Thank you ladies for your suggestions. I will look into them. I am in Texas and talked my neighbor through the de-enrollment process for public school. Really, there isn't much else to do rather than declaring you are a homeschooler; we have it easy out here. Morgan, I should see you Wednesday and we can talk more :).

My neighbor just pulled her 5th grade daughter out of public school due to severe bullying. She had no original plans to homeschool and doesn't have a clue where to start. She does not feel fully comfortable being her daughter's main teacher, but knows it is what is best for her daughter right now. I really think she would be most comfortable with an open and go curriculum BUT it is halfway through the school year and I know money is an issue so buying a full grade box curriculum for only half a year might be out. Her daughter never had academic problems, just social problems and loves to read so a lit heavy program might work. I use the Well Trained Mind suggestions for homeschooling my children, but I'm pretty sure that my neighbor will not feel comfortable pulling resources and making her own schedules at this point. I am a bit lost on what to suggest to her. Would you suggest starting a 6th grade program and going slowly or a 5 grade program and going quickly or is there an open and go program that you can start in the middle with? I can piecemeal something for her, this would be my suggestion for that approach (much of it is we are doing): CTC Math (her daughter can quickly test out of what she knows and work on what she doesn't) Story of the World volume 2 with Tests and Activity Book Mr.Q Science Earth Science Lit books that go with SOTW I am lost for what to offer for composition, I use IEW with my 5th grade daughter, but it is NOT open and go at all, we do it with a co-op so I couldn't offer to teach her daughter with mine. What kind of open and go curriculum is available for composition? Are there better options out there? What would you suggest? Thank you!

She does books like those when she reads to me, but they are just a bit too difficult and too long for her to tackle on her own. We are working very hard on extending the length of what she reads while retaining comprehension. Right now, if she has to read more than a sentence or two per page, especially if she struggles with a word or two, she loses the meaning. When I am with her and see that she is losing the meaning, I can read the page back to her after she reads it so she can understand the story, but she won't do that when she is reading independently so it is important that each page have few words and 90% of them decodable with basic phonics or looking at the picture. Thank you for the suggestions though.

Our family loves Mo Willems, but unfortunately the others are above her independent reading level, she could probably handle the pigeon books if I was there to help her and reminder of phonics rules, but knuffle bunny will be read a aloud for a while longer.

Those look great, thank you!

My daughter is 7 and a half. She has a processing disorder of some type that we are still trying to get diagnosed. I am currently having a hard time finding books she can read independently AND hold her interest. She really loves the Mo Willems Piggie and Elephant series as it is right at her independent reading level in difficulty and length, but funny enough that she likes reading them. Are there any other books or series like that? Any other independent reading suggestions? She reads Dr. Seuss beginning books, but sometimes the length of them tires her out. The Piggie and Elephant books are the first books that she WANTS to read all of and really ENJOYS reading them (such a change from me always pushing her). Any suggestions are appreciated. Thank you!

I totally agree, I lost the complete curiculum CD that I bought and emailed her about it and she quickly sent back links to the curriculum. We are using 2A right now and loving it. MM is a great program with great customer service!

In my personal experience, it depends on how you are freezing them and reheating them. The texture and sometimes flavor changes a bit, but it isn't bad, especially in soups and stews. I have also frozen sheppards pie (mashed potatos on top) and when cooked in the oven (always the best way to heat freezer meals IMO) tastes almost as good as fresh. Honestly, unless you or your family are very picky, I would try to freeze whatever you want and see how you like it. You could even make it for a meal and freeze the left overs before you made a big batch. I just made a bunch of freezer meals this weekend and used several recipies from this http://joelens.blogspot.com/2007/01/freezer-friendlymake-ahead.html blog. I made several main dishes and then got seveal bags of frozen veggies and we always have salad stuff on hand so I feel I can pull together a whole meal very easily and they aren't all casseroles.

