We started playing Ten Days with my oldest son last year, when he was also 7, but very comfortable with reading. (It's not like there's inappropriate content, or anything. And Ten Days is far more simple than several of the games my son likes playing with his father...)

My library separates out the "Step Into Reading" books (from Random House) into their own section. You may want to check out Levels 4 and 5. Level 4 is still a step up from Frog and Toad for difficulty, although the stories aren't divided into chapters. Some of these are mediocre (although more in the lower steps, honestly), some of them are so wonderful that Sonlight uses them as readers. For instance, my son has really loved Pompeii...Buried Alive! since he read it as part of Sonlight's Grade 2 Readers. The first "true" chapter book my son read that year was Clyde Bulla's The Sword in the Tree, which was definitely a challenge for him, but which he managed. (I think it was the last book of the year for Sonlight, designed to show your child that they can do more than they think. They go easier again, for a while, in Grade 3 Readers the next year.)

You may want to start a level down, at least, with R&S English, if you go that route, or even with R&S English 3 (Building a Strong Foundation)--that's where a lot of people start. A supplement I'd recommend checking out from the library (or watching on Youtube) is Schoolhouse Rock: Grammar Rock. No, it doesn't cover everything, but it really does help teach those parts of speech!

My husband calls Ticket to Ride Rummy, with a train theme. Which is not to say it isn't fun, but, like many awesome Euros, it isn't all that big on theme. Though it does help teach where all those cities are! Out of curiosity, is your husband an Empire Rails fan? I loved that game, when I had time and people to play it with. Oh, and edited to add: We own Ten Days in Africa and the U.S.A. We've only played the first yet, though; I'm saving breaking the second out for the school year (which we're starting next week).

Probably not the problem, but I think that The Magician's Nephew is actually very, very hard to get into as an introduction to Narnia. You've got a very unfamiliar world (Victorian England--even how the houses are connected, a major plot point early on, is kind of hard to figure out without a knowledge of row houses), an unpleasant situation (a sick, dying mother), and a very unlikeable yet dominant villain (the uncle). I'd have a kid start with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe instead. It's the first one Lewis wrote, and that whole generation of readers had no trouble following the series starting with it. Then again, the very title scared me off that book as a child (two out of three in that list are pretty scary!), so I didn't get into Narnia until I randomly read The Horse and His Boy. (Yes, I was a horse-crazy little girl, okay?) My mother didn't discover the series until she was in high school, and she started with Prince Caspian, and it didn't hurt her at all. So you might see if it's the particular book that doesn't appeal. Once your son is done with his Hunger Games glutting, that is. Just don't try starting with The Last Battle--that's probably the only one harder to get into than The Magician's Nephew!

FWIW, the Flashmaster has been a big hit with my oldest son. I got it for him because I hated drilling with flashcards as a student and I absolutely refuse as a parent. Making that more independent on my son's part helped me a lot. And yet, somehow, I love the flashcard aspect of All About Spelling. Yeah, I know I don't make any sense.

I've never seen the Keira Knightley version: the bits I saw of the *costuming choices* were enough to keep me far, far away. And why would I want to replace the perfection of the five-hour BBC version, anyhow? It's just that my sons probably won't even pretend to care for anything like that until they're dating. Better Off Dead is one of my husband's favorites, but I'm just not a big fan of Cusack. And I've never seen Hudson Hawk, Legally Blonde, or Pushing Daisies, and absolutely do not want to see at least the middle one there. Ha! I've never considered that particularly off. She's just so cold. Now, the scene leading up to it, with the bath, is a little off-color, I agree. But I honestly don't think my sons are old enough to really catch it; besides, they'd rather watch the chase scene ad nauseum.

Pretty much. That's the only way I know about it, after all! :lol:

Hey, if you're going to stop in Staunton for a play (and I heartily second that recommendation), may I recommend a nearby attraction that *is* historical? It's called the Museum of Frontier Culture, and it is, hands down, one of my favorite places to recommend (and visit, when I can). It's a little pricey, but well worth it, in my opinion.

Wow. It's funny how much I agree with you, except when I really don't. But I'll stick with the ones I really agree on. You listed Serenity twice (hee!). I second the Firefly part. (I don't know why I didn't like the movie quite as much, but I didn't.) And boy, do I second Galaxy Quest. (My husband's and my first date! What a winner!) I consider it the sci fi equivalent of The Princess Bride (which, of course, my sons already watch). As for What's Up, Doc? -- my sons already watch this. There isn't anything profane or unacceptable in content, and the chase scene is a big hit without being particularly violent. It's one of the few physical comedies I can really enjoy, because it isn't mean-spirited--kind of like Buster Keaton or something, you know? Other movies I'm waiting for my sons to grow up enough to watch: Holes. Even though this is a kid's movie, I think of it as more junior high than elementary. (The book is even more awesome, of course, but I was pleasantly surprised by how incredible the movie is in its own right.) Ladyhawke. Hey, it's a guilty pleasure! Star Trek: The Original Series. As a bonus, watching this will enable my sons to "get" a lot of the humor in Galaxy Quest, but the interest just isn't there, yet. Then again, they do love old Dr. Who. X-Men, Iron Man, Captain America, The Avengers, etc. All incredible movies, just way too violent for children. And okay, yes, I'm a major geek.

