Haven't posted in a long time, but trying to sell some books I no longer need and had trouble parting with for a long time.

I really appreciate all of your helpful comments. I am such a rule follower and sometimes that can be bad! I think I'm going to teach from the text. I will ditch the dvds for now and see what happens. Thanks again!

We used it in 6th grade and actually enjoyed it. This program is not riddled with obscure words and I think that makes the learning more enjoyable.

Calling Dana doesn't feel right for me. I'm really really good at math and have taught my ds 4 levels of Singapore. To have to call another teacher for help, when I totally know how to explain these concepts to my child, seems ridiculous. At the same time though, I feel like I'm "breaking the rules" by stepping in to teach because this is not how the program is designed. To be completely honest, I don't know if this aversion to calling Dana is an ego/control issue on my part when I know I could teach this OR is because I don't see the worth of a program that makes us dependent on someone else. (While we didn't take the placement test, I am so sure he is ready for this after finishing Singapore 6.) I'm guesssing it is ambitious of me to expect that my child has the maturity to recognize that he doesn't understand something and then go back to the text or dvd to work on the lost concept/problem. If this program wasn't so darn expensive and if people didn't rave about it, I might feel more confident about chucking it.

We started the prealgebra program this year but my child is doing terrible! I am following Dana Mosely's (the Chalkdust teacher) advice and I'm letting Dana do the teaching on the dvds, but my ds has gotten a 58 on his Unit 1 test and a 42 on Unit 2. We've done Singapore levels 3-6 prior to Chalkdust. Singapore required me to do all the teaching and that worked fine because I could catch everything my son was missing. As Dana suggests, my ds corrects his own work and when I ask him (ds) how he's doing with it he says fine (NOT!) This feels like a disaster (a very expensive one at that) and we have to go back and redo the first 30 lessons of math! Dana suggests calling him if your child gets lost in math but I'm wondering if this method of learning is just not a good match for my child. Any advice? Should I switch to a regular program like Saxon? Has anyone else had problems with this?

it makes checking my ds's work much faster. When I've tried to just glance over his work to make sure it's correct, I often have to take more time than I'd like checking it. The proofreading section sometimes trips me up for a few minutes when I can't find the last mistake. I want to devote as little time as possible to spelling to I use the teacher's book- it's faster (I'm impatient. Can you tell?)

When the accountant came with the envelope and blocked the 2 finalists from camera view, Adam moved into camera view pulling Kris along with him. I have a professional child actor who is well known. From being in this business I can tell you that many experienced performers would have stepped into the camera's view in that situation- but would not have pulled their competition along with them! That was a testament to Adam's genuine support for Kris. I commend them both for their respect and admiration of each other. That was awesome!!

Lightning Literature might fit your needs.

I think Kris won because he is an "All -American" kind of guy. If you compare them vocally, there's no match. Kris is talented and sweet. Adam is a born superstar. Adam will be the biggest star ever launched by American Idol. -My (very strong) opinion/prediction!

We used book A last summer. Will be using book B this summer.

If you do this: 7th-Pre-Algebra 8th-Algebra 1 9th-Geometry 10th-Algebra 2 etc. your child will be more prepared to take the SAT. In addition, this is what most kids applying to competitive schools will have on their transcript. Unfortunately the college admission process has become extremely competitive. (My older ds is a rising HS senior at a private school.) You are smart to think about your future goals and work your curriculum backwards from there.

Actually, after working with LOF, it was obvious that doing something in addition to Singapore was beneficial. After 5B we did LOF Fractions in the summer. If my ds got everything he needed from SM, he should have been able to "nail" LOF after only a short time of being introduced to the LOF style. He didn't. LOF serves as a great supplemental program to SM. I think it fills in gaps of understanding and/or computational skills that a child may not get from SM. Of course not every child would need this. (If my older ds was doing SM he would have flown through all of it by 4th grad.) The Bridge at the end of each LOF chapter was great. Even though it looks so simple with just 10 questions, getting less than a 90% on 3 Bridges in a row, would dictate that my ds had to keep doing the next ones until he got 3 A's in a row (that's how we did it.) He became determined to buckle down with focus and accuracy to answer the 10 "measly" questions. My ds was then able to nail most of the Singapore fraction problems (in 6A & B.) Now, after 6B, we are about to embark on LOF Decimals & Percents for the summer. I am confident that he will gain a better acumen of that topic after LOF. (Although SM is strong on conceptual understanding, I think he missed something in 6A & B with respect to his understanding of decimals and percents but I can't quite put my finger on it.) Even though we do supplement SM with their Extra Practice workbooks, Intensive Practice workbooks, and Challenging Word Problems, I still feel like we are missing something. We have found that Extra Practice books are nice but don't offer that much "extra." Intensive Practice sometimes seems too hard or even a bit off topic from what we were doing in the base program. Challenging Word Problems really only work well for my ds with the basic problems. Once we get into the challenging section, he is so consumed by the the difficulty of the concepts, that he gets discouraged and loses focus on the core of what he is learning. He has scored extremely high (98-99% nationally-can't remember exactly) on his standardized test in math. I was shocked because math is not his thing. I think SM is an excellent program and is quite advanced. It never hurts to check in with another curriculum because SM is so untraditional to its approach. I'd say that if your child is breezing through SM, he/she may not need a supplemental program. If your child is getting less than A's on the reviews and so on, I would try a supplement and see if anything can be gleaned from that.

We are not classiscal home schoolers and I found that (IMHO) the words in the word list for VCR were just too obscure. The words in Vocabulary Vine seemed to be more applicable to our studies.