Although I usually serve from the stove for the average meal, this is exactly how I grew up and how we eat when we have guests or are guests. raised by southerners in Texas and I'm still here

In high school we ran a trial for Hamlet. He was on trial for the death of Polonius and was pleading insanity. There was a prosecution and defense and the rest of the class were characters from the play. It was a lot of fun and you really had to know the play and the character you were playing and how they would react. -You could make/ design a costume for a character based on time period and the charcter. -Write a scene from a "therapy session" for a character -Create a Coat of Arms or a Flag for a character -Make a puppet show out of one scene -Illustrate a set of scenes from one of the plays -Make a travel brochure for the place where the play took place Just some ideas, hth :)

Thank you very much for explaining. Especially with the Unit breakdown and the link. I have a much better understanding now of what they are trying to do. It is VERY different than how I was taught to write so it was hard to understand where they were coming from.

I am the first to admit that I am not 100% familliar with the program. I have focused on the lower levels as that is the age I am most interested in. I have read on the website and looked at some of the samples and I just don't get it. I was part of a co-op that LOVED this program and didn't get it then either. It seems to me that not only does this program teach extremely formulaic writing, but it promotes plagiarism. Teaching a child to rewrite a paragraph "in their own words" while still using words from the actual paragraph and then calling it original writing is teaching kids the wrong thing. Even if you do not directly quote the author, you are still plagiarising. I am all for copywork, because it is COPYWORK and everyone knows it is not the child's work. I am all for retelling a story, but I would not usually call that original writing either. Am I wrong here, do the children move beyond this, are they taught that rewriting another's words and then calling them their own is wrong at some point? This is what I saw in a sample AND how the program was described by another mom who uses the program, but maybe there is more I'm missing? Please share.

I am very interested, RachelElizabethFlores@yahoo.com Thank you so much!

I didn't finish it because it just takes SO much time. It was obviously created for a classroom where it is normal for a student to spend 2-3 hours on language arts. We like to be done with ALL of school 3-4 hours and after PAL dd was ready to be done with school for the day OR she wouldn't want to finish if I put it after our other subjects. I DO think it is a very solid program and my dd definiently made progress last year, it is just too time intensive for us. We switched to Sonlight readers, ETC, FLL, WWE and continued with AAS and we get ALL of that done in half the time PAL took. With all that said. I did not start the program with my dd till she was already sounding out cvc words with reasonable fluency. I think PAL is more of a 1st grade program than a K program. I know some of the begining games teach letters and sounds, but IMO, it is not enough and they start introducing vowel combos with the first lessons. If a child doesn't know their letter sounds and how to sound out short vowel words already, this could be very confusing. I think it would be a great program for a classroom or small group, not so much for homeschooling.

I've found that my experience in PS was unique, but my English class started reading Shakespeare in 8th grade (so slightly older than your son) and read a play or more a year. If you are reading the original plays, many of the comedies and some of the tragedies IMO are inappropriate for the under high school crowd because of the adult themes. The first play I read in school was Taming of The Shrew. I thought it was a great one to start off with. We did a readers' theater in class and then watched the Elizabeth Taylor version of the play afterwards. We had several project choices afterwards; make a travel brochure of the citiy where Kate lived, make a diorama of a scene in the play, make up an extra scene between characters in the play, that kind of stuff. We also had to memorized a famous speech from each play. I also like Twelfth Night as a starting comedy. As for histories, I really liked Richard III or Henry V. Macbeth or Julius Caesar are good starting tragedies. My favorite tragedy, with some really great themes is King Lear, but your choice of video to go with it is very limited. In high school I read A Midsummer Night's Dream twice, once in English class and once in Drama class. It was really neat getting two perspectives on it. In drama we also watched Dead Poet Society not only because it is a great movie BUT also to look at how a speech can be used to mean many different things depending on the audience. We focused on Puck's last speech in the play where the character in Dead Poet Society is using the speech to apologize to his father. We all memorized the speech and I still remember it to this day (one of the few things I memorized and can recall at a moment's notice). I don't think I would suggest Dead Poet Society for the average 9 year old because of the adult themes, but the play would be fine and then you could revisit the play when he was older. In my college Shakespeare class, we read Harold Bloom's book of essays, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. I thought it gave interesting insights to many of the plays and think it could be something good for YOU to read and include in discussions as you think appropriate. The essays are relatively short and reasonably easy to read as far as critical lit essays go. I plan on doing this when my own dd gets a bit older. If we are by ourselves, we will read a scene or act and then watch it using the best video version I can come up with. Then I will give her a choice of projects to complete to show/ extend her understanding. Doing it in a co-op setting would be even more fun. I hope you and your son have a great time this year.

