Completely agree. I'm hoping to get interested emails from other sale sites like homeschoolclassifieds.com since I don't seem to be getting replies on the things I listed here yesterday and I thought at least one of them would go quickly. :(

I'm so happy to hear this!! Thanks all!

Has anyone bought anything from Horrible Books? I'm looking to get Beast Academy/AoPS items. http://www.horriblebooks.com/artofproblemsolvingbooklist.htm I'm thinking I might try ordering from them to save on shipping...but wanted to hear if anyone has had a bad experience ordering from them before. Thanks! Nikki

I agree with several things said above. I currently teach piano. Tried to teach my very headstrong, independent, strong-willed, likes-to-learn-everything-herself oldest child. Did not go well. She always interrupts me no matter what I'm teaching and likes to tell me about how she thinks it should be done or how it reminds her of this other story or song or "look I can make up my own song that starts just like it!"... Has a hard time respecting my authority due to other issues I think. Needless to say, the last lesson I taught her I ended up giving her the method book for now and said "you're smart. you know all the main notes now. finish the book yourself and ask me if you have questions." Not ideal at all...but I just don't think at this point that she's willing to learn from me. She's also a perfectionist, and wants to be able to play like me without putting in the years of work. So I have not found a good way to teach my own child who is like this. My little guy though, loves to have quick lessons with me and he is teachable. So I think it depends on the child. We also do not have money right now to put my daughter in lessons with another teacher. But I have been pondering on trading services with someone to get her in lessons though. (Like I'll babysit for free for you during a few lessons in return for free piano lessons for my daughter.) I have piano students who are similar to my daughter in personality who are wonderful students for me but would be the same with their parents... If you think it will work for you to teach your own, my favorite method for gently guiding you through and providing a great foundation in case the child wants to go somewhere with it is Piano Adventures. I REALLY like the My First Piano Adventures for ages 5-7. There is a CD that walks you through the songs and they're really fun. It's larger print with fun characters and teaches some composer study as a part of the series. There is some finger numbering at the beginning but this is because they want to start ear training and reading directionally (up, down, stay the same) but since the finger numbers don't always stay on C the brain doesn't get stuck in thinking your thumb is always C. There are cute songs to teach you the lines and spaces without having to use the long sentences. For an older student (10+), I like using the lesson and theory book for Piano Adventures Older Beginner then supplementing with online songs (like popular stuff on musicnotes.com). Finger exercises I end up teaching by rote: 5-note scales at first, then eventually full scales after all the 5-note majors and minors are learned. Whatever you do, if you're teaching your own child, I would limit lessons at the beginning to 15-20 minutes tops, then just let them explore or play on the piano by themselves for a few minutes. Inevitably, my daughter and I would end up getting frustrated with each other in that last 10-15 minutes and usually because I was so thrilled with how quickly she caught on that I wanted to have her just do one more thing... Much better to teach two 15-minute lessons a week than one 30-minute lesson where you get mad at each other. A wonderful resource for piano teachers is http://pianoadventures.com/guide/index.html. Complete videos showing teachers how to teach the primer level. You might even be able to watch these with your child to let Nancy Faber teach them. I haven't watched enough yet to know, but I've wondered this. I feel your pain! Good luck!

Just a couple observations: 1. Skip counting teaches the reason why we do 'fast adding of the same kind' (multiplication) so we can see what the numbers mean. 2. Skip counting helps if you forget a certain times table fact you can skip count to the next one if you remember. (i.e. If you need to know 7x6 and forgot, but you know 7x5 is 35 you can skip count up from there to get to 42.) 3. Skip counting helps if you need to count multiples of something that's hard to see the times table fact. (i.e. Counting a ton of pills is faster by 2s or 3s but you don't know how many groups you have total to use a times fact, counting quarts in a gallon or pints in a gallon may be easier with skip counting than a times fact, etc.) However, memorizing multiplication facts is still the goal. So if your son doesn't need to see concretely what the times table facts mean and is asking to do multiplication, especially if there are learning challenges, then maybe it's okay to not drill skip counting to death. Just my thoughts. Hope it helps.

It says to look in the instructions where you selected it...I know, I missed it too the first time. Go to your 'my account' on HSBC and click 'my subscriptions'.

I got the Critical Thinking joke book. My dd loves jokes so this will be perfect!

Thank you all. After hearing your feedback I think I will wait and start this in 4th grade. I can tell myself it's okay to wait--although it sounds so neat and so exciting it's hard not to think I need it now! :)

Thank you so much, Beth, for this. Just what I was looking for. Yes, the bathroom and shower times (or I should say sponge-baths) have been akward but we've ended up laughing over it so much. I know we'll look back on this time and be stronger because of it. And everyone's advice...thank you. It's great to have people to bounce ideas off of.

