So I ran the numbers (using The ABCs and All Their Tricks as the source of all my numbers), and for the above list of phonograms (excluding ow), here's how the "two vowels go walking" rule of thumb works out: When you include the known outlier "ie", it identifies the correct sound 90% of the time. When you *exclude* the known outlier "ie", it identifies the correct sound 95% of the time. If you don't include second sounds with consistent, easily identified criteria (ue/ui), to look only at true outliers, it identifies the correct sound 98% of the time. I think that's a pretty darn good rule of thumb :thumbup:. Here's my numbers, for the phonics geeks among us ;): ai: long-a, 98%; other, 2% (long-a: 308; other: 5) ay: long-a, 99%; other, 1% (long-a: 143; other: 2) ea: long-e, 67%; short-e, 32%; other, 1% (long-e, 325; short-e, 156; other, 5) ee: long-e, 99%; other, 1% (long-e: 307; other: 2) ei: Latin long e (long a), 73%; long-e, 15%; other: 12% (Latin long-e: 54; long-e: 11; other: 9) ey: in base words, Latin long-e, 85%; other, 15% (Latin long-e: 17; other: 3) as a suffix, long-e, 100% (43, no exceptions) ie (the outlier): within words, long-e, 97%; other, 3% (long-e: 77; other: 2); at the end of words, long-e, 63%; long-i, 37% (long-e: 17; long-i: 10) oa: long-o, 99%; other, 1% (long-o: 132; other: 1) oe: long-o, 83%; other, 17% (long-o 15; other: 3) ue: long-u, 51%; silent at the end of words from French, 49% (long-u: 44; silent: 43) ui: long-u, 62%; silent u, 38% (long-u: 15; silent u: 9)

Actually, you can simplify it - remove all the phonograms that are primarily used to spell the non-short/long vowels sounds (au/aw, oo, ou/ow*, oi/oy), plus the outliers ew/eu, which are only used for OO and long-u - and the "two vowels go walking" rule of thumb correctly identifies the most common sound for all the common vowel phonograms left (except for the already mentioned "ie", and Latin sound of "ey/ei"). (Afaik, this is how LiPS does it; certainly it teaches the above spellings (au/aw, oo, ou/ow, oi/oy) as the primary spellings for /au/, /oo/, /OO/, /ou/, and /oi/ long before it brings up "two vowels go walking".) (*Asterisked ow/ou, because they are the primary spellings for /ow/ as in cow, but half the time, "ow" has the long-o sound.) Phonogram list: ai/ay: most common sound by far is long-a ea: most common sounds by far are long-e (325 times in ABCs and All Their Tricks list) and short-e (156) ee: most common sound by far is long-e ei: most common is the Latin long e (long a; 44) and second most common is long-e (11) ey: in base words, most common is the Latin long-e (17); as a suffix, the most common is long-e (43) ie: the outlier, within words the most common sound is long-e (77); at the end of words, the most common is long-e (17), followed by long-i (10) oa: most common sound by far is long-o oe: most common sound is long-o (ow: most common sound is long-o (130), but almost as common is ow-as-in-cow (122)) ue: most common sound is long-u ui: most common sound is long-u Really, I think the key thing is to see "two vowels go walking" as a *rule of thumb*, a guide to which sound to try first, to the *most common sound* for phonograms that aren't primarily used for non-short/long vowels, instead of as some absolute, "it's *always* this sound" rule. Within those parameters, it's quote accurate and useful :thumbup:.

I'd heard so much negativity wrt the "when two vowels go walking" rule that I was shocked to see it taught in LiPS (an intensive, research-based remedial program). But while it fails when applied indiscriminately to *all* two-vowel phonograms, it actually *does* work as a rule of thumb for which sound to try first for ambiguous phonograms. Most two-vowel phonograms are fairly consistent, with one primary sound and very few exceptions (most of which are in common words, so for unfamiliar words the default sound is very likely to be right). Applying the "two vowel goes walking" rule would indeed fail for many of these - but actually that rule is entirely *unnecessary* for those phonograms the first place, especially in phonogram-teaching programs - because those phonograms have one primary sound, and it is learned directly, *prior* to ever being introduced to the "two vowels go walking" rule of thumb. That's how LiPS does it, at any rate, and it cuts way down on the error rate for that rule of thumb. For ambiguous phonograms, the only one it doesn't work for is "ie" (long-e is slightly more common than long-i). However, it *does* work straight-up for "oe", "ue", "ui", and "ea" (for "ea" the two primary sounds are the two sounds of "e", short-e and long-e), and works in conjunction with other bits of phonics knowledge for "ey"/"ei" (Latin sound for "e", and used most in words of Latin origin; next most common sound is long-e) and "ou" (/ou/ as in shout is by far the most common sound for "ou", but long-o is tied with /ou/ as in soup for the next most common, and the "ou as in soup" is a French sound, found in words of French origin). It surprised me, but the "two vowels go walking" rule of thumb, used not to determine *the* sound for all phonograms, but to pick the *most common* sound for otherwise *ambiguous* phonograms - it's quite accurate in that context. There's actually a legit use for it.

