Thanks so much! I just looked into it and it looks intriguing. Have you used it? Arbor Center for Teaching is actually only about 15 minutes from me. I may have to get in touch with them.

My 7th grader will be finishing MM7 this spring. I know that it is considered prealgebra and my other son was able to go into Algebra just fine after completing it. I really don't feel like he is ready to move on to Algebra though and could really benefit from another year of prealgebra. We've loved Math Mammoth though. What would you recommend looking at for 8th grade? Thanks for any help!

Our time of planning and dreaming is almost over! In one months, we leave on our 3 month road trip around the U.S. Going to be one epic adventure for our family. Although most of the trip will be just myself and our 3 boys, we will have my dad or husband joining us at various parts. If you want to follow our adventures, I set up a blog at www.roadtrippingboys.wordpress.com. Anyone else done something like this? Feel free to give some advice! (edited to give correct link)

I really appreciate all the input. I'd love to think about just forgoing all the formal stuff, but with the high school requiring the classes for him to play golf, we need to keep up on some of it. We are already using this summer to catch up from the rather traumatic September - December we just went through. So not a lot of wiggle room there. We are planning on visiting a lot of parks, hiking, science museums, etc. along the way. Three months is a lot of time to be on the road. :) I'm going to look into some of the GC on audio. See? It's just all fragmented right now and I want to get a plan in place. It's just how I roll.

We're going to be heading out on a 3 month road trip around the U.S. in the fall and right now I'm in the planning stages of it. We're in Oregon and planning on heading all the way to Key West and then up the eastern seaboard to see many of the sites affiliated with the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. I'm not too concerned about my 6th and 8th graders, but I do want to keep my 10th grader on track. We will have time to do some school work on the road and most mornings. So, what would you bring with? We've been using TOG for our history/lit studies, but I'm not bringing all that with. For my 10th grader: (this is what I was thinking, but I'm open to suggestions) Notgrass government (any other easy to implement government courses?) AOPS Intermediate Algebra Progeny Press Literature Guides Spanish 2 I don't want to overload him with work, but I also don't want him to feel like he is falling behind. He plays on the golf team at the public high school and needs to meet eligibility requirements. Thanks!

Last fall, we had my youngest son, then 9 years old, in for a full, complete eye exam. I have to say, a part of me was just really hoping that he needed glasses. Another part of me already knew that there was a bigger issue going on. He is 10 and it's been years of helping him navigate, so deep down I knew something was amiss. We spent over an hour with the doctor doing all sorts of vision games with him to try and figure it out. She came back finally to say, the good news is that he has perfect vision and the "bad"news is that she thinks he has a form of dyslexia or other processing issue. She said that she could send us for VT, but felt that was too expensive for what we would get out of it and that she recommended putting the money into resources, curriculum, etc. to help him figure out how to work with it and through it.

Our boys try and find everything on their own using an Atlas or a Bible Atlas. If they can't find what is needed, then they can check in with the teacher's map.

Are you looking for something secular or are you open to something a bit more religious? We use Total Health and it's been good for us as we look at Health as physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

Thanks for all the responses! I should probably print this thread out so I can refer back to it regularly. I think that part of the issue for me is that I'm definitely a list maker and love to check things off that list, but sometimes it's tiring to always be working that way. However, It's hard to let go of that mentality and just relax with the kids. I like the idea of actually planning the time off though. It kind of seems wrong to have to plan to have fun, but it might be just what I need. Oh, and the boys have a ton of fun in their lives, just not usually with me. I'm too busy "getting things done."

I have a hard time feeling like we are falling behind if we take day(s) off, but I'm really ready to just have some time to play with my kids. I miss the fun that happens when they are younger. My boys are 14, 11, and 10 and I feel like I'm just too serious most of the time. How do you do fun and still get the work done????

We did actually take him in for a full examination as we were really, really hoping he just needed glasses. It was amazing to watch everything they did at the exam! I never knew that there were so many tests to evaluate vision. I do appreciate all the advice with it. I'm going between IEW and WWE. I think my hubby would happier with WWE since the cost is just a bit less.

I keep looking at WWE and I think that might be the way to go. Any advice on which level to start him off in? Or should I just start him at the beginning and cruise through it until he naturally slows down? The TOG assignments just seem to not give enough guidance for him. This weeks assignment was to write a compare/contrast paper. I'm finding that he is struggling just to complete a sentence, let alone a whole paper. I'm not feeling like a good homeschooler right now knowing that my own child has fallen through the cracks. How he made it this far before I really paid attention that he was having problems? i just don't know.

I think it really depends on the kid. For my almost 10 year old, he needs that repetition in order for something to really get into his brain. We switched to FLL this year for him and it's the first time a grammar program is sticking for him and he's not dreading it.

My youngest son absolutely loves AAS. We do use all the tiles on a portable white board so that we can sit on the floor and work. It is teacher intensive though. The books are broken up into steps, rather than lessons and we just work through each step for about 15 minutes at a time until we finish it. Some Steps take a couple days and others much longer. My older two are much more natural spellers and just didn't need a program like this, but I'm learning a lot from it as well.

I think he would do better with something more specific and bite sized. He'll do anything I ask without complaint, but I'm just not seeing any improvement in his writing and it's not getting any easier for him.