This would be my concern - keeping the twins in the same grade so that the boy doesn't develop some kind of inferiority complex. Sounds silly but.. seriously! I see it with my two who are NOT twins. It's tough. Now, if you were sending him to public, my answer might be different. I think the holding back of Kinders (especially boys) can be very appropriate in this age of 7 hour Kindergarten days with (often) developmentally inappropriate academic material. While almost all developmentally normal kids who fall under the birthday deadline are capable of handling traditional Kinder, they are NOT all capable of handling the aberration that is today's Kinder in many regions. You might well be walking into a holdback scenario and that would make the inferiority complex even worse. Homeschooling, you can actually run Kindergarten for him the way Kindergarten is SUPPOSED to be - that is, a short school day when children can explore academic basics and work on developmental skills and play. The daughter may be accelerated as you see fit, but running Kinder as Kinder is one of the benefits of homeschooling.

I'll be the voice of dissent here. I consider it science. 5 years into homeschooling, I pretty much have decided formal elementary school science is a complete waste of time. BUT, caveat that we are a very science-oriented family. My husband is a physicist. I found there was nothing mentioned or done with any science curriculum that particularly introduced something that my kids weren't already exposed to by... conversing with parents, reading, going on outings to museums or nature hikes, family TV-time (things like Mythbusters), and in extracurricular activities like Girl Scouts and FLL (both of which husband and/or I run). They do go to homeschool science classes average of about twice a month at either the science museum, Space & Rocket Center, or the local botanical gardens. We're the kind of nerds that didn't just go through the children's museum and play with the exhibits - we always stopped, explained, read, predicted, and experimented. Both of my kids score almost perfectly in the science portions of the SAT 10. That said, I proctored a 3rd grade SAT 10 last year, and I was frankly a little shocked at how much I saw kids getting wrong that I (and my kids) would consider common knowledge about the world. So, I guess those science curricula are intended for kids who are, for reasons I don't relate to, not picking up on that knowledge by living life, reading, and conversing. I do think a lot of the same people who feel it necessary to have formal science (the people who are involved in FLL and sciencey-extra curricular activities) are the same people who don't need it. There came a point in time where I had an epiphany that my kids weren't really learning anything new from anything I tried to do *formally* at home. More time spent on math and letting them read is probably more efficient, in terms of prepping them for advanced science study. And back to the original topic, when done right, FLL, while perhaps "just an extracurricular" teaches kids more about science and engineering than any elementary school science curriculum I've ever seen.

We found a series at the library "The Science of Disney Imagineering" or something like that. They mostly dealt with physics topics. They seemed kind of hyper to me, but my kids really enjoyed them and remembered some of the things they learned.

Yeah, I agree.One of my children is substantially accelerated; she's on the young side for a 3rd grader (May birthday), but all her academic work is classified as 4th or 5th grade work. I'm sure some will be 6th by the second half of this year. I never call her anything but a "3rd grader" when asked what grade she is, though, and she answers the same. I feel for emotional and social reasons, it's best. I actually think one of the advantages of homeschooling is that she can just be a "third grader", without there having to be some kind of disconnect between academic level and social level for things like activities. If she ever actually has to be put into school, I think we'd have to have her skip a grade. Putting her in at her grade level *in school* would come with all sorts of negatives. I can't imagine her being in a 3rd grade classroom. She would learn next to nothing. At home, I can jolly well call her a third grader and still accelerate her academics as much as she needs. No stigma of being weird or different or outside of her element socially.

We're doing Stories of Don Quixote Written Anew for Children by James Baldwin. My kids are enjoying it well enough. *I* am loving it and felt I missed out not hearing all these stories as a child myself. Homeschooling makes me realize how much I missed out on in my own elementary education. We read mostly random crap from random reader textbooks. WHY?!

