package (the first I've ordered from them) and while the Pictures in Cursive books are absolutely gorgeous and my kids will love them, I was disappointed to find typos in the introductory letter in the front of the book, on the blurb on the back cover, AND within the pages to be copied. There was a typo on the first page of a history book that we purchased also. I didn't read further than that for that particular book. Anyone else notice this?
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Yes! We're using it with a 7 year old and 9 year old and it seems to work well. You would probably move through it much more quickly with a sixth grader.
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FWIW...I am planning a PS day next week. I am not sending them to school, but will try to do my best to imitate it here at home. No cuddling on the couch with pj's on as I read, raise hands to ask a question, 20 minute lunch, worksheets, worksheets, worksheets, waking up at 7 (I am not going to like that), homework for after our "school day", ect. It'll be a real eye opener.
Hope to see you at park day Friday! :001_smile:
Wow, this will be quite a day!
I enjoy seeing everybody's schedules. Sometimes I panic and think I'm not doing enough, but then I remember what the kids are doing at PS. I worked there for 2 years prior to homeschooling, and I thought you all might be interested in what our local school has their 3rd graders doing all day:
7:30-8:00 - bus drop off and outside recess (inclement weather, sit quietly in the cafeteria)
8-8:30 - breakfast served in the classrooms
8:30- 10:00 - LA block (this includes the teacher meeting with small reading groups for 15 minutes while the other students work quietly at their desks doing cursive, copying spelling words, drawing, reading silently, doodling, snoozing, fidgeting)
10-10:30 bathroom break and snack
10:30-11:30 - math
11:30-11:50 recess
11:50-12:15 lunch
12:15-12:30 bathroom break
12:30-12:45 read aloud
12:45-1:00 quickly go over any homework assignments
1-1:45 rotating schedule of history/science/geography/computer
1:45-2:30 rotating schedule - art/music/guidance/PE/library/Spanish
2:30 - escape!
now doesn't that make you feel better?
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Sheldon's PLL and ALL include grammar and composition
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I have a ds9 in 3rd also, so here's ours:
7ish - wake up, eat, get dressed, chores
8:00 meet with mom - go over daily schedule and do grammar lesson orally
8:20 poem, geography, and buddy reading a living history book with little sister (she's 7, in 2nd grade)
8:45 silent reading while I work with his sister
9:15 play outside, snack
9:45 read aloud (I read to them)
10:15 math lesson
11-11:30- pick up, walk dogs, leave house
11:45-12:30 art class with a homeschool group
lunch
1:00 - attends PE at the public school
1:45 - work on spelling/cursive/
2:15 free time/outside time
about 20 minutes before or after dinner "homework" time - finish up independent work, this is usually math problems and a phonics page
We do more with history and science the rest of the week because we have so many outside commitments on Tuesdays, but I think your schedule looks fine. Do you take little breaks for some wiggle time in between your subjects? If mine don't take breaks, they end up taking absolutely forever to do their work, and they whine the whole time and everybody is miserable.
Good luck!
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livemocha.com
We're only on the first lesson, but it's free so it won't cost you anything to give it a try.
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It sounds like you're looking for the DOMA assessment from Let's Go Learn.
It will test phonics principles, basic spelling, oral vocab, and reading comprehension. It does have a section on high frequency words but it's only one small portion of the score and even many of those words are decodable with phonics. It will give you the results in several different forms. You'll see a graph that shows the score as a grade level measure, also a DRA equivalency, and a lexile score.
Hope this helps!
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I'm assuming she's 7, because that's what in your signature. All I can really say is that my DD7 would never be able to do that schedule. Of course, all children are different and what works for one may not work for another. But we have to do short lessons with lots of breaks and outside play in between. Total time for all schoolwork for her is probably about two hours. I don't know if that's at all helpful to you, but it's just our approach.
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Our approach is somewhat Charlotte Mason and somewhat Waldorf with a little bit of unit studies thrown in.
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This is our tentative plan for 4th next year:
MEP math Year 4
Spelling Wisdom Book 1
Sheldon's Language Lessons
Literature from SL and AO
Science/History - Oak Meadow
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We test because I'm lazy. :D
I feel like it's easier to take a week and have the kids fill out the little bubbles than it is to try to put together a comprehensive portfolio that accurately reflects what we've been doing this year.
I also like to see the progress they've made from the previous year. If you give the same test each year (not the exact same test, but the next grade level up from the same publisher), then there's a number on there (the scaled score I think?) that can be compared to the previous year's score to show progress. It can be informative to see where, and how much, progress was made in different subjects.
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starting at the beginning of Year 1 would probably be your best bet, since Horizons and MEP have completely different approaches. DD7 started this year with Horizons 2A. In January she finished Horizons 2A and we switched to MEP and she started at the beginning of Year 2. It's been very challenging for her, and it probably would have been better to have let her move quickly through MEP Year 1, but I got hung up on the grade levels. MEP really requires more thinking, while Horizons works more on learning algorithms.
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We discovered Connect the Thoughts a few months ago, and I couldn't find anyone to answer questions about it, so I just went ahead and purchased a few of the beginning lower school courses to give it a try. It's designed for the child to work through it on their own, and at first my ds9 was enjoying that. I guess after a few weeks he felt a little lonely and asked if we could go back to doing history and science together, but he wanted us all to use the CTT curriculum. The history uses Story of Mankind as a spine, and the excerpts you need to read are included, but we went ahead and got the book from the library to go a little deeper. The curriculum includes lots of drawing (yesterday they drew what they thought the beginning of the world would look like), hands on activities (go outside, find stones and sticks and make a tool with it, then compare it to tools you use today), and lots of writing. We've started doing discussions for the writing prompts because dd7 wouldn't be able to do all the writing. The science is similar, with tons of hands on and experiments. It's been a great fit for us and we'll probably continue to use parts of both the history and science next year. It's very different from any other program I've ever seen, but we really like it. If you join the yahoo group, the author will answer any questions you have.
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We haven't been using it long term, so I can't say how well it works as far as preparing for upper levels of math, but we are extremely pleased with it so far. We use year 2 for dd7 and year 3 for ds9. What I'm most impressed with is how they have to actually think and apply their knowledge. We had previously used Horizons and it seemed like they were just being taught to memorize how to do the process of solving certain types of problems, rather than truly understanding. MEP encourages creative solutions and there are lots of puzzles and mental math.
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I took a look at the 3rd grade version of MCP recently and just wanted to add that there was daily review in the teacher's guide. The student text just covers one topic at a time, but the teacher's guide gave a daily list of review problems that covered a variety of topics. There were also suggestions for mental math.
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I actually send my children to the public school to participate in PE. They go for 45 minutes and seem to enjoy it.
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We like the books and downloads from Tin Man Press
Would you stop your 9yo and make her do school?
in K-8 Curriculum Board
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