We screen all our calls (no caller id; just listening to the message as they come in), so no one picks up unless it's for them and they want to talk - "taking messages" is letting someone know there's a message for them on the machine ;).

My mom always thought Martha got a bad rap - it always seems to turn into "doing = bad, being still = good". I thought of her when I read a new perspective on that story, in a book on spirituality (Grace Upon Grace, by John Kleinig), and she'd appreciated me passing it on. This post reminded me of that. The author said that the issue with Martha wasn't that she was busy preparing food or that she was failing to sit at the feet of Christ like Mary - but that she yielded to anxiety, that she was annoyed with Mary. He maintains that they were both engaged in meditation - Mary by listening to Jesus and Martha by cooking for Him - because the core of Christian meditation is nothing more or less than focusing on Christ. Martha's problem came in when she lost her focus on Christ - *that* was the most needful thing. The author concludes that whether we are activists like Martha or contemplatives like Mary, Jesus must be the focus of our meditation; anything else is distraction.

Another Confessional Lutheran, and ditto - we have service on Maundy Thursday and I've always considered it to be a "big deal" service, equal to Good Friday - I wouldn't miss it.

:grouphug: When my ILs visit (planned and welcomed) it's still pretty stressful. I tend to do the "mi casa es su casa" thing - here's the kitchen, feel free to use it whenever - just clean up when you're done :). And I go hide whenever in my bedroom when I need some peace and quiet. My grandma is an introvert, and my grandpa is an extravert, and there's *always* people dropping in and out of their house. Grandma used to do the hostess thing for everyone, fixing food and cleaning up and entertaining (and in retrospect probably martyring herself). But after major surgery, she wasn't able to do anything for months, and Grandpa learned how to take care of her and the house and all the visitors, instead of it always being Grandma taking care of everyone else (everyone, including Grandpa, said it was good for him ;)). Anyway, now she's a lot more relaxed, and only does what she's able to do without it being a problem. You want food - there's the kitchen, help yourself :). And she doesn't have a problem going to take a rest and letting people entertain themselves. And nobody minds :). Anyway, just throwing that out there - if you need rest, rest - everyone else will figure something out ;).

I'm not doing so hot on working it out practically myself, either :grouphug:. I do think most programs are coming from the same basic place as regentrude: the fact math works is empirically verifiable, and that's all that's necessary to use math with confidence. Feel free to layer on whatever philosophical or theological reasoning you may have as to *why* math is empirically verifiable, but it's not necessary - the key bit is that math *is* empirically verifiable, and learning how to verify it yourself is what matters. (You see how this appears to make a given program usable for people of vastly different theological and philosophical approaches.) That's been the dominant view for a few centuries, displacing everything else, and though I question its basis, I really have no idea (yet) what in the world math education from a more unified perspective looks like :(. It's been largely lost to us, and regaining it is hard. Especially because we can't turn back the clock and adopt pre-modern views wholesale, like the intervening centuries didn't happen. Because they did, and any mining from the past has to interact with the present. On the helpful side, most churches that have held onto the idea of transcendent truth already have an implicit sense that empirical reality isn't everything - any teaching rooted in that is going to somewhat counteract empirical assumptions. So knowing and conveying how learning math fits into your theological worldview (which it seems you have a basic sense of), is itself necessary and of great value. As the teacher, you are providing the context for learning math, and that makes a great deal of difference. People are forever lifting random ideas out of context and using them for quite contradictory purposes from what their original creator intended, all quite inadvertently, and while it's not ideal, it often works out a lot better than you'd think. Having an intentional, conscious worldview rooted in your core beliefs, that you intentionally and purposefully live out as best you can in every aspect of your life - that will make up for a *lot* of inadvertent use of contradictory stuff :thumbup:. (Let us all give thanks to God for that :).) For a piece of random speculation wrt squaring empirical math with a transcendent worldview while using empirical programs: clearly separating the study of the natural world from philosophy has accomplished a lot. Even though I think its legacy is a mixed bag, it's so entrenched in our Western society that I don't think writing it all off is a good idea (even if it were possible). So it's a matter of finding a new way to integrate science into an overall view of life. I'm wondering if, in the absence of anything else (that I know of), if it would work to acknowledge that the whole of reality involves both physical and metaphysical truths intertwined and in harmony together. While they cannot be separated in reality (which is the default modern/secular assumption), it can be beneficial to temporarily look at only the natural aspect. The key is remaining aware that this is only a mental fiction, not a reflection of underlying reality. In practical terms, I guess it would be using a regular program within a life that works hard to generally and deliberately integrate physical and metaphysical truth. The Circe Institute certainly tries to craft an education that unifies truth, goodness, and beauty in everything; Norms and Nobility (haven't read yet) talks about an education that keeps the moral dimension of life unified with the physical dimension; Beauty for Truth's Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education, by Stratford Caldecott (also haven't read yet) is trying to re-integrate physical and metaphysical truths in math/science (idk if I'm going to agree with him, but I think he's gone the farthest in trying to bring the philosophy of the past into the present, in the area of math/science education, that I know of). The Catholic and Orthodox worldviews of the above sources can be tricky as a Protestant if you don't have a good handle on your faith and where it differs (I've had problems there), but they are the ones with a past to draw on, one that Protestants share in, too. C.S. Lewis also tries to re-unify the physical and moral dimensions of life, in the face of an empirical worldview - The Abolition of Man, among others, discusses this. Help any? Clear as mud? ;)

Was this directed at my post #58? I ask because we cross-posted, and that post was a response to the post before yours, but what with the crossposting and my lack of quoting it wasn't clear (I went back and edited it to add clarity). In any case, I wasn't in any way meaning to suggest that "proofs in elementary school" was the only valid way to teach in light of a belief in absolute truth and that math provides a vital tool in finding that truth :grouphug:. Eta: It's a change in thinking for me, but I now agree with you that arithmetic is a worthy subject in its own right, communicating truth. And I thought your question to regentrude was a good one - I'm interested in the answer, too.

I'm sort of seeing two separate things conflated in your post - that humans cannot know *any* absolute truth for certain (e.g. a proof is true now but might not remain so) and that humans cannot know *all* absolute truth for certain (e.g. the existence of aliens as an open question). I would agree with the latter, but not the former. (FWIW, the belief that absolute truth exists but humans cannot know any of it for certain is consistent and a relatively common belief right now.) But truth that's only our best approximation of truth, and constantly subject to change, is different from truth that's Truth. I mean, embracing "the best truth we have right now" - generic you might stake your life on it in the everyday, acting as if it is true sense (we'd go mad otherwise :willy_nilly:), but it's not truth you'd stake your life on in the sense of being willing to die for it, is it? (Or even more stringent, truth you'd want your spouse or children to die for rather than go against it - that one gives me the heebie-jeebies.) I mean, truth that is always in flux, always subject to change - nothing is sacred, everything is potentially up for reassessment - that's a very different sort of truth to base one's life on than truth that's unchanging. Isn't it? Genuine question - it seems like it to me, but lived realities can be quite different things to philosophical abstractions ;). The "would I die rather than recant this belief" question is my litmus test here - it kind of demands a 100% all-in commitment ;) - and I personally can't fathom doing so over a "good enough" truth, one that I believe has the potential to change. To me, any truth a person would be willing to die for rather than abandon is one they believe they know well enough to be certain it won't change in any way that matters. Which isn't really compatible with a belief that no truth can be known with certainty - is it? If a person would die rather than kill an innocent person - well, that's a pretty firm belief, if an unconscious one, that murder is always wrong, isn't it? Otherwise, if in theory everything was up for grabs, when your imminent death was on the line, you'd be pretty motivated to find a loophole you could live with, yes?

Yes, even the choice and framing of the core questions is itself a philosophical position, and a contested one - people don't all agree on the starting point, and the particular starting point does indeed make a difference. Totally agree re: how one answers a particular classic question directly impacts one's view of math. (Is sort of my point - how can one's view of the purposes of math *not* impact how one teaches it?) Will take a stab at an example: Something I've seen debated is this: is arithmetic math? (Common answer is *no*.) Related is the question of whether anything in the typical K-12 math sequence actually resembles math as mathematicians conceive of it, except of proof-based geometry. Are proofs necessary in order for math to be *math* in a meaningful sense, instead of applied math? As you said, for those who think humans can *know*, math is a vital tool for that understanding. And ime, math in that sense is commonly seen as limited to proof-based math. And that radically changes how you'd approach teaching math, since the usual sequence doesn't introduce proofs until upper-level undergraduate courses in math, which are taken by very few people (math majors, certainly, but not engineering; idk about physics and other sciences). So if you believe that math is vital to knowing the world, and that means proof-based math, you somehow want to bring proofs into the K-12 sequence, in a major way, for *all* your students, so far as possible. There's not many choices for that, and most are for mathematically gifted kids. But if proofs are vital to knowing, and seeking to know is essential to being fully human, you're far more likely to do whatever it takes to enable your students, all of them, to work through those programs, instead of using a more standard program. And how do you view arithmetic? Do you try to bring proofs into it somehow (as many New Math programs in the 1960s tried to do), or do you see it as a ultimately pointless but necessary intermediate step before you can get to *real* math. The latter, in addition to flavoring all your arithmetic teaching (I don't think you can underestimate the impact of that), often leads to rushing through arithmetic as fast as possible, just hitting whatever is needed in order to be able to start a proof-based algebra sequence (the beginning of math that matters). Which has clear implications for teaching. Does that help any? ETA: And if we turn it around - for those who believe that humans *cannot* know fundamental truths of the world with certainty - then math loses its place as a major tool for that knowing. At that point, math is about its practical usefulness only; conceptual vs procedural math is a matter of which allows any given student to master whatever math they need for their life. If math no longer is a path to finding (abstract) truth, the importance of learning to think abstractly is materially lessened; understanding math is reduced to being able to use math skills to solve the practical problems of life - concepts are only important inasmuch they contribute to this. And proofs are back to being only for particular college students. They might teach really great thinking skills, but so do lots of other things - math has lost its unique place.

I am so woefully underequipped, but I'll take a stab at explaining (just explaining, not defending or trying to persuade; iow I'm just trying to explain the what without much in the way of the why): If I am understanding you correctly, the natural world works as it works, whatever the answers to the Big Questions of life. No matter what the answer to the Big Questions, nothing about the natural world would be remotely different. So how in the world do answers to the Big Questions have anything to do with math, or teaching math? Because the Big Questions have nothing to do with the natural world, they can have nothing to do with learning about the natural world, or teaching about the natural world, so they can have nothing to say about math, or the teaching of math. The thing is, the idea that the natural world is separable from the philosophical/metaphysical/supernatural realm - that's a relatively recent idea, and is far from universal. It's actually quintessentially modern; the physical and metaphysical were united in pre-modern thought, and post-modern thought is trying to figure out ways to re-unify them (albeit in very different ways from pre-modern thought). I can't explain the whys or wherefores of why people reject the strict separation of the physical and metaphysical here, not so it would help, but for the purposes of the discussion, accept that such people exist (and generally includes those who are seeking truth/goodness/beauty), people who think the answers to the Big Questions of life are inseparable from the nuts and bolts of *living* that life. (And historically there's nothing weird at all about that - modernism's separation is the outlier.) In which case, for them, *everything* about life is impacted and informed by those Big Questions. And part of the everything is education, and part of that is math. It's not so much needing to have detailed answers to abstract math philosophy issues to teach math, but that one's overall philosophy of life narrows the scope of what schools of math philosophy are compatible and which ones aren't, *and* that philosophical questions and their answers are seen as explaining the nature of the natural world, too. In this view *all* ways of teaching math have some underlying assumption about the philosophical nature of math (and wrt teaching, additional assumptions about the nature of man, and the purposes of education), because it's unavoidable (physical and metaphysical truth are intertwined, not separate) - and you want to find the ways that are compatible with your views. ETA: I think it's a common belief today that for a given set of answers to the Big Questions to be valid, nothing in them can go against scientific fact. Historically, that went the other way, too - physical truth and philosophical truth needed to be in harmony, and just as physical truths could point out philosophical falsities, philosophical truths in turn could point out physical falsities. For them, just as the natural world limits what can be philosophically true, the philosophical realm limits what can be physically true. Sounds weird to modern ears, but it's a basis for thinking the Big Questions have direct impact on something as apparently mundane as teaching math. ETA2: And really, modernism's position that philosophical truths don't impact the natural world is a *philosophical* position ;), one that does indeed limit what can be physically true.

