[Reading questions]

And then sometimes you have to resort to twaddle. I will admit that early on, when I was trying to get him to like short chapter books, I got him Clone Wars books. I considered them "advanced twaddle". :D He doesn't read them all the time, but they got him wanting to read more. Now he reads a lot of science and history, and he loves books like Amelia Bedelia. So far, a lot of the good classic literature has not been a huge hit. He loves My Father's Dragon, but other stuff like Charlotte's Web, Trumpet of the Swan, etc... those haven't been what he was interested in, or maybe it was just that he has to work harder to read them. He'll read just one chapter a day for those. He read the 2nd MFD book (Elmer and the Dragon) in one morning. :tongue_smilie:

 

:iagree:

 

I grew up reading "twaddle," such horrible stuff that I'm ashamed of it now. Berenstain Bears, Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, Babysitter Club, Roald Dahl (sorry, whoever was posting about Matilda, but he just makes me cringe now--except for the Chocolate Factory series, for some reason), Frank Peretti--whatever I could get my hands on. As long as you don't find a book morally objectionable, don't worry that much about it. Your child will grow up and realize that what they used to love is actually dreck, or at least I did.

 

Of course, there's also enough classic and worthwhile literature out there that there should be something your kid will like.

 

Meanwhile, as long as your child is enjoying listening to you read, that's fostering the love of literature that will eventually be the draw to books that will counterbalance the drudgery of actually reading. Or at least, that's my experience with myself. My mother tells me that I was really pretty slow on the reading front, but I ended up an English major!

 

My son's a year behind yours, since he's reading through the same readers your daughter is but finishing first grade. (Watch out for The Sword in the Tree--it's a true chapter book, and a real challenge. My son took a little longer reading that one than usual, but when I let him read it himself and just asked the comprehension questions, he did well. And he told my husband all about the story, so I think he ended up liking it!) So, y'know, your daughter's definitely not behind, and letting her coast for a while on "I Can Read" Level One or Two books is not going to ruin her reading progress forever.

[writing paper for 1st grade?]

Well, I use the Zaner-Bloser freebie set at the first grade level. I love that I can type in (or paste) whatever I need to for my son's copywork, and the font is close enough to what he learned for handwriting that he's not confused. I use Ubuntu, and I've never had any trouble loading the page, so it's obviously a very friendly site. (I use NoScript, and the only domain I have to allow is zaner-bloser.com.)

 

Hope this helps!

[Geography ?]

For the most part, we do geography as part of history, but we've use A Child's Geography to beef things up a bit.

Us too! Well, we haven't started A Child's Geography yet; I'm planning on doing it as our summer break material. I'm going to augment it by sending postcards with The Postcard Crossing Project someone else on the boards recommended. My son (finishing first grade) is already really excited about that part of it. We just have to buy the postcards! (I figure we'll do one a week--that way, hopefully the first one will have arrived by the time we run out of addresses. And also hopefully they won't all be to the same country, but even if they are, it's still fun! Particularly if we get some back.)

 

In the "Why don't people like Sonlight?" thread that was started lately, somebody said that it had very poor geography. I actually thought it was way better than we ever got in school. The maps with numbers might be very hard to work with, particularly since the number keys weren't even on the map itself, but the foldable map and wet-erase marker aspect of it worked really, really well for me. Geography makes a lot more sense to me now! And my son can at least identify Egypt, Greece, India, and Rome (or, well, Italy).

[Spiral math vs. mastery ?]

I'm using both with DS: We do CLE, which is spiral, and Math Mammoth, which is mastery. He prefers the spiral approach; he gets bored/frustrated if he's doing too many of the same kind of problem at a time, and the built-in review is good for him. So CLE is our main program and MM is more of a supplement for areas I want to work on more.

 

I can totally see how for other kids the spiral approach would annoy them, though, because they'd feel like they were jumping all over the place. I think it's one of those things that would really depend on the kid.

