Would you consider clock work abstract. I'm not just talking about telling time. Here are some examples of questions that would have a picture of a clock with them. Plus we have a practice clock. ~ The clock face reads 7:35. They want you to say so many minutes till such hour. ~ The clock face reads 1:05. They want you to say so many minutes past such hour. ~ The clock face reads 3:20. What is 5 minutes later? ~ Susie started weeding her garden at 6:15. It took her 20 minutes. At what time did she finish? ~ Tommy started mowing the lawn at 7:40. He finished at 8:15. How long did it take him to mow the lawn? I'm about ready to pull my hair out with my 10 year old ds because he knows how to tell exact time to the minute. He knows the clock is in 5 min. intervals. He knows it's split up into 4 equal quarters. He knows 30 minutes is half of 60. He just can't answer questions like these to save his life. Any suggestions? I've tried to explain it, but nothing seems to get through to him. Is it even worth the hassle?

There is a writing course that many people who use the Robinson Curriculum use. It's a self-teaching program, and it's flexible, letting the child write what they want. It give parents guidelines on how to grade the work and shows them how to help dc edit and improve their work. It's written by a college writing professor who homeschools his dc using Robinson Curriculum. I haven't used it, but am planning to next year after we finish Write with the Best. http://www.advanced-writing-resources.com/index.html

I tried to use Bigger with my older dd and ds this year. It was too young for them, but I imagine it would be right on for 2nd grade. We ended up scrapping most of it and just read the Eggleston books. We liked them, go figure! I have just started ds in Preparing and dd in CTC. The fit is much better and they are both loving it so far. I definitely think you need to find the right fit for the programs to work.

There is also a book called The Big Book of Questions and Answers. http://www.amazon.com/Book-Questions-Answers-Ferguson-Sinclair/dp/1857922956/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271683423&sr=8-1

Answers for Kids might be a good start. There are 3 or 4 books in the series, I think.

When Dragons Hearts were Good by Buddy Davis is a fun read. The Lost World Adventures (based on Characters by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) http://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Adventures-Mark-Smith/dp/0890512779/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271295272&sr=8-3 is also a fun read. It's more of a chapter type book, but it was a great hit when my dd & ds were 8 & 7 respectively.

MFW K would make a great preK program! It is very gentle, and the science/Bible section has fun activities.

I skipped the readers with my ds 9 and dd.

If your ds is anything like my dd, he will truly love the white board. It is the best $4 investment I've made. I even teach her reading lessons on it. I was using 100 EZ with her, and she balked any time the book came near. So I secretly used the lessons on the white board. She can blend any word I give her now. I put 100 EZ away around lesson 30 because I could see that she was getting stressed out with the sentence reading. We are now using a mixture of Blend Phonics on the white board and Abeka's Handbook for Reading (she likes the colorful pages) and it's going wonderfully. What I'm trying to say is it may not have anything to do with him not liking challenging work. It just may not be the right method for him. It will be interesting to see how Phonics Pathways goes for you and him. I personally don't like ETC, neither did my two older dc. I know it's raved about, but not in this family.

You could easily set ETC aside for awhile or even dump it. Phonics Pathways will be all you need. Then split the other worksheets apart with lots of playtime in between. He's such a young five. My dd turned five in January, and I only have her doing a handwriting worksheet one day, then she practices writing her letters the rest of the week on a dry erase board (she loves this) whenever she wants. On another day, I have her doing something from a R&S K book. I don't give her more than one worksheet each day. We do Right Start math, so that's all hands on. She is a worksheet lover, but I don't want to burn her out. So, I'd say relax and let him be an active little boy. Hug on him and love on him. He will grow up way too fast. I'd venture to guess he's not lazy at all, just active and social and very young 5, not even true K yet ;)

I think that you teaching yourself to read is a rare case. I have a friend who's son just figured it out when he was 3. But, a good majority of children need to be taught to read sysematically. I really don't think you need to do anything more with your 3.5 year old than you have already done with your other dc. Children develop in their own time, and eventually it all evens out whether a child learned to read at 4 or 7. From what I hear, Phonics Pathways is outstanding. It will most likely get your ds over the hump because it teaches dc to blend two letters together first, then it moves on to three letter words.

