My oldest ds with by in 2nd next year. This year in 1st we did: WWE 1, FLL 1: finishing both in the next week or two, both went well Sonlight LA1: We picked/chose out of this just because I happened to have it. What we did was fine. AAS 1, half of AAS 2: Went fine Orton gillingham based phonics/reading: He is dyslexic but made huge improvements. I believe he's basically reading on "grade level". I'm planning on more of the same next year (WWE 2, FLL2, AAS 2/3, and Orton Gillingham based phonics/reading) BUT I looked over Sonlight LA 2 and am not planning on buying it...I think there is too much overlap with what we are already doing and I don't really like the rest of it. So...is there anything else I should add in? Are there gaps that you see that are needed to be filled for 2nd grade? Thanks! Jenny

For me, I find it incredibly helpful. On the days we do it (we do 2 days at a time), I just open the book to the copywork and he starts. When he's done we read the associated story and do the narration. He has LOVED the stories she has chosen and it has led us to end up reading several of the stories because he wanted so much to know what happened next. While I could do it all myself, it crosses copywork/narration/dictation off my list (not that we don't do it anywhere else, but this way I KNOW it's done) with almost no effort on my part. I think it is totally worth it. I buy the workbook for the ease as well, no printing, just get out the book and go.

Just thought I'd mention since someone from this group would probably be more interested. I am selling this book: http://www.visiontherapyathome.com/product_p/PRT-1001.htm It is vision therapy at home, the primitive reflex training book. We had to go through primitive reflex therapy BEFORE the more traditional vision therapy. We did most of it at home using this book. For us, it was very helpful. It has full pictures/explanations and comes with a DVD. For us, we noticed a big change in our ds gross motor, general clumsiness, hand/eye coordination after this. So anyway, I'm listing this and thought I'd let you know. Thanks!

My ds is going into 2nd grade. For K we used Horizons K with a lot of manipulatives (I just added in on my own). He did very well and it was very simple for him, so this year we did all of Horizons 1 plus Singapore 1A/1B, the textbooks and the workbooks. It was also a good year but I think next year I want to make Singapore the main deal with Horizons on the side. Has anyone done this and if so, what did it look like for you? We like Horizons chiefly due to the spiral nature. He LOVES the variety each day...it suits him well. He is severely dyslexic and has some memory retention issues so the spiral suits him extremely well. However, I prefer the methodology of Singapore and the way it makes him think. Since I was just supplementing, I did not use the HIG, Intensive Practice, or the other extra book (can't think of the name). Obviously if it became the main deal, I would use the HIG and probably one of the extra books in addition to the textbooks/workbooks. Then Horizons would bring in extra practice as needed (although we would probably pick and choose). I guess I'm just wondering if someone else has done this and what it looked like for you-or if it sounds terrible to you:001_smile:. He is very good at math and doing two programs allowed it to take the whole year instead of finishing mid-year and going on to the next grade. Thanks!

This year my littlest one (3) loved the easy mazes, the cutting one, the Pasting, and alphabet games. The mazes were so popular I ended up getting my 5 and 6 year olds their levels of those. For me, they were worth it. My 3 yo really enjoyed them-and she's hard to entertain so it made for some happy quiet time:001_smile:.

I had the same reaction as you. We did it for awhile and it just didn't work for us. My kids HATED reading the books five times, even though they did love the stories the first couple times (and then again, say a week or two later). And these are kids who love to be read to--I was really surprised how upset they were by Thursday when I pulled out the same book:001_smile:. "MOM! We are so many other books. Why do you keep reading that one?" It worked well for us to read them two times a week (say Tuesday/Thursday) and do several activities those days. This worked best for us although still not as well as I would have hoped, but kept it enjoyable and fun.

Thank you for all the thoughts. I'll check out the other threads/links which I'm sure will help a lot. Yes, combining my younger two was what had me leaning towards A-my dd will be 4. This particular ds gets bored easily which is what had me leaning towards B. I'll keep thinking...

I am trying to decide about my middle son's math choice for next year. He will be in kindergarten, turning six at the end of October. I have taken the placement test which would put him in B but...I'm still wondering. With how much it costs, I'd love to get it right. He has been doing Singapore Earlybird this year (we've finished A and are working on B). He honestly likes it a lot, but my big issue is he has major fine motor skills issues (more than a typical 5 year old boy--he is in occupational therapy and improving). I am completely his scribe right now for Singapore. I like the lack of writing in Rightstart and the basic idea behind it. He can count to about 50 and count by 2's and 10's. He can recognize his numbers to about 20. He understands shape and basic time. Currently in Singapore Earlybird he is starting to work on grouping into 10's and basic adding. He doesn't quite get it yet but I'm sure he will by the time we're finished. He can add or subtract easily with manipulatives but he wouldn't understand it if written out. Overall, he's "interested" in math and spends the whole day asking me, "what is 234 + 12" etc...sometimes he really makes he work!! :) So what do you think...A or B? Oh, and side note, my oldest does Horizons/Singapore and it works well. Could he do the Rightstart games even though he's not doing the program? Thanks!!

We love the flashmaster here at our house. There are so many different ways to use it...for adding, subtracing, multiplying, dividing; by fact family, by level (has levels 1-7), by amount of time, and lots of other ways. My son never thinks of it as drillng. It seems almost like a video game for him.