For one thing, gamers love it to make maps for various systems. That way, you can model people moving around or attacking in a room with many more options than the traditional square graph paper.

:iagree:I've only ever played Ten Days in Africa, but it's managed to actually teach me some geography. (I'm notoriously bad at geography.) I just stopped at the Out of the Box Publishing booth at Gencon on Friday and bought Word on the Street Junior; we'll see if that helps my son with his spelling. Watch out; their party games are much less educational, though extremely addicting. (I ended up picking up a copy of Snake Oil, too, actually.)

We're using that! First off, in case you hadn't noticed, there's a weekly plan provided by the publisher here. Unfortunately, it seems to schedule pretty much everything for Monday. Ouch. So here's what I ended up doing instead, or at least close: Every day: Do memory work with the verse. (I use a Scripture Memory System a la Simply Charlotte Mason, so I'm also reviewing older verses as we go.) On Monday: Read the story. Discuss theme and WHO IS GOD? On Tuesday: Read all or part of the story from the Bible or Bible story book, in our case Vos: we often read another portion or another source on Wednesday and/or Thursday. Go over the KEY FACTS and THINGS TO REMEMBER. On Wednesday: Complete WORKSHEETS. (My child could do this completely independently unless he didn't understand the instructions, and *loves* worksheets anyhow, which is part of why I went with this curriculum.) I would often check the worksheets for wrong answers Wednesday night or Thursday morning. On Thursday: Review WORKSHEETS: I focused on the wrong answers but read through all of them with him. On Friday: Take QUIZ. As you can see, this is definitely an adaptation of the schedule mentioned above, pretty much moving the "Key Facts" and "Things to Remember" sections to Tuesday so that we could jump right in to the story on Monday and give him some sort of background for the little bits of information that comprised them. Also, a lot of the review the publisher recommends for Thursday really is on the worksheet already. I hope this helps!

This is so depressing. I just had a nice, long post for you... and my computer ate it. ACK! I'll try to recreate it. So, although I haven't been able to find any printables for you, here's my suggestions: As a writer, you should only use quotation marks (or their cousin, the text block quote) if you are quoting exactly what a person (or written source) has said. Otherwise--for instance, if you want to summarize something someone said, or can't remember exactly how it was put but remember the gist--leave the quotation marks out of it, and modify the quote to read more easily. As a reader, when you see quotation marks, you know you are reading exactly what has been said by someone other than the writer you're reading (even if it's just one of their characters). But how do you make this clear? If I were you, I'd get a list (maybe one your son has already gone through) that includes both direct and indirect quotations, don't let your son look at it, and do a little acting. For example, here's a sentence: "She looked down her nose at him and said that she was the best princess ever!" Go ahead and look down your nose at your son, and repeat in your highest snooty tone, "That she was the best princess ever!" Then ask, "Does that make sense? Does it sound like something a princess would say?" You could help him figure out what the original direct quote probably was ("I am the best princess ever!") and then compare it with the indirect quote. First: the quotation starts with "that." That's almost a dead giveaway for indirect quotations, but it's not perfect, so make sure you include on your list both sentences containing direct quotes that actually start with it ("Mark claimed, 'That squirrel is staring at me.'") and indirect quotations that don't ("She asked him how many times he thought he was going to win."). Secondly, the speaker of the sentence is referring to herself in the third person. Unless you're talking about Doctor Doom, that's a pretty strong indication of an indirect quotation, too. Even royalty just uses the first person plural. One fairly archaic exception would be using "one" and "oneself" to talk about, well, oneself. Finally, the verb tenses are usually changed around some. There's a handy-dandy chart on this at this site that even includes some fun pictures and examples of both direct and indirect quotations. If your son isn't getting this, ask, "Do you think it's more likely that the princess would say, 'I was the best princess ever!' or 'I am the best princess ever!'?" And then, sometimes you just have to check for quotes. A test on direct and indirect quotes over at Zaner-Bloser includes this little gem: Marcus asked her which epic poem is considered the best by literature experts. This one we only know is not a direct quote because it doesn't have quotation marks (or a capital letter and question mark for the quote). Ouch! And so we end at the beginning: look for the quotation marks.

A lot of homeschoolers seem to like Drawing with Children. If you'd prefer the step-by-step simplified drawing style, you could check out Ed Emberley's Drawing Book of Animals. I have used neither of these, although my son loves Draw Write Now.

:iagree: You don't even have to cut the bottom edge; when you leave one seam each way (horizontal and vertical), it sticks on the corner of the page a lot better. I just get the really cheap page protectors from Staples. (The rest of the box is used as actual page protectors for .pdf print-outs, which I have for homeschooling and my husband has for his hobby.) Still, if you want the official ones you asked for, you can check out the Wipe Clean Worksheet Cover, available from Rainbow Resource. They're less than $2 apiece, and as long as you're ordering at least $50 worth of stuff from Rainbow Resource (which is usually even cheaper than Amazon for homeschooling books and textbooks), shipping is even free!

Chutes and Ladders? It actually helps more further on, because you're mostly doing double plus single digit addition, but on the other hand, my son loved it even before he "got there" with the addition, and I think it gave him a little further impetus to learn his addition. Plus, it is another very concrete way to show what adding actually *is*, which can help conceptually. The only negative is that *I* get sick of playing the game really fast. Still, you could look for that at yard sales and/or thrift stores to add it to your arsenal pretty cheaply.

Wow, thanks, RootAnn, for the information! Too bad I've been having trouble with my forum account and so didn't find this until now. I went ahead and bought it full price a month or so ago. I'm really looking forward to using this, since it seems really neat. Maybe I can hit the sale next year, for the second book, though. Here's hoping!

I have to second loving the laminated fold-up map from Sonlight. It's got the U.S. on one side and the world on the other. I have actually managed to learn some geography by being forced to find the places and label them on the map. (Geography just plain does not stick in my head.) The only place in my house where we have room for the humongous laminated world map I bought before starting Sonlight is in the basement, where it never gets looked at. So, yeah, I really, really love the Sonlight fold-up map.

Well, if you want a basic scope and sequence to make sure you aren't missing anything fundamental, you could try looking for that, and seeing what state guidelines have to say, whether yours or others. Here, for instance, is the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools' (North Carolina) idea of what should be taught in each grade, K through 5th; it's followed up by 6th through 8th. (Links are to the Google Quick View versions of the PDF files.) This is honestly the first thing Google pops up on a search for "English language arts scope and sequence" (although my first search term was "scope and sequence literary terms"), and it seems pretty comprehensible and comprehensive. If you used this, you wouldn't have to worry about having missed something vital for your children's knowledge in elementary or junior high. The first few pages of each list linked above, after the one-page introduction, are the "READING" section, which is what you are most interested in, right? (I'm just ignoring the "WRITING," etc., sections.) In this, the "THEMES" section is one I would be most tempted to ignore, since that's the most "classroomy" thing there. You could look through the entire list of themes to get an idea what to talk about for your current book, though. The "GENRE" and particularly the "LITERARY TERMS" sections are much more useful, while the "READING PROCESS" section is kind of vaguely interesting but not terribly helpful. But since the "LITERARY TERMS" section is the one that I think most people are discussing here, let's talk about it. You could use it to evaluate any more "piecemeal" program, such as individual guides for your books. Do they cover everything listed? You could also use it to create your own LA program, or at least customize one that you already have. What should your student know cold by the end of the year? In this particular scope and sequence, these are the "Define and identify" items, which they should have been working on for several years already. Make sure you hit this for every book possible, and move toward not needing to ask leading questions. For fifth grade (the subject of this post, right?) these would be: Characters Setting Plot Sequence of events Conflict Resolution Main Idea/Details Note that this is somewhat genre-specific: while "who" (characters) and "where" (setting), fits practically any genre, whether "what" is "main idea/details" or "plot/sequence of events" (which includes "conflict" and "resolution") depends upon whether it's a news article or a novel. Anyhow, the next bit of the "LiTERARY TERMS" section--"Continue to develop" is stuff that your child would have been exposed to already, if you'd used this scope and sequence in previous years, but that are still "works in progress." This is a pretty lengthy list, for the fifth grade, but you can see how it's even more genre-specific: Point of View Fact and opinion Cause & Effect Italicized Words Rhyme Rhythm Repetition Figurative Language: Simile Metaphor Imagery Author’s choice of words Stanza Verse Dialogue Personification Exaggeration I'd like to point out that a good half of the list is either poetry-specific or very, very easy to teach with poetry. Rhyme, rhythm, repetition, simile, metaphor, imagery, stanza, verse, personification: I'd definitely use poetry (which is all ABOUT an author's choice of words) for many of these. Some people like to do a poetry unit; some like to do "tea and poetry for Tuesday"; some (like me, so far, since I use Sonlight) like to read poetry a few times a week. So, talk about poems you like, and why you like them. Are there a lot of "crunchy," "whistly," etc. sounds, (which is one kind of repetition)? For "author's choice of words," how would the sound of the poem change if you substituted a synonym or two? (I still remember an exercise from my high school AP class that did just that to an Ogden Nash poem. I also still remember the Ogden Nash poem.) Can your child look at poetry and try to determine its rhyme scheme? Try to introduce each of the above terms (the ones your child doesn't already know) in depth with a poem, and then every time you read a new poem for the week (or whatever), see if your kid(s) can spot the already-learned literary devices used. It's not like it'd be impossible to cover point of view, dialogue, and exaggeration with poetry, either, though it'd probably be more simple to do so with novels. Italicized words should actually be covered in grammar, in my opinion, although you can certainly talk about why things are italicized when you come across them in literature; cause and effect should probably be introduced in logic (or maybe science), and discussed in history and science, but you could talk about what motivates people to act in a particular way in a story, or why the heavy flooding in the story causes certain kinds of problems, etc., I guess. Separating fact and opinion (as opposed to fact and fiction), again, is something that is probably more suited to nonfiction, much like the "main idea/details" above. And then the last category in the scope and sequence, "Become aware of," has concepts you're supposed to introduce this year. For fifth grade, these are: Idioms Onomatopoeia I leave introducing these as an exercise to the reader. :p