 

So which is Math-U-See? Every lesson focuses on a new topic, but each also reviews old ones. And there are three pages of problems for each aspect, but you're only supposed to do as many as you think your kid needs, both for the new material and for the review.

 

Like agarnett, I'm a little :confused: about the differences between the two myself. I mean, I know the difference between spiral programs and immersion programs for science, and I know that I hated the "spiral" history my school did where I never studied much but American history. For an incremental skill like math or spelling or grammar, I keep wondering, don't you always have to review what you've already "mastered" anyhow? Even when you're working on, say, multiple digit addition, you're constantly "reviewing" single digit addition just to do your new kind of problem, right?

 

I'm heading off to check that RightStart link, now. Maybe it will help clarify the difference to me.

[Poetry - where do I begin??]

The only poetry my children have been exposed to is the limited poetry that was in our Abeka Spelling & Poetry several years ago, and the little children's poetry book I have here at home. I have not read poetry as an adult, so, I am embarrased to confess, I have NO IDEA who my favorite would be! :confused: This is why I feel so helpless to begin. For example, are all poetry books created equal? Is there a "classic poetry" book out there? Do I just pick up any book that says "poems" on the front and start? It seems like the little poetry I've read is young for my oldest daughter. Is there a better poetry book for her? (she's entering 7th grade this year).

Do we just read the poetry? I like your suggestions for discussion. What other things do we discuss about the work? Or do we just soak it in?

 

Thanks so miuch for your help! I need it!!!! :D

 

Well, Sonlight 1/B uses the Dover edition of Favorite Poems for Childhood. It's cheap--both in price ($2.00) and in printing quality--but the contents are nothing to sneer at. I used it according to the Sonlight schedule, which did two or three poems a week, and it worked pretty well. Dover does a lot of cheap editions, sometimes in box sets--if you want a reintroduction to poetry and Goodwill isn't helping you out, you could certainly go with those.

 

There are much more highly regarded anthologies, of course, like the Oxford Book of English Verse or the Norton anthologies I got in college. But for the most part, those aren't all that important for anyone under high school age. In contrast, there are plenty of children's anthologies out there, many of them similar--I think I saw several at our last library book sale, in fact. If you see an anthology you're interested in, flip through it, read a poem, see if there is any commentary and what it's talking about. Often people, and particularly poets, have an agenda, and it might not be one you agree with--if it's all anti-capitalism or paeons in praise of nature and in hatred of man, I'd have trouble with it. If the poems are eleven pages long, they're probably not going to interest your kids. And if the book smells too badly of mildew or cigarette smoke or anything, neither you nor your kids will be all that interested in sticking your nose in it for the length of time it'll take to really unwrap a good poem. (Hey, the strangest things can impact our thinking about a particular subject! I'm convinced that half the reason I hate science is that the science room always smelled of formaldehyde.)

 

You can also wander around online to find poems you like. Here's a site I found just by googling "children's poetry." I recognize some of them, but many of them were new to me. (I liked the ones I checked out, particularly the prayer ones.)

 

As for your daughter, as long as you're not strictly reading When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six-ish poems, she should still be plenty challenged. (Those two anthologies are A. A. Milne's poetry books, by the way, and I definitely recommend them for your youngest. In case you don't recognize the author's name, he also wrote Winnie the Pooh. Some of the poems do get a bit long for little kids, but most are pretty good, and they've been in print forever.) The poem I referred to above, since it looks like you may not have had enough exposure to recognize it, is "The Eagle" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I read it to my son this year, but I remember reading it myself for middle school.

 

Then, if there is a poem she particularly enjoys, you could see if that poet has a book available at your library, or check the internet for more of his or her work. If she seems more drawn to a particular type of poem than any one author, look around for those, too. I remember being drawn to melodramatic claptrap in middle school--"The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes, "The Glove and the Lions" by Leigh Hunt, etc. ad nauseum. Basically, if Loreena McKennitt put it to music, I probably loved it in middle school. Now my husband loves Loreena McKennitt, and I can't stand to listen to her!

[Spelling problems]

My responses are in pink above.