My dd broke her right arm (she's right-handed) almost 2 weeks ago. She's in a soft-cast for another 2 1/2 weeks since she has pins in her elbow. She can't write or draw. I'm finding it hard to work out schooling, but this is what I'm doing or will do tomorrow since we just can't afford to take any longer of a break. (We have a possible long vacation coming up and need to finish strong since she may return to private/public school next year.) Math--If she tells me what to write, I can write in her answers on her worksheets. (But this is time intensive for me and I have a 3yo who needs lots of attention too.) Grammar--read our text and talk about it. She can tell me how she would diagram/analyze practice sentence. (Again time intensive but we mostly already do this.) Writing--NO IDEA what to do about copywork and dictation. We could still do narration though. Spelling--try typing words and phrases on computer. (She can only hunt and peck with left hand so I wouldn't want to do this for sentences though.) History/Science--just read and talk about it. Reading--stories on ipod/cd. She can't hold a big chapter book open very well and still turn pages, so her normal hours of pouring over books isn't working. Music & PE--obviously piano and swim lessons are out. She is really bummed about the latter. If your child had a broken right arm, what would you do differently?

I'm afraid I don't know much about Beast Academy yet, and I've looked through their site and samples, but want just a couple quick answers from those who are using it... ...can it be done independently by a strong reader nearing the end of 3rd grade who is ahead in all subjects except math? (We're using MUS Gamma right now.) It sounds like something she would like, but I don't think I can add on another curriculum that is heavy on parental involvement. She needs to start doing more things independently. (She is fairly mature for her age and likes to teach herself since she is very strong-willed.) ...if it's a supplement, as in we'd do it for the summer, you'd want both the text and the practice books, right? Thank you all! Nikki

We're reading Eat Cake right now. Last month was A Year on Ladybug Farm. That was a nice easy book with some great reflection in it. Some other recent month's books: The School of Essential Ingredients Beautiful descriptions of life and food. Committed Interesting viewpoint. Makes you think. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

double post :)

The Complete Writer will give you the big picture from 1st thru high school, with outlines for 1st thru 4th. It helps you teach writing in general. If you want day-to-day specifics the workbooks are great. You can use the workbooks without knowing the big picture, but for some this helps explain why the program is set up the way it is. You could also be referring to the teacher pages in the workbooks, since maybe you saw someone selling the teacher pages only without the student pages. I own levels 1-3, but haven't started using 3 yet, so someone else chime in if I'm wrong...Level 2 is mostly like level 1. In levels 3 and 4 the passages are included in the student section so the student can read them to themselves. So in levels 1 & 2 you can get away without having the student pages if you want to make your own on regular paper or type them into a different size handwriting computer program. In levels 3 & 4 you need the student pages so you can have the passages to read. Maybe this helps? Hope it clarifies things.

But for me, as the type of learner who likes to know the why of everything and is constantly looking for patterns around me to understand how things fit together, I find this key card in AAS to be very helpful. We just know it doesn't apply all the time, but most of the time. We don't memorize lists of words at all, just concepts that can be applied most of the time. Although English has always been my first language, I find it very frustrating at times, and like having some kind of framework to help me understand how to pronounce and spell most words. I think AAS does a fantastic job of breaking the English language down into pieces that are manageable for understanding. Just my two cents.

We had to do this as well because I didn't start using AAS 1 until half-way through 2nd grade, so by that time she was already writing and reading words way beyond AAS 1. So when we began learning this concept, she would try to double f l or s when they happened in the middle of the word when they weren't supposed to be doubled, and she began doubling f at the end of 'of' (so that word I just told her how to spell and we memorized it). I found the rule card wasn't sufficient in our case to just say "What three letters are often doubled after a single vowel at the end of a one-syllable word?" [and then child would answer 'f l and s'] She tuned out when to use the rule and just memorized the answer. I had to turn it around and ask her to memorize "What three things do we look at to help us decide when to use the FLS rule?" Then she would have to respond with the three things Merry listed above. I have to think ahead on things like this...my dd has a tendency be able to give the answer you want to hear so we can be done with school, rather than really learning how to apply the concepts. So sometimes I feel like I have to teach her the opposite of something to make sure she understands the original idea. OP: I know exactly what you meant by your post and I was in the same boat last year. I also happened to find words in books we were reading and point out those words every once in a while and talk about why it had a double f,l,s or did not. If you start looking at signs while driving or in books you read, you start seeing them all over the place.

