I don't want to offend anyone, but I do not think this is necessarily an ER issue. But I do think a phone call to the pediatrician is in order. I don't know where you're located, but in here in NH my daughter's friend has contracted.......... what's it called?! Hoof and foot or hoof and mouth disease? When I read your post I was concerned about that..... Most kids are lethargic when sick viruses and fevers. Call your doctor if you have any concerns. Denise

I've never, ever seen bad words on the WTM boards, not once! I guess that's because I don't read every single post? BTW, where is that ignore button? :tongue_smilie: Denise

If that author isn't impressive, I don't know who or what is! BTW, I'm the one who makes my kids work for their answers, my husband is likely to give them. DS is very excited about the coming school year! Thanks again! Denise

My son came home and read the sample pages of LoF and LOVED it! He's a gifted writer and LOVES humor, and the second I saw those samples I *knew* it was for him! He's going to go through these on his own, not for school credit, so I won't even have to explain the curriculum choice to anyone. :D He's mainly doing this to improve on the SAT, and to get a THOROUGH knowledge of algebra. THANKS, Sue in FL!!!!!!!!!!!! :coolgleamA: Denise (who is off to get the information to borrow Cathy Duffy's book on learning styles, interstate library loan!)

thanks SO much for responding to my post! I went through pages and pages of posts trying to find you. I had read your review of MUS before and also knew you didn't like Saxon, and I really wanted to get input from you. I had forgotten that you were also a math teacher! May I pick your brain a little bit? First of all, in your review you say that in k-1st MUS starts skip counting. Do you mean primer or alpha? I was thinking of starting my daughter, now in 2nd grade, in the alpha level and we'd progress quickly until we got to subtraction. She's just not memorizing her subtraction facts with Saxon as she did with addition. She usually gets everything right but counts with fingers or in her head and is very slow with subtraction. This is why I'm looking at MUS, because I really don't want to move further in Saxon until she has mastered her subtraction facts. Do you agree with starting her in the alpha level? I also thought this would be a sure way to know we didn't miss anything else. And will it be too late to start the skip counting? I'll need to do this anyway. Can you please share why you don't like Saxon? My oldest son used Saxon until 9th grade and then went to PS. He learned to HATE math and to this day it's his worst subject. I FEEL SO BAD!!! I have SUCH regrets, because out of all my kids, he's the one I'd want to do best in math. He has always had high hopes for certain professions, now he looks down on himself, saying he's weak in math. I really want to get him to work at this over the summer to prepare for the SAT, don't know if he will. I'm hearing a lot about Life Of Fred here and am considering getting this for him, to make math FUN and not dull and dry. do you have an opinion of this? I don't want my daughter to struggle as my oldest son did. My younger son does very well in math, but he's been in PS since the middle of 5th grade. So he's gotten outside instruction. My oldest struggles to REALLY understand concepts in algebra and geometry, and I really blame Saxon, at least in part. He works very, very hard to get high C's and B's. He does well in all other areas. My husband, gifted in math, has tried to help him with his Saxon work but it just hasn't clicked. :banghead: Thanks SO much for your input! Denise

my daughter does not really have friends. I used to get her together with friends until I pulled my other daughter out of school in December. I have not had time. I will be getting her together with friends over the summer. I guess I was hoping for further progress in the home before we made friends more of a priority. BUt nothing I do helps. I'm considering getting her a full psychological check-up. I'm not "there" yet. My brother is extremely difficult, always has been, and he's a paranoid schizophrenic. The one thing I knew I couldn't handle in adoption was mental illness, but that's what we got. I don't know if I can handle it for 13 more years. She's from China, and I was told,"Girls from China typically do VERY well." Misrepresentation on the agencies part. I *CAN'T* sleep with her. I've tried it numerous times and she purposely awakes me. Then I'm *NOT* a nice mom. I had insomnia for YEARS and absolutely can NOT do without my sleep now. My bio daughter has a large room and the girls were supposed to share the room but we can't do that because she purposely awakes my daughter, who is prone to migraines, as am I. I guess I'll have to wait on schooling for now. She reads very little, because she intentionally tries not to pay attention when I try to school her. Denise

