My DD13 still struggles with spelling. I am interested in how a person would used WRTR with an older struggling speller. I would love to just use the text and work through the word lists, but I am not sure if that would be enough and I don't know how to go about it. I would love to find a resource that would have dictation tied to the lists, and some instruction for running an older student through a little quicker, as the text doesn't really address that. I would appreciate some ideas!

Landry Academy has an animal care science course for the logic stage and they use - Rural Teens & Animal Raising Large and Small Pets by Joyce Libal. They also have Introduction to Veterinary Medicine I and II, which is listed for 8th-12th grades. They use - Clinical Textbook for Veterinary Technicians (4th edition) ISBN 0-7216-2196-1

Thank you for reminding me about WttW. I had forgotten that it does talk about annotation. I will have to look at it.

I am interesed in teaching my DD13 how to annotate a book, but I have no clue how to go about doing it. Are there any resources for teaching annotation? I am interested in something that would start with children's books and move to more difficult books, similar to the way Teaching the Classics works.

I would also agree with the TT5 suggestions. One of my twins, who turned 10 in October, started Saxon 5/4 at the beginning of the year. He did fine for the first part, but by Lesson 30 he really got bogged down and started making too many mistakes. I ordered TT5 and he has been working through it ever since, doing 4 lessons a week. He will be finished in June and then will move on to TT6. It is pretty gentle, and by the sounds of it, your DD would do well in it. Have you looked at the ToC for TT5? Simple division is not really introduced until Lesson 62. Lesson 77 uses a two digit divisor. Lesson 69 is where two digit multiplication is taught. There are a lot of lessons that come before to build up to these lessons. TT is definitely not the most rigorous math out there, but for some kids, it is a good fit. My DS will be doing some math through the summer so that we can make steady progress. I also have Learn Math Fast Volumes 1-5 on my shelf. We haven't used it, but maybe I can answer some specific questions about it, if you have any.

I haven't seen any worksheets that have the vocab and chapter questions. There are worksheets to fill in on the disc that comes with the teacher manual, but those are for additional activities. Can you provide a link to the worksheets you have seen? It would be awesome if I didn't have to type each one out.

I am doing the physical science set from AIG this year with my four oldest(the youngest listens in when he wants to). Honestly, this is the first year that science is getting done EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. I put the vocab words/with definitions on our white board the night/afternoon before, and my kids know they have to copy out the definitions in their notebooks before we sit down together. We sit down together, do all of the reading and questions together(I type the questions onto work sheets ahead of time, so they just fill in the answer.). Then if I have found a good youtube video, we watch that and then if we have not done the experiment before, we will do that as well. I know there are much more rigorous things out there, but my kids enjoy working together and this has been a great year for science. I am torn for next year, because they all want to do AIG's Earth Science together. If I did this, my DD who will be in 9th, will delay Biology until 10th. I don't think she will do Physics, so this probably won't be a problem. I will be working on the worksheets this summer for AIG Earth Science, so if you decide to go that route, I can email you the worksheets as I get them completed.

Have you looked at AIG's Earth Science - http://www.answersingenesis.org/store/product/gods-design-heaven-and-earth-complete-set/?sku=40-1-327 It would be independent and if your DC did all of the activities it would be a good earth science choice. It would not be as rigorous as some, but it would get the job done.

Thank you, Kelly. This is encouraging!

I would definitely try to have the book in front of her as she is listening, but there are times when she wants to be 'doing' something while she is reading. She has started to quilt and she loves to draw and basically is a very crafty person, so she listens while she is working on things. I do find it helps her with pronunciation. She finished reading the book, Little Women, on her own, and then listened to it on her ipod. She commented on some of the names and some words that she had read 'wrong' and it was weird to hear them read correctly on the ipod. I am also working to shore up her spelling and some phonics gaps this year.

Thank you so much for responding, Crystal. It is nice to know that we are not alone. My DD sounds very much like yours. I will look into the Answers DVD, and I never thought about using Bible Gateway or something audio to get through the Bible reading. I was also going to write a separate post about audiobooks. My DD loves audiobooks, and she prefers listening to them to listening to music. I know most people say it is not the same as actually reading a book, but I am more concerned about getting the content into her than testing her reading ability(which is probably not at grade level at this time, because she only started reading fluently at the end of 5th grade). I really do not think that my DD will have her writing up to speed, so I will have to adapt the writing component. I am considering having her take a year and a half (end of 9th and 10th) to complete AHL, because I want to spend the beginning of 9th doing an overview of geography. I am not sure what I am going to do about the sciences. I am going to concentrate on Biology and Chemistry. Where we live you need two sciences to get into Vet Tech, so I do not think I am going to worry about Physics, as she is doing Physical Science right now. Math is a daily struggle. I have backed my DD up and she is doubling up on TT7 lessons so that she can be finish TT Pre-A and hopefully TT A by the end of 9th. My DD is not an independent learner, and really prefers to learn with her brothers. So I will have to gradually wean her to more independent work over the next few months.

My DD is in 8th grade right now. She is not quite at grade level in most subjects, and I keep hoping that she will mature in the next few months to start to tackle high school courses. I am considering MFW AHL and WHL, but she would like to be a Vet Tech, and I need her to concentrate on math and the sciences. Is it possible to do AHL and WHL lite? If I was to do this with her, how would I adjust things? What would I take out?

Thank you for taking the time to reply again, Elizabeth. She has gone through some of your spelling lessons, but it was a while ago. I will look at SWR and Marcia Henry's Words a little more closely .

