I wouldn't worry too much about the history at this point, but for listening comprehension, try short stories like Aesop's fables and such. Narration is a skill, and it sounds like he's not ready to narrate SOTW. That's fine. He's still a little guy. :)

People need to stop saying wait and see with speech therapy. NO speech therapist will tell you to wait and see. They will all say they want to see that child as soon as a problem is identified, because it's easier to fix it earlier than later when bad habits are formed! I had a ped even say to wait until age 5 and let the school system take care of it then. NO. I'm glad I switched doctors and that I got that kid started while still 3. We went through the school system. They have to test your kid and determine eligibility. If your child is school aged, they don't have to provide services in some states (mine included). But while my son was preschool age, we went to speech therapy at the local school each week, and he did very well. We finished up later via private speech therapy. My insurance covered up to 30 visits at that point (now I could get unlimited because he has an autism diagnosis, but that's a recent change). I have never had any issues with the school system and my homeschooling, even with this child who was a later reader. They could tell he was being read to and talked to and such. They just simply said that once he was school age, he had to enroll in order to get services. I was still given the choice to continue homeschooling and not get services (which is what we did). It would be worth getting your kids checked out, for your peace of mind. If other people have a hard time understanding them, that will help towards qualifying them for speech. And if they don't qualify, that's fine too. At least you'll know, right?

Procrastinating whenever he hits a writing assignment. :lol: My 8th grader is doing virtual school this year, so isn't really getting much writing instruction (though his teachers think he writes really well... once I get him out of deer in headlights mode!), but he did use WWS1 before doing virtual. Next year in 9th, I plan to attempt Excellence in Literature Intro to Literature, and we'll see if he needs any extra writing instruction beyond what we discuss as he just writes across the curriculum. I had thought about doing WWS2, but he really didn't want to. He seems to be doing pretty well just writing. His main issue is getting started (and often coming up with ideas when the assignment is some touchy feely life experience thing that he really hasn't experienced, but that won't be an issue in homeschooling, as I won't give those assignments). The funniest thing he said recently was, "I feel like I could just write this and come up with an outline afterward." That is exactly how I wrote when I was his age. :smilielol5:

My current 8th grader used Apologia General Science in 6th. He did Plato Life Science for 7th grade (virtual school) and is doing virtual school again this year (Edgenuity). We liked Apologia though. I had him use the virtual homeschool co-op with it (free). Don't ask me what I'll use next year for 6th with DS2. He's currently doing a mixture of a CK-12 Flexbook and Mystery Science (he likes the videos but complains about the activities!).

I haven't had any really sensitive kids yet (we'll see about my daughter when she's reading age), so they've been ok with anything at their reading level so far. If they find a book too scary, they'll just put it down. No big deal. Same thing goes for TV shows. If it starts to get scary, they leave the room or turn it off and don't watch it. Mine tend to have weird fear/no-fear... Like one son could watch the LOTR movies at age 5, but the happy, singing CLEANING SCENE of Snow White terrified him. :lol: He was thinking about the witch coming back, so that's where his mind went. I find that cartoons tend to scare my kids more than realistic looking movies. I have no idea why! You'd think it would be the opposite.

I'll get to start one from the beginning again in a few years. I'll likely use some of the same stuff... Like Singapore Essential Math K when she wants to "do school" at age 4. :P I have thought about maybe doing the reading program that goes along with ELTL, but I don't know yet. If she is an early reader like 2 of her brothers, I might not even need a reading program. If she struggles at all like her autistic brother did, I really liked R&S Phonics and Reading for him. So for that, I'll really have to wait until she's closer to school age so I can see what she needs in particular. She's not yet 3. I have some time. With every child, I've used different things, often multiple things in the same year. :lol: I am not a stick-to-one-curriculum-for-12-years kind of person. Not at all. Each year, I look at the child and what they need and decide what I feel like using that would meet that need. :) And goodness, I haven't even thought about what my middle two kids will use next year in 4th and 6th grades. I do have 9th grade mostly worked out! Starting high school for the first time got me excited, so I planned a wee bit ahead. Might tweak some based on where he is at the end of 8th, but I think the current plan is workable. :)