We have used Horizons for K and 1 and now 2. We supplement with Singapore. Horizons has been a great fit for my son. He loves the spiral approach and each concept is always "fresh" for him and they cycle through everything quite often. There is plenty of review. I'm not sure what the PP was talking about. There are plenty of problems on the actual lessons plus the teacher's manual has a bunch of extra worksheets for extra practice if needed. I think a lot of people don't like the TM because it is not scripted (I personally am not a huge scripted fan), but if you look through it they do offer quite a number of ideas and suggestions for hands on ideas and teaching conceptually. It may not be totally spelled out like some programs but it is there. Combining it with Singapore has been a great fit. He is incredibly far ahead of his public school friends and does understand math conceptually and not just as a "do this, do that, and get the answer". We have used TONS of manipulatives for Horizons. I think if you do just open the book each day, do the next lesson, and move on, you will be dissatisfied. However, if you look at the suggestions for the day in the teacher manual, do some of their suggested activities, and then go over the lesson, I thinnk it is a great program. For us, adding the full Singapore program as well has been a nice supplement, but I would not want Singapore for our only program.

I am making a little chart of what we are doing each day. For my oldest: 1. AAS/read to mom 2. Adding/subtracting on flashmaster, 3 minutes each 3. Practice for vision therapy and speech He is the one who would complain. When he sees this and knows that he can get it done it probably 45 minutes...it doesn't seem bad like hearing "we are doing school all summer". He just needs to see and know what is expected. It will make the complaining much more minimal. For my younger two: read to mom each day, my middle son will do homework for OT. They won't care at all, so it's no biggie. They LOVE for me to read to them so we'll read through a few novels this summer but that won't "count" in their eyes.

AAS had been awesome for my almost 7 year old. I, too, do not like scripted programs, but I don't really think of this that way. It will just say Review X, Y, and Z...not tell you word for word what to say. Then for the new stuff, I just kind of skim over the page or so of info and then do it. I like that it gives me word lists and phrases/sentences to dictate so my brain doesn't have to think of them. My son LOVES the tiles, but since they kind of drive me crazy, we'll do half the lesson with tiles and half with dry erase (which he also really likes). So, it's been a great fit for us. We went really quickly through level 1 and are in level 2 now which should also go quite fast. I think we'll really slow down at level 3. He really likes it. It is teacher intensive but really, it's only about 15 minutes a day so it's not that big of a deal. Oh and we also got all the readers to go with it. That has tied in some of his reading to the program which has also been a good fit. The readers are nice books and have quite a few stories in them. He has really liked them and they tell you at the end of the lesson which story to read.

That was my son at the beginning of this year (1st grade). For us, we found out that he is dyslexic WITH vision tracking problems. A combination of vision therapy (covd.org) and some Orton-Gillingham reading help plus using AAS has made a huge difference. We still have a ways to go, but he has come a LONG way this year. Every kid is different so that may not be helpful to you, but thought I'd share. My son also is amazing with math and has fantastic listening comprehension. Reading was just such a hangup.

Thanks for the insight. One question I have...do the kid's books have blank experiment/narration sheets for when we add in our own stuff?

I just discovered Elemental Science today and I think it looks great. We have used Sonlight science and that has worked fine but I wanted to move more in the WTM direction with science...it is the one area that has not gone that way yet. I thought this would be a good step while still providing me with a little structure. Anyone use this? Good? Bad? Thanks!

I also agree with HWOT. It has been great for both of my boys, one of whom is in OT for fine motor stuff. I highly recommend buying the teacher manual. It gave me a lot of ideas that have helped us. It got me away from just finishing the book. The pladough letter set and the chalkboards are very helpful too.

For my 10 year old neice, her favorites (although impersonal) are gift cards. She just loves to shop. I usually take her though and we'll get a special treat at Starbucks so we spend some time together. She wants wants to be grownup and loves to be able to pick out and buy something herself even if it is small.

What great ideas! I was just going to ask this question myself (although I do play a little...just not in a while).

My father in law texted this morning: I broke my arm and called you last night from the hospital. Why haven't you called? This was at 6:50. We were still in bed:glare:. He had not broken anything. We will definitely be doing something to him later.

Even though we are early on in the hs journey, I've been realizing more and more how true this is for my son. We use a combination of Singapore and Horizons which have been a good combination. The variety in the Horizons lessons really provides continual review. We rarely skip, but neither of these programs gives an overwhelming amount of problems most of the time. What we may skip are the additional Horizons worksheets as he usually does not need that much extra practice.

So...I guess this means I need to ease up on my almost 4 yo, huh?:) One thing to cross off the list.

Sent you an email--Raleigh area.

I think the flashcards were nice simply for the convenience of not having to track down my index cards or marker. They were just ready. We have the audio but haven't used it so I can't comment on that one.

I would have the 8 year old do Core K provided that all of his language arts/math were on his appropriate level. We just finished core K with my 6 year old ds (about to turn 7) and I think it really would be fine for an 8 year old. I'm glad they changed the name to Core A. The core is really the read alouds, history, science, and Bible and all of those are totally fine for an 8 year old. The read alouds cover some heavy topics: Nazis, homelessness, teasing, etc.. and I think with an older child you could go into a lot more depth talking about them. For science and history the topics themselves are fine...just add in some additional activity (say notebooking, narration, etc...) to make it more challenging for him academically. If you went with 3/4 that would be he would do Core 5 at age 9 which I think would be a huge stretch.

The very basic idea of it is that you read the same book for 5 days in a row and you do some basic activities to go with the book that cover all the different subjects. For example: counting all the ducks on the page for math, coloring a picture like the illustration for art, doing some physical activity they do in the book for P.E., etc... It is very basic and honestly for the most part are things you could think of yourself if you had time. It's a nice guide if you don't. Your older child would enjoy it too.