It's going GREAT!! I always try to go other routes and I always return back to HOD. I have no idea why I keep thinking we'll do something else:confused1: I am determined to stick with it for both boys from here on out. I've also just switched both boys to Singapore math. I just felt strongly at the gut level that I should switch even the older one. We are a week in and I feel like it's the best decision I have made next to choosing HOD. I love HOD and everything about it!! :D

Now that everything is up I think it's great! The first video can be watched whenever you want. Beth linked it above. I bought a Thanksgiving book from them Monday to use with the Tutorial I teach at. I feel like I wasted my money on those. I could have just used the Scholastic web site. :glare:

You can find the letters directly HERE. I found them yesterday looking all around there but I haven't gotten anything today as far as an email or anything.

I'm bumping one more time because I thought of some new questions :D What, if any, extra books are you using? EP, CWP, ? Thanks again!

Thanks ladies. I'm looking forward to this venture. If there is anyone else that has an opinion about my questions please do reply. :bigear:

You need All About Spelling for sure :D It totally explains all that!

You do not have to test in any grade if you are registered under a CRS. The only testing you will have to do is what your CRS requires of you. Home Life Academy doesn't require testing and many other CRS's don't require testing either. Here is a listing of the legal CRS's in TN. http://www.tnhomeed.com/CRSChart.html I highly recommend all new homeschoolers read the entire Tn Home Ed website I just linked to above. It's the best place for all things homeschooling in TN. There are several groups in the Nashville area also. MTHEA is a good place to read also. I live in Nashville so feel free to PM if you have any more questions.

Ok I've done it. I've taken the plunge and I'm moving both my boys to Singapore math. I've done search after search here at the boards and I've learned alot but still have alot of questions. Please help me if you can. 1) Do I want Primary or Standards? I bought Primary because that's what our core curriculum recommends and schedules. Should I have gotten Standards? 2) Assuming I want Primary what do I honestly need in the way of TM's etc.? Do I need the HIG's or the regular TM's from Singapore? I've had the HIG's for some of the earlier books (1 or 2 can't remember for sure) and they seemed ok but I don't remember them helping me that much. I've come a long way since then in understanding how Singapore works though. I might see them differently now. 3) Manuplatives! I'll be picking up c-rods within a few weeks. I'm getting a bucket of 155 plastic rods. What else are essentials in your opinion? 4) Are you using any additional books like EP, CWP. ? with the text and workbooks? Thanks everyone!!

For K and 1st the only thing I think you would need is a some type of handwriting. Between AAR and AAS I think you are completely set on phonics,reading, and spelling. I'm in the same boat. I'm using AAR for phonics for my 5 year old. I'll probably wait until next year to start AAS. All depends on how he does with AAR 1 when it comes out. I'm completely undecided on handwriting LOL. We use HOD and they recommend A Reason For or Italic. I've mainly used BJU and that's what we have right now but I don't know if I want to stick with it. I'm familiar with HWOT but hadn't really considered it for my 5 year old. Maybe I need to look into that again. I was also going to look into Italic since I haven't really looked in depth at it either. So many wonderful options, so many decisions, so little money and time :lol:

MamaHappy I see that you use HOD like we do. Do you mind to tell me if you are using the Standards or US edition? I know HOD recommends and schedules the US edition. If you are using the Standards edition I'm curious if you can still reasonably follow the HOD lesson plans. I'm moving both my boys to Singapore so I'm curious about all this. TIA!

I've not bought yet but I'm planning as it will all have to be bought in Feb with the tax return. I know the plan for most and the things that I'm not sure on are not expensive so I can wait until later. It feels so good to be set on the core of our curriculum. :hurray:

I feel for you honestly because my now 12 year old has been the same way. Working with him sucked the very life out of me. No matter what I did or what curriculum we used he was never happy and teaching him was the most horrible experience. Geez is sounds really bad typed out and it was bad but I feel so guilty writing it all out. :leaving: So I resorted to BJU dvd's for all subjects so that I wasn't the one teaching him. I wish I could tell you that it worked. That having another teacher require the work made him respond differently. It didn't. In fact it created a whole set of new character issues. It's late so I don't have time to go into all the new issues but suffice it to say that I wasted a whole bunch of money until I realized that it was going to take me teaching him and dealing with all the character issues for there to be a change. I needed to build my relationship with him and putting him in front of another teacher all day whether it be by dvd or local private school wasn't going to enable me to work on our relationship or deal with the character issues that were glaring at me every day. I'm not saying this is what is going on at your house but I have been where you are with the very same decision to be made. I went with a) and it only changed the issues we were dealing with. It didn't help with the issues I started with at all. I simply wasn't having to deal with the education side of it anymore which only made the mom side worse in the end. How is it now? Better, much better. Not perfect but better. What did I change to make it better? I prayed like crazy for the Lord to show me the heart of the issues. I evaluated my view of education and changed my expectations of what our days should look like. I accepted the fact that the book learnin' might have to be put on the shelf here and there so that I could teach him what I really wanted him to learn if you KWIM. These are the things that begin the slow change. I was able to build my relationship with him and when I did that his attitude and reactions changed for the better. It's been a long hard road and it's nowhere near finished. There were and are days I just want to give up, throw him in the nearest public school and let someone else deal with it for a while. I know that it won't make anything better so I can't bring myself to do it. I truly don't feel that sending him to the nearest private Christian school would have had any different outcome than the dvd's did either. Private school or dvds. They can't allow me to build my relationship with my son. Now I'm not saying that your relationship is bad with your boys or that you are stupid for wanting a break. Been there done that (this school year in fact sssshhhhhh). I completely understand where you and my heart goes out to you. :grouphug: Pray about it. Ask the Lord to give you answers. Ask the Lord to show you new things. Ask Him to reveal the boys hearts to you. He will not fail you. That much I know for sure. Probably not what you wanted to hear but I couldn't tell you anything different cause I'd be lying to you if I did. Praying for you!!

This has been our experience with Preparing and HOD in general also. I had to laugh because my son made that project and it hangs in his room to this day :lol: We like the crafts here so each child is different and we do have to find what works for ourselves and each child. Reconciling my desire with my reality bites big time though. I can relate to this. I also read those posts and I used to wonder if I would ever find my soul curriculum also. I can tell you that after hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars on curriculum in the past I finally feel at home with HOD. It's not perfect by any stretch and I do tweak here and there but not much. :lol: Dassah, the wisdom in this is profound. This is also my experience with HOD. HOD won't be this for everyone but I've found (after multitudes of curriculum hopping) that HOD is what does it for me and my family. HOD encapsulates what I want in an education for my kids.

Ok I love love love AAS but if he's a natural speller then if it were me I'd take his misspellings from his writing and enter them at Spelling City and let him play games there. Nice and easy and simple and FREE. Let me reiterate that I LOVE AAS but sometimes there just has to be a compromise :001_smile:

I was thinking that I didn't really regret anything but after today I regret buying the BJU Distance Learning for my K little guy. It's not the BJU, love the curriculum, I just wish I wouldn't have spent so much money on the DL classes for him. He's doing much better with me teaching. The problem is that I don't have everything I need to teach the course myself right now and we are broke. I was thinking of doing a few DL classes next year for him too but now I'm seriously rethinking that too. Only 1 regret with my older son. I wish we wouldn't have started out with straight BJU Distance Learning. I was missing the one on one interaction with him so I'm shifting back to HOD for some things. We've also had to change a few things with him but they are not really regrets. We've gone to Easy Grammar for him because I finally realized that he's struggling with grammar so I needed to change up the method of grammar instruction. We are still using the writing chapters of BJU for composition. Changes but nothing too serious. We are not in a grove yet either. Hopefully we will ge there soon.

We use AAS and love it. It has helped my struggling reader and speller greatly. AAS is based on the Orten Gillingham method and because of that your child will not only become a better speller but their reading will likely jump also. OG method teachers the letters/phonograms with all their sounds so the child can't help but excel in reading along with spelling. It's multisensory and lessons only take 15 to 20 mins a day. Feel free to DM me if you have any more questions. I'll be happy to help you in any way I can.

