There is a really interesting thread going on about the worst curriculum purchases. How about the best, the favorites, the things that work for everybody, or came down the line at just the right time? For my guys....IEW, AAS, and Singapore, although we are getting a little bored with it.

What if you did the IEW TWSS and then turned around and used WWE & FLL with the student. ds really likes WWE because of all the read aloud. he loves to be read to, and if IEW doesn't have that he'd never go for it. Does IEW have that?

Great idea! I didn't know she had lectures like that. thanks

Wow lots of suggestions for LDTPM. I'll definitely give it a try. Thanks a bunch!

Just curious, but does anyone have any positive experiences with a web based classical writing program? It sure is tempting to pass this on to someone else. It would be for ds who is 7/8.

We are looking for more poems, speeches, etc for ds who doesn't really like some of the things that are in FLL. I've thought of the preamble to the Constitution, but I think it is too hard. What do other people use?

ds has been using wwe 1 & 2 this year. we are about half way through wwe2 and we've reached the point where they stop asking the set of questions designed to help with the narration. poor ds is now lost. he can tell me the story but it takes him 5 or more sentences. how much help should i give him? how much help do you give your kid/s? and do you really use his narration for his dictation? i thought the point of classical writing was to give him lots of exposure to "good" writing, and his writing, while not poor, is no where near as good as the passage or the source. lately i've been using the suggestions for acceptable narrations. and lastly, with the dictation, do you expect that the child should reproduce the dictation word for word, complete with punctuation? for example, last week his dictation was something about "only" such and such came and he wrote "just" instead. it still made sense. and we have that problem especially when he is taking his own for dictation. Does anybody have any problems similar to this? I really like WWE; it makes so much sense to me, and seems like it works well for ds because he has learned so much.

It has been a while and a few very eventful days. We did end up taking ds out. he went for one more day so he could end up on a "positive" note, rather than one whose image was one where he was being pulled away from me by two adults/strangers. He didn't even want to go one more day. i told him i'd pull him out just as soon as i picked him up, but i ended up doing it before i picked him up. when i got him he said, "hey i wanted to go to school tomorrow; it's computer day." which got a loud response from me, including we don't pick which days we can go, by tomorrow morning you'd be singing a different song, and we can't undo what we've done. at least now i've left him wanting more?? dh is ok with this. i mean what were our options...nothing that we were willing to do. i was unwilling to have him carried off screaming. i am looking for ways to include him more. and we'll just see what the future holds. he wants to send ds2 next year, when he'll be in first grade. but i can't tell if he really wants to or is just speaking out of frustration, which he does alot. so we are back and loving it already. i gotta say everybody who has posted has been so helpful. i might not have followed the advice given, but it was good to have so many viewpoints. and to know that what i was feeling about being "fired" (which is EXACTLY how i felt) and other things, was ok. or at least not unheard of.:) can't wait until my next problem??!! :grouphug::grouphug::grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

he went on thursday, and they didn't do literacy, plus i went with to his class, back for lunch, and picked him up early. he also went on friday which was early release, and from the sounds of it they did 20 minutes worth the work. is that not amazing?? they were there for 5 hours, and did math only, which was abbreviated, and went to art class. anyway, friday was an ok day since it was so short. tonight i talked with him about what will happen tomorrow. i'll walk him to his class, while dragging my other two along. but i'm not going for lunch, and have a swim lesson for ds2 so i won't even be home when he gets home. he's grumbling like he was before, but i keep telling him one day at a time and one chunk at a time. we'll see if that is enough. as far as dh, we talked some this weekend. we still don't have a plan, but i have one in my head. we talked about different curricula, different points where improvement is needed, etc. we talked about what his chinese parents think of all this. while we never said specifically that we are going to return to hs or not, i think his mind is more open. there was one point last week when i called dh to tell him that ds hadn't gone to school again. he asked what did i think we should do. i said we should take him out. he grunted, then said fine then take him out. and i repeated myself a couple more times, and got the same response. well i figured it was decided, so i started ordering books and notifying the teacher. when he came home he told ds he had to go to school, took away his allowance forever, etc. ds finally agreed to go, and that was the day i went to lunch with him. so i figured give it another try. my point is that on sat night i told dh i had already started buying books and notifying the teacher and his response was well why did you go back? and he wasn't mad about it; he just wanted to know. i think we made some headway, but i wish we had a more specific plan heading into tomorrow. my plan is that ds finish out the track which is only 3 more weeks. that way, he does accomplish something, gets to feel some type of achievement. and then take him out if he is still miserable. if he is willing to keep going then we'll keep him in. it seems like the only compromise that will prevent him from getting out on demand and allow my husband to see that he has completed something and has less fear of school than if he got out on demand. i guess it is the best i can do, and dh has already gone to bed. i guess we'll just see how resistant ds is tomorrow. i am one of those people who believe that it is difficult to learn to like something if it is being shoved down your throat. he can't learn to like school if he is being physically forced to go. but when he can participate in the solution, he might be able to let his guard down enough to give it a chance. should be interesting. thanks for being so supportive. hope you all have a great start to your week. :001_smile:

