Oh, my dd does love to read aloud though. Reading for her is best as a social activity (that and everything else on the planet). She reads novels to her brothers.

I have my third grade math book from the nineties downstairs. Maybe I'll look this up.

My kids want me to read picture books to them. They don't want me to read longer books generally. They do like me to read D'Aulaires, but those are episodic. My 7 yo, who reads very well now, would rather I read her a picture book for the nineteen millionth time, and she'll take care of Roald Dahl herself.

It's weird, isn't it? I can't imagine making a reluctant kid read the entire Little House series. Surely you'd get more marginal value from doing one and then moving on to some other book or series. Same thing with G. A. Henty -- even if I thought he was a valuable author (I don't), one selection would suffice.

I think the problem with EM is that it's a huge math program even without throwing in "btw, do all the math facts." And a lot of it advised drill via games, which is tricky to organise with one kid, let alone thirty. AFAIK Math Makes Sense, our Canadian folly, doesn't include drill.

I may be coming at this from a very place-specific situation. Right now we've gone head-over-heals into conceptual math in my province (and several other provinces) and we're trying to pull back. So most of the people that I meet day-to-day are suffering because the teacher thinks that multiplication tables are optional niceties that parents might or might not drill at home, not because they didn't get the concept explained. They probably did get the concept explained, but they're so underwater they can't internalise it. http://blog.scs.sk.ca/schmitz/math%20makes%20sense%205.pdf Think less Singapore Math and more Everyday Math.

I just looked at Great Books Academy for dd's age. It's a very strange choice to do the entire series of Little House on the Prairie.

The Common Core Standards are significantly different than the British Columbia standards in the K-2 level. I have one in K and one in two. The math is a year ahead and the reading is a half-year ahead.

Yes, it can turn out okay. It's happened to friends of mine. As long as the repeat blood test reveals it's doubling. Good luck.

I did highland dance and lots of kids didn't practice regularly. I definitely didn't practice in the beginning. The kids advanced and ended up at the premier level all the same. Of course, when you're very competitive you're probably taking more than one lesson a week, and you're probably practicing more often, if you have a competitive bent. I insist on practice for music but I wouldn't make them practice dance or karate or those sorts of recreational activities.

We cross the border once a month or so. They give you no trouble usually if you fit into one of their particular boxes (oh look, Jewish people going over the border to get kosher food). They're trained to look for things that don't fit.

I think the concern about Ken Ham is that he has a para-church ministry that can, in some ways, undermine the local church body. I might admire someone as a great radio host or writer or pianist or swimmer, but it's a different dynamic than to look at someone quite distant from you as a spiritual authority. I know nothing personally about Mr. Ham. Just saying that these Christian-not-church ministries do have pitfalls and I think that's what people were pointing out. If I wanted to bring up someone who seems to be going a bit nutty and runs a Christian organisation, I'd pick Mark Driscoll. ETA: I think Vision Forum was a bad thing whether or not Doug Phillips was an immoral jerk, because it seemed so common that people would look to VF and be dissatisfied with themselves and their lives because it didn't look like his tea party of a life. VF is to religion what carefully curated blogs are to homemaking, and what facebook is to life.

Not taking sides on what children do or do not do in the grammar stage (because I don't care), but Euclid &c. were intended to be studied later on in education, and thus I don't think they make your point here. I think knowing that 4*6 is itself useful, in addition to understanding that multiplication is commutative, but ymmv.

I strongly disagree that everything understood will be retained, although it may be true for people who are very gifted in a given area. The best results in educational studies result from good explanation followed up by significant targeted practice. Countries that generated these conceptual math programs (Singapore, Japan, Russia) supplement them with drill, often in amounts that would make Americans weak in the knees. My own kids do Singapore, but my daughter is still not particularly strong in math. I think people overestimate the extent to which the texts make a difference. I believe that attempts to run trials with Singapore math in American schools were similarly uninspiring.

You need a passport to fly, and not to go by car. 95% of the time there is no difficulty traveling with just one parent. Occasionally a border guard is concerned by something, or you happen to match the description of someone they are looking for, and it may take awhile to sort out. In such a case a letter from your husband would be useful. I have never bothered to get it notorised. Technically either parent of a married couple is competent to take a child across the border unless there's some court order saying otherwise.

I grew up with traditional math and understood all this stuff. Maybe my mother was very bright. Conceptual math makes explicit what traditional math may not. Some people don't need explicit, and skilled teachers have always demonstrated the rationale behind the procedure. Unfortunately elementary school teachers are frequently weak on math. I'm not at all sure that a deep understanding of arithmetic is necessary for higher math. In general I think people fail at math for want of practice, not for want of explanation.

Universities here generally drop the foreign language requirement for kids with AS.

I do B concurrently with SM and then drop it. We don't have C.

