I love them, but only buy them when they go on sale for $1/lb ~ happens abotu 2x a year, but I'll go out of my way and we eat lots of them for weeks! :p

NO great wisdom here -- I haven't decided about HO -- grammar stage does look like a laundry list and a gathering tons of sources, too much work. A bit much at this age IMO. Soooo, what I am trying to do is a bit piecemeal: Kingfisher, SOTW, A little History of the World, Classical House of Learning's guide (thank you, wherever you are here! :D ), and some history pockets (my kids love coloring and pasting -- ugh). The first 4-6 weeks of the year we'll cover the first 4.5 billion years of earth's history (prehisory usually just gets at most one lesson). Then work our way forward slowly, letting them immerse in lots of good reference books and stories. We may only make it thru 2 cycles instead of 3. I'm fine with that. Bring on the rabbit trails!!! :lol: Wish us luck!

My advice is to put the curriculum aside, step back, and just "play" math with her. Build things with legos (great for spatial, esp girls), count things, sort things, play "some go missing" starting with 5 objects (you hide 0-5 of them and she has to figure out how many are missing), practice numbers 0-5 as penmenship/copywork daily. IMO, how quickly a kid picks up the early (k-2) math has NOTHING to do with how intelligent they are or how good they will be at math later on -- it's simply a matter of how their brains are wired! This means not only to lay off, but don't label a child as either genius or slow in math at this age. What is that disclaimer on financial products: current results are not guarantees of future performance? :D If a child is naturally intuitive, abstractions and arithmetic are easy and natural for them. That will make most of the first levels of math EASY. for these kids it is also very important to continuously reground their (easy) abstraction into the physical reality the math is about, or they will lose the skill. Think of them as natural suspension bridges whom you have to keep trying guidewires to the ground so they don't collapse. They will extend out farther than they can support weight, for example. ;) If your child is a more concrete thinker, she needs to really see, touch, and feel the reality of the math to make it relevant. Have you ever seen them build a skyscraper? Have you looked down and seen how deep the foundation goes? To build up you need to first prepare the ground and dig DOWN. Root everything into the earth deeply. If you do this (without making them hate math), they can take off and reach much higher than the intuitive child. Intuitive/abstract thinking doesn't naturally develop until 7-9, but some kids are just wired that way; the main difference wrt math is the intuitive child learns early to love math because they are so good at it! Sounds like your dd is a concrete thinker and is getting lost in the arithmetic. Math is so much more than arithmetic! You would be doing her a great service to help her embrace the OTHER parts of math and gently work on arithmetic until her brain develops that intuitive abilities (this is brain structure changes you can see on a PET scan, NOT something you can teach before those changes naturally occur!) ETA: Also possible your dd is a intuitive thinker that is losing her "grounding". Either way, concrete practice may help. I also agree with next poster (heehee) -- if you want a kid to like something, make them very GOOD at it! :D I think that's the main reason kids who start fast with math tend to want to stay ahead...and do. HSing means you get to define "ahead". :) Good luck!

Well, not exactly.... The answer is "20" but the math fact is "2 x 10 = 20", if you see the difference. Math facts are just the basic arithmetic relations that you would normally expect a person to have memorized. You will also hear talk about "fact families" which are just the group of related math facts. For example a fact family relating (2,3,5): 2 + 3 = 5 3 + 2 = 5 5 - 2 = 3 5 - 3 = 2 The concept is useful to help concrete learners (to whom each of those equations is a separate thought) extrapolate and generalize. To an innately intuitive thinking child, once they know one the other 3 will be obvious, and so it's good review but you can breeze over it more quickly and spend the time on something else. :D

Math is much, much more than arithmetic! Preschoolers spend the majority of their play time doing math -- sorting, comparing, counting. We're loving MM, but IMO any curriculum should be viewed as a suggested trail map -- a tool to see where you are, where you are going, and places to visit -- NOT as compulsive. Enjoy the scenic ride! Follow the bunny trails, build the bigger rectangles. Learning takes all forms and keeping math fun is one of the best ways to help your dc succeed in math in the future. Math is a universal and what looks like "playing" with math is an important part of developing his own internal understanding of how things work. That will help him build a solid foundation as he moves into the abstract over the next few years. There's no rush.

