It was a program I researched when I realized DD needed something intensive for spelling. I didn't like the idea of the tiles - I was convinced that younger brothers would lose or mess with them and it would be a frustration. I also didn't like that I would have to purchase so many levels for DD to even learn all the phonograms. We certainly weren't "done" with spelling after going through LOE Essentials once, but at least after a year her spelling had improved tremendously and we had all the tools (aka rules and phonograms) to analyze any word we wanted to practice spelling in the future.

I've been wondering the same thing. DS8 asked to do "something different" for spelling next year, so A&P is high on my list of things to check out. But it has been bothering me for days that I can't get the placement test or sample files to work!

Right...parents teaching all the other classes, just not that one.

I voted that it is fine for kids to be invited to events separately. But I still think it is on the ones doing the inviting to be as kind as possible. We have invited younger siblings in the past who are not quite as close with the birthday child so that the younger sibling didn't feel left out. I have really appreciated it when my DS6 has gotten an invite to parties that DS8 is going to, because in most cases (with church and neighborhood friends) DS6 perceives himself as good friends with those kids even though the reverse is not always true. But each of the three older kids has gotten individual invites to parties where others are not invited and that's fine too.

So, I know we can agree to disagree but does the fact that my co-op decided to hire an art teacher this year because none of the moms wanted to teach art but we still wanted to offer an art class (but all the other classes are taught by parents) make us suddenly not a co-op by your definition? It just seems like such a tight filter!

I wonder if there is more going on than meets the eye about how the non-invited twin feels about the relationship. Obviously I could be totally off on this, but I can't figure out why the mom would make such a big deal about it if the non-invited boy didn't care. I mean maybe...people are wacky sometimes. Maybe the non-invited boy wishes he could be better friends, and ends up acting weird (like he didn't like your son) because he has gotten vibes that he isn't as welcome as his brothers? I guess I always tell my kids to err on the side of inclusion when it comes to invites. If someone really doesn't want to come to the party they will say no, but it seems more socially awkward to exclude someone in this situation (and in other situations I've been in).

I voted "combination" ...maybe I should have voted "other" I have trouble defining how the word "membership" plays in -- I have seen groups that require a "membership fee" that are structured in such a way that most here would agree they are not a co-op (that it instead is a tutorial or something else). I attended a group for a short time that had co-op in its name, and had a structured meeting with activities for the kids that were planned and carried out by parents, but not "classes" per se. I also don't know if anyone was really a "member" since I didn't have to sign a form or even "sign up" to participate ahead of time -- I just showed up at the meeting time, signed up to bring a snack or lead the craft at a couple meetings...and a few months later stopped attending when it wasn't working out for us (This was when DD was still a preschooler, but there were younger elementary kids in this group too, so not just preschoolers). It was a really laid back group. I think co-ops are definitely organized by parents who have kids involved (not by another group/school/organization). I think it is primarily for classes or some other kind of structured educational activity (not just for fun, socializing, field trips, etc -- though those things may be included as well). I think beyond that it might be a bit of a fine line between co-op and non-co-op. Or maybe shades of gray between co-op and non?. If it is just a group of parents hiring some outside teachers, and all the other parents just drop off their kids and pick them up again with zero other involvement...that seems like not-a-co-op in the traditional homeschooling sense. But in my mind, even if all the teachers are hired from outside the group of parents -- if parents are staying on site, assisting with classes, staffing the nursery, planning parties, then it is a co-op regardless of if the classes are ala-carte or there is no statement of faith or official "membership" document, or whether it is high or low cost. But what if parents organize it and it is some parents teaching the classes, but only parents who teach have to stay on site (I know of a co-op like this)? I still think "yes, co-op" but maybe some people feel that if any parents can be uninvolved while their kids are in classes, it's not a co-op any more...?

Yeah, how she handled it was soooo wrong! My DS6 thinks of himself as good friends with all of DS8's friends, but I know the reverse is often not true. Most of those boys would not invite DS6 to their parties, and I totally understand why. To them DS6 is the "little brother", not their actual friend. That doesn't mean I don't wish it were different. I was super thankful when one family did include DS6 recently in a birthday invite. He felt so loved. He has cried many a tear when DS8 got to go to a birthday party and he didn't. Unfortunately he doesn't have many friends his own age so he sees his older brother invited to a lot of parties when he has to stay home, and yet he is rarely invited to any himself. I would absolutely never comment to anyone about it though...we just deal with the tears at home and do our best to find something else fun for DS6 to do. I think it's normal for a younger or older of a group of three close siblings to not be invited...what seems especially awkward is if it's one of three in the middle that's not invited. Like, if there was an 9, 10 and 11 year old and it was the 9 and 11 year olds that were invited and not the one in the middle. That would seem very socially awkward. Like others have said, if you are throwing a party you can invite whomever you like...but I can definitely see there would be social repercussions in that situation if a middle kid was left out.

The time didn't work for me either...DH wasn't home and fat chance that the kids would let me listen to a talk without tons of interruptions! :laugh: I am looking forward to watching the recording as well. I think I am going to end up listening to the recordings on most of the ones I signed up for. Between activities, travel and just times that DH isn't home it will be tough to see any live. There would have to be more at about 9 or 10pm CST for live talks to work for me!

When my DS was blowing through multiple math lessons a day and "getting it" -- getting all answers correct or understanding the concepts with little to no presentation from me, I started to realize we were in the wrong math program. Instead of just blowing through several levels of a program that was so easy for him (in his case, Right Start -- a great fit for many kids but honestly not enough challenge for my gifted-at-math kid), we switched to BA for our primary program. Not that this may be your case, but if you are finding it to be a consistent occurrence that your kid can go through many lessons at once and still get correct answers, he may need more depth or challenge.

My DD11 did not have a lot of fact retention until this school year (5th grade), and I think time and maturity was key for her. Xtramath and any other timed practice was totally frustrating at age 8 or 9. At age 10, she was ready to meet the challenge of Xtra math head on. It took her a LONG time to get 100% in six second addition and multiplication (maybe 3-4 months for each of them?) and maybe only a month each for subtraction and division. But at 10 she had the maturity to deal with the timed work and her retention was much better too. Not that every kid needs to do Xtra math or another timed fact program, but I was amazed at the difference that maturity made in being able to learn the facts. Prior to that, I had some success with facts set to music (not just skip counting songs, but songs with whole multiplication problems). I also let her keep addition and multiplication tables handy, hoping that if she looked up the same fact often enough, it would help her remember. We also played a ton of math games, but I am not sure those actually helped her retain the facts.

I remember that tornado question too from a past year when we did the ITBS...My kids knew because we are in the Midwest, but I figured that other kids would not know if they live in non-tornado prone areas! I also wondered if tests written in California asked what to do in an earthquake..My kids totally would have no idea about that! :laugh: Another favorite..."Which of these is a picture of a holiday celebration?" And one of the pictures had a Turkey dinner... the other three had some other random activities that don't look particularly holiday-like, but you never know. I was imagining how a child would feel about that if he/she came from a vegetarian family or one from any family background that doesn't celebrate US Thanksgiving with the traditional meal. I mean, I guess most kids probably pick up on that cultural tradition even if their family doesn't celebrate (or doesn't celebrate in the usual way)...but I felt like it was eye-opening to me how much of the "social studies" section can easily have a lot of cultural bias.

We love Logic of English Foundations. I chose it because I like the methodology, but the active/hands-on components of the lessons are great. My 6 year old loved it this past year for learning to read. I think Miquon or RightStart are also both great choices for math. Right Start is what I used with my two older kids and the games make it super fun. My 6 year old doesn't connect with the abacus so I used Miquon with the C-rods instead, and that was also a good fit - he liked doing math with the rods.

So far with my DS8 (he is working on 4A right now) we have needed some basic/easy math review so that he doesn't forget "easy" procedures. He was fine without even that for a while, but then he forgot how to do 4 digit subtraction one day. :-) I've been using some free daily review sheets I printed out. (I can come back and link later when I am not on the iPad). We also did fact practice with Xtra math. I haven't found that problem solving needs supplementing, since that is what BA is strong in. We are going to take a BA break for the summer - I think we are going to do some "Murderous Maths" for fun, along with a Borac book I was able to get locally really inexpensively (But only if DS is enjoying it...if not, I got it cheap enough that I won't feel bad if we don't use it). I have been really curious about Zacarro, but not curious enough to pay full price or close to it without having seen it in person.

Things that worked well for us: Beast Academy as our primary math, using Xtra math for fact practice, Spelling plus/Dictation resource book for spelling (We've already done LoE, so we use those methods to study/analyze the words), adding to the schedule independent reading time and a daily chore, combining DS with older sister for science and history, starting Latin slowly with GSWL (doing half the book over the course of the year), starting our school day with read-aloud time (Bible, chapter books, and sometimes picture books too) with DS8 combined with DS6. Things that didn't work as well: English Lessons thru Literature -- It did help me meet my goal of DS being more interested in longer read-alouds, but we dropped actually using it part way through the year once he was more into books other than the ones on the ELTL list. Copywork -- he absolutely hates it from any source...but other than spelling dictation sentences, we didn't really find any other writing that worked for us. Finding other independent work for DS -- he did a little bit of other independent work (other than reading time and his chores), but it was pretty much busywork, and he is not a fan. Overall, way more positives than negatives!

In the past I tried to match up library books with exact lessons in science, history, etc and found it to be problematic as well. I've decided to focus in on library books I specifically request for history. I try and step back and instead of focusing on books lesson by lesson, focus on the big picture, maybe a month at a time. So for ancient history, I got a month's worth of books about, ancient Greece for example. Not every lesson we read from our history text that month was on Ancient Greece, but that was the general time period we were in. Last year when we were doing US HIstory I got books for a given month focusing on a time period (maybe one or two decades). Some times we got to the library books first, sometimes we get to the history lesson first on a specific topic or person, but it all works together. I keep all the history books together in a crate. Starting in 3rd grade, I assigned my DD independent reading from the book crate, and DS8 will be assigned independent reading of that sort next year. We check out non-fiction living books on other topics too, but I let the kids direct on what they are interested in for those topics. For example, DS8 will tell me he wants to learn more about insects, so I request books or check what's on the shelf. Then a week or so before the beginning of the next month, I request a bunch more books for our history book crate. The nice thing about requesting a whole month-ish worth of books at once is that I do get a big stack, but if some don't work out I have extra...and since we are planning on that general topic in our book crate for the whole month, if some come later, we are still on that general topic.

This is a great thread..even though my oldest will only be 6th grade next year, my DH is very firm at this point that we should send the kids to public or private school for high school...and I am already beginning to think about what skills she will need to develop during the middle school years to be ready for that.

My DS8 is looking for more graphic novels to read during his free reading time this summer. He prefers things that are in full color and not too long. Funny is a plus. He just finished the Stone Rabbit series. He's read about as many Ninjago/Clone Wars/Chima graphic novels as our library has. He's done some Pokemon graphic novels but those are all in black and white as far as we can tell, and some of them are longer than he likes (he finds the thickness to be overwhelming for some reason). He's not too into super heroes. Any suggestions of titles/series we should check out?

I'm always overly optimistic about what I can get done over summer break...but I really want to: Clean-out/reorganize our school/craft/lego room a bunch of WTM online conference talks Listen to the Great Courses I bought (maybe while doing my clean-out?) Maybe watch the IEW TWSS ... and/or read a few books I have on my list about teaching writing Plan our reading lists for next year Other school planning that needs to happen And of course, that's not including all the reading I want to do for fun, planning for our vacation, spending hours at the pool (but not really "relaxing" since I have to watch the 3-year-old) and driving kids to summer camps/activities). We'll see what really happens! :laugh:

I used Language Mechanic for my DD this year, but we didn't look at editor-in-chief very much so it is hard to compare. When I was looking for a usage/mechanics curriculum, I wanted something more focused on learning a few new skills/rules and practicing them, more than finding mistakes. I got the impression that editor-in-chief was more about finding mistakes. I wouldn't say that DD loved Language Mechanic, but it was a nice get-er-done curriculum to practice some skills that DD needed to shore up.

Maybe she could join diy.org? My almost 11 year old DD loves doing the skills/challenges on there. There are challenges for just about every interest, and she might discover something new. My DD has tried things she might never have tried otherwise and found some new interests.

I honestly think Little Women is not necessarily easily read...I found parts of it very boring. Just being honest! I know some people love it. Boys in particular I think might have a hard time getting into it. What about Rifles for Watie? (http://amzn.com/006447030X) My DD liked it and she doesn't usually like "war books" in general. It is exciting, and not a sad ending (obviously people die in the book, but not the main character).

LOL...At my house, if someone said that, other people would immediately be running to check if the door is open. My kids are constantly forgetting to shut the door as they run in and out to play, and I am often yelling after them for very literal reasons, "Shut the front door!!!!" :lol:

I've let my kids try out different things as they have interest. They have friends who do a variety of activities and they hear about those from friends. Or they are just exposed to various activities through whatever random way and ask if they can try it. For example, my kids saw a hip-hop/breakdancing performance in our neighborhood, and DS6 was absolutely in love with the idea and asked if he could take a class. He had been asking to quit TaeKwonDo for a while as it just wasn't a good fit, so we made the transition to Hip Hop dance instead. My DD tried out gymnastics a couple times as well as dance and decided those weren't for her long term. As I hear about different things (especially free/cheap things) my kids might like to try out, I ask them if they would like to try it. We've done an inexpensive summer tennis program in past summers, but opted not to do it this year b/c of scheduling issues and the fact that it isn't as cheap as it used to be. But my boys will both do a free soccer program for a week, and older DS will do a week of touch football camp that is free. We live in an urban area, and there are quite a few cheap/free programs that are good for kids just wanting to try things out. One things we have is co-op (I basically consider this an extra curricular since it is for enrichment) - $600/year (but it will be closer to $800 next year when DS3 is in preschool class instead of nursery). Tae Kwon Do - DH and DS8 are taking TKD currently, which is $120/mo for both of them for unlimited classes per month Guitar - currently $60/month for DD, though I used to pay $100/month with our former instructor! May double in the future since DS8 wants to take lessons as well. Dance class for DS was around $100 for Jan - May - we joined after the term started, and they were eager for another boy for the boys' hip hop class because it was small, so they gave us a discount. Not sure how much the full fee will be if he continues in the fall...I cant remember how much the regualar rate was. Summer activities - $350 a summer for pool membership and swim lessons. Each of the three older kids is doing one camp this summer, for a total of maybe $250ish. We did a public speaking club for the older two kids this year, and the fees were maybe a total of $100 for both kids all year. Including membership and a conference. We're not continuing that. We might start a diy.org club which would be pretty low cost - maybe a small charge If we have to rent a space.

I checked that out too before I decided to buy and I was shocked by how popular many of the Great Courses are at our library. Our large library system might own 5-10 copies of most of the great courses, but there was still multiple people in the reserve queue in many cases. Part of my decision of which to buy ended up being course length and waiting list - it's unlikely I'll get an 18 hour course listened to in three weeks before having to return it to the library (no renewals of course if there is a waiting list). But some are shorter or seem to be less popular, so those ones I just saved for future library checkout. :-)