Part of the problem with knowing who to talk to is that we've been seeing a family practice doc for the past two years (we had a pediatrician before that, but had to switch clinics due to insurance network changes -- previous clinic was no longer going to be considered in-network), and to be honest I've not been super pleased. We'll probably switch the next time it comes around to have everyone in for well child checks (I have all 4 kids go at the same time in the summer each year). But when I brought up some concerns I had about DD last year, the family practice doc really blew me off. I still think my DD could benefit from some counseling related to anxiety issues, but now every time I have discussed it with her she reminds me that "the doctor said I am fine." :glare: So, it really makes me feel like this doc won't take me very seriously if I discuss what I am seeing with DS. I guess I could just seek an appointment with some kind of Pediatrician right now? I just figured it would be a waste of time if they were just going to tell me that we had to get a psychiatric evaluation done to have a diagnosis. Are you saying that a Ped might be likely just to give us a diagnosis right there without further testing? He does have some weird sorta auditory issues -- like he is constantly "mishearing" us and thinking he heard us say something funny that doesn't make sense. I have attributed it more to lack of attention than anything else -- but ???. I guess what I am really looking for is support and counseling to know how to deal with DS -- I can read books and websites about it until I am blue in the face, but I don't know FOR SURE that what I am seeing is ADHD and not me having parenting issues or him just being slow to mature. Or maybe I am seeing this wrong and there is some different diagnosis that would fit better than ADHD. I want to have the door open to medication in the future, even if that is not where to start. I feel like just the regular "parenting advice" that works pretty well with my other kids is a big fail with DS, and I need some ongoing support to know how to deal with his behavior. I've always assumed that getting some type of evaluation and diagnosis was what I needed to get the help I feel like I need, but maybe there is some kind of counselor I can see who would help me figure out how to deal with DS regardless of whether he has an official diagnosis? I also want to be able to tell sunday school teachers, co-op teachers, etc that he has a diagnosis (if he does), because i am kind of tired of getting looked like "that bad parent" because my six year old jumps up in class and starts attempting to climb the wall or whatever thing he did this week. I've gotten a quite a bit of flack from some church/co-op people even though I am really doing my best to keep him behaving properly. Another boy at co-op has a diagnosis (not adhd -- another developmental issue) and the mom has been quite open about it, and I notice that people give that kid a ton of leeway in his behavior that no one is giving my DS. Behavior that looked sorta cute when he just turned 5 looks really immature to people at 6 I guess. ETA: If we still did want/need more extensive evaluations, I am also wondering if a Ped wouldn't just automatically refer to someone within the clinic network. AKA we are XYZ clinic, so please call the Psych department of XYZ large clinc for an eval... rather than looking at the options in an unbiased way to to say, "ABC private clinic does has the best services of this type" -- but maybe that's not the case. I am wishing there was an unbiased way to figure out the best place to get services if I am going to pay a bunch of money for them, but I can't quite see that there is any way to do that.

I'm ready to seek out evals for DS6 -- My main suspicion/concern is ADHD. I have had my suspicions for a long time, but now that he is six, and I feel like some issues are getting worse and not better, I am more convinced that he isn't "growing out of it". I'm not really seeing learning issues yet per se -- I work hard to keep his lessons short and interesting, and he is doing great for a Kindergartener (I'm sure it would be a different story if he had to be in a classroom all the time). But we see a lot of other behavior/impulsivity issues, and he has a hard time with appropriate behavior when he is in a classroom situation (church, co-op, etc). We live in a large metro area, so there are tons of results for searches for ADHD evaluations, neuropsych evaluations, etc. I'm seeing three main paths -- the behavioral health/child psychiatry department of the large clinic network where we currently see our primary care physician, the Psychiatry clinic at the large university nearby (They have a "attention and behavior disorders" specialty clinic), or a private clinic (google searches have turned up quite a number, some of which seem to be covered by our insurance and offer adhd evals or neuropsych services generally). How do I evaluate which path would best fit us? I only know one family IRL who has openly talked about getting an ADHD eval, and they used a private clinic. I'm sure there may be more, but I am not eager to post a request for advice on Facebook about this or anything like that, at least not at this point. I am not even quite sure what questions to ask (besides maybe cost and wait time to get an appointment) - are there going to be significant differences in the type of evaluations they will want to do if I just ask to have DS evaluated for ADHD? Thanks for your help. :-)

Yes, from what I have read, there is more grammar in D. I will be doing D with my DS6 in the fall for 1st grade. Another option would be to add a "Story based" grammar -- like Sentence Family or Grammar Island. This little grammar story is free right now for Kindle (I haven't read it yet): http://amzn.com/B00UVTKJUG There's also the Brian Cleary grammar books (my library has these) and the Ruth Heller books (I found these at the library too). For writing, there is copywork and dictation in both C and D (It is a bit sparse in C, though I am assuming it will be more in D). I think a good companion to that type of writing could be something like the projects in Jot it Down (I might use these with DS6 next year). There are some books that appear often in the Scholastic Teacher Express Dollar Days sale that have similar projects. I had good intentions to use these with both boys this year but I haven't managed to implement them this year...hence why I might spring for Jot it Down.

I did Foundations A with my DS6 starting when he was 4.5 or so. We just skipped the handwriting for the most part (he taught himself upper case, and when he wanted to write a word, just wrote it all upper case). We went at his pace (taking breaks when he lost interest) over the course of his PreK year. Then this year we started out K with an intensive "lower case letter" month, where he learned proper formation of all the lower case letters before we started Foundations B. I probably could have taught most of the things in A without the program (he's my 3rd kid to use an LoE program, so I am pretty familiar with it) and he was a rock star at all the phonemic awareness activities right from the beginning...but since I already had Foundations A (I was a beta tester when older DS was in K), I went ahead and used it.

For a while DS was doing BA plus some RightStart, but we dropped the RightStart. The only other thing he does regularly is Xtramath for fact practice. We have also occasionally used these "Daily review sheets" for a quick warm up: https://www.aea267.k12.ia.us/math/resources/daily-routines I found we could easily use them a grade ahead (i.e. DS is in BA3, he was doing 4th grade sheets from the review pages at that link). I've discovered that after focusing really hard on some of the BA topics, DS is getting a bit rusty on some of his algorithms for things like multi digit adding and subtracting, so I want to make sure he is getting problems like that every now and then.

I live in Mpls itself, so I am most familiar with that. The further you go South and Southwest within the neighborhoods of the city, generally speaking, the lower the crime and generally the better the schools. City of Minneapolis has crime maps so you can see what the crime rates are like. We found that helpful when we first moved here: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/police/statistics/crime-statistics_codefor_index. We live in an area that is slightly less safe (some of the public school options are not as good either -- but since we are homeschooling it is not a big concern at the moment!), but is very vibrant and diverse (you can PM me if you want to know the specific neighborhood). If you are more of a suburb kind of a family, we have friends that live in Richfield, Bloomington, Edina and other suburbs fairly close in to Mpls (to the south and west), and they all seem to be pretty happy with crime rates and school options. Lots of great suburbs with great schools. I really have no idea how apartment prices are in any of these areas since we've never shopped for apartments. Some of the suburbs immediately north of Mpls are ones to avoid in terms of higher crime from what I have heard.

Yes! MN makes up for its sometimes-awful winters (not every year -- this year was mostly quite mild) with wonderful summers. I feel sorry for all the people who live in places where it is too hot to go outside in the summer, when we have such beautiful summers. :-)

5th grader in the CLE 500s spends 30 minutes or so on CLE, plus another few minutes for xtramath. I want to work up her math endurance to maybe 45 minutes or so next year in 6th grade.

How about a DIY club: https://diy.org/guides/clubs There are skills/patches for just about any interest. If there isn't a club near you, maybe you could start one?

Maybe Treasured Conversations? It was a good fit for my not-advanced-in-writing 5th grader this year. We did the first two books of W&R so I don't know how the skills proceed in Narrative 2 enough to know if that would make any of TC too "easy"/not enough of a step up.

We are most likely going to stick with CLE through 600s and then switch after that. I know we could try to do 700/800 in a year but I am not sure I want to deal with the headache of trying to figure out what to skip/combine. We are going to finish 500s right at the end of the year, and then DD will do Fred over the summer (she has done about half of fractions, so we will finish that book then go into the decimals book).

If anybody is nosy enough to both ask what curricula you are using AND then criticize your choices, it's fair game to tell them to butt out or to "pass the bean dip" as the saying goes here. Luckily, many curriculum options don't even have a grade level on them. It will mean nothing to an outside party that my K'er is currently using Logic of English Foundations C for reading, and Miquon Red for math. :-). I agree with the others that you just need to teach where she is at, call her the typical grade level for her age, and deal with possible "grade skipping" later if by middle school or high school she is far advanced or needs to graduate early. So far my experience with kids who are obviously ahead of typical abilities in an area is that people are less concerned what the heck math program I am using and more impressed that my 2nd grader can do multi digit multiplication in his head or whatever.

I'm a member of a FB sale group where it is required (unless you specifically say "best offer" or something like that) to gives dibs in the order that people comment with any definite interest (so, not to a person who says "are there any stains on that shirt", but yes to the person who says "I'm interested".) The expectation is that the person publicly posts interest in buying, then takes the conversation to Private message to figure out details. If seller can't work out price/time/location with the first buyer, they move to the next in the list. It puts a lot more pressure on the seller to contact each person in line (popular items often have a line of people saying "next" after the first person saying "I'm interested"), but I think the group owners feel like it is a fair way to deal with a large, busy group.

Are you doing 1st edition or 2nd edition? 1st edition copies of the A teacher's manual should be pretty cheap used. Check out the RightStart yahoo group -- I've often seen used TMs for sale there. Even if you are doing 2nd edition with the older, you could probably do the 1st edition A with the younger just to keep him happy. :-) The worksheets are a very thin packet for A and pretty inexpensive, but since there are so few of them you could almost do without them for a Pre-K child in A.

I had sort of forgotten I wanted to read this. I just requested it at the library am #512 on the list...but at least there are 237 copies! (Yeah, big metro county-wide library system). So, if people return it about when it is due in 3 weeks time and assuming maybe a few more days for transit...I might get it in 8 or 10 weeks? I guess maybe it will be my summer reading.

Another thought -- you are on the last main "story" in section 2 already -- maybe look ahead and see if Section 3 (starting in lesson 27) is more up your student's alley? It's a different skill doing outlines and reports on factual content instead of fictional stories. Maybe it won't be at all, but it is worth a look perhaps. I'm doing TC with my DD who is at the upper end of the suggested age range. The outlining and fictional paragraphs were hard for her at first, but then she just hit a point where it "clicked", and we actually skipped that last story as well (so, maybe the 5-6 lessons before part 3)...not because it was a "wall" but more because she felt she was ready to move on and tackle report writing. It's kind of funny -- Section 3 has almost been too much scaffolding and she flew through most of them in 2 days per lesson, combining the note taking and outlining step. We only have two lessons left now. But I can see how if I tried TC with DS who will be 3rd grade next year, it would probably be a much different experience.

Definitely find out more about the specific club you want to join - how it is organized and exactly what they do at the meetings. Also If the club is not super close to home (which it sounds like yours may not be?), find out where/how far away county offices and county-wide activities will be. We joined a club last year, and it was not a good fit for us. There were very few general purpose clubs in our home (urban) county, so we went one county over. The club meetings seemed very reasonable at a 20-25 minute drive, but all the county activities were more like 45-60 minutes from home one way (too far for us). Even club activities outside of meetings were usually pretty far from home for us. Also, our club had no project groups. All work was done individually. Honestly, my kids thought the meetings were really boring, besides a fun game and one student presenting a speech/presentation, the rest of the meeting was just a business meeting. Needless to say, we didn't continue this year. I think 4-h can be great, it just didn't work for us with this club.

