I used 100 EZ and am now going through ETC with my son- he loves ETC, and it covers the holes in 100EZ. We are also doing the Webster's Speller now- you can find more about it on Elizabeth's phonics page- www.thephonicspage.org. We also read from the I Can Read readers, level 2. They are advanced enough that he cannot read them fluently, and so there's lots of places to stop and talk about rules we haven't covered yet in ETC.

Andrea, I have not used the original, only Don Potter's version, so I can't compare, but I find the Don Potter version to be excellent. I have "low vision" (partial blindness) so using anything with super tiny text is out. I find Don's book is just fine for me. I think the other difference is that multiple syllable words are spaced out instead of hyphenated, and I think that's a good change. We have not gotten to the word lists yet, we are still memorizing the syllabary, as we came to the Speller after having done 100EZ lessons and some Explode the Code. We are starting explode the code 3, and when we finish 4, we will go on to the multisyllable word lists. I really like the Speller+ETC combo, and am working on writing out a correspondance between the two.

Amazon sells a reprinting of it, but it's not as nice as Don Potter's format from the looks of it. I just printed the whole thing out.

Is it that your kids don't like them, or do you just not have the habit of preparing them for meals? For dinner last night, I combined- pesto, a chopped onion, chopped sun dried tomatoes, and drained frozen spinach (fresh is fine too) with shrimp, and then tossed it all into pasta. Parmesean sprinkled on top. Yum, and you can't taste the spinach, since pesto and sun-dried tomatoes are pretty flavorful. We love roasted sweet potatoes or sweet potato fries. homemade salsa with anything Mexican Beef stew with veggies quinoa salad and vegetable quiche recipes- http://celebratingasimplelife.blogspot.com/2010/07/you-know-what-cool-about-houseguests.html I make a green salad almost every day for lunch with mixed greens, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, red onion, and vinaigrette. The kids don't eat salad yet, they'd rather have a sliced bellpepper, tomato, cucumber, etc, or cooked veggies. I think salad is tough for littlekids to chew up and takes up a lot of space in their stomachs.

We are also a bilingual family, and speak English and French at home from birth. I plan to start Latin during the logic stage, and possibly do the Greek decoding, but not much more besides roots. I hope the kids will both also have the time/energy for Spanish in high school, as we plan to move to CA and it'll be helpful there. So modern languages- 2 minimum, hopefully working knowledge of a 3rd, and Latin grammar plus Latin and Greek word roots.

Thank you so much for all these great replies. We will put it off until he is reading more fluently in English.

Somebody told me recently that a child should have a year or two to read the first language before beginning the second. I have no idea if that is true or not, and am wondering what others have for experience? My dh is dying to start Leo and Lea with ds, but he's still a new and tender English reader, so I'd hate to throw French vowels at him on top of the English ones... lol.

:iagree:We do this with the I can Read series. We started with the level 2 books (Frog and Toad, Owl at Home, etc) When we come to a word where we haven't learned the rule yet, I just tell him the rule and sound it out and move on.

My son also started wanting to read quite early. We went through 100EZL, and I printed out a monthly calendar, and at the end of each lesson, he got to put a sticker on that day's date. After each ten lessons, he got a special treat. Now that we are in the habit of reading practice, we just automatically do ETC and an early reader as soon as little sister goes down for a nap. He knows that either he has to do quiet time all alone, or he can do reading time then quiet time. He almost always prefers to prolong my company by having reading time first. :-) Good luck!

Thanks for the link!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110411/us_yblog_thelookout/chicago-school-bans-homemade-lunches-the-latest-in-national-food-fight This infuriates me. It's not about the "food fight", it's about "who is mjore competant to raise our children- the government, or parents?"

I had never seen this resource until someone posted a link about it in another thread. Now I see they have a music history, US and World history, etc, etc. Has anyone used these and have an opinion? They look really interesting, though a bit pricey! Thanks!

We started with 100 Easy Lessons, and after we finished it, we mvoed into ETC 1. We are now in 2, and I really think they are useful. We are going quickly, doing 3-4 pages per day, but they are cementing in the reading skills as well as starting some spelling skills. Because my son doesn't write yet, he does all the circling or crossing out, and I write the words down as he dictates the spelling. He loves ETC, and as I have all the books 1-8, I can see they are going to give him a great phonics foundation. 100 Easy Lessons sort of leaves you hanging at the end with an incomplete phonics base.