I felt strongly that once I finished teaching OPGTR and phonics, it was time to implement more reading comprehension/vocab exposure. So we read lots of big novels aloud and discuss them. I also ask my dd to read silently and then we talk about it, so I have to know what she's read. (This can be tricky to make time for, but it's important to me.) Although this may not be a good fit for a first grader (or second), I've loved the Michael Clay Thompson parent guide for his new lit program that came out last year. It's really helped me be creative about what questions to ask to create neat discussions based on the books he's selected. When I'm really pressed for time, I have my dd use an Evan-Moore workbook for reading comprehension. This is easy to grade to make sure she understood the questions, and it provides more practice in following specific instructions/directions, as we don't do much workbook work otherwise.

We are doing the Island level this year. I started following Satori Smiles chart/schedule she put together found here. My dd absolutely loves Sentence Island. It's what makes the program I think. I'm glad we started with Grammar Island first to make sure we have a good understanding of how MCT approaches the parts of speech. We also did Sentence Family first this year and we have referenced that a lot when she can't remember how to label the parts of speech. (We did a bit with the sentence diagramming in that program, but not much. I like the MCT analysis better.) I think Sentence Island and Grammar Island go more smoothly when you don't have to stop to teach the parts of speech. I was surprised how much my dd loves Music of the Hemispheres. It really helps children see the beauty of language and that they have a choice what sounds they use to make up their sentences and poems. This has been more challenging for me to implement since I feel like the writing assignments and general time for Sentence Island are enough to figure out. But I hope to study it more to figure out how to teach it soon. Satori Smiles schedule really helps, but for me I have had to really study before I teach anything out of MCT so I can create those discussions MCT really talks about using to inspire students to care. Since all the writing assignments and important points to highlight are all in the teacher resource section in the back it's easy to get caught up in reading the story and text and forget to stop and discuss and implement it. But this has been so worth it to me, to see my dd start loving language arts again (after hating it last year).

Maybe this is old hat to everyone else, but I just found out about this website and got excited about their fiction literature list of books with homeschool characters, as well as online book group options. Thought I'd share it with you all. I don't want to exclusively read books to my kids that contain homeschooling as a theme, but it's nice to read one or two every once in a while to show my dd8 that we aren't as different as she thinks we are. Most of her friends don't homeschool and she's been saying lately that she just wants to feel normal like other kids and have a schedule each day. Oh, I can give her a schedule, but she doesn't want what I have planned in that schedule. :001_rolleyes:

There are a lot of fun resources at makingmusicfun.net including very basic music theory lessons. There are some online music theory games and all sorts of secret code worksheets to get practice with reading staff lines. This might be a good place to start. For our family, I'm counting piano lessons as music class and then we listen to classical music lots and try to identify the instruments we hear in the song, as well as check kids books out about classical composers.

If your child can sense your fear and doubt, then do what others have suggested with field trips (or it sounds like he might be older) or explore career options by visiting work places of family or friends and also read lots of books. I also like the idea of just taking placement tests of several curriculums so you can make decision. But also celebrate the change. I know my kids are young comparatively, but my dd is very intuitive and could tell/can tell when I'm not organized and takes that chance to run right over me. I find it worth taking the break to really get a handle on at least one week's worth of lesson ideas so I can stay in control, if you know what I mean. It makes all the difference if your child WANTS to be home, but mine didn't and it took a year for her to stop shouting at me that she hated homeschooling and that I was ruining her life. (She is very dramatic for her age.) But now she likes it. THAT SAID, you will probably never feel totally prepared and you'll still have doubts about what you're doing. There are days you just have to do your best and move forward with what you can and not wait until you have lessons prepared. But I have found it's important to start strong for the first week or so to set expectations. Hope that helps.

I didn't check to see what ages your kids are, but I didn't see anyone mention The Secret Series by Pseudonymous Bosch. http://thenameofthiswebsiteissecret.com/ My dd and I have been thoroughly enjoying it so far. We just finished Book 4. There have been a couple things that were gruesome and intense in the series but it's never felt dark like Harry Potter's later books are. (I won't let her read those until she's a bit older and not so anxious.) I guess I should clarify this series might not seem like a magic series at first, but it becomes obvious in the later books. I love that we're learning all kinds of new vocab, and often times the author tells you in fun footnotes what the words mean so I don't have to look them up separately. Highly recommend if your child is a strong reader.

:iagree: Exactly!

This totally makes sense with Math-U-See as well...I haven't done the higher levels, but I can picture Mr. Demme explaining this in the video. The lower levels he talks about the four ways of counting: 1. counting (one by one), 2. addition/subtraction (fast counting), 3. multiplication/division (fast adding/subtracting), 4. roots and exponents (fast multiplying/dividing) (I may not have written number 4 correctly since we haven't got there yet, but I think this is what his intro said.) Thanks for pointing this out! It makes me excited to get there.

This was beautiful. Thank you for opening up and sharing this. I was too embarrassed to share my tantrums. :blushing: