If you want a writing curriculum that your child can use independently, I suggest Wordsmith Apprentice. I just started my 4th grader on it recently, and I have already noticed a huge improvement in the quality of her writing. It really is self-directed, too! We are using the same Apologia science book this year, and if you are only using it with the 4th grader, then it can be pretty independent...your help is needed to oversee the experiments, but that is it. I read it to my kids, but that is because I am using it with a 2nd grader as well, and she needs the occasional explanation and comprehension questions during the reading. My 4th grader does all of the activities (crosswords, end of chapter questions, mini-books, etc.) on her own, though. And on a side note, my kids have not found it remotely boring, either. Rather, they find the subject fascinating - it is one of their favorite subjects (but all of my children love science, so they may be naturally drawn toward it).

We do each day as outlined in the journal; my children don't retain any more info than that in one sitting, lol! :lol: We do vary how often we do science, though...a daily lesson will complete a book in a semester, and following their twice per week schedule will complete a book in a school year. But I have found that doing each chapter as broken down into separate lessons works very well here.

The things I have stuck with for 3+ years: R&S English, Math, Spelling, Penmanship, Phonics, Music, Health, Reading SOTW 100EZ Lessons (taught all 3 kiddos to read with it) Art With a Purpose (Artpacs) Poems for Memorization Daily Mental Math The things that are on my shelf for next year that will be the third year I am using them: Apologia Elementary Science Schoolaid Health Memoria Press Latin Logic Countdown/Logic Liftoff/Orbiting with Logic I am switching from some of my usual stuff this coming school year, though...my eldest is going too quickly through the R&S math to continue with it (2 books per year); our options were to either do the 7th and 8th grade books as a pre-algebra or go directly to a pre-algebra textbook, and I chose to go with the pre-algebra textbook. I am also dropping R&S reading and going to MP Literature, and doing MP Classical Studies instead of SOTW4. I will use SOTW1-3 with my youngest, though. I am also switching my middle child from R&S math to Prof B...if it doesn't help (I am not sure if it is the program or my child) I will switch her back to R&S.

My goal over summers is to give us all a break and give the children plenty of opportunities to swim, play outdoors, etc. That said, they will also work on skills that I do not want lost over the summer. For my rising 5th grader, it will be Latin (LCI review worksheets) and math (Key to...series, hoping to fit in fractions, decimals and percents). For my rising 3rd grader, it will be penmanship (cursive) and math (Jump at Home). I let them alternate subjects each day so they only have one subject per day. That way they don't lose anything, but they only have to spend a short time each day on school work so it feels like a real summer break. :001_smile:

:lurk5: bump for the morning crowd....

I was searching for ideas for my youngest child's K year when I came across this curriculum kit. I have searched everywhere and can find no reviews for it, so I was wondering if anyone here had ever used it. My son *loves* the PBS show Sid the Science Kid, and this seems like the type of investigative learning that is used on the show. It is designed for classroom learning, but it looks easy to adapt to use at home. I went ahead and ordered it (and the recommended books) on Amazon, so next fall I will come back here and give a review of it (if there is any interest, lol!), but I just wanted to hear from anyone that may have used or seen it in the past. The samples look really good!

That's funny, I recall coming across this exact same thing in R&S 4 earlier this year, and wondering if it was specific to the Mennonite culture. It was the first time I had heard of it!

The notebooks contain writing, coloring, mini-books, and pages for recording experiments, so it sounds like you are better off not getting one at all. :001_smile: I would recommend just going with your last suggestion. It is definitely a book that can just be read, discussed, and enjoyed.

Let's see...one hour per year, spread over 36 weeks...that averages out just under two minutes per week. I am sure that I am not the norm, but I have a very limited amount of free time (between home schooling, my part-time job, chores, etc.) and I have chosen to use curriculum that is already planned out so that I can spend my free time elsewhere.

I studied French in middle and high school, and I am now teaching my oldest both Latin (this is her second year) and Spanish (this is her first year). My experience is that knowing French has helped me teach Spanish, even though I don't know the language (they are very similar), and learning Latin has helped my daughter pick up Spanish easier. Learning Latin will give your child the ability to pick up any Romance language with ease. You really can't go wrong with teaching the languages in any order. :001_smile: I had hoped that one of my children would choose to learn French, but so far my oldest is learning Spanish and my second child is planning on learning Greek. They are not making this easy for me! :D Thankfully I love studying languages, so I just learn alongside.

My daughter used to have night terrors almost every night, and for her it was related to her sleep cycle (and aggravated by several different factors). I figured out it was related to her sleep cycle because the episode would happen exactly two hours after she lay down to sleep (she went to bed at 8PM, my husband and I knew when it was 10PM by the screams emanating from whichever room she had wandered to). I read somewhere online that interrupting that first sleep cycle would help her body reset the cycle and it would occur normally the rest of the night, so I began waking her up an hour and 45 minutes after she went to bed (at 9:45). I woke her up fully, and ensured she was fully awake for several minutes (I made her recite her ABC's, tell me something she did earlier that day, etc.). She never remembered being woken up, and she would fall back to sleep immediately. She did not have *one* night terror the rest of the night after I woke her up. I woke her up every night for two weeks, and and it stopped the terrors completely for several months. By then it was summer, and she was staying up late, getting over-excited, and not getting enough sleep, so the night terrors returned. So I woke her up every night for two weeks, and they went away completely again.

I let my children choose which language they would like to learn (beside Latin, which is required). We start Latin in third grade, and this year I gave my oldest her choice of language to study in addition to Latin (she chose Spanish). I figure they will put a lot more effort into learning something that they find interesting. Interest-based electives; one of the perks of home schooling! :D

My son and I both suffer from eczema, and I am treating both of us the same. First, we both take Zyrtec daily. Second, we both use this lotion (this one exactly, not the one for eczema or any of the adult ones), which is available at Walmart, Target, and most grocery stores. We use the lotion twice daily for flare-ups, once daily when there is nothing. Third, we only use fragrance-free products - shampoo, conditioner, soap, body wash, hair products, lotion...everything that touches our skin is fragrance-free. This is the result of five years of trial-and-error. The biggest factor for me was the fragrance in products...I had been using a fragrance-free body wash for years, but I still had eczema all over my upper body...as soon as I switched to fragrance-free shampoo and conditioner it went away and has not been back. Apparently just rinsing regular fragranced products out of my hair in the shower was spreading irritants all over my skin! Hope this helps!

I think the page you posted looks great. I, personally, would not reinvent the wheel and I would use Daily Math Practice and/or Daily Mental Math. It all depends on how valuable your time is. :001_smile:

LOL, someone else just posted about this on another thread (one about online Spanish resources) and I gave it a good review there. The only difference is that we use the "Again" video the same week as the first one...for example, this week we will watch the week six video twice and then we will watch the "Again" video twice since it is meant to be a direct follow-up to that lesson (we watch them all on separate days to give us four days of instruction per week). This is such an awesome resource! I didn't think about posting it outside of the Spanish resource thread, so I am glad you gave it its own thread so that people teaching languages other than just Spanish can learn about it! :D

Here it is. We have been using the series since third grade. It covers all sorts of mental math topics...for example, the fourth grade one includes the four basic operations, imagining a 3D shape (like a triangular prism) and counting the faces, basic geometry (perimeter, symmetry, tessellation, etc.), measurement conversion, word problems, calculating totals or change with money, the next item in a sequence, prime and composite numbers, squaring numbers, rotate a patterned shape mentally and draw it, decimals, fractions, and a whole lot more. There is no explicit teaching, but the lessons slowly build on each other to teach concepts.

Grammar: R&S 5 Spelling: R&S 5 Writing: I haven't decided...Killgallon with either WWS or Wordsmith Apprentice Vocabulary: VFCR 5 Reading/Lit: CLE Reading 5/RFWP Time Trilogy Lit. series Latin: First Form Logic: Orbiting with Logic/Red Herring Mysteries Math: Daily Mental Math 5 with LOF Pre-algebra I & II, and then...something Spanish: continue with the free video series on knowitall.org (until we complete all three levels), at some point we will give SFC another try Geography: Star Spangled States w/workbook Health: Schoolaid Health 5 Art: Artpac 5 Music: R&S Music 6&7, continue piano lessons and children's choir Science: Apologia Botany History: US History using various resources I have on the shelf, maybe a little Truthquest if I feel like it Bible: I don't know...maybe continue with PAC

We actually stopped SFC last month (my daughter was learning grammar, but couldn't say anything in the language at all - the program doesn't provide the basic conversational Spanish that one would expect...it is a straight vocab and grammar program, even more so than the Latin program we use) and started watching the First Step Espanol videos...we watch the video twice, and then we watch the follow-up First Step Espanol Again video twice (for a total of four videos over four days). I kid you not, by week two the instructor tells the story of Little Red Riding Hood in Spanish (no English at all, it is a total immersion program) and my daughter understood it. We are now in week 6, and my daughter can put together complete sentences in Spanish. If I could do it all over again, I would have done this before ever attempting a strictly grammar program like SFC. I will eventually go back and erase everything from the book and start it over again, and I think that she will actually do better with it now that she understands some of the language. All that to say that I highly recommend this video series! Honestly, I would pay money for these videos if they weren't free.

I have decided to continue with R&S 5 and LOF Fractions and Decimals & Percents to finish out this school year, then continue on with LOF Pre-algebra I & II. That is all the further I can commit to planning! :lol: I have no idea when she will finish with the two pre-algebra books (we do math over the summer break), and I don't know whether LOF is going to work for her long-term. I don't know if she is going to hit a wall and need to slow down, or if she is going to continue to gain momentum. My tentative plan is to let her move through the LOF series at her own speed. She liked the preview of Jacob's Elementary Algebra that I showed her, though...it is something that I am keeping in mind. And if she continues to need more and deeper math than I can give her, I will start her in AOPS. I say continue because most days the "new" topic I present her with for her math lesson is met with much eye rolling and "duh, I already know this!" :tongue_smilie:

I didn't get a chance to post what I read last week, so here it is: #10 - Waiting for Summer's Return by Kim Vogel Sawyer. A fluffy, enjoyable read. #11 - Crossing Over by Ruth Irene Garrett. The true story of a woman who left the Amish. While I understand that she is presenting her own one-sided perspective of the situation, it was rather eye-opening in parts. I enjoy reading this type of non-fiction to balance out all the Beverly Lewis books. :D This week I read: #12 - The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It was...different. It never really drew me in; in fact, I had to force myself to continue reading it after I had stopped for a few days. It had the potential to be deep, but was so showy that it just never got there, which was kind of a disappointment. The aura of mystery that she cast over the characters hinted at a depth that just wasn't there. I might give the author another chance in a few years when she has had a chance to mature (her photo on the cover looks like she is all of fourteen, lol!). I am currently reading: #13 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. I have a degree in psychology and I enjoy reading case studies (even ones that are out-of-date and can be explained using modern research). This one has been on my list to read for years.

This week I read Jodi Picoult's House Rules. It was a bit of a disappointment, honestly. It was informative as far as Asperger's Syndrome, but at times it seemed to cross the line from fiction to non-fiction; it did not flow well. I also figured out how it was going to end 450 pages before it actually ended, so it dragged on quite a bit. All in all, I like it the least of all of her books that I have read. #9 House Rules by Jodi Picoult