I would agree with the pp, do history and science through movies and have her narrate/ draw pictures/ write a sentence or two (or paragraph, whatever is apropriate and doable) about what she remembers from them. There are a decent amount of both science and history doumentaries that would be apropriate for her age especially through netfix and/or Amazon Prime. This would allow the girl to get a taste of the subjects, the mom to not feel guilty that they arent being covered BUT require very little effort on her part, and allow her to focus on her other children and getting her dd READING. I also agree that she needs to look into other curriculum, ABEKA is obviously not working.

I've been part of scholastic book clubs for several years. They offer quality books and $1 a book is a great price, BUT I would only do this if I had a very small amount of books to begin with or lots of shelf space available. At this point I have limited shelf space and try to be very picky about books that become ours permamently.

With FLL the script is the lesson, you cannot skip it, but you can make it your own. There is no need to read absolutely every word and when they were talking about family names at the begining I changed lots of things as we use different names than usual for some of our extended family. I think it is a great program and really, the scripting makes it SO easy to open and teach. Dd really likes it too and often chooses it as her first subject of the day.

You wouldn't need a roku if you were using your laptop, you would just stream what you wanted (netflix, huluplus, amazon prime) directly from the website. The roku is only for TVs that cannot stream directly from the internet. We love our roku! We have netflix,huluplus and were given a subscription to amazon prime as a gift. Check all three to see which has your favorite shows. We might drop netflix and just go with amazon prime as we are realizing that although most of it is overlap, it does offer some shows we like better (plus we get free two day shipping)

I have a degree and I honestly hope my daughter gets a college degree or vocational training of some type before starting a family as I think it is a wonderful experience and can offer a sense of security for her future. But I also hope she will choose to be a SAHM, at least while her children are small and I would be happy to have her choose to homeschool if that is what she thinks is best for her family.

Thank you for the replies, I'm excited to get her into the program as it looks like she could really benefit.

My dd, 6 (almost 7) has shown signs of dysgraphia/dyslexia for several years now, but only in this past year have I become convinced that it is more than a developmental issue. Her letter and number reversals are becoming WORSE as she gets older despite daily practice in reading and writing, along with other concerning "symptoms". Anyway, I feel blessed to be here in Texas where we have Scottish Rite Hospital that has a free evaluation and intervention center for dyslexia. I have applied and my daughter was accepted, but is on the evaluation waiting list. Hopefully we will hear from them by the end of August. I was hoping someone here might have some experience with Scottish Rite's Center for Dyslexia and could share their experience. I have only one IRL friend who has been through the process, but it was over 10 years ago and apparently they did not offer much intervention at the time.

My dh and I just started watching Eureka, but we like sci-fi. If you like mysteries and funny dialogue, I really enjoyed the Veronica Mars series. Arrested Deveopment is a great quirky comedy. Downton Abbey is on my to watch list.

Thank you for your replies. I have sent a care package and have another one in the works. I am hoping to continue sending them packages as the months go by so they know they are not forgotten and in my thoughts and prayers. There is a fund set up for the family. I will look into the meals and cleaning service idea. I keep very busy with my two children, so I am not constantly dwelling on things, but still think about it a lot. Thank you for the Bible verses and the blog post, I will be reading them. I have told my midwife about the situation when it inntially happened, but will share with her my fears the next time I see her. Thank you again.

It could still be a bug bite of some type, but I agree with the pp, watch it and if it gets larger, consult a dr.