Ok I found a book from Scholastic at the Teacher Express site and it says $1 but when I put it in my cart it's full price. Anyone have any ideas what I can do. I know they had their dollar days a few weeks ago but I thought it ended. Surely their website isn't still reflecting dollar days prices even though it's over? I really want this Hands on History book :D Help! Ok just tried adding a "free" item to my cart and it also came up as regular price. Well I thought I wanted this book but honestly with all the issues everyone seems to have with their website, cart, etc I think I'll just forget it. I don't need the headache.

We use the Online option but the content is the same whether is be dvd, online, or hard drive. We really like them. I personally feel they are worth the money as it frees me up from having to teach this every day. Priceless to me honestly. :D

Wow this thread has really given me something to think about. I have been trying to get done around 12 or 1 and it just doesn't happen. I've been dropping all those things that are extra and I want to do with my kids and all the joy in our homeschooling is gone. It's just check off another thing and get done as quick as we can with each subject. I don't want to feel this way about school and I certainly don't want my kids to feel this way about school. I've known in my heart that we needed a longer school day yet I've continued to try to cram it into 4 or so hours. The saddest part is the house is still not clean :blushing: I'm going to have to rethink things and decide what we need to do every day during the week to make sure the house is not a complete disaster and let the rest go. My first job is schooling and I'm happy with the curriculum choices I've made. Now I just need to find the resolve and discipline to make it happen each day. I can't believe I've been trying to school a middle schooler, a kindergartener, keep the house spotless, keep laundry caught up and put away, make dinner, grocery shop, meal plan, school plan, seems like I'm missing something...... and get it all done it all done in 7 hours each day. Now that I type it all out and think about it I feel incredibly stupid for thinking I could make it all happen between the hours of 8 and 3. :banghead: Off to take the weekend to rethink things.....

:bigear:

BJU Distance Learning. If I didn't do that it would be Heart of Dakota. I love them both. BJU gets done and the classes are top notch. We used BJU off and on over the course of our homeschooling and it's the only one that got done consistently. We kept coming back to BJU and I've finally just settled into it. No more messing around and fighting what works. It works for us for many reasons but the main reason is that it does the actual day to day teaching for me. It takes the pressure off me. The classes are engaging and academically strong. Another of it's strengths is also its Christian content. There is not one class that doesn't point the child to Christ. That's the condensed version! Hope that helps.

Google App School. There is a web site that is geared to letting you know all about the best educational apps. HTH!

We've done 3rd grade and are about to do 6th and K5. I like their english the best of all their courses - well except reading. Reading with Mrs. Walker is the bomb!! Anyway...if you go with the dvd's then I recommend spending some time with your child on the writing chapters. You might not need to do that but I found that I needed to. The classes are great so we will watch them but I will watch with him quite a bit so that I can help with the follow up writing he needs to do. I have no complaints at all. HTH!

mamabear, There is no actual teaching part for you except some minor things in a few courses such as spelling. You will need to give/mare sure he/she takes the pretest and reply to their journal entries. I also plan to spend more time with my older son in the writing chapters of the english. The lessons are wonderful but I feel like I need to help him with that quite a bit. That's him though. I also plan to watch with my K5 child during math and the phonics portions so that I can help him when needed. It will largely depend on the child on how independent you can make them. I don't do any real teaching using the DL classes but I do oversee and keep an eye on them. I tried letting my son be in another room to watch his classes and work and it just didn't work for us. I've just totally revamped our house so we could have a school room so that both boys will be with me during school for the most part. We needed to be more focused on school and I needed to be able to keep a eye on them. You may not need to do that in your family. There is a learning curve with the DL classes but it's worth it for me so that both my kids can get what they need academically and not have to wait for me to get done with the other so I can teach. Lots of people think that BJU DL allows you to shove the kids in front of the classes and walk away. You can do that but I personally don't like being that hands off with my kids education. I have learned how to make DL work for us. The classes are tools to help me. I adjust and change whatever I need to. It's my slave. I'm not a slave to it. I am doing 6th online and K5 hard drive. PM if you want to. I'm happy to help you in any way I can. HTH!

If you are reusing within your own family I don't see a problem. I mean honestly how can they expect you not to use it within your family. Don't lose sleep over it at all.