One additional thought...I was a great math student in school but it's not my daughter's strong suit. One of the things I like best about mathusee (we have completed Alpha & Beta & are almost done with Gamma) is that it teaches students to really think about the problems correctly. I see that she is really "getting it" and understanding why problems are done a certain way. There were things about math that I just understood on my own that I recognized my siblings couldn't get...the mathusee explains things in such a way that even if you're not mathmatically inclined you can still get it.

I have only used two math programs with my dd6 so I can't really speak to the spiral issue. I can tell you that with mathusee there is an emphasis on being making sure facts are memorized and higher math concepts are introduced in a gentle non-threatening way very early. i.e. when learning addition facts there were "mystery number" problems that were basic algebra like x+5 = 8. You can move as fast or as slow as your child needs and it seems to work well with different learning styles since you have the video, manipulatives & worksheets. I also like the fact that the goal is to make sure the child can do problems on paper or in their head and understand "when" to add/multiply, etc with the use of creative word problems. I've looked at several other programs but I know 5 families using mathusee with different age children and all are happy with it.

I use mathusee and love it. I'm good in math but because it comes with dvd's for instruction it will work for anyone. I tried other math programs but found that for us this was the best approach. The instructor teaches math in a way that makes so much more sense than the way it's taught in school and with the blocks my daughter immediately loved it. She went from hating math to asking to do it. We spend a year in K math and at the end of the year she was still counting on her fingers. After switching to MUS she memorized her addition facts in 2 weeks!

I don't know if you use Christian resources but if so Doorpost publishing has a book for Bible Study called Beauty & the Pig. http://www.doorposts.com/details.aspx?id=53 It's for ages 9 & up but there's a doll you can order and I would imagine you could tailor the information to use for character training with younger children.

You might try sticking with the sotw but go slower and utilize a lot of the library selections. If you use the suggestions in the book and search at the library for more easy readers (fiction & non-fiction) on each topic you can find a lot of options. I know several people who use the curriculum with kids 5 & younger but they really use a lot of the library resources. If you just started you'll find that after the first few chapters you get in to topics that have more suggested resources.

I would agree with a lot of what's been said on this thread about learning math but I also think it's important to train a child to be discplined and to have a work ethic. I wasn't ever trained in those areas and found college and adult life to be quite an adjustment. My dd6 is not naturally discplined but I have a goal of improving her work ethic incrementally. We use kitchen timers and set goals..."let's see if you can finish this math page in 5 minutes before the timer goes off without getting distracted." She's still distracted a lot...because she's 6...but at least she knows we value work ethic and it's something we need to work on and improve.

You might check in to MUS (mathusee) with the manipulatives. I have several friends who used the Primer with 3-5 year olds just for fun before starting Alpha or you could jump right in to Alpha. I changed to MUS after doing Horizon K math and it really improved my daughter's attitude towards math and she really started to "get it".

fyi...we also use Apologia and love it. We are doing Human Anatomy and Physiology which like the Zoology books is for grammar school age but is incredibly rich with detail. Both my daughter and I love it. We do go slower than the recommended schedule because it's hard for me to fit everything in our weekly plan since hubby and I run our own business and I basically work full-time and homeschool.

forgot to mention that even though my daughter gets bored with the repeating things as well I'm using the MUS to reinforce character concepts like focus, discipline, etc. She would rather do one or 2 harder challenge type problems and does them easily but then makes mistakes on the double digit multiplication because she's bored or doesn't want to do it. I officially view math as character training.:)

I use math-u-see (MUS) for math because it introduces basic algebra (like the problems you used as examples) at early levels. I know for sure it is covered in Beta and Gamma. It's sequenced differently than other math programs but for a child who loves math you move through it very quickly and can then move on to something more challenge focused like AOPs. I also found that the blocks kept her occupied for extended periods of time outside of our official lesson time which was great for me because she constantly felt the need to be "doing" something as well. fyi. I originally started in Beta because of where she tested but ended up buying an old VHS tape that covered the alpha material because I liked the instruction method better than what we originally used for K math. We covered all the alpha material in about a month before moving to Beta and now Gamma. My daughter is also 6.

I also recommend HWOT. I had the exact same issue with my daughter. She was loving ETC but the lack of handwriting skills was slowing her progress and frustrating her because she wanted to write herself but really couldn't. Wasted my time on other handwriting programs first but when we finally found this we were both happy. Also, for math I love MUS Primer for younger children who want to do "school" like older siblings. It's a very gentle intro to numbers and basic addition but with the coloring and blocks it's fun. I didn't discover MUS until we were past the Primer stage but I have three friends who used or are using it with 3 & 4 year olds and love it.

She liked the mathusee blocks for learning addition facts...but not necessarily along with the lessons. Just played with them and would come to me and say..."did you know I can make 10 a lot of different ways with these blocks?" Loves to build things but doesn't necessarily like to use them with the current lessons which are on multiplication. She says both the blocks and writing down the steps for her work take too much time when she already knows the answer in her head.

Thanks for the suggestions. I was never involved in drama or theater so the idea of just trying out for a local production didn't even cross my mind. I was thinking of classes/lessons. I've already googled and found a few options which we'll check out.

On the thread about gifted kids finding peer groups several people mentioned drama and/or theater as a good activity. I've been thinking of drama as a good option for my dd6 and was wondering if any parents who've already been down that road have advice or suggestions. She can read like an adult and can quote books and or movies she's watched word for word even weeks after being exposed. She is also very naturally dramatic and enjoys telling stories with "accents" and making up songs. I looked for some programs over the summer but couldn't find anything for her age. The few "fine arts" type camps I found in my area seemed to be mostly coloring and doing simple art projects for her age.

I also used the Handwriting w/o Tears and only used the teacher and student book. I think I spent about $12 or $14 total. After getting the pre-k teacher book I didn't feel I needed another teacher book until we got to cursive. I just bought the student book each year. Most of the multi-sensory activities in the teacher guide can be done at home with your own supplies. For phonics, I loved Explode the Code and at 3 you can start with the Get Ready for the Code books. Those are also very affordable. $6 or $7 per book I think. The teacher book isn't necessary until you start book 1 of the Explode the Code..you don't need it for the Get Ready for the Code books. I also highly recommend the Leap Frog Letter Factory video (and then later Word Factory, and whatever the next two are called that cover complex words and then paragraphs...it's been a while so I can't recall their names right now). I have 4 or 5 friends whose children learned their letters and sounds from those videos. We're not much of a tv or video watching family but I made an exception for these.

I started Grammar Island a few weeks ago with dd6. Basically, she read it and went through the information herself in about a week because she was tired of waiting for me to get around to starting it. After she finished we started the Practice Island sentences. She gets most of them correct and seems to grasp the concepts week. I am now looking to incorporate SI, MOTH & BL. I pulled up the schedule satorismiles posted and am using it for planning but as I'm reviewing the SI exercises I'm having trouble seeing how they differ from what we're already doing in PI. I'm thinking I should only do the writing exercises and skip the level 4 analysis because it's duplicated in PI. Can anyone else confirm this for me or make suggestions based on the way you did it?

I haven't used LoF but I've heard good things and planned to check in to it later because for some reason when I first checked in to it I thought it started with fractions which we aren't studying yet. I just looked again and saw the elementary books. I might order them because my daughter loves to read and would probably do them just for fun.

My daughter has the same maturity issues and we've been working on them but I also started incorporating www.khanacademy.com on some days as a fun alternate to work on skills without so much paper. We still do the paper work everyday just a smaller amount but I have been making her do neater work and to check her own work. Then I have her do some on the computer. Interestingly, she rarely has computation errors on the computer where it's all done in her head. I think she's getting bored and distracted on worksheets. I can't bring myself to eliminate the paper all-together but I'm considering it character and neatness training instead of just math.:001_smile: Just this week my daughter had me thinking I was pushing her to hard when her first day of double digit by double digit multiplication was torture for both of us. She was distracted, unfocused, emotional because it was "hard", and basically forced me to sit with her and re-explain every problem. Since we're working 2 1/2 levels above grade level I was mentally making plans to slow down. The next day when she had an incentive to finish quickly (friend waiting to play with her) she did so AND did it all in her head. She told me it took too long to write out the steps when she already knows the answer.

I am not familiar with the curriculum you are using but I was having the same experience with MUS so I started dd6 on www.khanacademy.com in the practice section. She liked the idea that the mind map looks like a constellation and at this point thinks it's a game but it's good drill for skill practice. Also, the MUS website has a drill page for practice of basic math facts that times the student which she thinks is cool.