I have a 7 yo finishing second, five-year-old doing K, three yo and 1 yo. Math: Math-U-See (Beta) Math-U-See is not my thing, but if this is what you have, no worries. Did she start with MUS? It has a weird sequence. History/Social Studies: Story of the World We listened to the Veritas Press timeline song and she read stuff. Very back burner though. Language: Song School Latin Didn't do any Latin. Handwriting: I think we're using Handwriting Without Tears but I'm not sure. Thoughts? Her handwriting is terrible. I think because she is soo busy and in a hurry and there is a lack of effort or attentiveness or SOME thing. I thought the manipulatives - though probably intended for littles - might make it more interesting but IDK. There comes a point...like maybe when you are almost 7...where you just need to write. Right? LOL Really need advice on this. Have her write less. I used HWT for printing but Memoria Press for cursive. Spelling/Vocab: NEED SUGGESTIONS We started with AAS but gave it up at AAS 3 because I cannot justify spending that much time teaching something relatively minor. She's doing Rod & Staff now, which is okay. Second graders don't need vocabulary separate from their reading. Phonics/Reading/Literature: NEED SUGGESTIONS (I've considered Teaching the Classics...but I'm worried she'd freak out with too much book work.) She did the Hay Wingo Primer to review phonics and is reading through the Canadian Readers. She's in the fourth reader, and it is tough going. She reads it aloud and we discuss vocabulary. Grammar/Composition NEED SUGGESTIONS (I've considered Structure & Style...again, worried about it being too much sitting and book work.) She has also been doing Classical Writing Aesop since the new year. Previously we tried Easy Grammar but it didn't stick. We did the Sentence Family and a diagramming workbook. Science: NEED SUGGESTIONS We do this informally. Religion: NEED SUGGESTIONS Can't really help you here. And I'm thinking of adding the Critical Thinking Company for an added component. IDK, it might be too much. I'm trying to be realistic about all the littles we'll have running around; at the same time, this is our first crack at homeschooling and I want to do it right...I want to be ahead of the curve, not falling behind. I am not sure that adding things is a good idea. I like my daughter to have strong progress in math and reading. She is a very good reader for her age (not naturally so we had to work on it) and she's solid with the math she does. But wanting to do more than the schools is not necessarily a great idea. Also, be aware that American schools in particular expect a great deal in the earliest grades right now. Unless you have a gifted child, you probably don't want to go faster than Common Core math in the second grade. A great deal of Common Core writing in K-2 is unrealistic for most children.

Find a restaurant supply store and scope it out. We aren't buying much made for consumers any more. Apparently "consumer" means "occasional user."

Singapore Math is very good. Miquon can be used alone for the early years (it only goes up to third grade or so) but it has a pretty steep learning curve. Gently. Summarising a page of science work alone is not something I could ask my seven-year-old to do. It sounds like you've got a very bright, very capable kid. It also sounds like he's already reading fairly well. I think phonics _and_ spelling is overkill, especially if it's an intensive phonics program. Are you using Saxon phonics?

My brother's college profs were so glad he had nothing in higher math rather than public school calculus. YMMV. My experience with math and science teachers has been decidedly mixed. The complete death knell for all non-STEM professions is a bit premature. Medicine (can be done with an arts ug here), law, and business still seem to offer abundant opportunity. And I'm glad I didn't go to an elite American school. Those places aren't free and need to be worth their price tag plus interest. For certain circumstances I could see it, but lots of times a good state (provincial!) school is a better value.

The Phantom Tollbooth. I know more than one AS kid sucked in by this one. Septimus Heap books Trolls, Horvath D'Aulaires Greek Myths and Norse Myths Harry Potter Holes The Indian in the Cupboard Half Magic-series (The Knight's Castle in particular) the Ember series I fill up a box with books at her proximate reading level and she chooses from that.

BTW, you're planning to finish Saxon Math 1 by August. How soon do you intend to start up again? Because there's a massive overlap between Saxon 1 and Saxon 2. If you plan to go on with Saxon (and really, it sounds like a poor fit for your son's personality as you've described) then take a look at Saxon 2 before you stress about finishing too much.

I don't think foreign language gives the average person a long of bang for his buck in North America. In Canada we spend far more on foreign language instruction (it begins in grade four and everyone goes at least to late high school) and the results, away from Quebec, are not good. Bear in mind that foreign languages are particularly expensive for school systems -- one needs a particular type of qualification. People who took Spanish for three years (10-12) achieved about the same proficiency as people who took French from four to twelve. Even most of the early immersion kids had a near-complete fade-out of French by the time they finished high school. If I were able to choose what my children were to be like, I'd probably choose to make them brilliant at mathematics. Alas, I did not have such a choice. They are what they are. If my daughter goes into STEM, I will collapse from shock. She does well enough at math, but it doesn't stoke her fire at all. I have seen children who are brilliant at math and I know the difference. That's fine. Really, that will have to be fine, because it just is. So she works really hard on her arithmetic for me, and when we're done she goes and disappears with Mary Poppins for the next three hours. I live in an area with a very high percentage of Chinese students. There is a great deal to like about their academic culture and a great deal one would not emulate as well. The children are, on the whole, quite precocious -- they are ready for formal learning earlier. The academic culture can be absolutely brutal. The education is also quite narrow. I do think that Americans could benefit a lot from doing fewer things but devoting more time to them. I also think that Americans are pushing really hard, really young.