My 2nd grader had a hard time with that too. I couldn't understand how he didn't get it. LOL I'm just glad that we're past that section. ;) He seems to get everything else okay. He wines a bit, hates word problems--hates everything, actually. He hates school in general. LOL But at least I'm not pulling my hair out when it comes to math now. The week or so we spent on those time pages was horrible!

I've been doing NaNoWriMo for a few years now and my daughter does it too. She started in 1st grade. It's awesome to see how much she's grown, writing wise, by reading her stories. Crazy! I tend to gain weight in November, and it has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. LOL

We use MCT and are Christians. I do not believe that everything we use has to be from a Christian perspective. The parts of speech and parts of a sentence stay the same, regardless of religion. We do History and Science from a Christian perspective, but Math and Grammar, I don't see the importance in it being Christian-based. We haven't gotten into the poetry book yet, but I've read through it and love the way it's presented and nothing I've seen so far has me balking at it. We use WWE for writing, LoE for spelling (which also touches on grammar, but we don't use it for that), and we use various books along with the McGuffy Eclectic readers for reading. We switched to MCT this year. We started out with my DD (4th grade) doing Voyages in English and my DS (2nd grade) doing LLATL. My 4th-grader was bored and hated ViE and she aced the vocabulary test, so I decided to look for something else and fell in love with MCT. When my 2nd-grader saw the books, he asked to do it too. He's doing great in it, but he goes through it a bit slower than my 4th-grader. He gets it though, and that, along with him enjoying it, is what matters to me. He's happy, he's getting it, and it's great to not have him complain about having to do LA each day (he didn't complain about LLATL this year, but we used A Beka (Christian-based) last year and he'd cry and whine about having to do it). Oh, both my kids are doing the Island level.

My second grader is doing: MM 2A/2B with LoF sprinkled in WWE2 Michael Clay Thompson Island level (He LOVES this) SOTW 1 and MOH 1 together (Ancients) Apologia Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures A Beka Writing with Phonics Logic Puzzles In a few weeks We're going to start LoE Essentials with him and his younger brother (waiting for my Kindergartener to get up-to-speed before beginning)

My only thought is don't jump into blending three letters together, start with only two. They don't have to make words, just blend... My older kids used A Beka, and even though we aren't using that with our third, I have an old Kindergarten Blend book from A Beka and I've been going over it with my Kindergartener. it takes each consonant and blends it with the short sound of each vowel (except for Q, which is only blended with A, E, I, and O because U is needed with the Q). Anyway, we go consonant-by-consonant and go through blending each one with each short vowel sound, and then move onto the next...Once we've gone through all the consonants (should finish today), then we'll start taking these two-letter blends and adding a sound at the end to form CVC words. I didn't start using the blend book with my kindergartener until I realized that jumping into CVC words from the get-go just was too much. He needed the transition. Once I realized that, I pulled out the blend book and he's been doing fine. He gets excited when he gets them right and he looked ahead in the book and saw some CVC words and said he couldn't wait to get to that page. ;)

My house has become a disaster since I started homeschooling last year. I also work a 40-hour (many times more) job from home, and do direct sales (would love to quit that 40-hour job and only do direct sales). Anyway, I realized I can't do it all. So I hired a cleaning lady. ;)

Thanks everyone. All your replies have helped. My DS does hate to write and with word problems, getting him to write down what he has "9" of has been enough of a struggle than to also get him to write out the equation. LOL I think for now, I'll make him write out his work for anything he gets wrong or randomly just have him verbally explain how he got an answer every once in a while. He does talk out loud (not fully, more under his breath) when he does his word problems, so I do hear how he gets his answers most of the time. Once he starts getting into multi-step word problems, I'll make sure he writes out his work. My DD is in MM4 and I make her show her work. She hates having to do it, but she has already seen the benefit of it. Thanks so much!

I screwed myself because I took advantage of the offer, but misunderstood the instructions. It said to use the link below, and the link below was the normal link, not the HSBC link, so I can't get them at the HSBC price. Ugh. I contacted the spaceboards people, but they haven't replied. :( I lose nothing, by not buying anything or redeeming my $25. Oh well.

Voyages in English does this as well. Each writing chapter has a final writing project the student has to do and they use an example from another "kid" and show the first draft, then it goes through the editing process with that same writing throughout the rest of the editing process, showing the mistakes and how to fix them.

A Beka is like this too--at least in the younger years, though I assume it follows the same format through the higher grades too.

We're using MM 2A/2B for my 2nd-grade son. The teaching, itself, helps them to do addition in their heads. When he gets to the word problems, he does them in his head and just writes the answer. I hate to make him write out his problem since he's getting them all correct, and the text is teaching him to do it in his head, but I'm so used to having to "show" my work...it's making me feel as if he's doing it wrong, even though he talks out loud and I know exactly how he got his answer, and he's doing it okay. I guess I'm just afraid that he'll end up in college and fail math because he doesn't show his work...should I get him into the habit now, or should I just let him go along as he is, since MM does teach him to do it in his head... What do you do?

