I've had this app on my Appshopper wishlist for a while for dd but I don't like to spend more than $5 on an app. It's normally $6.99 but it's on sale now for $3.99 so I'm going to get it. She likes to make her own books so I think she will enjoy this.

I did say I'd have to resist the urge for vengeance. If it makes you feel better it would be followed up with go do your math and a few days of pointing out things I know that you don't just to reinforce the point.:tongue_smilie:

The Beatles #1's album. My dad plays the guitar and introduced my 6 year old to this album. It is the only album on the shared ipad that isn't school related that she listens to regularly. She walks around all day singing, "she loves me yeah, yeah, yeah", "yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away"..."it's been a hard day's night & I've been working like a dog". She gets some funny looks in the store and I get the songs stuck in my head all day. :lol:

After resisting the urge to plot a nasty vengeance assignment I would probably respond calmly with something like. "I respect your opinion and I'm glad you feel secure enough in our relationship to share it with me. When I was your age I would have felt exactly the same way. Now that I am an adult I realize that youthful naivete is a blessing and I'll let you enjoy it until you grow up and realize you didn't know half of what you thought you did. In the meantime I'll just keep shepherding your education until your an adult because it's my job"

I agree that it's more about parenting than the homeschooling. As a homeschooler I have more time with my dd to parent her and correct wrong behaviors while teaching right ones than if she were in school. With that being said, I will say that my experience teaching children at church in Sunday school and Bible study tells me that there is a shift that happens in a lot of children somewhere between 3rd and 6th grade that is not positive. Attitudes of formerly cheerful learners seem to go down the drain quickly. I don't know exactly why but I just know that over the last 15 years I've watched children go from pleasant to teach to unpleasant to be in the room with in a few short years more times than I would like to count. It's not every child but it does seem that a lot of behaviors previously associated with rebellious and difficult teenagers shift to the pre-teen set and now to the late elementary group.

Great points and a much needed reminder. I've been finding myself feeling frustrated a lot this week and I know it's really about my responses and not what my child is/isn't doing but some times it helps for someone to point it out. I read in a book once that we should consider our emotions, especially anger and frustration, to be a warning sign to something going on in our heart. Almost like smoke that sets off a fire alarm. The smoke isn't the problem but it warns you about the fire. Our emotions aren't the problem it's what's inside my heart that's causing me to respond this way to unfinished work. Am I prideful about being ahead in the curriculum? Am I expecting perfection from my child when I'm nowhere near perfect? I've been having to check myself a lot the last few weeks.

Is it your math curriculum? I remember a recent thread about having to do something special to make math mammoth (I think) work on an iOS environment and that the instructions are on the publisher's website. Are you importing the PDF dorm dropbox on to the iPad or is it just showing up in the notability folder on your of?

My daughter is in a really honest phase where she confesses everything and shentoldnme Rocket Math wasn't good for practicing math because the rocket is too tempting to play with.:lol: I guess that's a universal experience! Apparently math bingo requires you to do math problems to earn bingo bugs to sling at some coins or something...she says it's better for practicing math.

I don't think that's taking your mom's side at all. I think it was a perfectly reasonable and acceptable response. I love you but think you're making a horrible decision is the truth and it's okay. Saying I will never forgive you or speak to you again would be taking your mom's side....even if that's what you might feel like saying you didn't. I don't think he can expect much more than that. I also don't think it's impossible for them to reconcile. If there are no third parties involved it often doesn't take long to realize that living by oneself after 37 years of a spouse/companion isn't all it's cracked up to be.

We're doing FLL3 and MCT island now. FLL diagramming so far (we're about 30 lessons in to the book) is quite simple. Dd doens't even need me to explain or ask questions. We have done about 15 or 20 sentences in Practice Island. They are move challenging. I think we probably could have skipped level 3 and gone staring to FLL4 and it would have been fine. Since I already bought 3 (in PDF to use on my iPad) we're going to finish it and then return to practice island to finish the sentences in there. If your child doesn't like practice island FLL3 might be a good fit because it's a little more straight forward and easier to follow.

Also...then alpha level is pretty gentle. I doubt you'll get to much that feels too difficult for your son. It probably won't seem like work for him until you get to the last 10 lessons or so in the book.

