...as written? I mean whole curriculum here. does anyone use WTM AS WRITTEN no tweaks here or there? Or SL as written? Or Winterpromise? Or Ambleside Online? Or..insert curriculum of choice here..? AND (just to stimulate discussion...not that we need to on this site :tongue_smilie:) would it be a good thing if one did follow the curriculum as written without tweaking for individual children? Have fun with this one. ;) Willow.

:lol:

I would like a very large book token so I could splash out on classic kids literature, historical fiction etc. I don't know about the US but here in NZ our library seems to be full of the modern stuff, only a small percentage of which I actually like them to read....they don't like it either! Books are sooooooooo expensive here. Willow.

Great idea.....do you think people will recognize me if I call myself Salix? Willow.

Well, although the post was tongue in cheek, ds actually LOVED LOVED LOVED the story in LOF, but he was unable to get any of the maths in this manner. In the end he asked could he just read the story and ignore the maths and go back to MUS. I think if you are not a maths person it moves too fast, and has insufficient explanations. That said, it would be great for review, learn the material in another programme and then return to LOF to review in a fun manner. The algebra book and above have extra practice books which may help, but I cannot comment on these as we blew out in fractions. :tongue_smilie:

Life of Fred maths or Royal Fireworks Grammar. Nor does ds. Shall we leave the board in shame......;) Willow.

Yep, we are doing negatives right now, and its 'in the hole'. The manipulative have holes in the back showing that you have not got these items. I'm not explaining it very well, but suffice it to say 'I' understand now! Ds thinks negatives are easy after doing these lessons. You could email MUS, but I wouldn't worry. MUS is clear and well explained. After, say, gamma, we don't often use the manipulatives, but it is good to see them on the video. The fraction manipulatives were excellent. For zeta and pre-alg (negatives are in pre-alg) you need the decimal inserts.

I also have used both. TT did NOT work for us at all, but I see you have been using it already. Our problem was the spiral approach, ds would forget what he was supposed to have learnt for that lesson by the time we got to question 12 or 13. He had totally forgotten by the next day, so we would be teaching (reviewing) 5 or 6 lessons every day. With MUS we stay on the lesson until he masters it. Generally I would say stick with what works for you. If you like TT and it works for you, why change?

Gosh I didn't know anyone else had this! Weird! I cannot tolerate sugar, and if I eat it with grains (We are gluten free as 2 of 3 kids are coeliac) then disaster! The weirdest thing is my temperature plummets, sometimes as low as 34.5C (37 C is normal), I get tired, shaky, brain freeze....and exercise makes things much much worse. I thought it was just me..... Now I don't eat sugar, honey, agave, any sweeteners, and I am careful with fruit. I love veges thankfully. Willow

Ambleside Online, non text book, free, great old literature, rigorous standards. Also there are various yahoo groups to help. I know there is a bit more work than open and go programmes, but i find i tweak those anyway, so i might as well have a looser programme in the first place! Willow

Sorry this is going to sound blunt, but be careful Do not drive them so far away they run off and join a cult. They must know you love them whatever they wear, however they date. Or they will find that love elsewhere, in a love bombing session from a cult. Cults are real, they are out there, and they seem great to your teen when they are against everything you believe in. yes this is the voice of experience. Willow.

This year (our school year runs Jan-Dec) so far I have spent less than NZ$100, I do not anticipate spending more than NZ$150. I think we HS well. We are using Ambleside, many of the resources are online. I already have MUS through to Geom from the olders but MEP is free if necessary. We read online to save printing costs. If the book is not online, is expensive to buy and I do not already have it, I skip and substitute. I also carry a piece of paper with the Ambleside booklists so i can buy in 2nd hand bookshops and garage sales for the years ahead. I keep $20 in a special envelope in my purse so I can always grab a bargin without upsetting the budget. I also have the best investment I have ever made, a book called Homeschool your Child for Free, by Lauramaery Gold and Joan Zielinski. This is full of things you only need an internet connection for, and you obviously have one of these! The BBC skillwise and bitesize websites are great, but there are so many others, you would be staggered. yes, it is lovely to have homeschool specific curriculum, but it is perfectly possible to give your child a great education with just a Bible (or religious book of your own faith) plus a library card. Most of the great minds of the past had access to the classic books and not a lot more! It may seem contrary to the way things are going in the homeschool world, but I rather think all the curriculum is getting in the way of education. We begin to belive that if only we have the right curriculum, the right co-op, the right outside class, everything will drop into place! If only! ;) Sorry this has got long. Willow.