2queens - I have a 5th grader too. She was doing WWE 1 year behind largely because of dyslexia issues and being able to read out loud longer and having no/simpler dictation was necessary (in 1st grade, her writing/spelling was so cripplingly atrocious, I couldn't even consider WWE1), but by the end of WWE3, I felt the narration and reading comprehension question portions were absolutely trivial to her, and while the dictation was still a fair challenge, I didn't feel dictation skills alone was a reason to continue holding her back. So I decided to skip WWE4 with her and go directly to WWS1. So far, my 5th grader is really enjoying WWS1 and I am meanwhile doing WWE4 with my 3rd grader and I couldn't be happier (so far) with the choice I've made. While WWE4 is fine for the 3rd grader (a gifted student who is a spelling whiz and has slick penmanship), I know WWE4 would have been yet more annoyance for the 5th grader, who found dictation a struggle but had excellent reading comprehension. Being able read the instructions, reference the text, and write independently is really boosting her confidence and I think she's getting a lot more out of it than she would have gotten out of WWE4, which would have been more of the same from last year and a tedious chore. I still like WWE4 for my 3rd grader, who due to just maturity issues would probably not do well with the kind of multi-step independent work WWS requires, but for the 5th grader, just.. great. Probably not for every 5th grader, but for mine the skip was great. We still work on spelling, but through a dedicated spelling program. Hanging back with WWE4 for memory and spelling only when the rest of the skills were ready to move on would have just been holding her back, I think.

Yes, that was the workbook. WWE4. I often modify. In this case, I think it was kind of a poor choice as that is a sentence I would critique the heck out of in student writing. It's just too long. I repeated it in segments, which kind of defeated the purpose of having the student identify where the commas go. Fortunately with this student, she is very bright and a good speller, and she definitely already *gets* commas and such. I like the workbooks not only for the convenience, but because they expose my kids to a greater variety of literature than I would just with our literature selections. I just know I have to deviate from the directions frequently. Still, I think it's funny, and I wonder what the thinking was behind some of those selections!

Sometimes I wonder what SWB was smoking when she wrote some of this stuff.. Now, I consider myself a fairly intelligent adult, and I'm pretty sure I'd have to hear that sentence no less than half a dozen times before I'd remember it accurately. Seems like a tall order for a 9-yr-old!

I usually let my kids watch TV while they eat lunch, but this year, I've decided to put my Amazon Prime membership to good use. Instead of rewatching a zillion episodes of Phineas and Ferb, they will be watching classic TV episodes. We're starting with Gilligan's Island! I'm going to try to pick a different show each week to expose them to various things (maybe we'll stick with some things longer, like Little House.) I'm not sure of I'm brilliant for thinking of this or if I'm lame for letting them watch lunch-TV in the first place. :) (Probably both - I'm lame for letting them watch lunch TV in the first place, but this is a brilliant compromise.) What would you add to this list? Gilligan's Island Lassie The Andy Griffith Show The Brady Bunch Little House on the Prairie The Twilight Zone Star Trek (Original series) The Cosby Show I Love Lucy The Wonder Years Bewitched The Munsters The Adams Family Leave it to Beaver What else?

We have a team! We just started it! It's our first year! Get commitment from the families of the kids you want on the team. By that I mean - a commitment to show up to practices regularly (just as if it were a sport season), and to help split the financial commitment. If you don't have a robot already it is a little pricey, but we did approach a few companies (just the employers of some of our members' parents) and we were shocked at how quickly we raised hundreds to support our team. Everything you need to know is on the web site and on the coach's manual they will send you when you register the team. Good luck! :D

I had *not* heard this, but this really validating for me! I have a 5th grader that did WWE 1-3 - one grade level behind the whole way. She is dyslexic and the spelling and penmanship issues were crippling her, so we had to hold her back a little bit, even though her comprehension and composition skills were totally solid. She has mostly caught up with spelling/penmanship issues, and WWE3 was feeling really trivial by the end, so I decided to skip her to WWS 1 this year. Meanwhile I have a gifted 3rd grader who was doing WWE 1-2 on grade level. It rapidly started becoming trivial for her, but I didn't want to jump her to the same level as older sister, for reasons of older sister's insecurity. But since older sister caught up, I decided to skip WWE 3 and do WWE 4 with the 3rd grader. Sounds like WWE4 might be a nice accelerated bridge program for her for a gifted 3rd grader. So glad to hear this! I had some concerns about skipping a whole book for the two of them, but now I feel good about it,

Really confused as to why your daughter would complain if she is doing dictation elsewhere without problems. My only guess is that the AAS dictation sentences very related to what she has learned to spell, while WWE often throws in some very challenging words and the spelling difficulty level in WWE dictation is not consistent at all. (One of my few complaints about WWE, but with my child that is a good speller, it was a non-issue.) My oldest is dyslexic and we used WWE 1 year behind for a while, largely because the dictation was just crippling in difficulty level for her. This year is the first year we're finally caught up to grade level.

What is your goal; teaching art as an academic subject, or having supplies on-hand for map-coloring and projects? If your goal is the former, I would include charcoal, chalk pastels, a good pencil set with varying degrees of hardness, kneaded eraser, and stomp. Good drawing LARGE drawing paper as well as lots of crappy LARGE drawing paper (newsprint) for generous practice. For painting, stick with watercolors and acrylics (though good tempra paint is fine, too.) If your goal is the latter, the colored pencil and watercolor recommendations already given are fine.