I can share some thoughts and what we've decided to do for today but I don't honk I have all the answers. I'm torn between justbletbher be a kid and pushing her to do her best. I probably fluctuate between both in practice. Dh and I actually had a discussion about this very thing today. I was leaning towards slowing down or even stopping the long division because I was getting tired and frustrated with how long it takes her to do problems. After we talked we decided that we need to keep going. The thing is she can do it...she just doesn't want to. Because EVERYTHING else comes so easy for her (she can read anything, she remembers everything she reads, knows every answer in class at church, never needs help in any other subject, easily picks up her Latin & Greek lessons, etc) math is the only area she has to work in. We feel that letting her off the hook might lead to a lifelong habit of quitting when things get tough. When we got to multi-digit multiplication for the first time we had a horrible first day. We watched the video but she said she just didn't get it. It was too hard, etc. There were tears, I felt like I was pushing her too hard...I basically did every problem for her because she needed "help". I went to dh and told him we needed to slow down and that I was pushing her too hard. The next day right when we started math a friend came to then office with her son. Dd wanted to play and I told her she could when she finished math. She then proceeded to do the same length worksheet we had the day before....in 10 minutes...in her head without writing the steps down and got every problem right. So...as long as I think she can do it but doesn't want to I feel we have to keep working. Because I'm not as mean and pushy as this post makes me sound I have done some things to make math a little more pleasant for her. We sat down and discussed a reward system. Basically if she does her best I won't make her do so many worksheets every week and she can spend half her math time reading math books like Life of Fred instead. This resulted in us drastically accelerating Delta and we'll probably do the same with Epsilon. If she demonstrates mastery after a few problems I let her test and we move on to the next chapter. I tried to find a previous thread where this was discussed but sisn't have any luck. Also, math bingo on the iPad is great for working on facts. She does this and the Singapore math app for fun. Because it's on the iPad it is apparently not real math in her mind. Off topic but I see you have an iPad app listed in your curriculum. What is it called and what subject is it? I'm trying to move more subjects to the iPad.

I am hesitant to offer too much advice because I don't think ther is much anyone can say that will make you feel better about this. I would encourage you to try to stay in communication with both parents. My dh's mother left his father about 10 years ago. They kept it a secret for several years and in the end that was way more damaging to him than the divorce itself. There was also infidelity on her part. To this day his relationship with his mom is very strained. Had there been open communication during the process they might have been able to work through the hurt to a better relationship today. I said all of that to say try to focus on what you can control and continuing to show support without taking sides, passing judgement or implying with you agree with the decision. If it were me I would probably thank him for informing you, tell him that you love him very much and always will but that you think this is a poor decision and that love isn't a feeling and that you hope he reconsiders.

I know for us it is one hundred percent a desire issue. My daughter can remember everything she wants to but she just doesn't like math. She couldn't help but learn the facts with mus because she got caught up playing with the manipulatives. She kept coming do me saying she found another way to make 10. Alpha and beta went very smoothly untll we got to multi digit subtraction. The she decided she didn't want to do it anymore so we had a few character building months. We breezed through the beginning of Gamma...then she decidedp multi-digit multiplication just took too long. More character building time. :D We did the first 20 lessons in Delta in about three weeks (simple division). Now we're doing long division and back to major character building. If I don't sit there with her she stares off in to space day dreaming and acts as she has no idea what to do. Just today I asked her if it was to hard and she said no I just don't like it. Then she proceeded to work 93,871 divided by 357 by herself while I watched her. As I'm sure you know sometimes gifted kids don't like to do things that take work.

I use mus and it works well for us. My dd is very accelerated in everything including math....but she hates it. MUS makes it tolerable for her. My impression is that when we get past the learning of basic arithmetic she is going to like it more but right now it's pretty painful. I love mus because of the video, because it's easy to accelerate and because it teaches the concepts in a way that makes sure children learn to understand why they are doing a particular problem not just how. The manipulatives are also great. The program is also great for remediation. Basically, I think it works well for range of learning styles and mathematic ability. You might find that once you switch to MUS your son starts moving a little more quickly. We spent a year on Horizon math and dd was still adding on her fingers and struggling to memorize her math facts. Between the video and the manipulatives she pretty much had them down a few weeks after starting alpha. Don't be surprised if you end up moving through more than one level per year.

