... has been refusing to read a book because he read the first page and hated it. Alas, today reading was the only thing left on his history to do list for the week, so he had no choice. Whattya know? He’s still reading over lunch because, “Mom, you are right! This book is awesome!” Who could have guessed?

Just under that age, but my almost 3rd grader is allergic to pencils if required for school. On his own, in the past two weeks he has written a list of birds he has seen in the yard with an ongoing tally. At my request, he added some features for male/female, ostensibly so I or his siblings could identify the birds and add to his tally. He has made a bracket a la March Madness for his paper airplanes that he has made this year (he has a plane of the day calendar). This took him three days, but he wrote the names of 64 planes and created the bracket. He likes to draw tanks and military planes, so he usually writes a few specs for each one he draws. Sometimes it's just a few words, sometimes it's a list of 4-5 facts. This happens almost daily right now.

I understand about punishing 😞 My DS would feel the same way. I have a bonus kid this year who is at a completely different level of math than DS, even though they are the same grade. I've been using Singapore Dimensions with him, because he will be returning to a classroom next year, and Dimensions was a good fit for that. However, he definitely gets invited to read the guide books with us, and he's been working some of the puzzles in the Level 2 puzzle book. If another curriculum is necessary, would maybe being able to read the guides and have 1-2 puzzle sessions a week be a possible bridge? How does she do with MM? Could it be the spine and BA be the supplement?

You are a little ahead of us in BA, and I do think BA flies through the concepts of division and fractions. My kid thrives on BA and it gives him access to puzzles and much more challenging problems than I would easily be able to create for him, but I'm trying to really pay attention to how they introduce concepts and slow down/put away the books when I think it jumps too fast. For example, in the division chapter (which I've recently just paused), I think BA leans to heavily on the notion that kids can automatically do division if they can do multiplication and doesn't spend any time having kids build a model for the concept of division. I don't want my kid only thinking about division as the inverse of multiplication, since he needs to be clear about division for fractions/decimals/percentages. @notanumber would be much more helpful for specifics, but what I'm doing right now is giving him 4-6 division problems daily (we're starting with single digit divisor and 3-4 digit dividend and definitely no remainders) and having him talk through how he solves them. Today he had 2569/7 and kind of froze, so I talked him through it. I started by asking if he had enough thousands to give to all 7 groups, then moved to hundreds, etc. Mine has a very solid grasp of place value, so once I talked him through his moment of panic, he was able to talk me through the rest of the problem. Manipulatives of any kind drive this kid crazy, but I would use some if it helped him "see" distributing groups. I imagine that division would be a topic that would make it clear if the concept of place value wasn't solid. Also, I really do love BA for this particular student, but it isn't a good fit for many students. It shows so many tricks and shortcuts. My kid thrives on puzzles and different ways of looking at things. I've tried my hardest to make sure he has a really good conceptual understanding of each topic, which has meant pausing BA to pre-teach or solidify something before we move on to the puzzles or short cuts. I am NOT strong in math, so this has really challenged me. It also means that my daughter is not doing BA, because I don't think it's the right fit for her. She needs a lot more time with models than my oldest and needs to work much more concretely for much longer. He jumped right into BA2 after half of a first grade math program; I'm probably going to use Math Mammoth for her when she starts grade 2 maths.

As others have said, mostly eggs. About once a week I toss veggie odds and ends into a frittata and eat that for the next 3-4 days. I also freeze pieces of frittata to pull out on hectic mornings. When I’m in the mood I make salmon patties from canned salmon and eat that with a salad in the morning. Not breakfast-y but it works for me. I always make double and freeze some. These pancakes are delicious with nut butter and a few slices of banana. I especially love them with Trader Joe’s Mixed Nut Butter, which I don’t share with my children. https://balancedbites.com/content/paleo-pumpkin-pancakes-from-practical-paleo/

No advice. I’ll have those exact grades some day, so this thread is a timely reminder to enjoy these years when they are little and sweet and school is much less pressure.

That is offensive. I tutored in NYC more than a decade ago, and I never worked for less than $50 an hour for short term, generic tutoring. Plus, if I charged that low, I usually knew the family or situation. My specialty tutoring ran $125/hour.

Honestly, the school I was attending at the time used Spalding and just whipped me through most of it in a year. I have all.the.things and will probably use Spalding for DS. It’s easy to accelerate as needed. Especially if she’s already had AAR 1-4, I imagine she’d be fine. We review phonogram cards daily, because my kids are 3, 4.5, 6, and 8. The oldest doesn’t need it, and I don’t care what the 3 yo knows, but I find the review is great for my learning to read kids. DS8 has definitely tuned into the more sophisticated spelling rules attached to the cards in the past six months. I use Logic of English cards, but I have Spalding and AAR, too.

As a natural speller, a very early reader, and probably a whole word learner, an OG crash course in spelling was AWESOME when I was about 10. It solidified all the rules I had intuited and taught me some of the "why's" about what I was already using. I didn't need it, per se, and I don't think I would have learned as much earlier. I needed to be a tiny bit older to appreciate the intricacies of what I was learning. To that end, my oldest is only 8, and he was an early reader and is apparently a natural speller. For now, his only spelling is through copywork and dictation. I'll most likely run him through an intense OG based spelling course in 4th or 5th grade. I think my next is going to need systematic OG based spelling from and earlier age, and my next two are too young to know. I do teach reading through phonics, but not with any specific curriculum.

So this morning, DS8 comes downstairs to inform me that he is going to be very good at division and could I please quiz him but "I don't want any 1/3s or 1/4s or anything." I inquired further, because it was 5:45 am, and I did not want to start my day by giving the wrong math problems before coffee. He explained first that he really liked splitting numbers into groups, because it was a neat way to think about how many ways you could split up a number but, "Mom, if you tell me something like 37/6, then I can't really finish the problem. Because 36 is a perfect square and there are 6 groups of 6 in 36, but then you have one leftover. I'd have to cut it up and give every group 1/6. You can cut up cookies, but it would be really hard to cut up a marble, and I'm having groups of marbles in my head." Okay then. I think I can panic less about introducing division and work him towards problems like 216/8. We'll just forget remainders for the time being, but maybe we'll start chatting about fractions (eep).

I think my biggest problem is that HE is intuitive, and I AM NOT. So I'm always retreading material to ensure that it really is entrenched, since in my math education, I was moved on after very superficial understanding. I think we'll pause and work with bigger numbers so I can really get an idea how how consistent his mental model is before jumping back into the BA chapter that introduces division. Our next chapter is measurement, and he hates that, so we'll split our time working through both topics, and we'll both be happier.

We've done lots of this orally. I've probably never really called it division. He's particularly adept at anything in groups of 4 or 6 due to our family size. Wouldn't want to have anything not shared equally! Last night I asked him how many ounces were in 3/4 of a pound, and he asked if I was quizzing him in math or if I needed to know. I said both, lol. But he was able to tell me 12 easily. He informed me that 16 was a perfect square, so of course there were four groups of four in sixteen, so 3/4 of a pound was obviously 12. There was a strongly implied "duh, mom" in there, but since he didn't vocalize it, I didn't follow up. This is where I think I need to start with him to check his understanding. I'm very confident about his place value; he does almost all his mental math with various place value strategies. I just need to work with big enough numbers that I'm confident he's actually dividing not relying on multiplication inversions. This is all VERY helpful. It suggests that my instincts are right to work on this more and in different ways before jumping into remainders. He's very aware that remainders of some sort exist, because his favorite weekend hobby is to look at football scores in the newspaper and calculate how many touchdowns each team gets. Since sometimes there are field goals (3 pts), safeties (2 pts) or missed extra pts (6 pts), he's pretty efficient at breaking a score down into groups of 7 and then debating with his dad how the team scored the leftover points. But I'd like his mental model of division be be more robust before we formally work remainders.

No, the remainders were what was giving me pause! It felt like it was muddying the waters much too soon. I don't have confidence that he will routinely identify division in a word problem or instinctively recognize that he's splitting a number into equal pieces. I suppose I'll have to make my own problems for him for a while and move into an unrelated chapter in math (because he'll go nuts if we work tons of the same kind of problems, and I'm not confident enough to make a more diverse worksheet). I'd like him to really dive into what happens when he divides numbers outside of the 1-12 facts before we play with remainders.

DS8 is happily using Beast Academy, but we're approaching the division chapter, and I'm not thrilled with the speed it races through introducing the concept into division with remainders. I feel like it leans too heavily on the notion that division is the inverse of multiplication without really building an understanding of division as its own operation. Suggestions for supplementing? I have (and will be using) Math Mammoth, but it too doesn't seem to have challenging enough problems before division with remainders, just lots of practice with basic facts. @Not_a_Number, suggestions for the best ways to talk about division with my kid? I feel like my understanding of math started to fall apart around 3/4th grade because I didn't really internalize the concepts of multiplication and division. I can (obviously) do the operations, but I stumble trying to teach because I doubt my ability to explain well outside of the algorithm. FWIW he's fairly fluent in multiplication facts, can easily multiply numbers that are multiples of ten, and can multiply 2 or 3 digit numbers, even if it's a laborious process (haven't introduced that algorithm either). He doesn't LIKE doing 2 or 3 digit numbers, but that's just because it's slow, I think, not because he doesn't grasp the concept.

Thanks for this. I'm reviewing them in detail in a few weeks. This is a kid who reads college level history texts for fun (he's deeply interested in WW2, which means a lot of books get taken away when I realize he's purloined them from my shelves). I'm still not sure that OUP is the right way to go for him - and I'd plan on the series taking 2-3 years - but at a glance, I can already tell I wouldn't consider it for my other kids at a similar age.

I have it and am previewing it for next year (3rd grade), but I'm honestly leaning more toward OUP's The World in Ancient Times series. I'll be listening in on this thread to see if anyone has more experience. I don't have time to sit down with both books until April.

My current 5 year old hates writing; he also hates being wrong, which doesn't improve his attitude. What we're doing right now: 1) Daily handwriting is always done in a salt bin, on a tray with shaving cream, or on a whiteboard with a marker (only about twice a month). He gets practice forming the letters but doesn't fuss (as much). We also take time to write on a vertical surface: white board or window with dry erase markers. 2) Emphasis on time outside and gross motor activities to keep his core strong and work on cross body movement. 3) LOTS of fine motor work. I actively plan fine motor activities into his school day, but also I offer them for all my kids when I'm reading aloud. Busy hands helps bickering and keeps everyone listening longer. Fine motor activities we do regularly: - tracing - mazes - play dough mats - q-tip painting - pokey pin pictures (huge favorite - Google for examples) - playing with therapy putty - finding small objects in therapy putty - stickers - moving objects with tweezers - cutting a wide variety of materials (different kinds of paper, string, noodles, straws) - hole punching paper/paper shape punching - melty bead pictures (Perler beads) - folding paper - "feeding" a tennis ball monster objects - building designs with snap blocks - playing with legos - putting rubber bands on Geoboards (my kids like to try to match pictures) - stringing beads - mine especially likes to make pipe cleaner bracelets - clothes pins - linking with plastic links: I use this as a way to review number order/counting by 2s or 5s or sometimes even abc order - building with marshmallows and toothpicks or small play dough balls and toothpicks - eye droppers and colored water - sorting small materials in sensory bins - lacing boards (or threading pipe cleaners through strainer holes)

Yup, she’s definitely telling you she needs a break! Lots of modeling from you, and when she’s ready she’ll jump back in. Funny story, I was organizing a bathroom drawer one evening, and my husband was shaving or something. I’m counting out loud as I clean, and he finally asked me if I thought he needed help counting to 10. Lol. I’ve spent so many years narrating counting (and colors, patterns, size relationships, etc) I was doing it for my (engineering!) DH. When we finally get around to formal school in kindergarten, I’m always surprised by what my kids know and are able to demonstrate in more traditional academic ways just from listening to me narrate things like setting the table or walking down our street.

Like PP, I wouldn’t do a worksheet like that with a 3 yo, even my current loves to do worksheets like the big kids 3 yo. I stick to coloring and tracing and very simple mazes, and I only offer those because she is begging to do school at the table with the big kids. Kate Snow’s book Preschool Math at Home is full of developmentally appropriate activities you can do with 3 yo to develop their number sense. I would recommend that many times over worksheets. Frankly we don’t do anything other than real life counting and math (How many cups are on the table? Can you put one more cup on the table? Can you give each plate three apple slices?) until my kids are kindergarten age.

You've gotten great advice from @wendyrooand @Xahm, so I just want to throw in another reassurance. My third kid is going to be in K this year. He's very bright, but he's also my most difficult kid. We are going to spend most of kindergarten on life skills. We are focusing on independence in self care and basic chores without whinging and meltdowns. We are working on frustration tolerance, so when he's older he can work to the level that I THINK he's intellectually capable and meet challenges without shutting down. We're working on being a good loser/winner. We are working on fine motor strength, because he's resistant to writing/coloring and building hand strength will make handwriting more successful, even if I don't really tackle it until first grade. Ultimately, even if you did NOTHING this year, your little guy isn't going to be behind for life. My kinder kid is going to do a phonics program, handwriting probably with salt trays most of the year, and a very simple hands-on math program (I'm using Kindergarten Math with Confidence and First Grade Math with Confidence). We try to spend 2 hours a day outside, and I put a high value on family read aloud (usually 2-3 hours per day). He will sit down with me for probably two 15 minute school sessions, but most of his days will be playing and working on the life skills I mentioned above. Improving his self-regulation will make him a much better 3rd grade student than any kindergarten math program I could throw at him. I am not suggesting that your student has any need for the kind of focus I'm doing on self-regulation and life skills, but kindergarten is a perfect year for a simple, sweet introduction to academics with a heavy focus on creative play and time spent exploring outside.

Potty training is one of the reasons I stopped at 4. Also sleeping through the night. And mostly because DH was DONE. But yeah, I don't miss waking up to feed someone at 2:00 am He did point out last night that if we'd stuck to our usual pattern, I would be about a month away from having number 6 right now. I poured myself a very rare second glass of wine and enjoyed every sip. I didn't mind breastfeeding and love babies, but I'm thrilled to be almost done with 18 mo-3 yos.

My oldest turned 8 yesterday, and there have been times in the last 8 years when I've had 3 in diapers at once. I never really thought about life without diapers 🤪

...since my youngest has had a potty accident. I might be (daytime) diaper free for the first time in 8 years! Where's that old dance party emoji when you need it?

Thank you, @wendyroo and @8filltheheart!

Those of you who notebook for all or some subjects, tell me what that looks like. Google gives me too many blogs with either preprinted pages all filled out or elaborate art work, which is inspiring but just not going to happen here. @8filltheheart,I was rereading Homeschooling at the Helm, and you sent your son off with an assignment to set up his notebooking pages for the year. You didn't elaborate, because he knew what to do, but now I want to know!