I am wondering if it's possible to estimate how long it would take to go through Webster's reader. I see it is divided into lessons, but each lesson looks like it might be closer to a week of work, depending on the kid. If anyone has gone through it all the way before, how long did it take? Thanks! Monica

Explode The Code book 4 goes over the syllable division rules, open and closed syllables, etc. We have switched over to Webster's method too, and Elizabeth is running a thread here where she explains her weekly Webster's speller schedule she is using with her son. If you search for the tag Webster or Syllabary, you'll probably find it. Good luck!

I am a beginner too, so take this with a grain of salt... For a 4yo boy, I would take handwriting VERY VERY SLOWLY. My 4yo is verrrry slowly starting handwirting worksheets, but we do it like this: Monday for that week's letter while fingerpainting (5 minutes out of probably 45 minutes of free fingerpainting time) Tuesday he forms the letter by drawing it in cornmeal,then that afternoon, he does a photocopy of a worksheet for the letter (We are doing Getty Dubay, and the worksheets each have about 10 letters to copy, so only 5 minutes) Wednesday, we form the letter with shaving cream, then do a worksheet in the afternoon (each takes just five minutes) Thursday- chalkboard or whiteboard, then worksheet later int he day Friday: The "real" worksheet, in his GD workbook. (all the other are photocopies of the same page) We also love Explode the Code (we started it after finishing Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons), Frog and Toad readers, and a chapter book that I read out loud (right now, we're reading Farmer Boy) For math, we went with Right Start, though I think we'll switch to Singapore later. Our math takes us about 15 minutes for a lesson (2-3x a week, maybe) and about 10 minutes for just reinforcement games. All told, we probably spend 2 hours MAX doing school-y stuff. My son enjoys it, so I don't think it's too much. Good luck!

I think this is true, but more in the following type of context: What did you do in the morning 9 years, 7 months, and 28 days ago? What were you doing on the morning of September 11, 2001? It's much easier to remember for latter, because of the huge emotion surrounding the event. At least, that is how I would interpret the sentence.

All students in a grade learn the same "level" material, in all subjects, as their peers, regarless of their individual strengths or weaknesses.

My son just announced that he wants a book about history. I live in Switzerland, so I will need to order an English language book- no trips to the library for us! I'm looking for smoething like the Usborne world history, but a level below it, for a pre-k/K audience. Any ideas? Has anyone read 11 Centuries of Children and Change? I found that on amazon and it looks interesting. Thanks!

His hair is BEAUTIFUL!!! And the review is cute too!

I am SO FAR from high school, lol, but I was planning to do a CM-ish type approach to French in general. When/if we come across book choices in our "normal" curriculum which have been translated from the original French, we'll just get it in French and read in the original language. But I do think we'll get the Swiss history pour les nuls to round things out. :-) Since I think we'll be in the US long before then, I will probably use the WTM history rotation, but spend extra time on the francophone world, especially Switzerland.

We just started, and my son just turned 4. He is good at counting objects up to about 20, but this did not seem to have a negative effect on him for switching to the RS method of "seeing" the numbers as a whole. We did stop at about lesson 10 or whenever we got to the number 10 on tally sticks, and spent a week JUSt doing Yellow is the Sun and number identification without counting, and that really helped him break the counting habit.

Thank you to everyone! These stories are so inspiring.

I own both and used 100EZ with my son. If I had it to do over again, I would definitely have used OPGTR. It is longer, but it teaches phonics correctly. 100EZ doesn't teach WHY certain vowels are long (silent e, two vowels together, etc) OPG does. You can use short vowel books (bob books, etc) for extra reading practice until your kids get to the long vowels later in OPG. If they are flying through it, it's because it's clicking with them, so keep going!

This is rambling, but I just need to put it out there. I had ds, miscarriage, dd, miscarriage, missed miscarriage. After 5 months and 3 periods, my missed miscarriage has finally cleared itself out, and we are trying again for a third. This is suddenly scary. I'd love to hear of any success stories after two miscarriages in a row. Thanks! Monica