Could be she just forgot a lot of things with our break in March and needs a big review. :confused:

 

They do say that much of second grade at a traditional school tends to be a repeat of first grade in subjects like math because students lose almost everything over summer break. Is that about the age your child is?

 

I'm about to start on summer with my first grade son, but we're going to keep up math and writing and reading (even if we slow down or mix it up with more "fun" versions) because I'm petrified about this very thing happening. But we haven't started AAS yet, so at least I won't have to keep reviewing in that, too. (Actually, I'm thinking of starting those first three lessons of Level One this summer, just so we can get to the "real spelling" part for the beginning of school.)

[Poetry - where do I begin??]

We like Sonlight's recommendation in core 3:

 

A Child's Introduction to Poetry by Michael Driscoll

 

We got ours at Costco actually. It is a book with a CD. It gives a bit of intro about the poet or genre and then the audio CD has the poem of that genre read aloud, with the text in the book to follow along. I really love it, and prefer it over the just read a poem a day type of method, probably because I myself am not strong in poetry.

 

Our library also has several books now with poems and CDs of the poems read aloud, including one that had modern poems set to hip-hop music [child friendly lyrics]! That is such a fun intro for the very young or poetry phobic.

 

See now, that's very interesting, because I would never, never deprive myself of the chance to read poetry (or at least poetry I like) to a captive audience. My poor, long-suffering husband will back me on this one, based on the number of times he's had to listen to me read Gerard Manley Hopkins. The only exceptions would be the poems meant to render a particular regional accent, such as "Little Orphant Annie" or "Cuddle Doon" since I'm hopeless at accents. If I could find a version of poems like those in the "proper" accent, I'd buy it in a shot!

[Poetry - where do I begin??]

Hey, there's nothing wrong with most anthologies of classical poetry, whether it's the buying-them-cheaply-at-Goodwill part or the flipping-through-them-to-find-a-poem-you-like parts. Do you (or your children) have a favorite poet? Robert Frost, John Donne, either of the Brownings, e. e. cummings, Langston Hughes, Lord Tennyson? Get an anthology of his (or her) poetry! That way you can weed through their works for the ones more appropriate for children. Or A. A. Milne, Shel Silverstein, Calvin Miller, and Robert Louis Stevenson have books specifically for children--for most of those poets, it constitutes their entire poetic oeuvre!

 

For your younger children, Sonlight uses Surprises, edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by Megan Lloyd, as a reader in their "second grade-level" reading curriculum. It's a "Level 3 I Can Read Book," and probably not terribly unique, but I liked it, and it let my six-year-old read some poetry to me, for a change. (It looks like you use Sonlight, but you may have missed this little gem.)

 

In my opinion, the "point" of poetry, unless you're doing a unit specifically on poetry, is just to enjoy it as much as you can. Appreciate poetry for what it's good for: using the musicality of language; expressing things (such as emotion or concrete physical experience) better than prose or in ways that prose never can; using the ambiguities of language to allow the reader a deeper understanding; or whatever other aspect of poetry you can appreciate. Save talking about meter or alliteration or the names for common poetic tropes (such as the various types of metaphorical language) until you feel like you need to discuss them when talking about a particular poem, preferably a poem your child has liked (or maybe really, really hated).

 

To make a poem you're reading to your child more interesting, check to see if you can leave off the title and make it a riddle--"Who do you think is clasping the crag with crooked hands? What's a crag? Well, later in the poem it's equated with 'mountain walls'... Why is he watching the 'wrinkled sea'?" Then, when your child has come up with some sort of answer ("an animal that eats fish?" "a bird?" "a space monster!"), you can show him or her the title and see how well he or she did. (This could be good training for some of the more advanced poetry, where even well-respected literary scholars can't always agree on what the poem is really about.)

[Math U See Gamma question]

Wow, so the blocks really may be helpful again in the future, even for the son who's no longer using them in Beta. That's good to know!

[Can anyone help me w/ pre-K & combining w/ 1st]

I'm about to combine pre-K with second grade myself. I would like to point out that having your daughter around while you're going through the phonogram cards in All About Spelling with your son probably won't hurt with those prereading skills. That's what I'm going to try, anyhow!

[Math U See Gamma question]

Depends on the child.

 

:iagree:, too. My son is still in Beta, but he almost never uses the blocks. Sometimes he'll use them when covering something completely new, but for the most part, they just sit there in their expensive boxes. (I went all out when buying the blocks, but then again, I've got two more coming, so I'm sure I'll get use out of them eventually!)

 

What's really funny is that my son is newly turned 7 and just finishing first grade, and, according to Ruth Beechick, is not of an age to be able to understand numbers conceptually at all. And yet...

[New to the forum...thought I had it all figured out]

Hello,

 

We are just wrapping up our first year with pre-k and 2nd where we focused on reading books, math and writing. I thought I had next year all settled. Then I started using WWE2 and reading TWTM. I was orginally all set on SL core 1/B but looking over the history portion I felt the need to add in more living books and not just rely on the Usborne ones. Now I just want to totally switch and use SOTW w/Biblioplan for next year's ancient history. Crazy right??

 

I know it takes time to learn what works for your family and kids. The more I learn, the more I feel drawn to a classical style with a little CM thrown in for good measure. Meanwhile, I am driving my dh crazy with all the curriculum choices we have considered for next year. Tell me it gets better. :D

 

Toni

1st year homeschooling ds8 and dd5

 

As someone who just finished Sonlight 1/B, is headed for 2/C, and plans on switching to Biblioplan in a few years, I can't find fault with your taste. :p Biblioplan looks like it works a lot better for multiple kids (which is one of the reasons I'll be switching, in fact). I will say that I found Sonlight and its micromanaging very helpful for "getting my feet wet" and building my confidence in homeschooling and my knowledge of how homeschooling "works," as I am also wrapping up my first year. Since you've already taught a year, and you'd be adapting the core to teach two kids at two different ages, that aspect probably wouldn't be such a strength for you.

 

I don't know if curriculum choosing gets any better, but at the moment I'm having fun "window-shopping" all the curricula I'm not getting for next year. So maybe life'll get a little easier once you do choose?

[Logic for 5th grader: Red Herring Mysteries? Building Thinking Skills? Other ideas?]

Another suggestion is to check out your library's collection of . . . coming up blank here . . . who is the fifth grader who solves the crimes his dad, the police chief, encounters? Leroy Brown, Boy Detective? Each mystery is a few pages long--and each is self-contained so you can do one or five or whatever--and all the pertinent details are provided.

 

Okay, what's the kid's name?!? It's not Leroy Brown. . . Help!!

 

 

LittleIzumi is right, it is Encyclopedia Brown. You're right, too, though, because his real name is Leroy. Which, when I first heard the song about "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," really cracked me up.

[If I am using a combo of MOH and SOTW I]

I'm going to be using MOH & SOTW as part of our history this fall and while there is plenty of Biblical & Christian history in the mix, I feel that in my particular household we need something more for Bible. During the schoolyear my boys do Awanas & will be starting CC Foundations, so I don't want to add any more Bible memory during that time. I am thinking of doing something deeper for Bible study during the schoolyear, though. For this summer I want them to start learning some of the catechism, and I'd like to keep that up and add the creeds and confessions as time goes on. I never learned those as a kid, and seeing some of what is in an old BJU catechism book makes me think if I'd had that, I might not have so many unanswered questions now. I think it is Daisy here who has a link to daily bits of confessions, etc. in her blog.

 

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "deeper," or what the original poster is looking for in a Bible curriculum, but Biblioplan, which schedules both Mystery of History and Story of the World as spines, also schedules the Victor Journey through the Bible for grades 4-8 in their Year One, which is the time period the the OP appears to be doing. Whether or not you're interested in paying for Biblioplan to coordinate a schedule for you and help you along with age-appropriate readers for the period, that Victor Journey book might still be helpful. (The link I gave is to its page on Amazon, which has ten reviews, several from homeschoolers.)

 

And Yay! for another mother who plans to catechize! (Or is at least considering it.)

[Time Management Question with 3 Kids!!??]

This is why I'm switching to Biblioplan after next year--it allows you to at least be studying the same period of history with multiple kids.

 

Other than that, I'm all ears for time management tips, myself--I have trouble enough with only one kid actually in school! (We're doing Sonlight Core 1, with Core 2 to follow next year.)

[American Tall Tales -- recommendations (xpost)]

Well, I'm back, having done a teensy tiny bit of research. Have you found this site yet? One of the books it links to is American Tall Tales by Adrien Stoutenberg: from the reviews, this is pitched a little older than most tall tales, for upper elementary to middle school. Its first printing was in 1966 (or at least, that's the first printing Amazon shows), with several since then, so it may be available at your local library. (Or you could go with that four-for-three sale at Amazon, right?)

 

Also found via a roundabout method from that site is this: Stories collected and adapted by Chuck Larkin. He calls himself a "bluegrass storyteller," so these are mostly American yarns, specifically from the American southeast. Look more closely at "Fish Tales," "Hunting for Tall Tales," "Short & Tall Tales" and "Tall, Tall Tales" for the tall tales. They are all in .pdf format, so, assuming you have an appropriate reader, you can get them right away. And for free!

[my sons and lapbooking]

Homeschoolshare.com has a unit on soccer. One of the lapbook offerings is a "Bucky Ball Fact Pocket," which consists of a ball-shaped pocket and several "pages" to go in it. The ball-shaped pocket has a soccer ball printed on front, or you could easily turn it around and have just a blank ball. You could also cut out whatever you want for the inserts--just use the pages saying "'Bucky' Ball Fact" as guides for the right size.

 

I would be tempted to cut out the "pages" on different colors of construction (or whatever sturdy) paper and review colors with them, but that's just one thought. I thought it would be a good addition to whatever lapbook you end up making!

[History Odyssey vs. Sonlight Core C (aka 2)]

I'm not going to help here, but I would like to point out that History Odyssey is secular, and Sonlight is not. I don't know if that's a factor for you, or in which direction, but it's something to keep in mind.

 

Also, Usborne hasn't been the spine in Sonlight Core 1 (whoops, I mean B)--A Child's History of the World is the spine, and, as far as I can tell, Usborne is there to provide pretty pictures. I had a few problems with it, but I'm doing Core C next year, so they obviously weren't deal-breaking!

 

If you're interested in another Christian program, and particularly if you have more children coming along, there are a lot of people on these boards who really like Tapestry of Grace. Personally, I think it's way too fussy and expensive, but I'm planning on switching to Biblioplan, which is much more pared-down but still good for multiple kids, in a few years. Both of these programs also follow a four-year plan. (Biblioplan was specifically based on The Well-Trained Mind, much like History Odyssey, I believe.)

[I need open and go US Geography suggestions...]

10 Days in the USA! Okay, so it's a game, not a geography curricula as such, but it certainly makes learning about geography fun!

 

We own the 10 Days in Africa game, which I think was the first game in this series, and it is the best way I've ever found for me to learn geography. I'm kind of geography learning disabled, though. I guess spatial relations and me don't get along too well, as anyone who has ever seen me walk across a room would probably be able to tell you.

[Non-US Centered Modern History Curriculum]

Do you want another perspective entirely, or just more coverage than only U. S. history?

 

Biblioplan offers 1850-2000 in its Year Four program, and seems to try to expand beyond the borders of the U. S., but the U. S. is where it's centered. You could probably tell both of these facts by the year's title: "Modern America and the World."

 

All Through the Ages might be a good resource for supplemental materials, if you want to try to pad a spine out yourself. It looks like a bibliography organized by topic (historical or geographical) and age level. It mostly draws from the book lists of some of the big names in homeschooling curriculum (such as Veritas Press, Sonlight, Beautiful Feet Books), so it'll be pretty West-centered, still.

 

I don't actually own either of these items, but I am currently intending to purchase both for myself. Part of the reason I'm interested in Biblioplan myself is that it doesn't only focus on American history. I only remember two years in all of my K-12 education where we studied anything other than American history. I'm learning things in my son's first grade classes that I never even heard about, which is kind of pathetic.

[American Tall Tales -- recommendations (xpost)]

I know you said for older kids and adults, but... I've always really, really enjoyed Sid Fleischman's McBroom books. You know, the ones about the wonderful one-acre farm? And, hey, I'm an adult! (I'm an adult English major, even.) Maybe you can check them out as a treat that's still fun to read, despite being way below your daughter's reading level? Make sure you get the versions illustrated by Quentin Blake! If she's anything like me, she'll be reeling off willjillhesterchesterpeterpollytimtommarylarry and liiiiittle clarinda! in no time. (I just did that from memory, having not looked at the books in over a year, so if I got it wrong, I'm sorry.)

 

Some of Sid Fleischman's "older" books, while still being for children, are still rather tall-taley and might be a nice change from Paul Bunyan and John Henry. (I'm talking Chancy and the Grand Rascal, By the Great Horn Spoon, and so forth.)

 

Most tall tales do seem to be aimed at children, though. All I can think for adults is going back to some of the older (non-American) folktales, such as those involving "Baron Munchausen" or his identical Russian twin, "The Fool."

 

To build on a unit on tall tales, consider Maniac Magee, which uses some of the tropes and much of the language of a tall tale to tell a story that ultimately ends up being about real people. And I would certainly consider it "meaty," and appropriate for middle school--if that's where your daughter is. (I really can't tell!)

[very worried about choices]

She doesn't seem to able to solve problems logically, which then brings me back to wondering if this is right for her and whether it is a good fit for a classical education at this stage. I think she may simply do better learning facts/method for now. Knowing how to solve word problems has never come easy to her either.

 

As for LA, I came to the same conclusion about Wordly Wise comprehension having logic questions and realized she isn't there yet. We never really liked that book and would be glad to drop it. I was drawn to FLL as although she does do well in grammar workbooks and using it in her writing, I don't think she remembers definitions. We have the same problem with math facts. She never remembers them, or doesn't trust that she has remembered them correctly, might be a more accurate way of putting it.

 

My son is only in first grade, so he's definitely in the grammar stage of things, but it sounds like you are planning to work on review. Have you tried flash cards? How did you like them? We got the Flashmaster for my son to review his addition and subtraction without taking up my time (since I am often busy wrestling with his two younger siblings) and he loves that. We've also started incorporating the scripture memorization card box suggested by Simply Charlotte Mason here: it could easily be adapted for grammar definitions, instead.

 

Just some thoughts from someone who is actually way, way behind you. Oh, well.

[FIAR - How Much Preperation Required?]

Here and here are some wonderful free online resources for Five in a Row. I would usually sit down the Saturday before, look through the book and make my selections for what I wanted to study with my son (what was age appropriate and likely to be interesting to him), and then see what lapbooking materials and/or supplemental printouts would appeal to him. Not all the lapbooking stuff actually made it into a lapbook, but my son still had fun putting it together.

 

If you do want to do something like that, you'll need: paper and a printer (I got a color printer and would find neat images on Google images to make the lapbooks I did make more appealing for my son); glue (I used rubber cement); and file folders (colored are great) for lapbooks.

 

Also, the book recommends art supplies for the art lessons, which is kind of obvious, but I thought I'd put that out there anyway.

[Why don't you like Sonlight?]

Just in case you somehow managed to miss it, Sonlight has its own list of reasons people may not like their materials (at the level of learning style incompatibility/fundamental disagreement on what education should be).

 

I am finishing up Core 1 (now B), and we've really liked it in general. We're doing Core 2 (now C) next year for my son's second grade, in fact.