My youngest daughter is adopted. She has caused major stress in our home since she came to us at ONLY 14 months of age! After 2 years of pounding my head against a wall, KNOWING something was off, I did research and found that she has an attachment disorder. She is now almost 5.5 and does everything she can to try to upset me. I put her in preschool but she regressed so much I took her out after 6 weeks. I will not put her back in school because she has so many issues and I think we'd have more problems with her in school than if she were home. In the meantime, we're working with an attachment/trauma specialist. The woman we're working with, a social worker who adopted 2 kids and LIVED what I'm living and who also homeschooled, told me not to worry about schooling her for now. We need to work on relationship. (I've been doing that for 4 years!) She recommends this because my daughter, who is VERY bright and KNOWS all the schoolwork I give her, will intentionally do ALL her work wrong or just scribble all over her papers. When she's doing something for fun she'll write all her letters beautifully and can spell many things, but for schoolwork she intentionally writes things backwards, does work wrong, makes her papers a mess. Anything and everything to upset me. So I didn't school her for months and months. But as we move forward I worry about how long it will be before I can school her. And I also worry about evaluation/testing at the end of the year. We just have so many problems with her. I try so hard to help her but she sabotages all my efforts. Has done this since a BABY. How I wished I had been informed by our adoption agency of what to look for to see problems, and how to proceed with help from a younger age. We could have made HUGE GAINS at 14 months but I had NO idea what was going on. My daughter is so destructive to our home and pets that I have to have her by my side every waking minute. I don't know what it's like to go to the bathroom alone, take a shower alone, ANYTHING alone. I'm tired. And I don't know what to do about our schooling issues! Any tips/helps/advice would be appreciated. I'll be speaking with our therapist tomorrow. Thanks, Denise

There are seminars, but I have an attitude about paying $100 for the seminar and then another $100 for the curriculum! BUT, I just found out that there's a dvd ($20) which shows how to get started with the program. That, along with the SWR Yahoo group, I think would really help. But OhE mentioned WRTR and I'm going to borrow that from the library, order the dvd, watch it after reading through WRTR, THEN maybe I'll feel better prepared for SWR. In looking more into the online samples of SWR and Wise Guide, it appears to be easier than I thought..... but that's silly - I don't have the 200+ page teacher guide in front of me! :D Anyway, the dvd is sold here: http://www.bhibooks.net/catalog/item/4154895/4031289.htm and there was a review of the dvd somewhere but I can't find it now. Denise

Thank so much for your very detailed replies to my email. I forgot I had written in about them, and LOVE the idea of not forcing myself to remember anythying.:D I need to :chillpill: and take some time to think about this. For what ever reason, SWR is still ringing loudly in my ears, even though I really think I shouldn't consider it. I wish I could go see it somewhere! In the meantime, thanks for your suggestion to getting WRTR from the library. I will do that tomorrow! Then maybe I can feel comfortable moving forward to SWR. Or maybe I won't feel I need to. Anyway, thanks so much for sharing what you've done! Denise

Thanks SO much for your detailed message. I was looking at AAS because I didn't think I could implement SWR due to a head injury. I shy away from guides and curriculum which are heavy on teacher involvement, teacher prep, etc. Also, too many details overwhelm me. The more I read, the more I felt SWR was an answer to prayer, but too overwhelming for me to implement. But I wanted to understand what AAS would be lacking, if anything. My daughter really needs a solid, phonetic spelling program to catch up after being in PS for 1.5 years. She reads very well but spells horribly. Thanks again, Denise

can you tell me the difference for the child? It seems that SWR is more of a headache for the teacher - which I pretty much stay away from. Is there anything a child will miss with AAS that they'd get with SWR? Thanks! Denise

I'm looking into our 4th spelling curriculum THIS YEAR. I didn't like the traditional, memorize this list approach. My daughter needs a good PHONICS approach so she can apply spelling rules to all words. I'm currently using Sequential Spelling and will continue to do so because it is effortless on both our parts and takes little time. BUT, my daughter was in school for first grade and half of second - HUGE mistake. She needs a good, solid phonics program now! Her spelling during journaling is awful. She's always gotten 100% on spelling tests at school but doesn't apply the phonics rules to all words. I backed up to put her back into a phonics program but she hates the baby work. I'm now looking at SWR. It looks like it has the potential of FINALLY being the answer! We'd review phonics and spelling rules and that's what she definitely needs. My problem is this. I have a head injury and I'm afraid the SWR book will be so cluttered with information, studies, suggestions, etc. that I won't be able to use it. This has happened with several curriculums and I have to have my husband figure things out for me. :crying: Can someone tell me how the book, and the entire Wise Guide program in general, is laid out? Spelling Power had WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much information for me when I was schooling my other kids and I never did the program. Will this be the same? If I get this I'll get the complete core program. It looks like this is for grades 1 - 12. Is this true? Thanks SO MUCH! Denise :001_smile:

