Thank you Lori D. for your thoughtful helps! I have not heard of Morning Girl. I'll check into it. Thanks!

​Any opinions on the following books? Planning unit on explorers of New World. ​Walk the World's Rim ​The King's Fifth ​Pedro's Journal ​Daughter in 7th grade in the fall and is dyslexic. I will likely be reading these books to her, so I want to read the best one(s). What do you think? Is one better than another? Are they all good? Is one slow going but ever so worth it? Any different lit suggestions?

Yes, good idea. I ususally think of Pinteret for recipes I guess. :)

I guess from the lack of responses here that my topic is too broad. How about any ideas for explorers and navigation or 13 colonies? Hands-on, notebook pages, etc? Surely someone has done this time period with their dc and blogged about it? Thanks everyone.

Can anyone point me to resources that flesh this curriculum out? Dd finds the Veritas Press cards and worksheets dry and boring. I've done this time period several times with other dc, so I already have great lists of books that I love to go along with the year. What I need are lots of hands-on activites, visual aids, and projects for my 7th grader (who is also dyslexic--very slow reader, terrible speller, no grammar skills but actually likes writing as long as some creative element is involved.) I also have SOTW vol. 3 that I'll probably be supplementing quite a bit with. Any blogs or websites that might help me make this time period interesting for her?

Great question. I haven't been on the boards in a long time, but I came back today looking for exactly what you've asked. My dd (12) is dyslexic, so I'm looking for anything to help her succeed in the middle school years. She's come a long way, and I too would suggest looking into Don Potter's website. The information that I found on his website turned learning to read into something positive for my dd. We now use All About Spelling. Spelling is her worst subject second only to grammar. Anyone have any suggestions for a good grammar program for a dyslexic 12 year old who basically can barely remember to capitalize the first word in a sentence and put a period on the end?

This is it!!! This works for me!!! Oh my word, thank you, thank you, thank you!! I thought I was going crazy. :hurray: :hurray: :hurray:

Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure this out. So, I followed your directions--I still see no place where the word coach exists. I see the Khan logo--clicked that. Nothing. So then I looked around more and found a place where it said your child needed to add you as a coach to his account. So we started to do that, but I noticed that on his account, I am listed as his coach. I've also been getting e-mails for the last couple of weeks explaining his progress, etc. I even got on a different computer today to see if my laptop was just having a problem. Still nothing. Thanks Jean for your help. I appreciate you taking the time. I guess if I don't figure it out, I will need to find something else for math. Sigh.

Well, I thought that I was; however, I see everything you've explained BUT the word coach. I will look into what I've done wrong--hopefully that's it! It's gotta be, right? :001_smile: Thanks!

Hmmm.... Okay, so I go to my name in upper right hand corner. A menu drops down and I click "your children". The next screen should have "coach" somewhere to click? I don't see it. :confused1: If I try clicking on son's name first, I still don't see the word "coach" anywhere that produces what I'm looking for.

I am a bit frustrated again tonight. I cannot for the life of me figure out how I made a coach recommendation! I've done it twice now, but for some reason, I can't do it again like I did before. I'm clicking on my name, then "your children", but there is no place that I can see to go from there successfully. I'm sure I'm just missing something. Can someone help? I've read the directions from the Khan PDF, but they don't match up with what I am seeing on my screen. TIA.

Ok, so Monday is here and were are working on Khan again. Sigh. I do not understand about the horizontal bar chart--I see the colored bar chart and numbers when I hover over them, but I have no idea what those numbers mean. Also, I get how to view the problem he worked on and got wrong, but I don't see his answer anywhere. You had stated that it showed the answer he gave? I can't find it. This program is either not very user friendly, or I'm just slow. :) Does anyone else find Khan hard to figure out?

Matryoshka, Thanks so much for all this detail. I am currently working through your descriptions, so I may have more questions, but I wanted to say thanks!

Hmm... So, are the mastery challenges optional? What do you mean when you say you "require" your kids to do them if available? My ds won't do anything I haven't required. Ha!