I too kept downplaying all the comments from friends, family & strangers about how smart my daughter is for several years. When you only have one you assume everything is normal. Gradually over the last few years I've come to realize a lot of the same things mentioned here weren't "normal". She was using sign language to request milk, diaper changes and more food when she was 3 or 4 months old. Spoke in full sentences at one. Learned all letters and sounds in a weekend after watching a leap frog video. Extremely detailed imaginative play before age 2. (someone else mentioned the salt & pepper shakers....the first time I noticed it was at my parents house where there was a silver platter with a pattern that looked like grapes...she played and talked with those "grapes" for an hour). Ability to focus on a particular task for a very long time. (realized this was unusual when I started trying to teach the pre-k class at church and learned that other 3 year olds couldn't focus on a task for 2 minutes...lol). She has an incredible memory. Whether it's a Bible story we read 3 years ago or a movie she watched yesterday she can recall and recite specific details and/or dialogue. At 3 or 4 she asked me if she could read for a while before going to sleep. I said okay and stayed downstairs watching tv/doing housework for 4 hours and then went upstairs to find her sitting in the middle of her bed still reading. There are too many stories to even remember now (I wish I'd written some of them down!) but one of my favorites was when she was 3 or 4 and I was trying to convince her she should read chapter books (at that point she COULD read anything but was mostly interested in easier stuff) so I made a big deal out of going to the bookstore to buy the first Magic Tree House Book. She was not impressed but I insisted she at least try the first chapter. When we got home 20 minutes later she said "I'm done, where's the next one". Not wanting to discourage her my dad volunteered to take her to buy some more. He bought the next 3 books in the series to take with her for a visit at his house. An hour later he called and said she was done with all three and suggested I visit the library because we'd go broke trying to buy books for her.

Here's what I did with my now 6 yo when she was 3: Bible curriculum which involved me reading a story to her, asking questions afterwards and a short memory verse (5 to 10 min a day) Explode the Code for Phonics (5 to 10 min. a day) Handwriting without Tears -added this when we got to the point that her handwriting was holding her back in the phonics workbooks. I found that she is very literal and likes specific instructions for things. She liked that hwt gave steps for making each letter and enjoyed the songs that went with the curriculum. We did numbers/math for about 5 to 10 minutes per day also. I discovered mathusee when she was a little older but had I been aware of it we would have done the primer curriculum from them when she was 3. I have 3 close friends who have used it with 2 or 3 year old younger siblings while older children worked in Alpha and/or Beta and they loved it. It always sounds like a lot for a 3 year old when I type it out but we didn't do it all at the same time each day. We would work in 5 to 15 minute sessions 2 or 3 times spread throughout the day.

After reading your post and replies I tried something similar and seem to be having good results too. I realized I was frustrating dd and myself because I was distracted while she was working and therefore she was spending a lot of time daydreaming. Once I started sitting with her and having both of us focused for shorter periods we both started getting more done. Her during school time and me during her play time. Sometimes what seem to be huge problems are solved by simple solutions when we get good counsel.

Some ideas.. I wouldn't worry about the ABC song thing. Instead I would suggest teaching him letters and sounds gently. The Leap Frog videos are great (Letter Factory, Word Factory, etc). Once he can recognize letters and sounds you could start a 5 to 10 minute phonics lesson. Either Ordinary Parent's Guide to teaching Reading or something like Explode the Code. I would also recommend the Handwriting without Tears Program. You can start with the preschool book. 5 min or less per day. I highly recommend the Math-u-see program. The Primer is easy and fun for young students (I have a friend who does it with her 3 1/2 year old because she wants to "do school" like her older siblings") For the most part, at this age children love spending time and "playing" with their parents. We make school a game we played together and teaching my DD to read early really improved her behavior and prevented her from being bored.

I would also recommend Apologia. I like the decidedly Christian approach to Science and enjoy that even though it's aimed at Elementary students there is a lot of depth to each lesson. My dd is only 6 so we spend several weeks on each chapter. Because the is only 6 and doesn't write as well as she reads we do a lot of the questions from the notebook orally & I write the answer. I also like MUS. I understand that others think it's not deep enough for gifted students but like the last post..because she's flying through it I plan to work until we get done with Algebra and then do some other programs for gifted kids once she has the basics down. We've finished Alpha, Beta & 1/2 of Gamma over the last year and a half. I just bought the MCT and so far DD really enjoys the narrative approach. I also use FLL, WWE and Latin for Children from Classical Academic Press. We just started their Code Cracker course for the Greek Alphabet and she likes that too. I think it would appeal to someone who likes solving puzzles.

How did the SSG go? Was it challenging? I'm trying to decide when to start that. DD is flying through the Code Cracker now and just started LFC A and I'm debating whether or not to start this fall or hold off on the Greek. I have a great homeschool store near me but the Greek choices are limited and so far the Classical Academic Press stuff is the best I've seen.