We do Grammar Island every day, but we don't do a lot of pages each day. Sometimes it's just a few pages. We don't go to the next page until my DS has a good grasp on what the current page is teaching. My DD also does Grammar Island, but she goes at her own pace. She seems to be getting it without any problems and is almost done with Grammar Island all together. My DS and I were going too slow for DD, but she goes too fast for DS, so we go at different speeds. I have found that my DS has a bit of trouble at times, but it's usually if we haven't opened the book in a couple of days due to whatever interrupted school the day before. When we do it every day, he doesn't have many problems at all. We also do Mad Libs a lot and I get books out of the Library that discuss the different parts of speech in fun ways. Oh, and I let them watch School House Rock videos while I'm making lunch. I would just keep going over what your child doesn't get and not progress until he/she does. Take a break from this book and check out books in the Library. I actually got a book the other day from Amazon that looks good too. I forget the name, but it's colorful and fun, and is about the different parts of speech. I was scared to use MCT after reading horror stories, but I find that if we take it page-by-page and discuss everything until my son knows what he's just learned, then we're good. We haven't had any problems with it so far. We do go slowly though, so maybe that's the drawback...

We're using A Helping Hand's State study and love it. You can do it at any pace you want. We've chosen to do all 50 states in two years, so we do a state a week, and when we come to our state, we'll do a 6-week study on it. So far, we've only covered three states -- start our fourth state tomorrow -- but we review the dates the states entered the union (they teach the states in the order they joined the union) and the state capitals. We also make a meal or dish that is characteristic of each state each week. If you don't want to take two years to go through the curriculum, they have schedules for finishing in a year, etc. You pick which speed is good for you. Oh, and we're doing the state study in conjunction with the state geography study, also by A Helping Hand. It's very interesting to see why the states are shaped the way they are, etc. Very interesting stuff. We also do have Stack the States, which they love, but they also look forward to our state study each week too.

My DD did Abeka through 3rd grade and we switched her to Math Mammoth 4A/B this year. Even the private school we used to send our kids to changes from Abeka to something else in the 4th grade (This is for both Math and Science). My DD hasn't had any problems transitioning to MM, and neither has my DS, who went from Abeka 1st grade to MM 2A/B. Angie

Wow. This is exactly what I was going to write. My 4th grader will pick up her books over the weekend and work on her stuff without me telling her to do it. But she also won't ask for help when she needs it, and instead will skip those problems until what she calls "later" (I call it "never"). She has good intentions, but she's like me. She'll forget about it. LOL She's so close to being ready to be on her own and do her own thing, but I think there's something to be said about having a "mentor" to ask questions of and bounce ideas off of. I keep some of her stuff set up so that she has to do it with me. I thought we'd do her LA together since I got MCT's Island for her to do, but she doesn't want to do it with me. I told her that as long as she's comprehending (and I constantly ask her questions about what she's going over -- I'm doing it with my DS7, so I know what she should know), and so far, so good. Anyway...My DS7--my 2nd grader--is a different story. I don't think he'll ever get to a place where he'll be independent enough to sit down and do his work without me having to tell him to transition to the next thing, etc. He HATES school (his words, not mine). He hates all school. And he hates his teacher. :001_huh: Oh well, such is life. I gave him the option to go to public school, and he said he hated public school more than home school, so we'll see... Oh, and my Kindergartener, well, he's a manipulator. I don't think I'll ever want him to work on his schooling alone. LOL I wish I knew how to handle him. I need to find a book on how to raise a manipulator into a fine, young man...

As for how much we pay to homeschool: I'm a WAHM, but I did the math to see if I could quit, and we'd have to cut back on spending money on things that we "want", but as for necessities, we'd be fine, and I make well over 40K a year, so I don't see it as though we're spending that. As another poster said, it's really the cost of private school versus the cost of curriculum for me. Buying my own curriculum and homeschooling is far cheaper.

Oh, man! LOVE that egg-blending idea! Now I need to find some plastic eggs. Where in the world will I find them at this time of year? LOL So glad you found something that works! My kids told me the other day that they wanted me to have a prize bag, where they could get something from it after each subject they finished without complaining, whining, or procrastinating. Little things, like tootsie rolls and stuff like that. I just need to run to the store and get on that. LOL It was their idea, so I hope it works! I did buy special pens for them to do their work. They worked the first few days and then the novelty wore off. :( We have some really cool pens and pencils though. We have tons of smencils because of this too. They loved using smencils for a while until the novelty wore off. lol Thanks for the egg blend idea!

We've changed a few things too, and I feel guilty when I look at the money I spent for the curricula that we ended up ditching, but my kids are happy with the changes. My DD9 started out with Voyages in English for Grammar/Writing. She'd done the 3rd grade ViE last year, and I figured it would work for 4th grade as well. But I didn't listen to her when she told me how much she hated it. One week in, she had aced the Voyages in Vocabulary pre-test and I started looking for something else for vocab, but ended up finding an entire new grammar/Writing curriculum in MCT's Island. My DS7 was loving LLATL's Red book. It was so different from last year. He was happy when we worked on it, smiling, laughing...it was great. But then he saw the MCT Island books that my DD9 had just gotten in and he asked if he could do them too. So, I started reading through it with him, going at a slower pace than with my DD9, and he loves them. I feel guilty because he did like LLATL. Can I actually just drop it? I don't have the time for him to do both though, they are both teacher intensive. He would need me, and I don't have the time...Ugh. Decisions, decisions... We found that we don't have time to do everything I had planned out. We were doing a writing workshop, but it just wasn't clicking. I'm thinking of doing it in the summer. Something to keep us going with a structured day, but not a full course load. I think it would make them better writers, but it just doesn't fit this year, so we dropped it. Also, I've dropped Apologia's Who Is God. I'm going to have my DD9 do it on her own, independently, but it was taking too much of a chunk out of our days. Oh, and My DS5, he did the first half of Singapore's Early Bird Math last year and so I started him on B this year, with the idea to move him into Math Mammoth 1A the second half of the year, but he's bored with it and so I printed out MM 1A this weekend and he'll start it tomorrow. I think he can do it. I looked through the first month-worth of work and I know he can do it. We may have to go slower than if he were in 1st grade, but it makes better sense for us... You aren't alone. I just hope my husband doesn't catch wind to all my mind changing because these decisions are costing us more money...

Thank you so much! I want to teach my kids via immersion too and I had no idea how to get started. I bought a book that came with a CD and it teaches phrases that are commonly used in conversation, but I have no idea how to implement it. Your blog will help a lot! Thank you!

We're supposed to do school tomorrow, but my DH, who is okay with us home schooling, teased the kids, telling them that none of the other kids have to do school tomorrow. So now my kids are revolting and my husband just sits there and laughs. We will do school. I have to work tomorrow (work full time from home). I only have to do a half day, so I'll be done at 7:00 am and then we'll hit the books. I plan to make it a fun day, but we'll get everything done. My husband, btw, is in the dog house right now. :(

I am very much a Young Earther. The Mystery of History 1 book explains everything very well. A great book to get from the library is "Dry Bones and Other Fossils". This is a young Earth viewpoint and went along very well with how Mystery of History explains things. Use the Bible. You will find references to dinosaurs in the Bible itself. As a Christian, we should always look to see if the Bible supports a theory. Best of luck to you! Oh, and I read secular books about Dinosaurs to my kids. When they start saying how many millions of years old the dinosaurs are, we all laugh and talk about how dinosaurs were on the earth when people were, that they were on the arc, and that the Earth isn't that old, so how could dinosaurs be? Yes, they know what the theory of evolution is. It would be wrong of me to not expose them to it, but they know it's all hogwash. ;)

We loved that book too. I'm going to have to check out that "Motel of the Mysteries" book. Another book we've enjoyed is "Dry Bones and other Fossils". My kids have gotten a lot out of these two books alone.

I have the schedule in my hand...I just received my books on Friday. 1. Do Grammar Island first. 2. Begin Building Language after you finish Part One, Parts of Speech, of Grammar Island. 3. Begin Practice Island after the whole text of Grammar Island is complete. 4. Begin Sentence Island once four-level analysis is strong, as seen in the practice sentence (my notes: Under the description of Sentence Island on the front side of the page, he says to do Practice Island for at least two weeks before starting Sentence Island). 5. Begin Music of the Hemispheres after Sentence Island is complete, to continue the exploration of the sound of sentences. Hope that helps!

I wish my kid would go through two of those a day. Man! My 7-year-old HATES to read. He cries when I tell him he has to pick a book and read for 15 minutes. I stopped telling him how many pages because he can read, he just hates it, so he'll read those pages as fast as he can and be done. I give him a 15-minute time period now, and he gets more done, but if his time end with one sentence left in a chapter, he will not finish that one sentence. Ugh!!!! I have no idea what is next though. My oldest is an advanced reader. In second grade she was reading Pride and Prejudice...I have no idea what is normal. LOL

I vote Laptop. We own two desktops and three laptops and I'm NEVER on either of the desktops. I like the freedom of being in any room in the house with a laptop. We have wireless mouses for our laptops and we can print to our printers from them as well. Everything is wireless now-a-days...I say go laptop!