I have been lurking in all these threads because I am in the same indecisive boat. My oldest will be in 5th grade next year (yikes!) and she is beginning to advance in math by leaps and bounds. Up until the beginning of this current school year (this past August) she was progressing normally through R&S math on grade level. Since August, though (86 school days logged) she has progressed through the entire 4th grade math book and is well into the second quarter of the 5th grade book. We have been combining lessons and skipping lessons when necessary (if I had a dollar for every time she rolled her eyes and told me she already knew the concept being introduced in the day's lesson, I could buy every pre-algebra book I know of!), and it doesn't look like she is going to slow down any time soon. She has also been playing on Khan Academy for the last month or so, and learning FAR too much over there, lol! :lol: Oh, and I tried to stump her with CWP, but no such luck. She views them as more of the same word problems that she is already doing in R&S. Anyway, she is going to need a pre-algebra program pretty soon. I can't even say it is for next fall; this 5th grade book isn't going to take long to get through...maybe a few months. I could just go with R&S 6 and 7 at the same rate of speed, but honestly, I am tired of combining lessons and trying to find the level that challenges her. I have been considering AOPS, but I think she might freak at the jump in difficulty level (she has a perfectionist streak and cries at the sight of anything difficult)...it might be a possibility after doing another pre-algebra program. I have also been seriously considering Jacob's Elementary Algebra. I really like the looks of it, and I showed my daughter the sample of it and she liked it. I have also been thinking about LOF...starting with Fractions, Decimals, and Percents (just to make sure everything is cemented) before doing pre-algebra. I could do the first books while doing R&S (my daughter loves math and she loves to read, so she would not view it as extra work) and then move to the two pre-algebra books when she finishes R&S 5. I really just don't know. I want something appropriately challenging, but I also don't want to rush her into higher math...she is a young 4th grader (she would be a 3rd grader by local public school standards). She is holding a high B average, and that is simply because she is only nine...she occasionally doesn't pay close enough attention to signs and will add instead of subtract, or multiply instead of divide. Or she will get lazy in her handwriting and misread a six as a zero. But as far as concepts go, she *gets* math. I don't have the luxury of buying several different programs and comparing them...I am relying on y'all for that! :D I need to make a decision, and whatever I decide on will get purchased with the rest of our curriculum when we get our tax return. So, here I sit on this fence....:lol:

I went on a retreat with my husband this week, so I had lots of time for reading. The first book I read was Summer Breeze, by Catherine Palmer and Gary Chapman. It is second in a series authored by the two of them, and it (like the first book) was excellent. I enjoy Catherine Palmer's style of writing, and with the help of Gary Chapman she portrayed marriages in a very realistic manner and showed steps that could be taken to improve areas in a marriage without coming across as a how-to manual. The second, third, and fourth books I read were the three books in The Postcards from Pullman series by Judith Miller. The books were titled In the Company of Secrets, Whispers Along the Rails, and An Uncertain Dream. The series was set in the late 1800's in the town of Pullman, Illinois, where the Pullman railway cars were designed and built. While the topics of railway cars and railroad strikes are not highly interesting to me, the story line caught me up enough that after reading the first book in paperback, I immediately downloaded the next two onto my Kindle. There are a variety of recipes included at the end of each book that look rather easy (and delicious). The fifth book I read (I told you I had plenty of uninterrupted reading time this week, most weeks won't look anything like this!) was Ruby by Lorraine Snelling. I thoroughly enjoyed this light read about a proper eastern young lady that inherits (of all things!) a brothel/saloon from her long-lost father when he dies. I began reading Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline, but I was reading a borrowed copy so I have to get a copy of my own and finish it. So far it was very interesting and thought-provoking. So for this week, my books are: #4 Summer Breeze by Catherine Palmer and Gary Chapman #5 In the Company of Secrets by Judith Miller #6 Whispers Along the Rails by Judith Miller #7 An Uncertain Dream by Judith Miller #8 Ruby by Lorraine Snelling

Direct objects come after action verbs; predicate nouns (a noun that renames the subject) come after "be" verbs. In your first sentence, for example, "Firs and cedars are tall trees," since are is a "be" verb and not an action verb, it cannot have a direct object. The noun "trees" renames the nouns "firs" and "cedars", so it is a predicate noun. If you look at all of the sentences you listed, they all have "be" verbs, so none of them can have a direct object. They all have predicate nouns. We just learned this in 4th grade English a couple of weeks ago, or else I never would have been able to answer your question! :lol:

I finished book #3 this week; Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. The subject matter of the book, bullying, hit pretty close to home for me; I was bullied in junior high and high school. Thankfully I had the foresight to see that high school (and the idiots there) was not the end-all, be-all of life. :D I really enjoyed the book, and was kept guessing until the end what the twist in the story would be.