Yes, I am his coach. Okay, so I see now the problem he did by hovering over the bar graph. But, I don't see his answer or what the correct answer is--just the problem. I see whether or not he got it right or wrong.... I don't understand what you mean by "track back in a focus topic..." Sorry! I feel so illiterate! Ok, I did see the pie chart, but now I can't find it again. I've been looking at the "active summary" page. How do I give him a coach recommendation? Also, what do those badges tell me? Or, are they just for the student for motivation? And, I see energy points? What are those? Thanks for taking the time to help. I feel like a dummy!

So, I have my son started on Khan Academy Algebra thanks to the help of this board. Now, I just don't understand how to track his progress. Any helps on how to figure this out? I see the activity summary, but I don't know how to use the information. "Oh, good job son. You got 13 badges today." or "Good job son, I see you are struggling with 1 skill, leveled up in 13 skills, and need practice with 3 skills." What does any of that even mean?? I'm lost because I can't see, for instance, how many he got wrong and what the mistakes were. Will Khan move him to practice those skills he needs practice in. What do I do in the meantime? This is definitely a learning curve for me. Another question: How much time do you all expect your children to work on this daily? My ds isn't self-motivated in math. He will need me to say, "Do this for X amount of minutes every day."

I would like to start using Khan Academy Algebra I for my ninth grade boy. We signed up, but I cannot find anywhere that tells me how to use the site effectively. My questions are things like, what is the scope and sequence he will follow? How much should he do each day in order to make the best progress? Etc. I feel like I am just looking at bunch of information that I don't understand and can't find anywhere that explains it all to me. My son feels like he is doing a bunch of busy work on the computer with no real direction--just an endless supply of math problems being thrown at him. How do you all use this site? How did you figure out what to do and how to progress? How do you use the site mainly--as a supplement or as your main curriculum? Can it be used as the sole source of Algebra instruction? Thanks for taking the time to help.

My husband is planning on teaching a speech class to a group of 10th-12th graders this fall. He is looking at several programs, but really wants info about Abeka's book--Speech for Today. Has anyone used it? What all does it include? Did you like the program and why or why not?

My list is just the books we are considering so far--very much in the working stage and not a final one by any means. If you have time, I would love to have more specifics on why you would be left "cold and bored". Definitely don't want the kids feeling that about our lit year! Others aren't liking Heart of Darkness--what do you find appealing about it? If you have time...

I am working on a literature list for my girls who will be entering 10th and 12th grades this fall. They will be reading these in a co-op setting so there's no rhyme or reason to which books we are looking at---just that we need books the kids will read but haven't read before. I need opinions and input because I have read only a couple of the books I'm thinking of using. The kids don't like "gross" stories, yet they don't want to be bored. I'm trying to balance the list out between uplifting stories/depressing ones and hard to read/easier to read. What do you think? What would you change? Eliminate? Keep? These books are the ones I'm leaning more heavily on using: 1. Watership Down 2. Til We Have Faces 3. Huck Finn 4. The Yearling 5. Tale of Two Cities These books I really know nothing about: 6. Farenheit 451 7. Heart of Darkness 8. Murder at the Cathedral 9. Out of the Silent Planet

Thank you so much everyone. There are some great ideas here that I have not yet tried. I'm going to print all these ideas out and start using them. I knew I could count on the hive! Thanks again to all who have replied--very helpful.

My littlest is finishing up her third grade year. She struggles with the reading process. She has really come a long way and improves every day just a bit, so I am grateful. She still has to sound out so many words that reading fluently is a problem for her. She isn't doing nearly the amout of backward reading and reversals that she was--just occassionally now she will still reverse "b" and "d" or "was" and "saw". She also does some of what I call lazy reading---"then" instead of "when" or "a" when the word is "the", or "there" instead of "where". She can go back and correct those things when she realizes the sentence makes no sense, but the whole process is so slow! Any suggestions for something I might use or do to help her fluency? I would guess that after this year, she is reading on about a 2nd grade level.

Thanks for these links!

Thanks for the info! And, I know, I like it too :)

Does anyone have any ideas about how to teach his poetry? Any helpful resources or ideas for projects or ways to analyze it? I'm drawing a blank.