Really, the only scheduling I do is that they do 1 page out of every book, each day. If they finish a workbook, I have another one on a different topic ready. (Map skills, story elements, states, writing, Reading Connections) I rotate through the LA curriculums. We do 1 unit of R&S grammar, then a fun workbook of some type, next I have a Progeny Press study guide ready to go, then we will be back to R&S. We school year round so that we can take off whenever we want. This week I have two days that we will be on a field trip or at a park day and we will scrap "book work" for both those days. As far as time scheduling, we usually start the day at 9 am and when each kid finishes depends on their ability to not goof off. It does not take many times of doing "homework" at 7pm to help keep them on task. It sounds like your daughter is doing great academically and that she has completed a lot of seat work, so I am not sure you need to change anything!! :hurray:

If I start with something that is way too easy, I have them do 1/2 of the problems, some of it oral, and have them do lots of it, so they scoot along faster, but don't miss anything. Like with my daughter's phonics workbook, I had her do three pages a day, but once she was caught up to where it was the right level for her, I dropped it down to 1 page a day and sometimes 1/2. The main goals of my home school are to teach them to have self-discipline, be independent, and learn how to learn. So almost all of their work is done on the most challenging level possible for them, even if that means they "only" do 1/2 of a page of each subject a day. When I know that I am going to be increasing their workload, I always give them lots of notice that it is coming and I add things on slowly or take away something they do not really like for a short time. Like, "Since we are starting this new writing program, we are going to skip doing our LA book this week." So they will be emotionally prepared and also a little excited. I also have built in rewards for days we do school. When they finish all their work, they get a fruit snack and get their electronic time. If they do not complete school that day, even if it is because we were running errands, they do not get those things. They know exactly what they are supposed to do each day, so I do not have to tell them. I don't know if that helps any! I have no idea how old your daughter is, so that may not be applicable to your situation. :001_smile:

My husband has never had any sort of allergy in his life until we moved to this house. It would happen for 1 month every spring. It took us a couple years to figure out that it was the nectarine tree in our backyard. When it first starts blooming he has intermittent symptoms. One day he went outside and came back in with an enormously red, swollen eye. I think a granule of pollen landed right in it. By about the 3rd week of blooming he is constantly miserable. So it could be with your son that he is allergic to one certain plant and it is just when the wind blows the right way, that it gets him. I second the eating honey from a local hive, I have heard that it works wonders for lots of people.

We love ours! It has a 7 year warranty. If a part breaks, we call them up and they ship it out the next day, no hassles. We do not even have to ship the broken part to them. I bought mine from the company, refurbished and saved about $100.

We did several languages with it and my kids had zero retention from it. I hope that the language "got in their brain" though. I took objection to the story line, but I still let them watch it. They never did pick up on what was happening. We also got lots of videos like Blues Clues in Spanish from the library and they did not learn anything from those either. I start Rosetta Stone in K and they have good retention and carry over with that.

I *think* only if you are going to have two children in the same level, at the same time, would you need two packets. If you will, then I highly recommend it. I could be wrong though, maybe when you move to the next level, you need to carry over some of the cards, but I doubt it, because I imagine that the next level has everything you need. I hope someone can give you a more definite answer than that!

I have a friend who was in a similar situation. She bought the Hooked On Phonics set from Costco and he does it independently. Her son went from reading beginning phonetic readers to easy chapter books in two months. Maybe something less hands on for your sister would be less daunting? On the other hand, I was not taught phonics, so when I started with my kids, I had no idea what to do. I found a chart with all the sounds of the letters and taught them all to my son at the same time. Like A makes the sounds c/a/t, c/a/ke and /a/ll. We learned together, sometimes he learned the sounds faster than me! Then we got Bob books and it was as easy as that!

Costco has tons of organic stuff. They just got organic applesauce in the big jars and raisins in the big bags at my store!! They also have lots of dried fruit without chemicals, not organic though. They have tons of frozen organic produce, but at my store I don't think the fresh produce is organic. It probably depends on geographic location.

I would go to the ped. and get a lead test ASAP! Most likely the levels will be normal. Lots of kids live in houses with lead paint and it is not a problem; they have to actually eat the lead for it to be an issue.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Carib-Black-Bean-Soup/Detail.aspx This is my all time favorite soup. I used to use yogurt instead of sour cream and now that I am diary free, I just omit it. I also make meatless chili and 15 bean soup in the Crockpot a lot.