well one of the main reasons i was interested, is not so much because i see so many opportunities for a reading 2 year old, but because my middle child is just now learning to read, at 5.5. that isn't late by any means, but i wonder if he will ever be enamored with books like my older son. i don't think he will be, to be honest. and is that because of his nature, or because he was older when he learned and has had a harder time with it. he hasn't had it from the "beginning"; he might even remember that it hasn't been easy. i think if i thought that it would make him a good reader by the age of 3 or 4 i would try it. but i think i'll try the same techniques i used with my oldest and hope for the best. which means i need to start teaching him his letters now, while he is interested.

Thanks for the info. I was just wondering if anyone could give a stellar recommendation for it. My oldest knew all his letters, upper and lower case when he was two, and was reading pretty well by the time he was four. my youngest is showing alot of interest in letters, but he doesn't talk much. i can't find anyone who would say it works wonders, or at least anyone ordinary like me. thanks folks :auto:

just wondering if anyone here has tried "how to teach your baby to read" by Glenn Doman. did it work? was it worthwhile? any perspectives?

We did talk, though we didn't get to any conclusions thanks to my toddler and a thunderstorm. going to keep trying though. i asked some questions and wrote down the answers so i could think about them but the mania of our weekend has set in. the reasons seem to be the same ones we have talked about before...lack of discipline, ds's new fear of school stemming from his situation, i'm not a teacher, lack of organization. we have different styles of disicipline, no i'm not a teacher, i'm pretty organized though not to a t (it's kind of hard to be when you have a two yer old), and ds's problem does need to be addressed. before i got cut off i told him that we needed to come up with a plan of what to do with ds when he starts refuse again. i really want to do this with him because i'd rather him be on board. in the same light, i am the one who has to execute the "rules". even dh has not idea how to force ds to do as he wishes. ds's problems with school are his used-to-be-dislike-but now-has-become-hatred of writing, the dramatically increase of independent work and he misses his family, me in particular. i hope i am still making sense

well we were pretty specific when we made the deal. the deal was he didn't have to even walk in the door if he didn't want to. but maybe the point that was made that dh expected the trial to last at least a certain amount of time was true but he was unable to or unwilling to verbalize it. i agree this is a marriage issue and that is another reason i get so mad about it. it seems to me that there is a lack of respect or understanding or both. there has got to be some type of compromise here and i need to find some way to find it. i'm more than willing to change our curriculum. and i'd love it if he took up a topic or two. but compromise is so hard when dh is so strongly opinionated. and the funny thing is that he was the one who got me started in hs, due to some really cool family he once knew. thanks guys. wish me luck. i'm going in. i'll let you know the results. though it might take a while.

wow. this really gives me alot to think about. it helps me to not feel so guilty about how i feel about this whole situation. i was thinking this morning about what if i capitulate, how does that guarantee a united front or a happy marriage. i often think that hs is much more important to me that to my dh, i spend much more time thinking about it, planning for it, dreaming about it. he says he doesn't think about it outside our arguments (which might just be because he is a man and not given to deep thoughts). and i have often thought that i am wrong for feeling so strongly and being so angry. i did get ds to go this morning, by walking him into his class, promising to meet him for lunch, and pick him up as soon as his core subjects are over which is only about half an hour early. he was weepy but not sobbing. it worked for today but there is no way i can keep this up. and someone said "unreasonable". i have often thought that about dh. especially with this lie. dh has always has scrupulous morals. it is one of the things i love about him. but this time...it makes me think he is out of his mind. maybe there is something i am missing but we have discussed over and over his problems with hs and it never improves. he thinks ps is good for a child's character as well as the social issues. and he has also said he doesn't like the way i do it. that was why i reluctantly agreed to try ps, because i could see that it was the only way for dh to see ps as it is. but now ds is paying the price for this experiment. maybe we need to keep talking and keep talking. and keep talking.