With my son, once the demands of writing increased, his writing got worse, and he would complain that his hand was getting tired. I did a few things to help him. First, I took out the coloring sheets and crayons and had him color daily. This helped strengthen the muscles in his hand. He is now 10 and still colors a few times a week! I keep his writing lessons short-- no more than 10-15 minutes at a time. And, when he was about 8 or 9 he began cursive. His cursive is much neater than his print, and it is faster.

Is he on Prednisone? That is a pretty strong steroid, but it works. My son usually ends up on an oral steroid for his asthma at least once during the winter season. I know that during that time to forget trying to homeschool because he is either bouncing off of the walls, or sleeping! I agree with everyone else to keep your son on it. It's better to have him a mess and breathing than not.

I feel your pain! Until this year, DD12 has been a very easy-going kid who diligently completed all of her work without complaining, even math which she claims she dislikes. This year, it's nothing but complaining! Bible--she groans that the outlining makes her hand cramp (!); grammar and spelling dictation (using Spelling Wisdom)--she whines that the lessons are too long; math--well, we've been through Thinkwell, AoPS, ck12, MEP, and Key to Algebra, all met with complaining and moaning until I gave up trying to please her and picked a curriculum that she MUST finish! She loves art and creative writing, and I do give her plenty of time for those, but some days it is almost 3:00 before she gets around to writing or art because she spent most of the day griping about the other subjects.

My daughter is working at a snail's pace through pre-a, only just now on the section in chapter 1 on reciprocals. I would like her to pick up the pace, but she's the type of kid who refuses to race through material. Usually, she'll work on a section for about 30 minutes and watch any of the accompanying videos. The days where she has to work on the exercises might take a little longer, depending on the number of problems there are. I wasn't aware that the Intro to Alg book included Alg 2 after chapter 13. That's good to know!

That's what we do, too! We usually begin with a math warm-up (math games, or one of the c-rod games shown on educationunboxed.com), Miquon in the a.m. and LOF sometime in the afternoon. It's working out great, and my son loves it!

Congrats! My kids love BrainPop!

You could check out Connect the Thoughts (connectthethoughts.com). I haven't used their history program yet, but it was recommended on another homeschooling forum.

How about logic? My 6th grader is doing logic daily now and enjoys it.

FWIW...I guess it really depends on the kid. I borrowed Apples to read to DS and he loved it. He thinks Fred is funny, and asked me to get the next book. We are finishing Butterflies now and he is looking forward to Cats. However, we do use them as a supplement to MEP. LOF is cuddle-on-the-couch time. We usually do all of the "It's Your Turn" exercises orally or on a small white board. DD also uses LOF Decimals and Percents as a supplement to MEP. I am not sure if she will continue next year, though. She likes Fred, but is not overly excited about the books. We might just switch to CLE instead.

After much, much trial and error (I have a dyslexic 9 year old), he is finally making progress with ClickN'Read. Of course, after having tried Starfall, ETC books, Rocket Phonics, HOP, and several others, it could just be that he is finally ready and able to retain what he is learning. I like that he can repeat lessons if necessary, and DS enjoys being able to work independently. I do supplement with the HOP books, just because we have them!

I agree. We finished Apples before Christmas are are now around chapter 6 or 7 in Butterflies. The books appear to be simplistic and easy, but are chock full of information that gets kids thinking and expanding their knowledge base. I mean, how many elementary kids can tell you who Archimedes was and how much a vigintillion is? And yes, my son took the time to write out a vigintillion with all 63 zeros on our white board the day we read about it in LOF. But not being content to stop there, we ended up taking it a few steps further and defined an unvigintillion, a duovigintillion, and a tresvigintillion. There were a LOT of zeros on the board that day! I love how the analog clock in integrated throughout the books, as well as continued reinforcement of skip counting and other basic facts. However, I don't know if I would still consider the elementary books as a complete curriculum. We're only on Butterflies so the jury is still out. But I use LOF as a treat for my son because he loves it so much better than the workbook-based math we also use.

We use Spelling Wisdom from SimplyCharlotteMason for our spelling dictation. My daughter has had success with it. She's in 6th grade and does dictation twice a week.

Not really. We are participating in a local MLK Day of Service. It begins with a brief overview and keynote speaker at 8:30 AM, then we'll go to our work site at 9:30. I count this experience as a homeschooling day.

We use Khan to supplement Life of Fred. Days 1 & 3 she'll read LOF and work on the problems, Days 2& 4 she'll watch the corresponding Khan video and do those practice problems. So far, so good. She is enjoying it.

I used FIAR last year with my son. We would only row the book for about 3-4 days and do a cooking project on the 5th day without re-reading the book. That worked well for us. On day one, I would read the entire book. Day two, we took turns reading, days 3 and 4 DS would try to read the book to me. He is not a strong reader. We only used it for reading/lit last year. I really don't find that it is strong enough as a stand-alone curriculum at all. I shelved FIAR this year, until just this week when DS asked if we could do a FIAR booK! Even at 8-years-old, he still enjoys the picture books and prefers them to chapter books. I let him choose, and he picked out The Story About Ping (again)!