My assessment: People on the WTM forums are, on average, skewed in their perception of what "grade level" is. A lot of us are nerdy and bookish and were probably placed in the most advanced groupings in school (whether we were aware of it or not), and/or were raised in an area with an educated demographic. So I think you more frequently hear a program (especially math, which is more universal and objective) is "behind" because many people evaluating the curricula just have higher default expectations. In reality in a classroom, there is usually math going on at two or three (or more) different levels at least. Just have your kid learn the stuff, and move forward at their own pace.

This is interesting to me. I tried my daughter on piano, and viola, before finally settling on percussion.This is a child with dyslexia and dyscalculia. She had asked to take percussion lessons for years. Not just drums, percussion. She wanted to learn the xylophone, marimba, timpani, the orchestral works. I kept saying "no" because that sounded like a logistical nightmare to me and I thought she was just asking on a whim after seeing some musicals, but after piano and viola efforts were nothing but nag, nag, nag to get her to practice, I finally relented and looked into the percussion lessons. It turned out to be not quite as nightmarish or expensive as I thought. I found a music education student/percussionist at the local university who was willing to give her lessons. I bought her a student bell kit and a practice drum pad and some mallets/sticks. Percussion, she can practice daily without any need for me to nag - even though it's twice the practice of the other instruments she tried. She practices both rhythms (drum pad) and melodies (bells, and when I say "bells" what I really mean is like a 2-octave student xylophone.) At the university during lessons, she gets an opportunity to play on the big orchestra instruments. I later read that percussion is great for dyslexic students. Now, my daughter has made great progress this past year, but who is to say whether the introduction of percussion played a role, or not? For us, it was just about music education. But for whatever reason, she gravitates towards percussion and enjoys it.

We don't do that many of the activities, actually, but I still buy the AG every year (we're starting Vol 3) this year. I think it's handy to have the AG in my hands. I use it primarily for supplemental literature suggestions and for review questions for the kids. Once in a while we even do an actual activity from the book. :D But do you need it? No.

It could be the kid. It could be the curriculum. It could be *how* the curriculum is being used and absorbed. It could be a combination of all of the above. To me, a low test score indicates a need to change something - to invest more time in a subject, receive outside help, or to find a more effective curriculum (or teach the current curriculum more effectively.) Basically, a low test score is a wake-up call to re-evaluate your situation and your child, and figure out the best way to try to address it.

I had the same question, and was fortunate enough to have someone lend me a teacher's guide. I think it was worth looking at once, but it wasn't strictly necessary and really not something you'd reference regularly. The majority of the things in the guide were only useful for teaching cursive to a class. If you are an adult who knows how to write legibly, and can monitor the practice of an individual student, you can correct-as-you-go. A lot of the guide involves providing slow, clear instruction to a group of students to minimize the chances that students will form their letters wrong while working individually. I think most homeschooling parents and kids find it more efficient to just jump into the work and correct-as-you-go rather than having the parent stand up doing a time-consuming instructive song-and-dance (as if teaching a class) before getting to work.

I am assuming you mean the SAT 10 and not the college entrance exam since you are posting on the K-8 forum? I have used TT with two kids for several years now, and my kids' SAT 10 scores pretty much reflect their individual capacity and knack for math. I have a gifted student using TT who is great at math and gets phenomenally high SAT 10 (94th percentile math), and one with dyslexia/dyscalculia using TT with scores I'd like to see higher for sure (58th percentile in problem-solving and 23rd on procedures.) The one with the lower scores I supplemented like crazy - and her real weakness is fact mastery and speed because of her learning disabilities, and I honestly do not think her low scores are a reflection of TT because I have been there every step of the way supplementing. If anything, TT has actually helped new math concepts remain accessible to her with the audio/visual component. I know some have the philosophy to not progress until math facts are mastered but when you have a child with dyscalculia I really believe doing so would just frustrate her and make her despise math. (My husband noticed this child scored extremely high on a few areas a lot of kids struggle with - like fractions. He has the same learning disabilities as her and he is now a physicist & engineer, and he believes her struggles would remain the same no matter WHAT curriculum we used, as he had the same struggles as a younger student.) Consider that whatever whatever math curriculum kids are using in public schools, their test scores still run the gamut. I don't see any reason for TT to be any different, other than TT is light on fact mastery and most kids will need outside practice. (speaking up through TT6 here - I've never used anything beyond.)