Wow, I somehow missed this current thread when I posted this. I'm still curious, though.

So many people love Cuisenaire rods, and I want to know if they have any particular benefits over the Math-U-See manipulatives beyond, presumably, price. Since we already own and occasionally use the Math-U-See manipulatives, I do understand the basic benefits of manipulatives. (And, I mean, some people use Legos, which makes loads of sense to me. Toothpicks, not so much, because my kids would be unbundling those suckers and sticking them unpleasant places at the first opportunity.)

All About Spelling. Math-U-See. Prufrock Press logic books (we are specifically using Primarily Logic). Rod & Staff English (i.e., grammar). I gotta agree with Five in a Row, for kindergarten, supplemented with Homeschool Share.

I am not a terribly knowledgeable person, particularly not about math, (although I enjoyed it,) but for some reason, I couldn't resist contributing to this thread. Maybe a few more things to do with your daughter might help? I totally agree with the those who suggest playing games, although I don't recognize many of the game names. Here's some you may already have the resources for: Get a Rook, Uno, or Sklpbo deck, pull out the "funny" cards, and play a variation of Twenty-One with it. (Feel free to pick the number--you could stick with twenty-one, or go for something entirely different.) Don't let her count individual squares in Chutes and Ladders--make her add the number on the die to the number her piece is standing on. (Alternatively, just play the game and point out her beginning and ending numbers, so she can see that, conceptually, she is adding.) Or, as ljswriter suggested, you could deal (or have her deal) with the word problem itself. First, underline the question (which is usually at the end). Find the "key words" and the numbers, write them out in sign and numeral fashion, and cross out what you've replaced. Look at what's left to make sure you haven't missed anything important to the question. Oddly enough, my very mathy brother (he's now working on his doctorate in computer sciences) actually needed my help with word problems on the "group quizzes" that were encouraged by our discrete math teacher, although he was far quicker than me on content. He'd come up with an answer, and my job was to say, "Great, but the question being asked is about this, not that," and actually answer the question. Getting your child to look at the question of a word problem first is a very good habit to get into.

Honestly, the major one I think about is class size. (Since a smaller class size allows for more customization, etc., they're all linked anyhow, in my mind.) The reason that the class size argument comforts me is that it makes me think that, by taking my son out of the public school, I'm actually doing those kids a favor, as well as my son. One less student for the harried teacher, right? Win, win! The argument I hear back is that that's one less good student, with supportive, involved parents, who could really help a school. In my opinion, that's complete nonsense. I'm not in it to support a SCHOOL, particularly not financially, which is what it always sounds like to me. The fact that a school would insert itself between me and my son, and then expect to get attention from me because I want a good education for my son... There's just something off about that, in my opinion. And as for removing my son's presumably beneficial influence from the class... Once I get over cracking up about that, considering what his "influence" with his siblings is, I would like to ask how, exactly, he is supposed to be "contributing" when the ideal child apparently sits still and shuts up. Cooperative learning may be big in other countries, but it really hasn't caught on well in American public schools, perhaps in part because of (you guessed it!) class size. (Not to mention, as loads of people have already pointed out, that the peer influence definitely doesn't run only one way.) So, this really didn't have much to do with the original purpose of this thread, but that's the cause I find most comforting because, hopefully, I'm helping more than just my son by removing him from school. On a related note: my state apparently doesn't have any problems with parents of somewhat "disadvantaged" children removing them from the school. When homeschool lobbyists pointed out that lowering the bar from 50% to 33% on yearly standardized tests would save a whole LOT of money on remedial teaching, that requirement was adjusted really quickly. I find that kind of funny, and really practical.