I have nothing to say about taking an extra year or not, but I wanted to let you know that I had jaw surgery when I was 15, just before school started. I had bones removed from my upper jaw and they pulled my lower jaw forward. My teeth were wired shut for 6.5 weeks (because of Labor Day - it was only supposed to be 6 weeks, and every day counts when your teeth are wired shut!!!). I had the surgery, stayed in the hospital a few days, skipped pre-band camp the following week, then attended band camp the week after that. It was not a problem at all. I just couldn't play my trombone. ;) I didn't have any issues doing school and such. I drank Ensure from a cup and was able to talk as much as you normally could without opening your mouth. The worst part for me was the day after surgery, when my nose got stuffy and that made it hard to breathe. :P They gave me some meds for that, but they were the kind that can be addictive, so it often started to wear off before I could get my next dose. That sucked. But when they removed something in the front (I don't remember what) before I left the hospital, I was able to breathe through my mouth easier. Just needed that air flow through my teeth! So I'd tell her that if she needs an extra year, that's fine. But just know that you may not even need it. :) I wish her luck!

I'm guessing this thread is fishing for blog article content... But yes, I'm engaged in educating my children from early in the morning until time to make dinner, and sometimes after dinner as well. When I had one child in first grade, it wasn't very time consuming. Now that I have 3 children ranging from grades 3-8 (and the 8th grader is doing virtual school this year, so I'm not even responsible for him nearly as much!), it takes all day. An individual child may not be schooling that long compared to public school students, but my time is spread thin. I have to sit at elbow with my 5th grader, for example, and drag him through an education that he really cares nothing about. :tongue_smilie: And that doesn't count the planning, research, and educating myself.

We're outside the city. Trash pickup is weekly. They have actual people get down and lift the bags out of your trash can (or dump the can if it's small). There is no recycling pickup at all, but there are recycling trailers located at the elementary schools nearby. You have to sort everything and drive it over there. My parents live in the city (a couple towns over), and they have automated trash pickup and recycling pickup. I think they're once a week for each. I'm pretty sure trash pickup was twice a week when I was a kid (in that same house). The city I'm closest to (just a few minutes down the road) has automated trash pickup, but I don't think they do recycling pickup at all.

I just used the textbook and workbook. I didn't use an answer key, but that child needed to be at elbow anyway, so I watched as he worked. We went over the material in the textbook orally, then he did the workbook pages on his own.

Call the actual phone number: (606)-522-4348 This isn't Milestone Books (they're a reseller), but the actual publisher. They're very friendly, and ordering is easy.

My boys aren't boring at all, but they don't like to decorate or color their work either. IF they decorate it, it's usually just making things blow up. Sigh. Their sentences are typically very creative though. I might have to threaten them to get the sentences written, because 2 of the 3 are pencil phobic, but they do have fun with their sentences. :) Mostly, my boys would rather be playing outside or playing with Legos or doing stuff on the computer. They don't want to be doing school. They certainly aren't going to waste time doodling with colors and using glitter. :)

Thanks everyone! I think I'll let him look at the choices and see if he has an opinion. He doesn't always. :lol: I've had to drag opinions out of him. I did print out the placement test for R&S English (that seems new?), starting with grade 5. I'll see where his grammar knowledge is and go from there. What I like about R&S is that it's very thorough and it has writing helps there if we need it, or we can ignore the writing if we don't need it. He'll be doing plenty of writing across the curriculum. I'm hoping after this virtual school year he'll be more comfortable with writing a basic essay. He freaks out every time he's assigned one, but then he gets excellent grades on them once he gets over himself and gets to work. He just lacks confidence in the process. And it doesn't help that the English essays occasionally have ridiculous assignments. Last year it was writing about an event that affected his identity. He was 12. He hadn't really had any specific memorable events that changed him, you know? This year he had to write about a hero and an event involving that hero and how it affected him (my son). Again, sheltered, fairly easy life... not a lot of events like that. :p We figured something out and kind of stretched it to make it fit, but man that was hard. When he's given a normal topic, he can do well. He's certainly much more comfortable writing about history or science, though he'll still have a deer in headlights moment when the assignment is given (and he'll just do all math for a few days until someone notices and says, "Hey, don't forget your other subjects!" :tongue_smilie: ). At least when homeschooling next year, I'll give the essay assignment myself, so I'll know it's there and can make sure he isn't procrastinating it. ;)