We used it for grades 3 - 7 and *loved* the program. It's SO easy to use and VERY thorough. My oldest went to public high school and took the PSAT a year ahead in 10th grade and scored in the 99th percentile for the English/written section! The teachers pulled him aside and wanted to know where he got his English instruction from because they KNEW it didn't come from the school system! All those tearful years of diagramming paid off! Denise ps - the tears were MINE as I had never diagrammed a sentence before! :lol:

I'm SO frustrated today because a few years back I could have figured this out all on my own. I have a head injury and I struggle with it sometimes like today. I feel I have the answer somewhere in the back of my head but I can't pull it out! PLEASE HELP ME! I had my daughter in first grade and part of second grade, pulling her out and starting our school year in January. We're using Saxon Math and I was going to supplement with Singapore but because Singapore has no teacher instruction I don't see that working long term, so we're going to stick with Saxon for now. Anyway, my daughter did NO math drills in PS. She had to learn addition and subraction drills and has been working on that since January. We've had some health issues and had to take off a week here and there and I know that hasn't helped. Anyway, she has not yet been able to finish a speed drill in 1 minute, which I don't really care. She's down to 1 minute 30 seconds. My problem is this. We doubled up on lessons some days so we could take the summer off and we're currently on lesson 90. Being that there are 40 lessons left, we basically have 20 days of math left. WRONG!!! Saxon 2 is now getting into multiplication and she still has not memorized her addition/subtraction facts! My husband made a computer program for her that I'm going to have her do at least twice per day which will help. I also may start to use calculadders as have them from years back. So, should I stop math now until she's got a better grasp on her addition/subtraction? I feel that somehow moving onto multiplication will cause problems. Can someone help me think this through? I want her to get to the point where she won't have to use her fingers for addition/subtraction. Any *fun* ideas for helping her to memorize her facts? I think I remember buying Math Wars for one of my sons. Does this use all math facts that Saxon does? I hate it when I get confused!!!!!!!!!!!!! :confused: Denise

I used this through the 7th grade and switched to Jensens in 8th just to give my son a little variety. He went to public high school and when he took the PSAT in 10th grade and scored in the 99th percentile in English, the teachers pulled him aside to see where he learned his grammar! They KNEW it wasn't from their school system! I love the simple approach. Going through the first portion of the lesson orally really shows you if the child has "gotten" it. It's thorough but simply laid out. Some curricula just wants to make things too technical and this one is easy to implement. My kids have always scored highest in English and that makes me a fan of R & S and I plan to stick with it.

after homeschooling my oldest through the 8th grade he entered high school for 9th and 10th and did very well. FOr personal reasons we will be dually enrolling him next year. He will do history AP and statistics AP through the local high school and the rest of the classes at home. My problem is that I can't teach hima at that level due to a recent head injury so I'm looking at online options. The one that seems to make people so happy is Bob Jones, but the one thing I really dislike about that program is that you watch the dvd and then you do the classwork. Doing school in this way won't be cutting down on his class time like I was hoping. He wants to handle his work load with a job, and I'd rather do some sort of online tutorial where he does the work online and then others grade it. I need to be as much removed as possible. While I hate that, I do realize my limitations at this time. Can anyone give me ideas with online schooling? I didn't like the looks of Alpha Omega SOS or CLASS, and Bob Jones will be too time consuming. It is my understanding that BJ will be like having a full day with teacher instruction and then off for work/homework. ISn't there another option? He'd really like to be able to have a job. I told him going to school full time, coming home to do homework, he'd not have enough time in the day to have a job. WOuldn't it be the same with Bob Jones? And with BJ don't I do all the grading? I feel completely incompetent to do so now. Thanks Denise