 

After that, I'm planning on dropping Sonlight because I have more kids coming and I want to have them study the same subjects as much as possible. Lord willing, I'll switch to Biblioplan for my oldest son's third grade so that I feel comfortable enough for it that teaching two children the next year will be a little smoother. (I do think that having had the spoon-feeding Sonlight provides for two years will have provided both my son and me a good grounding in what school is "supposed" to be like.)

 

That said, let me nitpick the things I really hated:

 

1.) We both hated the Usborne Book of Peoples of the World, which is the first history spine. Long, boring, and really, really abstract. I know there are people who love Usborne, and I will acknowledge that it has some very, very pretty pictures, but that book was just very hard to get into. When we moved on to A Child's History of the World, it was like a breath of fresh air. I have no idea why we had to suffer through Peoples of the World first, though.

 

I will acknowledge that the other Usborne books weren't quite as bad. Time Traveller, for instance, was much easier to skim by just reading an introductory paragraph or two, and then having my son find something interesting (or making him search for something interesting I'd found: "Can you find the thief in the market?" "Where's the colosseum?").

 

2.) At the same time, and for much longer, my son was reading The Beginner's Bible, which is the first book in their "second grade reading level" readers. Make no mistake, it's a great book, but I would have appreciated a little more of that one being broken up than just one one-week break for a book of poetry.

 

3.) The tips for how to cover the history in the instructor's guide (child should come up with five major points from the text) were just way, way too hard for a first grader (or at least my first grader)--this is the kid who seems to have trouble with the "tell me one thing you remember" in Writing with Ease, although that's finally improving. In fact, figuring out how to handle my son's retention and make it feel like he was accomplishing something was a major issue that was only resolved when I purchased History Scribe for some guided notebooking. (Note that that wouldn't have helped with Peoples of the World.)

 

//Nitpicking over.

 

I would like to clarify: As far as reading several things at once goes, several books are spread throughout almost the whole year: poetry (an anthology and a collection of Mother Goose that do last the whole year) and missionary books made up of discrete units (such as From Akebu to Zapotec, a description of cultures alphabetically arranged that do not have the Bible in their own language). To be honest, this has kept my kids from getting bored or frustrated with them. Once you've finished the two missionary books that are spread out, you start a pretty steady diet of George Muller, although he could certainly be finished quicker if you read him more than three days a week! Then there are history spines (A Child's History of the World) that are supplemented with other materials (Usborne books), just as many, many programs recommend and/or schedule. So usually during a week I was reading: the history spine (2-3 days), the supplemental material (the rest), a missionary story and a short paragraph on people who don't have the Bible for history. For read-alouds, we'd be covering whatever book we were reading and 3-5 poems, often fairly short. And finally, my son would be reading his book of the week to me.

[DC have trouble reading large numbers and we use MUS...]

I would go back again, watch the dvd lesson with your dc, do the problems without any worksheet and just the big number street poster and the blocks. We used a piece of paper to write the number on after we would build it with blocks. Then we would write a number and then build it, back and forth until we got it. I would also go over the tens place value. 1 tee, 2 tee, 3 tee, etc.. IMHO the way MUS teaches place value it genius. Spend as much time as your dc need and believe they will get it.

 

hth!

 

:iagree: Depending on the ages of your children, the Decimal Street paper and the manipulatives should work great. If you lost your "Decimal Street," you could always make your own. (Check out this post at the Math-U-See blog for an example.) There are several suggestions for "mixing it up" a little in the teacher guide for Primer, and presumably for Alpha, as well. (I knocked the Alpha teacher guide behind a tall bookshelf shortly after purchasing it, so I can't actually check the truth of this assertion.) My son loved the "windstorm" that would come through and displace all the residents of Decimal Street, along with being the "census taker" who would go along and knock on all the doors and ask for number of residents. There were suggestions on using flashcards and such in the book as well, I remember, but I was always too lazy to do them. (Hey, I'm too lazy to fish out my Alpha book from behind the bookcase after over a year, what do you expect?)