Thank you for clarifying :). My overall point stands, I think - there is indeed a difference between that view of math and a "seeking truth/goodness/beauty" view of math, and it involves whether it is good or not to separate the philosophical questions of math from the discipline or practice of math.

Yes, that was a sloppy phrase. I think my point is that modern math separates, or allows for the separation of, the doing of math from the "philosophical debate of whether a mathematical entity even exists in the 'real world'". I mean, currently, what a mathematician believes about the metaphysical connection of mathematical truth to the rest of the universe is seen as irrelevant to the mathematics he does, yes? Two totally separate issues, and work done on one does not materially impact work done on the other; or at least the metaphysical question does not impinge on the math itself, though math itself might impinge on the metaphysical question. Is that more accurate?

I would love it if you could explain this some more... pretty please? I'll try :). Can't find the original source :(, but a series of googlings and memory jogging has (hopefully) enabled me to say something intelligible ;). The original context was about "art for art's sake", but I believe it applies to "math for math's sake", or any sort of "learning for learning's sake" or "creating for creating's sake". "Art for art's sake" says that the highest, purest motivation for making art is for the sake of art itself. Art itself becomes its own end; it no longer has a "self-transcending purpose". Pure art only has meaning as art; it does not have inherent meaning in the world outside itself. But the point of seeking truth, beauty and goodness is because of the belief that those things embody transcendent truth. Art is not good in and of itself, but by whether it conforms to, reflects, transcendent truth. But art for art's sake rejects the idea that artists should conform to anything outside the demands of art itself - embodying transcendent verities is no longer seen as the purpose of art. In math, my understanding is that in Ancient Greece, the first principles, the axioms, of math were meant to be fundamental truths, and finding the best and purest axiom system meant finding the one that best reflected transcendent truth. But from what I understand in modern math, the best axiom system is the smallest, most conceptually elegant one, and it makes no difference whether those "conceptually elegant" axioms reflect "real world" truth or not - it's rather beside the point. "Math for math's sake" has math as its own end, judging mathematical truth and beauty apart from any universal sense of transcendent truth (or the idea that there's any inherent moral qualities to math itself, whereas "seeking truth/goodness/beauty" believes all those qualities are unified in everything (goodness meaning moral goodness), and educators should preserve that unity in how they teach). Does that make any sense? (Hopefully I didn't make too many gross math, history, or philosophy errors ;).)

Here's how I think of it: my approach to math is likely to reflect my overall educational approach, and my educational approach reflects my educational goals; in turn, my educational goals reflect my overall goals in life. What does it mean to live a good life? What is my purpose in life? How do I live a meaningful life? Those questions are fairly core to a person's worldview; sometimes they are answered by a person's religious beliefs, but there are non-religious answers to those questions, too. Anyway, here's a personal example of how the two intersect. I used to be in the "math for math's sake" camp - education is about seeking the true, the good, and the beautiful, and so math should be presented and taught so that the inherent truth/goodness/beauty of math is brought out, and so I only looked to educators/mathematicians/curricula that were in line with this view, which vastly simplified things. Concepts before procedures; understanding before memorizing, with memorization primarily in context; proofs, not calculations, as the focus of math; focus on flexible thinking and seeing multiple ways to solve a given problem - all answered because of the choice of approach. And I would be equipped to modify programs to fit kids, because I knew what my ultimate goal was. However, I recently learned that my religious beliefs and my educational beliefs (re: education being about seeking the true, good, and beautiful) may actually be at odds. Because the idea that education should be about seeking the true/good/beautiful has as its basis that belief that the highest aspiration in *life* is the contemplation of the true/good/beautiful. And my religious tradition, as it turns out, does *not* consider contemplation of the divine as the highest human aspiration, or as the life God means us to live. (In fact, I recently realized that I actually have *no idea* what my religious tradition teaches about the highest goal of life, or how our beliefs impact daily life, or anything of that nature. Which is why I was borrowing from other, apparently contradictory, traditions. The funny thing is that *all* the traditions in question are rooted in the classical tradition :lol:.) Anyway, a re-think in my approach to the "Big Questions" of life had direct impact on my theoretical approach to math. "Math for math's sake" is no longer an option (and actually, after many years of equating them, it turns out that "math for math's sake" is at odds with "seeking truth/goodness/beauty", something else I didn't know till recently), and I haven't replaced it with anything yet, because the answers to the big questions are still in flux. And it is totally unsettling. Because right now I'm just doing math because it's probably necessary no matter what ;), but I'm not aiming at anything in particular (other than mastering the content in the books we have), because I no longer know what to aim for - I'm just keeping the status quo until I know where to go next.

Yeah, structure is both needed and hard for me to implement. (I love to plan, but making plans that are actually doable by the real me (as opposed to the ideal me), well, it's a work in progress ;).). Teacher intensive stuff inevitably becomes twice a week instead of every day, and I want to nip that in the bud wrt the three Rs. And this thread is helping me organize my thoughts and evaluate what really does get done and what doesn't. That said, I really do think there is *something* different with dd8. The writing only blossomed this week, really. And she's spelling based on pure visual memory - and that's just blossomed this week, too. But she can't segment anything beyond a cvc word, and that only just. And she's noticed a difference between herself and others when it comes to spelling and writing. And whether flighty and normal or flighty and exceptional she needs to learn to calculate - I just want to feed her interest in math at the same time, kwim? But idk, hitting dd8's sweet spot wrt skills practice is *hard* and always has been, in a way that it just isn't for dd6. Not so much a matter of intelligence but a matter of having a narrow optimum window, and non-optimum is *really* not optimum. Oh, idk, I really don't think I'm making it all up, but at the same time it all might be taken care of by steady daily taking one's medicine skills practice. Which needs to be done in any case, so it makes a good focus. (Is it better or worse that the majority of the programs on my shelf were bought ahead of time and have just never been used instead of bought, tried and discarded? Math has been SM with varying levels of modification and/or LoF, and spelling has been copywork, LiPS, and going through the Let's Read (minus two disastrous weeks with R&S 2 last year). I'm flighty, but not nearly as flighty as my list of curricula owned makes me sound ;); I stress *buy* at the drop of a hat, but I don't jump ship nearly as quickly. Although they aren't all useless - I do regularly pull ideas from them and incorporate them into my teaching. And it mostly has worked. It's just a fair bit of effort. And I'd sort of like to be able to do a program pretty much as written and have it pretty much work. Or at least have the *option* to do so. SM is a constant dance of flying ahead or parking for weeks, and it's getting to be a bit much at the moment. I don't think it's *all* me, but it's probably partly me. Idk, the winter kills me and it all comes to a head in Feb/Mar. Whatever, I'm now armed with a plan that can be effective whether it's all in my head or not ;).

Ooh, Math-U-See looks promising :thumbup:. How do you do composition? I admit the thought of doing composition intimidates me, but I think dd would enjoy it. She tends to do better with creative, big picture tasks than the various sub skills that make up the task, and she's occasionally used the iPad to write stories. Dd8 uses the computer some in her free time, but she hasn't done anything to learn to touch type yet.

Yeah, I was afraid of that. I haven't done any grammar yet (was focusing on handwriting/spelling), and our spelling is LiPS when I can and otherwise working our way through the word list from Let's Read (it's the program I used to teach her to read and has lots of sentences with 100% known words I can use for dictation, which dd8 likes well enough) - she spells the words with Dekodiphukan sound picture tiles and then writes them, and then we do sentence dictation (with the writing on a whiteboard with colored markers because that makes it more fun/palatable). For LA we do copywork (dd8 usually chooses verses from hymns we are learning) and oral narration of all content work. The narration is rather like pulling teeth, tbh - output's always been a bit of a struggle. And I've been trying to figure out how to increase the amount of copywork; she does about two short sentences worth a day, and that's pretty comfortable now - I can leave her unattended and it gets done ;). But I can't fit too much on a page without causing problems (she locks up), so I leave lots of white space between words and don't fill the entire page, and she's not a fan of doing more than a page at a time. We've also started cursive, at her request, and it's done wonders for her handwriting in general, actually. Today with the StM placement test she had to write 20 short words, and I wasn't actually sure if we could do it all at once, but she didn't have a problem - it's like she's finally getting automatic at it, not having to use so much of her brain on just trying to get the letters written :thumbup:. And actually, wrt the copywork, she can do her page in 2-3 minutes now, compared to taking 10 at the beginning of the year, and with better writing, too. And even in the last few weeks her spelling in her own writing has improved quite a bit.

No? :tongue_smilie: I have no idea what the law is here or what sorts of services the ps provides wrt evals - probably a good thing to look into :yes.

Fortunately (miraculously) she's reading well. I appreciate the suggestions, but they all sound very parts-to-whole, and dd8 does so much better with big picture, story-based things. (I think that's why LoF has been a consistent hit.) Are there any whole-to-parts and/or story-based open-and-go programs for skills? Or am I just dreaming - that 10-15 minutes of taking our math medicine and spelling medicine and grammar medicine and writing medicine's really the way it's got to be right now? In which case I guess I'd alternate back-and-forth between skill medicine and content feasting in our homeschool day. That's a lot of transitions, though - right now it's content-centered morning time first (everyone's happy to get started on that) followed by math and reading/spelling blocks (with a read aloud/snack break between the skill blocks), to minimize the number of times I have to corral everyone. But sometimes we only get one skill block in.

Yeah, I did a lot of buying-ahead-used, and my ambitions for what sort of teacher I'd be do not match my current reality ;). I gave dd8 the StM placement test, and she did surprisingly well - got everything but "such" and "teeth", even got all the nonsense words. I might try starting it, or maybe I could continue what I've been doing but just skip ahead to the consonant digraphs - she was just placed too low. (She saw me looking at Spelling You See today, though, and rather likes the looks of that, and it's got open-and-go copywork/dictation.) WRT powering through the dull bits: it's not so much being dull, but that keeping her focused becomes a full time task. I don't know how much is her preference for novelty and how much is she's already mastered it, but whatever it is, day 1 she can focus beautifully and enjoys the challenge, and by day 3 she's more distractable than her little sister and I'm having to redirect her literally every 30 seconds (skipping ahead resets the clock back to day 1 if I can find the right place to skip to, but finding the right place isn't always easy to find). The amount of doodling on the margin of the page tracks this - on good days, with a good mental challenge, there's hardly any doodling. On bad days, the entire page is covered with doodles but the actual problems are blank (if I sit with her the entire time and direct her through the page still gets covered in doodles but at least the work gets done, too ;)). She'll do her best to refocus when I point her back, but her attention inevitably wanders within seconds. It's important to learn to focus no matter what, but days upon days of work that's that unengaging is kind of hell for both of us. And the worst part is that she *loves* math when there's a mental challenge - will spend hours on it of her own accord. And it feels like I'm ruining math for her when it turns into nothing more than day after day of drudgery, kwim? It doesn't have to be a laugh a minute, but there ought to be sufficient material to engage the mind more often than not, right?

Complicating this is that I'm just about on the verge of making a doctor's appointment for *me*, because of unexplained fatigue. I really don't think I'm well, and it limits what I can do, which is why I wanted to reassess and streamline.