I've switched curriculum several times without issues. I'm teaching the child, not the curriculum. I have an overall goal in mind for the year, and I meet that goal with whatever materials I need. Even in math, I have switched several times without a problem. My 8th grader is doing geometry this year, having used Saxon, Math Mammoth, Singapore, Jacobs Algebra, and AoPS. The first 3 were elementary curriculum that were sometimes changed mid-year even. :)

I like the looks of SWB's program, but I don't know if I could swing the teacher intensiveness of it. I'll likely still be at elbow with my autistic 6th grader, and my 4th kid will be 3 - more sane than this year, but still good at interrupting mama. Though I might be able to combine the 6th and 9th graders in it... Hmm... I'll look at it again. :)

My son was diagnosed earlier this year at age 10. Before the evaluation, I told him the testing was to see how his brain worked. Afterwards, I explained to him what the diagnoses were, and how that explained some of the difficulties he had. I think it was helpful to know why he has so many problems socially. I also explained it to his brothers (found a good blog post about toaster brains vs. hairdryer brains). He's level 1, so high functioning. People who have been around him usually do notice that something isn't right, but they don't say anything. A few years ago, it wasn't as noticeable, but as he gets older and the other kids mature more than he does, it's quite noticeable. Who can miss the 10 year old throwing a fit over something that wouldn't phase a NT kid?

I'm using book A with my 5th grader who has dysgraphia. He's not dyslexic, but has some overlapping symptoms. He also can't spell his way out of a paper bag if he hasn't memorized the spelling already. And I mean he'll put weird letters in the middle of a word and you're thinking, "There's no 'r' sound in that word! Where is that coming from?!?" I'm thankful that he doesn't think the book is babyish. We started at lesson 1 - tracing letters. It's good for him, due to the dysgraphia. He really needed to go back to the beginning. The entire contents are still on the website, so you can see what they look like and whether they would benefit your students. I agree with others that Megawords might be a better choice.

We only got a few days through MM6 when my current 5th grader was having tears of boredom. We went to AoPS Prealgebra. If he gets stuck, I'll figure something else out. :p He really likes it and Alcumus so far. He thinks it's fun to find the "trick" to make the problem easier. :) My oldest did MM through level 4, and then we'd both had enough. We switched to Singapore 5 and enjoyed that. Then he did AoPS Prealgebra after 5B. I've also used Math in Focus grades 3 and 5 with my younger two boys and enjoyed that. MM has soooo many problems on the page, that even if you only circle a handful to do, the kid still gets overwhelmed by the number of problems they can still see.

This is my first post in the high school forum. :seeya: My oldest is in 8th grade this year. He homeschooled grades 1-7, and then did virtual school (Edgenuity) the second half of 7th and now all of 8th. I plan to homeschool him for 9th and up. Just needed a break while baby #4 was a chaotic toddler. Anyway, he's had bits and pieces of grammar here and there over the years... FLL 1/2, level 1 of KISS, a quarter of R&S 5, about half of Hake 6, and then the grammar included in ELTL 5. Since he's been in virtual school, he's really not had much grammar, if any. He reads a lot and generally uses decent grammar, but I would like to hit some of the grammar areas he hasn't been taught yet. He knows the basics of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, predicate nominatives, predicate adjectives, prepositions, indirect objects, and direct objects. He has not had things like gerunds and perfect tenses and stuff like that. Some ideas I've been mulling over: R&S 6 or 7? Jensen Analytical Grammar I was set on Jensen, but then realized it didn't have diagramming. I would like diagramming included. The rest of his English will be covered by Excellence in Literature Intro to Literature. We'll see if I need to add more writing instruction than that... I suggested WWS2, but he'd prefer not to do that. Currently, he writes essays for virtual school fairly often and gets good grades on them. I have to drag him through the process, but he can do it. Once he gets over his fear, he writes a decent essay. It's not spectacular like some I see on these boards, but they're apparently better than what the local teachers are used to seeing from the public school students, probably because he's had some grammar. :tongue_smilie: As far as writing goes, he really needs to learn how to flesh out his ideas more. He's a man of few words. So any recommendations for that would be great too.