My ds just needed more practice. He was still making a lot of careless errors in 5B, which have significantly decreased this past year in SM 6. I think he wouldn't have been ready for prealgebra at that point, but I can see a very bright child going from 5B to Chalkdust Prealgebra.

I would only use SM through 5B then switch to Chalkdust Basic Math. I didn't find a whole lot of benefit from doing Level 6 in SM. I think switching to Chalkdust for 6th grade would have given him a more well-rounded and traditional math education to supplement his already strong Singapore base.

I was just having a guilt issue with this. It's been a great program for us, but I don't think these new levels meet our needs anymore. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I don't feel as bad about dropping it now. I'm just going to put it up for sale and I'm not gonna look back!

We just finished Book F (end of 6th grade.) My ds couldn't spell to save his life so we started SW-D in 4th grade. Because of SW he is now a decent speller. I am just torn about whether or not we should do book G in 7th grade. He would be exposed to a lot of words he has not written before so I just can't decide what to do. We are so busy with our other subjects and it looks like the lessons in book G are more time intensive than those in previous levels. The program also seems to shift focus to being more vocabulary focused at this level. We have been doing Wordly Wise for vocabulary and I'm not convinced that SW would be effective as a vocabulary program for my child. Has anyone decided to drop SW at this point? Should we just stick with it?

You know, I read that twice and it just didn't click that you meant "bed." Duh! Your son will get 9 hours of sleep then. Not bad. Would be nice to get to Trials! My son will be in college by then, so who knows... Would be nice though!

We have been using Galore Park French and need to switch. I really like the "school approach" of Galore Park. It offers opportunities for writing and teaches grammar (although weak on speaking), but I never had french so it is difficult for me to teach. My husband (who took french) is just too busy to keep up with the teaching. I need something else (Middle School) that: 1. doesn't require a french speaking parent AND 2. is strong on writing, grammar, and speaking/pronunciation. Do you know of anything like that?

I have read TWTM but I have no intention of following it. I think my ds would fall apart if I tried to implement a classical model. It seems like it would overwhelm him. However, I do think that classically schooled kids and adults have a great base of knowledge and experience from which they could draw. I would have loved to receive such an education. We started home schooling in 4th grade and unfortunately my ds is one of those kids that thinks he knows better than everybody else. He is almost impossible to home school. In fact, his 3rd grade teacher laughed at me and, as she snickered, wished me good luck with it. ( I now know why she snickered. He's stubborn, uncooperative, disrespectful, and thinks he's in charge. Yeah, lovely, I know.) I don't think the classical approach is for every kid. So why do I come here? I want to know what you gals think! What are you teaching your kids? What works? How do you approach your lessons? Which curriculum should I look at? It's because of this forum that I embarked on a seperate study of latin roots, discovered what diagramming a sentence means, understand how important history studies are... I want my ds to get a great education and I'm responsible for that. Why wouldn't I want to check in with families who, in my opinion, chose a wonderful approach to home schooling? Also, not every family supporting the classical model actually sticks to it 100%. In the beginning of TWTM, Susan talks about how each family needs to customize what works for their particular child and how the book was meant as a guide.

so I feel your pain!! (We have one with almost Olympic Trial cuts and many state champion titles and T16s) First, I'm not sure how cold it is in Kansas (I'm assuming based on your user name) but an outdoor pool in the summer usually doesn't take too long to warm up, especially once all those bodies start swimming in it. Maybe 2 weeks?? Hopefully it will be heated. I would have him wear sweats and/or bring his parka (if he has one.) You will find, especially in the teen years, that your boys want to be like their buddies. Notorious for being too cool to admit their uncomfortable if nobody else is complaining, they probably won't make much of a fuss. If hot showers aren't available, have something warm for them to drink when they get out. Eventually they won't need or want any of the warm stuff. Honestly, I am more concerned about the scheduling. It is not optimal to be swimming until 8:30pm and then have to be in the water by 6am. Are they doing doubles like this everyday? If so, that's a bit much for a 13 year old. Sleep and recovery are necessary for optimal training. I would say that if there are days he feels he needs to sleep in, he should do so. He needs to listen to his body to make it strong, not wear it out. At his age I would take 2-3 mornings off to sleep in. I would encourage getting to bed earlier (not an easy task in the summer.) He will get more out of his training if he gives his body a chance to recover. Just to compare, my 17 year old son will train 6 days a week this summer with 3 days of doubles. He swims everyday at 6:45am but on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday he also swims an afternoon practice that ends at 5:30pm. Looking at our team's schedule for the 13 year olds, they only have 1 morning a week with a short rest period like your team.

why not try the new school and see how it goes. A small private school like that may offer a very different experience as opposed to a public school. You could also keep home schooling, but you will have to be more aggresive about offering her regular social opportunities so she could build friendships. Some kids, like mine, thrive on social interaction. Without lots of connections to people, they feel lonely.

I had not purchased any because I thought the books had a biased liberal feel to them. I try to stick with more neutral viewpoints. That's just what I got out of perusing them.

I really love this forum, but I am not committed to a classical approach to home schooling. I was wondering if anybody knows of any other *active* home school sites for sharing information. I am not looking for a site that sponsors one particular publisher or curriculum.

My ds did the same thing but eventually he caught on after he kept getting it wrong. They've only gotten it wrong twice? You beat us by a mile! It might help if you made this tactile. Try using string or other household goodies to construct the border of a pretend garden, playground, or something else they'd like. Make it surrounded by water filled with crocodiles or a man-eating snake. You can do a real activity in the backyard or in a sandbox or on the beach. My ds did a picture because I thought it might be too dangerous to bring in that snake. Let them get some real measurements of their masterpiece. They will most likely remember how to measure their borders after that.