I'm in the same boat with an 11 yr ds who gets distracted and overwhelmed. If I mention three things that he needs to get done in succession, he gets upset and says he can't remember all that at one time. To me it's simple. We do lists and then he'll get distracted and tell me later that he forgot to look at the list. I always attribute it to lack of desire to remember. So according to this thread, maybe he it's lack of executive function and he really needs help organizing his thoughts. But I feel overwhelmed myself with all that I need to get done and I can drift off in several different directions with a lack of focus. That means it's especially important to me to not have to remind ds multiple times to complete his tasks.

We read the Sutcliff books when ds was in 4th grade and we both loved them. They were the little paperback versions without pictures and I think it was better to form our own images in our minds. The language is very rich and provides vivid images for your mind's eye to feast on. Not that illustrated books aren't beautiful - we just happened to have ordered the mass market books and they worked fine.

What about the Learn Math Fast System where the author states students can learn years of math in months: http://www.learnmathfastbooks.com/ I have the Liping Ma Knowing Mathematics coursebooks but they are visually geared toward the younger set with their photos and illustrations. Might not go over well with an older kid.

I have really wanted to use LToW b/c of Andrew Kern, but I need an "open and go" type of curriculum with my work schedule. To intermingle the two programs means it just won't get done around here. Reading all this with great interest.......

11 yr ds wants to begin to learn programming. Any updates on what's working for you and your kids these days?

G5052, You suggested in your post: "Look at the session questions in the samples though -- they are quite difficult at times and quite thought-provoking." Where are those located?

Great list, Derek. Thanks

Your replies have helped me out, thanks. I think I see glimmers in our homeshool journey that there is some beauty to behold in math. I just wasn't taught that way so I am intrigued by the concepts being debated in math education. I had two dried up, uninspired math teachers at critical times: a dull, old prune of a man who refused to smile and jingled change in his pockets while he "taught" us algebra in the dullest way imaginable. And our geometry teacher at a different school, was a mousy, plump little woman past retirement age who got a bit disheveled when she had to explain things to those of us who weren't getting it. You just stop asking questions when there is absolutely no pleasure in the math learning process and pray the semester will end quickly. I swear, teacher showing some enthusiasm for a subject goes a long way in encouraging the student to believe that it's even worth learning. I want to dump my math baggage so I can help our son see that math is a beautiful thing.

Steph, I meant TC. I looked more closely at the description in the web page and see there are problems for the student to do after the lesson, and later, printable worksheets as well. Thanks for your response.

Derek, I've looked at the YouTube videos which work through the problem sets so I think I get that. But where and how does your son practice his own problems? Is there a built in worksheet generator or online worksheet?

I periodically check Dr. Hung Hsi Wu's essays to see what's new in his efforts to reform math education in the U.S. The link below is from a presentation to educators and policy makers in October, and it is a quick and straightforward read. In it, he offers specific examples of where textbook school math has done more harm than good. He suggests a new paradigm for math education, and in other publications points out that we have created a false dichotomy between conceptual and traditional math. His goal is for math to be taught "correctly." Can you math folks look at this link and comment? (I promise, it really is quick and enjoyable.) A shout out to Nittany Jen and dh, dereksurfs, etc. http://math.berkeley...unty-2012-2.pdf He starts out addressing California standards, but it applies to the entire U.S. I know only textbook school math and I am lousy at it. I am always intrigued that I might have had a better understanding if I hadn't been taught by rote. I would liked to have been able to teach Singapore up to ds's current 6th grade level, but I was messing him up. We have turned to Thinkwell, which is pure traditional textbook, Life of Fred, and now maybe Tabletclass Math after reading dereksurfs' posts.

Thanks, ladies! Your suggestions really helped me re-think things. I set up time with a Quickbooks accountant to get me caught up with my bookkeeping. I might continue to farm that part out if it goes well. I called a friend who cleans houses to start every other week. I will do some batch cooking to freeze some meals to keep us a little healthier. I made an appt. about my knee. And I'll think about the laudry more as a load-at-a-time endeavor instead of one huge block of time. Thank you, thank you!! This board rocks.

I'm posting today for a reality check. Does this lifestyle sound normal or nuts, and does anyone have a suggestion for how I could organize this better? This is not a woe-is-me because I know most of us are overwhelmed. I just need to see how I can be more efficient to git-er-done. My husband and I own a machine shop where I help him run machines, quote jobs, order steel, help maintain our machines, etc. We are out here at 8 pm on Sunday night getting some rush jobs finished for the a.m. We always have lots of work from great customers. It's just the two of us and dh needs employees for the work load but we can't find any qualified machinists because not enough people want this field anymore. (A topic for another time - the trades and homeschool career exploration.) Dh and I get along great so that's not a stressor. I also do the office work: invoicing, paying bills, corporate taxes, insurance reviews, computer networking, etc. I homeschool our 6th grade ds, only child, and have him in Tae Kwon Do two nights a week, Awana on Weds., piano one day/week but am taking a break from the every-other-week co-op and speech/debate club. I love having ds's friends over so at least once a week we have a kid or two or three over here to run around the house. This is a true pleasure for me. My husband and I have been renovating a 100-yr old house for the last year with the help of a handyman-friend of ours and are getting close to having only the interior finishing and siding/gutters to do . We don't live there - it's a couple minutes from our house. We renovated a little apartment next to that house to accomodate dh's 83 yr old aunt who needs looking after. I check in on her, provide chat time and fulfill some shopping requests. Lots of things are always half done : laundry, house, meals, garage is a mess, etc. I was 42 when our son was born, am now 54, am noticing decreased energy. I tore knee meniscus a year ago slipping on a wet mat on pavement and excercise exacerbates the pain and as a by-product, my weight has crept up 50 lbs. I'm on thyroid meds. My desk at work is a mess, our schoolroom is a mess, and I feel like I race from one pressing thing to another. I am mostly calm about it, through God's grace, but once in a while I freak out (not the scary mommy way, I just get in a tizzy and impatient). Is this lifestyle nuts or do I just need better management skills? I don't see anything I can give up. I am not a morning person and get up about 7:30 but am not ready to go until 8:30. I don't know where else to go with this request since homeschooling is at the core of my life and identity. Our son is bright enough to get by with the amount of schooling we get done, but I will need to step it up next year for 7th grade. More online classes through Veritas or Memoria Press, Bravewriter perhaps? "Me time" is browsing homeschooling stuff online, (but this new WTM format has helped me cut down substantially sniff, sniff) I have many, many books that I long to read that would help me be a better Christian, mother, teacher and wife. Many books on classical education that require deep thinking, many of those started but not finished. Many audio books waiting for me. Bible reading doesn't get done. So, any ideas for me? Bless your heart if you read all this!

Here is another Hobbit study/read-along: http://www.redeemedreader.com/2012/10/hobbits-hot-chocolate-the-bookshelf-giveaway/

Very helpful, Shmead, thank you. I use Donna Young planners to schedule ds. http://www.donnayoung.org I tweak them all the time. I felt bad this week when ds saw me printing yet another rearrangement of his curriculum and he said something like, "Mom, isn't this something like the 50th time you've done this?" Yes, this is a personality thing, which could be related to perfectionism.

Maybe I missed it in your post; how do you access the classes? Which online academy/curriculum provider? They sound great.

Help! I feel like I'm in a hamster wheel with 6th grade math but it doesn't reflect ds's skills as much as my insanity over trying to cover all the bases. I feel so confident most days, but today, I am in a crumble. Not so on other areas of school - math is my area of paranoia. Background: I started ds with Saxon in 1st grade b/c I heard it was solid. We hated it. So we used SM1 and SM2. I could teach that! Yay. In the middle of SM3 I saw ds forgetting basic things and had my own internal freak out so I switched back to Saxon 3. Hated it again. Moved on to Saxon 54 which was better and I made him do every problem on every page (like Art Reed said,) but by the end of the year ds hated math and would cry when I got the books out. I used TT5 last year and it got the job done okay. I tried MM5 along with TT to make sure any weaknesses I heard about with TT were addressed. We didn't do well with MM so I put it in the garage filing cabinet. Now we're in 6th, and by golly, I'm going to make sure he has all his ducks in a row as we move toward algebra. So I overbought this year and don't use any of it well, or consistently. I have MUS Epsilon to let Mr. Demme teach fractions (and I got hung up myself on the rule of 4.) I bought Singapore 5a&b to back-track to make sure ds understands conceptual math. I have a subscription to 6th grade Thinkwell which uses a traditional (Glencoe?) text. I even have AOPS to see what I think we should be moving toward (and as I began to work through it myself, I got hung up on why reciprocals need to be made so complicated when it looks simple, but again, what do I know?) Ds worked through LOF Fractions this fall with ease and is now in Decimals. He loves it. I bought Keys to Fractions, Decimals and Percents for more practice. I also ordered Hands on Equations from HSBC yesterday. As I read this list, I feel nauseous! :tongue_smilie: I've read Liping Ma, I've read some of Hung Hsi-Wu and I'm trying to get ds to the conceptual la-la land so he's not mathematically impaired like I am. That's my hang-up. I don't know why I won't believe the educators who advise to just teach, or use Thinkwell, etc. to teach, the algorithms and quit worrying about getting to Liping Ma's nirvana. Ds does mental math fine, in my opinion, and gets "decomposing 10's," etc. Okay, so today I was teaching order of operations which we covered last year to some degree, but now in more depth. I use the same PEMDAS I used last year (is this old fashioned and wrong? I don't even know...) but when we apply it to some SM5a basic problems, I teach the "MD" in PEMDAS to be "left to right, M then D," which causes ds to now pick out all multiplication from an expression left to right and go back and pick out all division signs afterward. I have messed him up at a basic level and I think I need to completely farm out math. I would love to actually use the Singapore HIG but that's not working for me. Can someone talk me off the ledge? Doesn't it sound like I should just hand over the reins to a qualified online source and provide some consistency for ds, forget the false conceptual/traditional dichotomy? Oh yeah, last week my dh was ordering cement and asked ds what the square yards were of the area needing concrete, and ds drew a blank. That's something we had down-pat in Saxon 54. That isn't a "mental math" or "conceptual" issue, it's plain old memory of an algorithm. I don't want to fail ds! Help!

How many syllables are in your last name? What nationalities do you bring together? Micah Andrew Scott Micah Troy Anders Micah Levi Scott Micah Piers Wyatt Micah Liam Wright Micah George Fenn ahhh, the combinations are endless.....I think it depends on your last name. And how the initials sound if used instead of Micah later on when he becomes famous. :001_smile:

Thanksgiving with my husband's family is growing: the nieces and nephews are all getting married and now bring their spouses and kids to grandma's house. Everyone lives in the area so there are no out-of-town travels or complications like that. I believe we will be up to 29 people at my mother-in-law's house this year. Even though it's a big, older house, some insist on bringing their dogs (despite being asked by my MIL to leave them at home,) and between kids running around, dogs chasing them, everyone bumping into each other, and being pretty squashed around the huge dining table, it ends up being a pretty chaotic day. The only child in me prefers a quiet dinner at home with a few friends to make a long, leisurely day of it. My husband doesn't feel obligated to go to his parents' house, so it's pretty much up to me which way we go. Last year we skipped the family event and hosted our own at our house and invited 3 other families who have no local kin. I had a very nice time. I'm thinking this year we should go do the family thing just to alternate. Do any of you participate in Thanksgivings that are growing too big for one house and feel the need to split off on your own?

I just found a YouTube post where Bill OReilly states he will come out with the kid friendly version of Killing Kennedy in the spring. Profanities and sexual references will be removed which answers my question about the current version. I told my son he will need to wait until then and he can read that version.

I haven't had time to read Killing Kennedy yet, and skimming it might not answer my question. If you have read the book, is there anything inappropriate for an 11 year old? I don't know how in depth they might get with RFK's liaisons, for example. Our son grabbed it the day after it arrived from Amazon and began reading it with great interest.

This site has a "a poem a day" program sent to your inbox which is helping me easily incorporate poetry into our lives. A large archive helps locate some poems you might already plan to teach. http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=1252

Thank you everyone. OhElizabeth, I was hoping you'd respond, and I copied your checklist earlier this week when you responded to a poster about her 7th grader wanting more structure. I am encouraged and I will make the checklist a priority. Thanks!

I think that is for the tutor service. The online math is $99 which I assumed was for the year.

Has anyone used this online Singapore math supplement? Whaddya think? http://isingaporemath.com/