Like a couple of the other posters, I had one child who could not learn to read with just phonics. He's autistic, has dysgraphia (and some overlapping symptoms of dyslexia but isn't dyslexic), slow processing speed, and low working memory. When he was 8, I decided to try a blended approach after doing pure phonics only since he was 4 (and he could blend at just turned 4,before he knew all his letters). I used Rod & Staff Phonics and Reading, and suddenly he took off! By 4th grade he was reading at grade level. I still believe in phonics for most kids, though my other 2 readers spontaneously started reading without instruction - one tending to read more whole word (and he reads FAST) with less spelling skills, and the other intuited phonics as it applies to reading and spelling. So out of 3 children, the only one I've used pure phonics with didn't do well with it. :p I do plan to have my struggler go through Elizabeth's lessons at some point... Right now we're hitting writing and spelling hard, back to basics. I have to keep his school work short and to the point. Though he might be ok with watching a video. I think the hardest thing for him is that English words break phonics and spelling rules, and that sends him into a tizzy. :)

I've made big purchases that were worth it and big purchases that were flops. My curriculum closet is like a mini-homeschool convention. 😂 But part of buying flops is learning what kind of teacher you are, and teacher education is worth paying for, right? That said, if it's a choice of expensive curriculum or food on the table, always choose food on the table. ;) So glad your purchase was a good one!

Not academically educational, but my husband took my 10 year old to Philadelphia this year, and they went to Diggerland USA, a theme park with construction equipment that the kids can use. They enjoyed it. :)

Another vote for getting evaluations done. My 5th grader has been in the same boat with writing/spelling and such. He doesn't have an issue with math, but I suspect we might get into problems as we move into algebra later. Anyway, I had him evaluated earlier this year by a psychologist. We suspected autism, so she tested for that, dyslexia, and some other things. Turned out that he is autistic (high functioning), and that he does NOT have dyslexia, but he does have dysgraphia. He also has slow processing speed and low working memory compared to his other IQ subtests (both were low average, but there was a huge difference between those and visual spatial). I'm actually surprised he does as well in math as he does. Anyway, with this knowledge, I made some changes. First, we got Writing Skills Book A. It starts at the beginning of writing sentences and works up to paragraphs. Last year he couldn't write a coherent sentence. This year, he typed an entire paragraph with added details!!! Slow and steady wins the race. For spelling, I went with Apples and Pears Book A from Sound Foundations. We're only about 15 lessons in, so not enough time to transfer to writing. I do know that he struggles with applying phonics. He's done strong phonics programs from the beginning, but applying them just didn't happen. He didn't start reading until I switched to a program that incorporated sight words along with strong phonics. He needed both. It's worth it to back up and lay a good foundation for these skills. We aren't changing grades. Just teaching him where he is. :)

Also, you might want to do more prewriting skills... Use a finger in salt, sand, shaving cream, etc. Use "sky writing" (write up in the air, moving the whole arm). That sort of thing. Also, encourage coloring to build up muscles.

I try to start around age 5, though one kid wasn't ready until after he turned 6 (which was early in his K year) and another was writing at age 4 (also an early reader). The one at age 4 had much better done motor skills - he could button his own dress shirts at age 3. My other boys couldn't do that until 5. The one that started writing at 6 has been diagnosed with dysgraphia at age 10,unfortunately. He's typing more now.