Thank you, Elizabeth. I do have another question. Do you think that it would help to do How to Spell Books 3 and 4 with her, to try one last chance at a more traditional spelling program, before I go to the 1000 words list in Spelling Plus? My DD already knows she will be doing spelling with me until at least 11th, if not 12th grade, so I am wondering if running through the spelling rules, etc., again(sigh), might be a good idea. Spelling Plus does use rules, but I find that it is more based on memorization. ETA: I am also considering Spell to Write and Read to run through quickly. Any thoughts?

I was hoping that you would chime in, Elizabeth. She is just average in math, or slightly below. I like Spelling Plus the best out of everything we have done, but it did not seem to be sticking. Here is the way that I have implemented it, maybe you can take a look and see if I could tweak it somehow. 1st - I give my DC their spelling list for the week on Monday, adding in homophones if there are any, and writing important rules on these sheets. 2nd - Monday through Thursday, they study their words with a Spelling Power type worksheet that I have made up. 3rd - Monday through Thursday, after they have studied their words, I test the complete list. If they get any wrong, they write those words out 25 times each. 4th - Monday through Thursday, after the test, I give them the dictation from the corresponding list in the Spelling Plus dictation book - usually 5 sentences per day. If there are any words that are incorrect in their dictation, they write these words out 25 times each. I used to put the lists on Spelling City, but I have stopped doing that this year. Maybe I need to revisit that as well. The only problem I foresee is that one of my 10 year old twins and my 11 year old will probably be on a higher list than she is when we test back into Spelling Plus. Any thoughts? Thank you for your comments.

The bolded above is where I am at as well. I feel like I have one more shot during 9th grade next year, to see if we can make some headway. I do not believe that my DD has any LDs, but if she does, it would be very mild.

I have never had her tested for LDs. I will look into it further. Thank you.

Our DD will be 14 in August. She has always been a horrible speller. I have tried almost everything on the market, and honestly feel like giving up. Is it too late to help her? This is an example of how she spelled 'audio' the other day - awdeo. I have her working through Megawords 1 independently right now, mainly because I need a break. Here are some of the things we have tried over the years - Spelling Power, AAS, Sequential Spelling, Phonetic Zoo, and Spelling Plus. These are just what I can remember off the top of my head. I really like Spelling Plus, and 3 of my boys are using it successfully, with some tweaking, but it didn't seem to work well for her. I think part of the problem is me, and the fact that I had 4 boys within a few years right after her, and her beginning years of homeschooling were a little sparse. She was a late reader and only started to read really fluently in 5th grade. She reads well now, but is probably not totally up to 8th grade level. I feel like my window of opportunity to help her is closing(or is it closed?)! I know some people just do not spell well, but I am unwilling to throw in the towel yet. Is there something that we can work through for the next year to get her up to speed? I have looked at the Logic of English, but I am so tired of throwing money away on things that will not work. She seems to need the auditory aspect, which is why I tried Spelling Zoo, but I found that she couldn't spell basic words we had gone over during her early years. Sequential Spelling was working until I realized that she was not transferring her knowledge to everyday writing. I could maybe go through AAS again, but when I pulled it out a few weeks ago, she complained that it was for little kids. So...what I am looking for is...something that will cover all of the modes of learning...isn't childish...and will get her up to speed quickly(1 year). Please help!

Courage and Conquest does exactly that. Each lesson has additional resources listed with the coordinating Canada - A People's History episodes to watch.

The above bolded is exactly how I felt as I read it. I am sure there were some slaves who had good masters etc, but I don't want my kids to have rose-colored glasses about that portion of history. I will look into Freedom Train.

I pre-read this book a few nights ago, because I was planning on doing it as a read aloud for my children. It was okay. I am not sure why it is on so many lists as an early modern must read. I think my children would like the beginning, but the rest was rather boring. I also do not think that it portrayed slavery in the way it was for most people. Any other suggestions? I am not looking for an overly graphic book, but if it is the only read aloud we are doing about slavery, and its atrocities, I want it to be a little more realistic.

I kept my fraternal twins together for everything when they were 7. They are now in 5th grade and their strengths and weaknesses are getting more and more prominent. I have them in different programs for most of their skill areas, because, for one thing they learn differently, and for another, it has eliminated the competition that was rearing its ugly head. Their content subjects are still completed together, with their brother, who is 17 months older.

I am using the God's Design series for all of my children this year. We are doing the Physical Science books, as my DD is in 8th grade. This has been one of our most productive science years. I do supplement with youtube videos when I can find them, to reinforce the concepts taught. If you have your older child do the advanced sections it would be a good program, but possibly not as rigorous as BJU, hopefully others can chime in to compare the two. The God's Design series has worked well for us, mainly because my DC love working together.

We have been studying some of the first colonies that were settled in North America, and I would like to review them by doing some type of visual diagram. I am looking for a free blank download that we can fill out together. I do not think a Venn Diagram will work, because we have studied - Jamestown, Quebec, Plymouth, Boston(Providence), New Netherlands(New Sweden), Pennsylvania and Georgia. This would be 7-9 items to compare/contrast. Or would you just compare/contrast Jamestown, Quebec and Plymouth. I could do that with a 3 Circle Venn Diagram, but I really want something that would concisely organize all we have studied for the past few weeks on one page. We have already done a chart comparing all of the early North American Native Groups, with the tribe names across the top and subjects to compare down the left side, so I wanted to try some other type of visual. Any ideas?

I would love to help if you still need it!