Happy new year, its been 2010 for 6 hours already here......

Thank you. Am onto these suggestions.

Any great reads for british History for the older (grade 7-8) set? We have Our Island Story, but would like to complement it with something a little more 'meaty' Thanks Willow.

Just seen your reply (must have been typing at the same time!) Yes, we are better with chalk than markers too. Get someone else to paint the boards for you, and bring them in when they have off-gassed.

I agree, unless it is part of a certain 'look' I would make one or paint the wall. Ds has some spare MDF and I am going to make 2 smallish portable chalkboards for school. Solvent based markers (white board markers) trigger asthma in our house. Black board paint is cheap, but allow for 4 coats (they tend to say 3 but 4 is better) Willow.

He's not 7 yet, so don't panic. My youngest (now 13) wrote almost nothing until he was 11. It was like pulling teeth. As he was the youngest and I had teenagers going through HS high school, he got left alone, we did stuff verbally, I got one of the girls to write his responses etc. Then when he was 11 the girls were entering a national writing contest. He wanted to enter. So I set him up with the laptop and he wrote and wrote. To the best of my knowledge it was the very first time he had ever written a sentence unaided! He did a spelling check, and one of the girls helped him with spelling so...er...creative.... the spellchecker could not get it, and we sent it off. He came 2nd in his age group in the country! :D Now he had done grammar verbally and with cards (Winston grammar) and had the benefit of the girls education going on all around him, and had dictated stories for me or the girls to write out, but this was his very first attempt at independent writing. He had also (of course) played computer games so was conversant with the computer keyboard. He still doesn't like to write, and is learning keyboarding instead. BTW he is an Aspie too.

This one is for you! Is there something school related,. curriculum, or parents help homeschool book, that you would be overjoyed to find in YOUR Christmas stocking this year? Something that makes your life easier, or offers the help you have been craving? Myself, I would like a really good homeschool specific planner!

I am schooling an over 10 and I only have one dc left at home so I think this is easy and doable. I would do 45 mins maths and 45 min of writing (this would include re-drafting, and therefore spelling grammar etc, as appropriate) this leaves half an hour for anything else I would wish to concentrate on, probably science, but also things that came up during unschooling that I wished to cover more formally. For the unschooling rest of the day, strewing is not so useful with a teenager. I would ban computer games until 4pm when he could play games from then until dinnertime. No games after dinner. We have no TV anyway. This would leave a vast tract of empty time. We normally go to the community garden and he enjoys this and we have a big library just 10 mins walk away. I would leave the rest of the day empty and watch him get bored and then begin to fill the time with his own interests. Actually this sounds rather fun..... Willow.

A tramp is a tramp, regardless of size. However the people who sell rebounders would be sure to say otherwise, and you need their special super dooper rebounder.....

So ds13 is now officially a gifted aspie. Now what? Help! Any advice, web resources, must have books? The good feeling is that now I know that neither I or my son is going mad. We just didn't know what was going on! Willow

I don't like RS4K. Too expensive for what is in it...which isn't much. Too prescriptive. We are now using a UK text book from Cambridge University Press called Balanced Science aimed at GCSE (ages 15/16 I think?) with ds 13. The text is quite simple, but provides a great 'jumping off' point. so we read a page or so about, say, catalysts, and then we talk through their questions and then we set off to find out more about catalysts in industry, or in the kitchen etc. Or not, if catalysts don't fire his enthusiasm, then we just move onto the next. Interestingly it mixes biology, chemistry and physics in one book. We like this, it keeps us interested! I agree with the other poster who said there is no perfect curriculum out there. Ds is my youngest, and more and more I use school textbooks as jumping off points for our own research.

Unless you need the 'piece of paper' for some reason, I would quit. This is just my view, but here we go. In the old days the teacher held the knowledge, (in the very old days there were very few books...in more recent old days there were books, but these where expensive and impossible to locate outside of major universities.) So the teacher held the knowledge and you needed the teacher to access the knowledge. In modern times we have the internet, and also many of the books via the internet. The knowledge is in the public domain. What you need is the knowledge of how to navigate the internet and how to discern and cross reference facts to ensure that ARE facts. (i.e. never trust wiki!) Therefore we no longer need the teachers (sorry teachers!) Things help, a literate peer group studying similar things is great...but you can find this via the net, or start your own either in RL or online etc. But society still tends to recognise the paper rather than the learning, but I think this will change, it already is in computer circles, music, performing arts, fine arts etc. Got to go...just as well this is getting long!

Quakers?