Well, I'd be primarily going down for the classes BUT I am a Disney freak and would certainly enjoy the rest of the time at the parks with my kids. :) We've been 3 times so if we went, I'd dress it up as a "school trip" and use it as an excuse to plan all of our days around the educational offerings (there's lots of great free stuff once you're in the parks, too), and skip doing the crazy FastPass runs and trying to hit every ride and all that. I think it would be worth it. But the YES programs are $34 a person (in addition to the ticket package) so I'd have to decide if each were worth it. Right now what might work is doing Energy and Waves Physics, Marine Life Conservation and Animal Behavior. Right now they only have programs released through October dates for individual enrollment. I do think they usually open up some offerings in January, too. January would be my preference I think. Or, I'm wondering if I should just pass and wait until Middle School - the Middle and High school classes look more substantive to me (from what every little info they offer.)

I'm curious if anyone has done the Disney YES (Youth Education Series) programs. I noticed my kids this year will both be ages where they could simultaneously do the same programs (8 and 11 yrs old/3rd & 5th grade) this year. A Disney vacation was not in our plans, but if these programs are excellent I'd consider driving down for a few days just the kids and I. Reviews for the programs are few and far between, however. Has anyone done these? Especially elementary level? My concern is that the programs are not really that different than what we do as nerdy homeschooling parents taking our kids to Disney World. We always spend time at exhibits, EPCOT is our favorite park, we make the effort to enjoy the (included) educational offerings. I was disappointed to see the educational program of 3 hrs includes.. riding rides. For example, the Physics program at Magic Kingdom sounds great, but it looks like they just might talk to a Disney cast member about physics and then go see a few attractions after the talk for context. That's like.. our nerdy little family on a typical outing. BUT.. if the tour includes some behind the scenes stuff or the chance to talk to Disney imagineers, I think it would be worth it. Any insights?

By the way, I noticed Diary of a Wimpy Kid is on that list. My kids both enjoy those books, and trust me, they wouldn't normally have been on my radar. But I'll just throw out there that there is deceptively complex language in those books. Don't let the scribble-font and stick figure illustrations fool you. While I make no comment about the quality of the content, the vocabulary and sentence complexity is several steps above where you might expect, and for that reason I do think they are worth having kids read. They are great transition books, as they make elevated language use accessible. (Kind of in the same way I think Geronimo Stilton books are great transition books from early reader->chapter books. They *bring it up a notch* in a way that does not intimidate kids.)

Has your daughter read the American Girl historical fiction books yet? They are really good stories, great for that reading level, and teach a lot about American History in the process. Can't recommend them enough, and they'll keep her reading for a while. They have some spin-off mysteries that are pretty good, too. For literature, some of the books my 4th grader enjoyed in that range: - Where the Mountain Meets the Moon - D'aulairesBook of Norse Mythology (I read the Greek/Roman to her last year as a read-aloud, and she did Norse this year as an independent read) - The Egypt Game - The Cat Who Went to Heaven - City of Ember - The Graveyard Book - Number the Stars - A Wrinkle in Time (and its sequels)

This is exactly my husband's thought - he had similar issues with math in elementary school, and he ended up getting graduating cum laude in physics and getting a master's degree in electrical engineering. Both she and he are dyslexic. But he also shares my concern about how slow her computation is. He doesn't remember how/when he resolved his computation speed. (He's still not always the best - for example, I can usually calculate a tip faster than he can.)

I have a 4th grader student - just received her SAT 10 scores back and has excellent scores in everything except math, which is the 23rd percentile in math procedures - while math problem-solving remains OK in the 60th percentile. Every other subject is 70th percentile or higher. Oh and the one area most 4th graders struggle with the most - fractions - she got 100% right. Her problem solving has been a head-banging nightmare. We have done rote repetition, tricks, mnemonics etc, to get the math facts down. She will remember for a while - and then forget. There has been some progress, but obviously not the progress you'd expect to go along with time, We've done Xtramath, Math Rider, Khan Academy, worksheets, timed tests, Times Tales, all sorts of games, mental math, etc. She's slow with all four operations still. Meanwhile, 2nd grade sister has 95th percentile in overall math and knows all the facts forwards and backwards, so trust me, it's not because of lack of math in the house! I need some recommendations. I'm considering doing Kumon. I know it's just worksheets but supposedly there is a method there and my random distribution of math problems to her obviously isn't cutting it.