For us, I find the length of the day depends on two things: 1) how much prep I've done, and 2) the kids motivation. What seems to work best for us is if I set up their work for the day on a clipboard (one for each kid; in order, alternating "work" and a coloring or puzzle sheet), we start first thing with drill and math and move towards the "more fun" crafts, free reading, science projects, and piano. They can be done with the "have-tos" in under 2 hours (including 30min of reading for the 2nd grader). Having those clipboards set makes the day go smoothly. As the first respondent mentioned, having something to motivate the kids is key, too. Right now it's time on the Wii when they are done. If they're still doing lessons at 3pm, no tv or Wii for the day. It's not punitive -- just natural consequences. :D ETA: (3) clear expectations: we do a quick 1min "briefing" each am so each child knows what they need to do that day to be "done". I resist the urge to add after that, though if a kid is struggling I might say, "how about we do half of that today and save the rest for tomorrow." The clipboards also give the kids a clear indication of their progress and satisfaction when they "turn in" that last sheet for the day!

I think there may be a difference in criteria between which language you'd want them to study in HS (esp if they want to become a liguist or translator -- in which case chinese or arabic is probably by far the most useful) and what language to teach them in early elementary (when any would probably do, but romance lang are preferred, esp if ou've touched on latin). In the later (like the OP), IMO if you speak one language, that's the one to teach. If you've already taught the language to one kid...that's the language to teach the next. Why make your life more difficult? So I still vote spanish. :D You can always learn french later.

Thanks! :D I'd searched on latin (ton of irrel posts), but pronunciation got zilch as did a combo and I think I misspelled ecclesiastical -- unfortunately the board requires you wait 15sec between searches, even if the answer was "none". :glare:

Stick with spanish!!! I clincher for me is that you speak it (BIG advantage) and it could be wonderful for the boys to be able to converse with each other, even if it is just simple bits at this stage. I also think spanish has the advantage of being phonetic. And useful in the Americas.

I recall reading a post about why one (classical/eccl) was "better" to learn. My searches proved futile. ;) I'm starting with SSL and then plan to move to Big Book of LL and maybe minimus for fun. If my kids aren't likely to be singing latin in a choir, should I have a preference? Can't. make. decision. Need. help... TIA!

I used to listen to it right before going to bed the night before a big exam! :lol: How sick is that?? But it actually made it easy to fall asleep -- like saying I've done what I can, it's out of my hands, and all that is left is tomorrow. :D

I'd start with MM1. I just started my K'r (5yo) in MM1 a couple weeks ago. She really enjoys it and hasn't had any problems. I just work at her pace which is easy to do with MM.

:iagree: Focus on his greatest pet peeves. Here, dh wouldn't notice how nasty a kitchen sink or toilet got, as long as the floor isn't covered with stuff. FOr us, a 10 minute toys->bins before dh gets home helps dh's mood immensely, even if the dishwasher hasn't gotten unloaded or...

I'm glad things worked out for you! HSing requires buy-in and commitment from both parents, so hopefully dh will be able to get there. My dh works 3 days a week, and I've found that having a clear POSTED schedule helps immensely -- before that dh would decide to put a dvd on for the kids...in the middle of our school day. :banghead: Putting dh in charge of set projects (like a science or craft) also works well for us (as in, "Honey, here's a couple pullies and some string and some weights. Go teach them something."). :lol: Until you find desks, you might just try having them sit at the kitchen table, or choosing a "reading spot" on a couch. That way you can oversee, but still get the kitchen clean, for example. :D Your kids are also old enough to be doing more of the home cleaning -- put 'em to work! Good luck!

:iagree: That is one of my favorite quote as well!!! :D Another fav is from Les Miserables, end of Act 1: Tomorrow we'll discover what our God in Heaven has in store, One more dawn, one more day, one day more! ....and here we go!

I'm so sorry. Seems if dh is going to make unilateral decisions he should darn well fill out the paperwork himself and take the kids himself to enroll. If he honestly wanted to reduce your stress, I'd say he failed miserably. This is his failure, not yours. You just have to live with the consequences of his need for ...orderliness. Again, sorry.

You might try (again) discussing with dh logically what is really bothering him. If it is an untidy home, then fix that. Babies and bath water come to mind.... Another option to consider would be a VA. Curriculums like K12 are substantially online (though not the LA for the lower grades). Since the curriculum is free you could use the $$ for a house cleaner. :D PS -- if my dh finds the mess from the kids and I stressful he darn well cleans it up himself. He was a SAHD for the first few years and doesn't take for granted how hard it is to be home. Maybe DH should spend a week home alone with the kids and house and learn what REAL stress is. :p You can pop in just often enough to tell him to clean the mess up! :lol:

Any fun things you do at the start of the year, school year, week, or day? Have you named your homeschool? Do you do a special craft project? Banners? Coookies? Songs? Do you have a teacher-student meeting? :D I'd love to hear about any special little activities you do with your family to mark the start of HSing or the year (that I can swipe for my own family) !!! :bigear:

Both your son's examples are exquisite historical mathematics and I am truly glad they have caught your child's interest. I specifically mentioned the golden ratio (part of Fibonacci sequence theory) as an example of something worthy of study to broaden the depth of the mathematical mind. My point wasn't that patterns are not a part of math, just that looking at patterns as an exciting branch of math is a few centuries out of date. Your son's examples only prove my point. Pascal's Triangle was first described in 1653. Fibonacci described his series is 1202, though it goes back at least another millenium. If he continues to study mathematics for another 8-10 years, he'll finally be up-to-date. Einstein's matrix notation is probably the first thing he will see that's even from this century. Your toe is dipping in the edge of the water and you are telling me you know how deep the ocean is. If you want to know what is CURRENTLY going on in mathematics, your son might enjoy looking over one of the professional peer-reviewed journal publications. Or even just read the bios of a few Univ math profs. Or read about how Einstein thought through his theories -- then spent years working the math to prove them. You may want to differentiate between the work of theoretical mathematicians, applied mathematicians, and folks applying and developing math from within the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, genetics). And if tangrams are useful for your son, be glad and use them. Agreeing to disagree.

Just realize all "visualization" is not the same. As I said, tangrams are not for me -- I could LEARN to do it, but not thinking "that way" never held me back in math, and visualizing a parabola rotated in 3d in the mind (as a pp mentioned) -- now THAT I can do! :lol: Mathematicians do NOT sit around looking for patterns (I know dozens) -- maybe they did 500 years ago (or even 200), but now they "play" with equations and abstractions. YES, they visualize, but at high level math the trick is forming your own way of visualizing an abstract problem, which you cannot learn from tangrams (I've taken over a dozen grad level mathematics course, even taught one). To me it's not very much like chess: chess the players know the rules, in high math you're trying to discover the rules. I'd say it's more like weaving a tapestry where you have to keep track of hundreds of threads and the only pattern is what you see in your mind. All that aside, I stick by the idea that if they are useful or fun, use them. If not, skip them. Your child can excel at math without them. I believe the best way to prepare a child for higher math is to make sure they have opportunities to play with the ideas on their own. Struggling with ideas like the nature of integers and what does the square root of -1 mean, and when you get to geometric proofs letting them play with historical proofs so they can understand how they thought of that (my favs are inscribing a circle with a polygon and the golden ratio) -- that will prepare the mind for abstract visualization far more than any prepackaged tool. Just my thoughts.

WOW, can you please come organize my home?? :001_smile: Seems to me that binding could be a bit addictive -- like scrapbooking for curriculum organization. ;) I'm leaning towards one that can at least do a 1" comb (maybe more). Q: What comb size do you use the most? I think I'll do MM single-sided -- the blank side can serve as scratch paper as needed.

Since I am using MM and some other PDF curricula, was thinking about getting a comb binding machine rather than filling up the shelves with 3-ring binders. Any home-binding HS'ers out there? How many pages should it be able to do? Don't know if I need a bigger one to do a semester/year at a time, or if a med 85 or 120pp is enough -- maybe kids would like a smaller book so they can see "the end" ??? I used them at work, so know how to use one (manual). :D Just trying to NOT overspend or end up buying a 2nd. :p

Actually, WTM specifies this one: http://www.amazon.com/Usborne-Internet-Linked-Encyclopedia-World-History/dp/0746041683/ref=wl_mb_recs_1_dp The one in your link is a reprint from this year, doesn't have "internet-linked" in the title, and the author is one of the authors from the WTM spec'd book...I don't know how similar or different they would be. Might be nearly the same. My local library doesn't carry either book. :glare: Sounds like we'll be ok starting with the Kingfisher book and seeing how it works. Won't be doing irreparable damage to dd's understanding of history by not starting with Usborne's. :D Thanks to all for your responses!

I think they can be fun and even helpful for some (strong visual types), but don't take them too seriously. I got perfect scores on both math and logic sections of my grad school entry exam (GRE) and I couldn't do a tangram to save my life! :lol: I also can't estimate distances visually worth a dime, but give me a REAL problem to solve or an intractable mathematical equation and I can kick serious arse 6 different ways! :lol: For visual learners they are prolly a good thing.

Can anyone describe how the Usborne and Kingfisher history encyclopedias are the same/different? I know Usborne is cited for Level 1 and Kingfisher Level 2, though they both are listed as for 9-12 yos by their publishers. I'm wondering if I really need both or can get by with just Kingfisher (and SOTW1 and other narratives). Usborne is now out of print so it is a bit pricey. I'd hate to pay more than MSRP on a Used copy of an old edition if I can avoid it. :D My 2nd grader is reading at ~ a 6th grade level (in fluency, comprehension, and abstraction), if that helps. She does have 2 younger sibs, tho, but so far they seem similarly wired. Unnecessary or am I just being cheap? :lol: TIA!