There is incidental practice from doing the problems in the workbook, but they aren't practiced systematically. We have found xtramath to be great for this. DS7 just finished all four operations on the six second speed, and now he will go back and do them all on the faster three second speed.

Way less conflict if you have two. We have three accounts because we have three computers to play it on, but there is is still sometimes conflict between the four of us who play. "You got my guy lost! You used up my diamond sword!" Etc, etc. It was way worse however when we had two accounts for four players.

Also, the answers have pretty through explanations...not just the actual "answer" - a few times on some of the harder problems, my not-so-creative brain could only think of a complicated, time consuming way to solve a problem. In order to help my DS, I had to read the answers to see the creative/elegant way they intended for the problem to be solved. :-)

My guess is that she might not be quite ready for BA yet math wise (there's a placement test), but it might be something to move toward when her DD is ready. My DS started it when he had just turned 7 (he turns 8 next week, so about a year ago). i think he might have been ready before that point, but we didn't try it until we were between levels of RightStart. I think it requires more maturity in the sense that it requires more perseverance in problem solving than the average curricula. On the other hand, the characters may not appeal to some kids either. I showed it to a family who has a DD of a similar age to my DS who is ready ofr it math wise, but the monsters were a complete turn off to her! Life of Fred would be an option if mom could read to her. My DS's math ability has always surpassed his reading ability, so I often read the BA stories and problems to him.

I would definitely encourage her to have them in different curricula if she can manage it. For my DS who is advanced at math and may at some point surpass his 3-years-older sister, I know we would have a world of trouble if they were in the same program. Singapore's K program is really basic and would probably bore her DD as well. Even the first grade one may be a bit boring if she can really understand 2nd grade level math already. For my DS who is accelerated in math, Beast Academy is a great fit. While he was blowing through multiple RightStart lessons in a sitting because he just "got" what was being presented and didn't need tons of practice, BA causes him to slow down and think creatively to solve the problems.

We did a trial run with MM3 when DD was in 3rd, and we were in the chapters covering those concepts. Honestly, I thought they MM didn't have the clearest explanations compared to other 3rd grade curricula covering the same topics. Maybe pull in some other resources to help explain? My DD has finally just gotten her facts down this year. Prior to this year I let her keep a multiplication table handy to look up facts so she didn't get too bogged down.

Yours are pretty close in age to mine (my 10 year old is a 5th grader). I would definitely work toward more independence for your oldest - an independent grammar choice for next year, more reading on her own (or audiobooks), maybe a video lesson for math? I have my oldest work independently all morning (save an ocasional math question that just can't want until later). I work with my 2nd grader and K'er in the morning (2nd grader has a short list of "independent work" to do during the hour I work with the K'er - some of it is actual school work like read a book or do xtra math, while some of it is quick chores and playing with the 3year old). I also spend 30-45 minutes reading Bible and read aloud books to the boys in the morning. Then after lunch I do anything my oldest needs help on with her - answering math questions or going over a new concept, new material for writing lesson, new spelling list once a week, etc. This is anywhere from 15 min to an hour depending on the day. Then we do either history or science all together. The K'er sometimes loses interest, but I figure he has plenty more chances to "get" this material over the years. I still do a longer read alouds at bedtime (maybe 5 nights a week) with my 10 year old. I make my own lit list for her so there is no pressure to get through someone else's list! Either DH reads to the boys or if he is not home I read to the boys first, put them to bed, then read to DD.

Sometimes I end up asking a lot of "leading questions" or giving extra hints to my DS (turns 8 next week, we're in book 3D right now). It just depends on the problem. In my case, since my guy is pretty young, I figure he has more time to work up to the level of struggling longer with the problems. For him, if he has to struggle very long on his own without someone to help him stay on task, he is apt to lose his thought process and run off to join his younger brothers playing legos. ;-) I find if i lead him through the process once, he will often do much better on same/similar problems on his own later.