That sounds so much like my youngest. He spit up a lot as an infant. He started vomiting entire feedings at about 5 months, so we started solids "early", compared to the older kids. That is when it got really bad. He would scream for 24 hour periods after eating, he would have spells of looking violently ill for 20 minutes, then would barf and be fine, until the next time he ate. . .he became failure to thrive very quickly. From 6 months on he was scoped upper and lower, had intestinal biopsies, put on every allergy diet, had a hernia from the muscle strain of vomiting sewed up, tested for every metabolic disease, most twice, cystic fibrosis 3 times. At age 19 months he had a CT scan of his pancreas because undigested fats were passing in his stool. In the upper corner they saw that the ducts in his liver were dilated, which usually means severe gallstones. An ultra sound confirmed this. At 20 months he had his gallbladder removed and a biopsy of his liver. The liver biopsy showed minor damage from the pressure of the bile backing up for almost two years, so another round of metabolic tests was done. All were negative. A week after the surgery I saw a huge leap in his development; he wasn't in pain anymore so he started to thrive. He is 24 months now and has NO vomiting and is in perfect health. He was in the 75% for height and 40% for weight just last week. I will cut it short now since my reply is so long, but don't give up looking for a "cure". Get all new doctors for fresh ideas, if need be. An ultrasound for gallstones takes 10 minutes and costs $100 versus all the other tests where the baby has to be unconscious and costs thousands. You are in my prayers, PM me anytime.

At what age did you teach your children to type the right way and did you use a program or curriculum? Thanks!

I agree with another poster who said to check out different AWANAS groups. The first one that I observed was a nightmare. I later found out that they were not even remotely following a lot of AWANAS rules. On the advice of a friend, I tried another church and their program was structured entirely different and had quite a different tone. We have been very happy there. We do not use children's ministry during church service and are very particular about a lot of stuff, but so far this church's AWANAS has been a good fit for us. I do worry about what types of doctrinal things will be taught at the higher levels and what types of sin issues they will openly talk about, but I am not sure how to address my concerns before my oldest advances. Good luck!

Well we have a couple inches of snow on the ground right now, so being outdoors may not be the best bet, but the forecast does say it is supposed to be nice by Sat, so it might work out for you. There is a nice playground around to the back of the zoo called City Park. It has a large castle structure that my kids love. Lookout Mountain Nature center is one of our favorites, but bring a coat and make sure it is open this early in the year. http://www.co.jefferson.co.us/openspace/openspace_T56_R14.htm Here are some free tours that I keep in my field trip folder: http://www.hammondscandies.com/index.php candy factory, free tours http://www.usmint.gov/mint_tours/index.cfm?action=StartReservation Denver Mint tour, free http://www.mines.edu/academic/geology/museum/ Geology Museum free If all of your kids are over 5, Celestial Seasonings also offers free tours. HTH!

We recently tried SS for 13 lessons and it was going great until they introduced two types of words, ones where you double the consonant before the suffix and ones where you leave it single. There are no explanations and my son keeps trying to make up rules in his head. I looked on-line and the rule on doubling consonants is confusing, especially because one of the exceptions to the rule, "outing" is on the list! My son loves rules and wants an explanation for everything. So we just ordered All About Spelling and will give that a try.

I put all of the books on a shelf. I get a couple choices for each subject in our history and science spines. I also get books on other topics that have come up or are important. I vary the reading level from way too easy to quite hard. He has to read non-fiction for one hour a day and gets to choose any book he wants. If he does not want to read a book, he just puts it back in the library bag. If he finishes a book, he puts it in his book report pile. At the end of the week he picks two subjects or books to write a report on and the rest in the book report pile go back into the library bag. On Fridays he skips all bookwork and writes the two reports and draws pictures for them. Frequently he presents them to the family over the weekend. If it is time to move on from a subject, I get new books and take the old ones back. If I renew the book twice and he still hasn't touched it, I just take it back. Right now he is choosing to spend half of his non-fiction reading time on reading through encyclopedia sets.

I used MMM K and 1st. I love, love, love MMM K! I have used it with my two oldest and will use it for the rest at age 4 or 4.5. It is very basic and easy, so don't wait until age 5 or 5.5. It really gets kids excited about math and explains the vocabulary of math very well. After K, I went into MMM 1st with my oldest. I loved the beginning of the book. Frankly, I had to ask my husband for help with lots of the lessons (remember 1st grade here!!) :blushing: I finished up through Calc II with an A in college and I just didn't get what I was supposed to be doing lots of times!! About 1/2 way through I noticed that they way that all the math facts were presented just wasn't working for my son. They basically introduce all of the math facts of addition and subtraction at once and figure that after lots of repetition, it will become memorized. I just found that it did not happen with my son. So we switched to MUS 1 and he is doing unbelievably well. He just needs a systematic approach to learning the facts, not a hodgepodge. I do really love the beginning of MMM 1 so much that I am considering using it with my next right after MMM K, but the price for just the student workbook is so high ($16.95) that I am not sure it is worth it. I keep looking for little workbooks that would cover the same thing, but haven't found it yet. Both programs require extensive teacher prep and teaching time. MUS requires almost none. HTH!!

We still did K, but did not using a boxed curriculum. He did 1st grade math, continued practicing reading skills by getting books from the library and continuing with his phonics program, which was not divided by grade level. He also started Greek and Spanish. I used the year to expose him to a wide variety of subjects since when doing TWTM, you focus on one area each year. We read "Earth and Space" and "The Complete Book of Nature" and the Linnea books. We did lots of books from the library on all sorts of subjects, American History, our state, unit studies on oceans, quilting, bread making, basically anything that caught his interest. Also lots of science experiments, keeping of little critters and growing of plants. I tried to give him a well rounded exposure to as much as I could and make him understand that learning is fun. The only thing that bombed was cultural studies. He just didn't get it. He thought it would be fun to live in a mud hut and play in a garbage dump all day!! HTH!

Thanks for all the replies!!!! Once I saw that they have a 1 year money back guarantee, I just had to give it a try. 1 year!!!! I would have gladly gotten my money back with my other spelling programs right at the 30 day mark.

We have tried numerous programs and nothing works. Recently we were trying Sequential Spelling and it was going great until they introduced two types of words, ones where you double the constanant before the suffix and ones where you leave it single. There are no explanations and he keeps trying to make up rules in his head. I looked on-line and the rule is confusing, especially because one of the exceptions to the rule, "outing" is on the list! He loves rules and wants an explanation for everything. He has no visual memory of words. Has anyone used All About Spelling and what did you like/ not like about it? Do you think it might work in his case, or would this program likely be just as "hard" and should we just stick with Sequential and do our best with it? Thanks!

My son had a PS therapist come to our house from the age of 2-3. At the age of 3 PS therapy took place in a preschool. I questioned why I could not drop him off for the therapy sessions. Why did they need him there for hours?? Then I asked to speak with the person who would be doing the therapy. Turned out that it would just be whomever could make it in, not a regular therapist. I talked to the woman in charge of the therapy and asked what type of therapy sessions they would have. Turns out that none of the sessions would be one on one; they would all be group sessions lasting 20 minutes. I have no idea what they think they can accomplish with a group of 20, 3 year olds in twenty minutes!! We declined and payed out of pocket for his therapy. I have known kids that their parents did not pay for therapy and most their kids ended up speaking just fine. So my advice would be to find out all you can about the program and the therapy. Possibly go and observe the center. Your center may end up like mine and you may realize that they really are not doing much for your child, or you might feel wonderful about sending your child.

Jean, you are so creative! My husband and I decided last night that we better just try and come up with something on our own. Your ideas are a great start! Thanks!

We use Quarter Mile Math computer program for speed starting in Alpha. I am also planning on using the Focus on Math series soon with my son who is in Delta. http://rainbowresource.com/search.php?sid=1206478398-1161575 The only things I have found that need supplementing so far are basic geometry (shapes really), measurement and unique word problems. HTH!

Thanks for the link. I am looking for something that is geared toward younger kids, like maybe a pet-napping or something stolen, like a bike. The one you plan to do sure does look fun! Maybe I will have to do one with our adult friends . . .:001_smile:

I highly recommend it!