Is this even possible, for a likely gifted and VSL student with phonological processing weaknesses and maybe dyslexia and/or dysgraphia? So the "no school for two years" thread gave me a kick in the pants to break out of the winter doldrums. And I was looking at what works and what doesn't, and what works is "do the next thing" open-and-go programs. What sort of works is following a scope-and-sequence in a subject I know inside and out, but where I have to create my own custom materials each day (I lose time by making them just-in-time, right before handing them to the kids). What only works on good days are teacher-intensive programs that require me to learn it before I can teach it. What doesn't work ever are open-and-go programs that aren't, because dd8 isn't an open-and-go kid (the pattern inevitably is that day 1 is a good fit, right amount of challenge; day 2 is teetering on too easy; day 3 is just this side of mind-numbingly boring; day 4, if I even try, is a disaster; re-place and repeat until I give up in frustration). Either I turn them into an expensive scope and sequence and source of problems (although often trying to adapt the problems is more work than making up my own) or I chuck them entirely. I wanted to simplify things by switching to open-and-go programs in the three R's: a math program to replace my custom stuff loosely based on Singapore Math and a spelling/writing program to replace custom spelling/copywork/dictation and to give me something that can be done every day (unlike LiPS, which is a good-day-only curriculum). All our content subjects are read alouds where we just "read the next chapter", which works (and as such has formed the base of our schooling). Despite needing LiPS, dd8 is a prolific reader well above grade level (reads for hours a day) and gets a lot of content that way, too. But as I started researching new programs, and thinking about whether I need yet *another* program when I have all these programs collecting dust on the shelf, and so thinking about why is it that I'm not using the ones I have, I was forcibly reminded that we've never managed to use a math or spelling curricula as written for more than three days, ever. Even my custom spelling stuff, going through the book I used to teach her to read, spelling the words with tiles and then using the sentences as dictation, is hitting the "third day boredom" problem. (She drew between every word - it was basically drawing time interrupted by the occasional word.) Placing her is trying to hit a moving target, and the gap is huge (and seemingly growing) between her pace of learning and her interest on the one hand, and her ability to hear and manipulate sounds on the other (and write - her stamina is well below her peers (although she's improving there recently), and she needs a ton of white space - one of the many reasons me writing up custom work is so helpful). In math she's such a concept girl, but is held back by her calculating ability (and difficulties lining up her own problems - I mostly scribe writing out problems), and IDK how to realistically get non-soul-killing daily calculation practice in while simultaneously feeding her concept-love - it tends to be one or the other, calculation practice until the boredom/soul-killing becomes an issue, and concept focus until lack of calculation becomes an issue, and though it works, it feel very haphazard and inefficient, and involves hitting more roadblocks (with attendant tears) than I like. Also, I'm feeling increasingly at a loss with how to provide concepts, and it's been more of a calculating focus lately, which generally requires me to sit next to her and constantly redirect her back to her work. I know, evals would help make the whole thing less of a shot in the dark. And we could use our tax return to do it - I haven't because we have a very limited savings that only gets replenished from our annual refund and this would be a giant chunk - but I've been battling the moving-target-placement issue and the wide divergence between her strengths and her weaknesses for a while now, and while the custom work *does* work, it's still a rapid series of shots in the dark some days. But tbh, trying to find the doctors and make the appointments and find the money and deal with insurance - all that's all pretty darn overwhelming itself - how do I find the energy for *that*? I mean, I have phone phobia - the idea of calling all those strange offices and talking to all those strange people is overwhelming itself. The whole point of this was to *reduce* my workload, not add to it tenfold, kwim? And also, what do I do in the meantime? How do you streamline and reduce your workload to what you are able to get done each and every day, when you've got a kid who defies all norms??? (Programs I have, if anyone has suggestions how to make them work for both me and dd8: Math: Miquon, Life of Fred, Singapore Math, RS Activities for the ALabacus & card games, Beast Academy 3a, Kitchen Table Math 1-3 LoF is the only program that's actually worked for more than a week, so it would be our best bet; we're doing it as a fun supplement now, so dd8's only in Cats, which is pretty behind where she can calculate. I guess we could pair custom five-a-day practice to keep up her current skills while we do several chapters of LoF each day till we caught up. Spelling: WRTR, SWR, AAS 1, Words, R&S 2, Spelling Through Morphographs; of these, StM looks the most likely to get done on my end, but IDK whether it will work for dd8, although I'm going to give her the placement test to see if she's got the necessary skills to start it. I'd love to do LiPS every day, but the prep is killing me. Suggestions on streamlining and routinizing the process of making custom work are welcome, too.)

I agree that no one needs lectures from someone who isn't both doing their best to live what they preach *and* is actually achieving some level of success at doing so. I used to think the right theory got you 75% of the way there, but now I think you can't truly understand a theory unless you are living it out - theory and practice are so intertwined that one without the other is means that even the one (you think) you have is seriously, seriously lacking. And that if you hold a theory that you mean to live out but can't, then there's a problem with your theory or your understanding of your theory. Not that you have to perfectly live your ideal for the ideal to be valid, but that if you are perpetually "about to start" living it out - that at no point have you actually managed to for-real live out your ideal, however imperfectly, for more than a few days or weeks at a time - then that raises red flags not just about your practice but about your theory, too. A theory that can't be lived out - even if it seems like it's for unrelated-to-the-theory-reasons - is a fatally flawed theory. It might just be *your* interpretation of the theory that is fatally flawed - but that certainly means that *you* shouldn't be teaching it to others. But she still might be doing her best to live out what she preaches. It's not a very good best, and in fact is not good enough period - and *definitely* means she shouldn't be teaching others - but if she is doing the best she can do, then I don't really consider her a hypocrite. Although looking at the Pharisees - doing your best *and* thinking it is good enough when it isn't is what Jesus calls being a hypocrite. In which case maybe she is, if she really does think her current best is good enough, or presents it as good enough.