I am homeschooling the second time around and am jumping the gun a bit with this question as my oldest is only in 2nd grade. But we used R&S for grammar, after HATING Abeka, and it worked very, very well for our family. I know they now go above 8th grade grammar, but IS THAT NECESSARY? We threw in Jensen's Grammar for my oldest son for so he could have a different view on things but I am really wondering if all that grammar is necessary. If they have a good, solid understanding of RS, a WONDERFUl grammar choice in my opinion, why do English/grammar through high school? I think it would make more sense to go on to study literature and forego the formal English/grammar instruction. My oldest doesn't learn much grammar wise in school now. Yet in the 10th grade he took the PSAT and scored in the 99% for ALL kids in the US, INCLUDING 11th graders. I know he gets VERY little grammar instruction in school. In fact, when his scores came back so high, his English teacher pulled him aside and wanted to know what his schooling background was because she knew he didn't get that in the public school system. :willy_nilly: So, isn't all that extra grammar just busy work when you've completed such a thorough curriculum as RS through the 8th or 9th grade? Thanks for letting me think out loud. :o Denise

nt

thinking that there should be more of a focus on WORD FAMILIES instead of memorizing lists. I've done Spelling Workout, Abeka, A REaon For Spelling and own Spelling Power. I've never used SP because I can NOT have a curriculum with SO MUCH CLUTTER that it causes brain fog, I like things plainly laid out for me. I have a head injury. So today I was looking at Sequential Spelling. Although my daughter is not learning disabled or dyslexic, I did think this was a real good way of teaching spelling. Can anyone who has used this please respond? Or if you've used a program that is SIMPLY laid out and goes over word families and NOT word lists, please give me input? My daughter is doing MUCH better in spelling. We did phonics, she went to 1st grade and 2nd until December and then I pulled out. Her spelling has come a LONG way in 4 months by going over phonics again, but I'd really like to focus on SPELLING and not phonics because she reads very well. Thanks so much, Denise Who is SO SICK of searching for the perfect curriculum!

and why we're really glad he did is because of what it showed us. He needs absolutely NO extra study in grammar and writing but while his scores were exceptional in math, it did show areas to improve (I believe Saxon ruined his ability to think things through in Algebra) and he's wanting to try Algebra again from a different view. It also showed that under pressure he reads slower and comprehension isn't what it normally is when he's not under pressure. So we're looking for ways to improve his test skills. Denise

My son was homeschooled until high school. Does very well in school but he thinks he's bad at math. Both my sons struggle with math and are otherwise extremely bright. We used Saxon all the way but now that my son is in school we want to supplement his math and go back to Algebra II to get his scores higher on the SAT. He got very good marks but needs to bring up his math, and his reading is slower and he needs help to better comprehend. Can someone give me suggestions? I'm considering Teaching Textbooks or Jacobs for Algebra II. He already finished Alg II honors and got b's and c's but this is strictly to help him on the SAT and better prepare him for college. He's always been an excellent reader but he does read slower and needs to better comprehend while under pressure, like on the SAT! Any tips/helps to bring up his reading speed? Thanks!

nt

Ok, I just looked at the online samples of Singapore and I LOVE IT. Now for those of you who use two programs, WHY and how do you use the two together? Would the daily drill of Saxon's speed drills be the main part of what's used? How long do you use two programs? Thanks, Denise

Thanks so much, ladies, I absolutely NEEDED that! I already have SOTW and plan to use it next year. I REALLY need to let this go now!!! ;)

I had to put my kids into school due to burnout. I have my girls home with me now. TOG always intrigued me but because of the workload I've always refused to look at it. I have a friend using year 2 and she said it's a LOT of work on her. Can you PLEASE share so I can put this to rest? I absolutely can NOT head down that burnout road again. I've always agreed with the classical method but now want to tweak it a bit. I want to enjoy more of LIFE with my girls and have lots of plans for them and I do NOT want to be too bogged down in the early years. There is ONE thing I'm certain of: We'll do core 5 SL to study cultures around the world when they're old enough - they're now 8 and almost 5. I can't find our "fit" yet. :confused::confused::confused: Thanks Denise veteran homeschooler for 8years, now newly returned and hsing 3 weeks