I bought 10 Days in Africa as a last minute Christmas gift for my daughter after someone referenced it here. We are having a blast playing it and it has drastically improved our ability to remember the countries and where they are located in Africa. We plan to buy the rest of the series too.

Because I habitually over-purchase curriculum:lol: I have both the junior and regular notebook for Anatomy & the notebook for Astronomy. For each lesson there are generally narration type questions, minbooks (the regular notebook activities might involve writing vs. just cut & paste for the junior book), sheets to record experiment notes & results, crossword puzzles (in the junior book it usually has the first letter filled in as a clue), a Bible verse for copywork, and a page with suggested library books and/or DVDs to go with the lesson. There are coloring pages in the junior book but not the regular. They are well put together and well worth the cost in my opinion. We love the materials I have just decided to live with the fact that it will probably take a year to get thru the book because Science is often what gets skipped when we take too long on other subjects.

We just started attending a large church after attending the same small church for almost 15 years. It's somewhat different because you aren't in a building yet but some of the things they do that seem helpful are: When you visit on Sunday and drop your children off for the first time they actual assign them a buddy. There is some free time where board games are played before their actual classes start. This prevents children from sitting at a table alone and feeling left out. After service they have a connection room where people are assigned to greet/ask questions. There are multiple bible studies that meet before or after church and function like small groups. You can attend any you like and they have social functions throughout the year organized by the groups. This could be done in a school setting because you have multiple classrooms. Every other month or so they have a ministry fair type event where ministry leaders are available to meet with new members in an informal session to make them aware of opportunities to serve within the church. Getting involved is the best way for new members to assimilate in to the body. They also have the new member banquet. This is only possible with a building but maybe you could do something on a smaller scale like donuts & coffee before service. On Wednesdays the church serves a meal so people rushing from work to get to midweek activies don't have to cook. It's $5 a person. When you visit you are given a coupon for this. We attended this since it was free and because there are banquet tables you are forced to sit with someone you don't know. There were also people from the church going around to the various tables introducing themselves and engaging guests. There is a newsletter given each week with a list of upcoming events, bible studies, etc and who to contact if you would like to attend. There is an "information booth" type area in the lobby which is always manned by several friendly people who answer questions about missions, service opportunities, etc.

:iagree: I have an android with minimal apps on it and the ipad. I don't use the phone for anything other than talking anymore. If it acts as a hotspot that's a plus too. If you have to buy from best buy this isn't an option but if not apple.com has refurbished ipads for slightly less than retail. ETA: Surely you can get an iphone later when you are eligible for updrade without spending $400. I know we are waiting for our upgrade in April so we only have to pay $99. I would not spend $400 on an iphone.

We use it and really like it but it is wordy. My daughter loves to read and can read it on her own so it works well for us. We go much slower than the recommended pace. Because it can be used for such a wide range of ages and there is so much information in the book we just can't get through a lesson every other week like it is scheduled out in the notebook. If I had to read it out loud to her we would get through even less.

We did Code Cracker and are now doing Song School Greek because dd saw the program advertised at the front of her Latin for Children book. I was hesitant to start because I thought it would be difficult to do both. It is difficult for me but she doesn't seem to have a problem with it:lol: It's good for keeping me humble because she generally knows the answer before I do. Song School Greek can be done in 1st or 2nd. There is a local Classical University model school that does it with that age and then starts Latin in 3rd.

You must be very patient. I only have one at my house and some days it's quite the challenge. Today in particular has been one of those days :glare:

Congrats!

The answers to this are going to vary greatly depending on your theological position on scripture. If you believe it is inspired, inerrant, infallible, etc then you are likely to believe that there is one interpretation but various applications. Even the most conservative of scholars generally leave room for the fact that fallible man is limited in his ability to perfectly interpret the text. If you hold a more liberal view of scripture and tend to see the Bible as a collection of stories and/or literature and similar to the writings of other religions or historical pieces then the idea of multiple interpretations would make the most sense. What the instructor in a hermenuetics course teaches and is expecting from a student would differ greatly from one class to another based on the theology of the teacher.