The LA in HOD is very flexible, so if you like Sonlight readers with those guides, you could use those instead of DITHOR.

I have Classical Phonics because I ordered the K program for my dd. It is almost identical to Word Mastery except that it is organized differently. IMO, the presentation is a huge improvement over the original Word Mastery. But Classical Phonics leaves out a few of the more advanced sounds, like ti, si, ci saying "sh" , that are included toward the end of the original. So, it's not quite as complete. The original also introduces a lot more multi-syllable words toward the end.

I think the biggest differences are OG methods teach vertical phonics, that is all the sounds a letter makes at once. Another difference I've noticed is that OG programs have you spell the word to read read it. Maybe others will chime in. As for letter reversals, I think it just takes a lot of practice differentiating between how they look, how they are formed and their sound. One thing Phonics Road does is teach the "d" is a short letter with a tall part and "b" is a tall letter with a short part. I've gone a step further with my dd. We keep the same dialogue for "d" but for "b" I say it's a tall letter with a b,b belly and we put a little dot inside it for a belly button. She seems to be catching on pretty well with writing.

Veritas Press is Reformed.

I'm looking for, possibly, a world geography program for next year for my 5th and 6th dc. I like the idea of a missions focus. I've looked at MFW ECC and Sonlight Core 5. Is there anything else out there that I'm missing?

The Phonics Road to Spelling and Reading! But, you won't find coloring or cutting and pasting activities. Abeka is also a very solid program.

There is a book by Sydney Ledson called Teach your Child to Read in Just 10 Minutes a Day. It is geared towards two year olds and older. You can get it from Amazon, and you can see samples at google books. http://books.google.com/books?id=65_KDFR8F3QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Teach+you+child+to+read+in+just+10+minutes+a+day&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false It starts out with dc learning how to blend and read 100 cvc words and is pure phonics with no sight words. It also has a lot of good ideas for fun little games to reinforce what is learned. It doesn't have dc reading any sentences until those words are mastered and the child really has a handle on blending from left to right. Another thing, it's not scripted like 100 EZ. It just gives a basic guide line on what to do.

To sum it up in one nice package, we will be doing Memoria Press K with Right Start Math.:D

Another thing that is really great about this way is that I am now catching her spelling words we've learned on the white board in her play time. She comes running so excitedly. "Mom, mom, I spelled God, look, look." Music to my ears, ahhhh!:party:

Actually, you put the song in my ear about blend phonics in your mega thread about phonics road.;)

I got to the point in Phonics Road where dd finished level two and ds was still in level two. We started level 3 with her, then I decided I wanted something more independent for the two of them. I actually need to change my siggy, because We are no longer doing CLE LA with ds. ds is actually finishing up PR 2 and I'll continue on with him. (I think I mentioned that I worked through PR 2 with both, should have thought about what I was writing, oops!:blush:) I kind of got a grass is greener on the other side syndrome, and doing two levels was getting really time consuming, so I purchased CLE LA on a whim :o Mistake! Well, not quite a mistake for DD. She is actually still doing CLE LA along with Write with the Best. She really thrives with the independence. I'm thinking I will use The Bridge to the Latin Road with her next year. I'm not sure yet. She's had a lot of Shurley English in the past. So her grammar is very solid, as is her reading ability. White Board - It's really easy. I just write the first letter of a word, we'll use "dad". So I write "d" then ask what sound? then I add "a" so it becomes "da" now what does it say? then I add "d" to make "dad" and she tells me the word. Then I erase it and I say we are going to spell dad. So we say daaaad together. I ask her the first sound. She says and writes d, then I ask what is the 2nd sound and she says and writes a. Then I ask what is the 3rd or last sound. She says and writes d. then she reads "dad" again. We erase it then she spells it again on her own. I go through more words this way, then I write them again and she reads them again. That's it in a nutshell.:001_smile:

Well, that's a good question. When my oldest dd was in 2nd grade, I was trying to find a way to get her spelling well. I had heard about SWR, but it looked way too overwhelming for me. I knew I was enrolling her in a Christian school for 3rd, so I didn't want to spend too much money. That's when I, completely by mistake, fell upon AAS (then called The Complete Book of Spelling or something like that) There was only 1 level available and we went through it so quickly that I needed something else. I came upon the Phonics Road at that point, but it was too expensive. So I purchased Phonics for English Reading, Spelling and Writing from www.yesphonics.com. I guess you would say that those two programs taught me how to teach the phonograms and all their sounds. Unfortunately, two years in school did nothing for my elder dd's spelling, and she mostly forgot everything I taught her. So, I bought Phonics Road knowing I wanted to use it for the younger dds. I took elder dd and ds through the first two levels of Phonics Road with great success. But, I had never taught them to read that way. They both learned to read with programs that discouraged spelling until they were reading. Therefore, I was still a little skeptical about teaching reading by such a method. No longer am I skeptical. I can't believe how much spelling has really helped to solidify the words for dd 5. If I thought she could handle PR 2 in 1st grade, I would just go ahead with Phonics Road 1, but it all advances so quickly after level 1. That's why I'm waiting to use Phonics Road. I am going to continue having dd spell her way to reading, though. I will just use a more pattern approach with Blend Phonics and Word Mastery for now instead of rules. Phonics Road will provide all the rules. :001_smile: Webster's does teach all the sounds of the phonograms at once. I've looked at Webster's being a mix of OG/Spalding and beginning blend programs like Abeka, Phonics Pathways, etc. Webster's doesn't teach rules. It teaches reading and spelling through syllable patterns using the syllabary. :001_smile: I don't think ElizabethB has the phonograms on her website. She just has so many great ideas to offer, like using a white board with yound dc. I would have never thought of it had she not mentioned it.

I would like to share my experience so far with my dd who just turned 5. We began our learning to read journey in January with 100 EZ Lessons. She immediately put up a wall against the book, so I started using a white board to teach her the lessons (with a big thank you to the wisdom of ElizabethB). She LOVES the white board. We didn't use the funny orthography, and I've been teaching her the phonograms PR, SWR, WRTR style, not 100 EZ lessons style. Anyway, I can't believe how fast dc catch on to blending with 100 EZ lessons. For that only, the book is worth it. However, we ran into a road block around lesson 30. Although she can pretty much sound out any one-syllable word I give her, she couldn't catch on to reading the words the fast way. Therefore, she really couldn't comprehend the little stories, because it took her so long to get through them. I could tell this was overwhelming her. So, I ditched 100 EZ Lessons. I thought through all the information I've gathered from ElizabethB's posts and how PR teaches (which I'm planning to use with her) and decided to have her spell the words she has learned in 100 EZ lessons. All I can say is, WOW!, spelling has made all the difference with words she's already learned. I am now using both the Word Mastery and Blend Phonics from Don Potter to teach her new words. Those lists along with spelling the words she's learning has proven 100% successful thus far. I'm not so concerned with having her read sentences, yet. But, when I do give her a sentence to read, she can now read it with enough speed to comprehend what she has read. I truly think there is something to be said for spelling your way to reading (even without the rules)! Which makes me all the more confident that PR is going to work wonders when she is ready! Woohoo! On another note, ElizabethB recommends Webster's Speller a lot. Webster's doesn't even have dc reading sentences until Table 13. That's after they have learned up to 5 syllable words. I find this quite interesting.

The extension pack titles for BHFHG by Heart of Dakota are great books for American History!! http://www.heartofdakota.com. I actually have enjoyed them better than Adv. titles. Although we did love Mountain Born.