Thanks for this. I'm not going to try and get it done within the first half of the year now. I'll let my DD pace it herself. She is advanced in LA, which has been a problem with figuring out what books to have her read and stuff (books at her reading level usually have content not good for her age). Heck, why do I even mention reading level? She can read my books and understand them just fine without any comprehension problems. I just don't want her exposed to certain content at her age... DD scanned over the books for Island last night and was excited. She had just gotten home from a birthday party and it was past her bedtime and she asked if she could take one and start reading it now. LOL I told her no, that she had to go to bed. I wish all my kids were eager to read and learn.

Tell me about it! I try to only be on the forums when I'm not teaching, but I find myself on them while the kids are outside having a fresh air/recess break each day. LOL

Thank you! This makes total sense. I was thinking of having my 2nd grader go through this with us, but I want my 4th grader to go at a quicker pace so maybe after my 4th grader is finished, I'll let the 2nd grader start at a slower pace... I'm going to go and request to join the yahoo group. I appreciate the link and the schedule!

Does your child get the gist of dictation? My DD9 doesn't get it word-for-word. She'll substitute with synonyms or rearrange the sentence, but keeps the meaning the same. I'm okay with this. I'm not sure if SWB would be, but for me, it's all about being able to get it from her head onto the paper, so if she's keeping the meaning, I'm okay. I do agree with others about doing narration/dictation, etc from history and science. I didn't understand what the difference between the teacher's book and the workbooks were and bought both. We're going through the workbooks because we have them, but next year, for my son, I'll be having him narrate from history and/or science and doing dictation from those subjects as well. I like that idea better than the workbooks. Although, I will say that I've enjoyed the excerpts that SWB chose for the workbooks...

Thanks, Rose. I'll plan on starting with a half an hour each day and see how it works out. Do you know if there's a Yahoo Group for MCT and if so, what the group name is? I've tried searching for MCT and got too many results that didn't look like anything. I then tried to search for MCTLA and got two pages and nothing looked like it was for the curriculum. I tried typing out Michael Clay Thompson and got odd results, but nothing for the MCT curriculum...

Okay, during the first week of school I realized that my DD9 pre-tested out of the vocabulary curriculum we had purchased. We were using Voyages in Vocabulary (I think that's what it's called -- goes with the Voyages in English). Well, I came on here, wondering what to do and was given advice to start her on a Latin roots-based vocab. I had already looked at MCT earlier, but it was after I'd purchased all of ViE for her. Well, since she hated ViE last year (I loved it and wanted her to use it again), and I knew I'd have to buy something different for vocab, and knew I would want to use the Caesar's English curriculum eventually, I decided to switch all of my DD9's LA to MCT Island. I hemmed and hawed over Island or Town, but in the end, went with Island even though it's for a grade level behind (honestly, I don't think it's for "3rd graders" only, but she didn't like the stigma). Anyway, I would not call my DD9 gifted, but she excels at everything LA. Always has. My friends would call her gifted, but they don't realize that she puts forth the effort. I think of a gifted child as one who doesn't need to do the work to excel at something. So, anyway, I have MCT Island now. My goal is to see if I can get her to do the entire Island level in the first half of the year and then start on Town after Christmas. I've looked over the materials, and I am vibrating with excitement. Is that TMI? LOL But I'm not sure how many pages to do. I understand the order of the books and when to start the next book, etc. What I'm not sure about is the pace. How many pages per day? She's used to taking an hour or more to do her LA from ViE a day, so even a half hour would be a bargain for her. Is a half hour a day too much? Not enough? Oh, I've been on the forums over at RFP but they are very slow...not sure many people log on there. They mentioned an old Yahoo Group. Does that group still exist? If so, what is the name? I've searched for the Yahoo Group but haven't found it yet... Thanks a lot for any info you all can give me!

One of the cards is the "I" phonogram. It has four sounds instead of three on the new, corrected card. The spelling rule is Rule 7. I haven't opened up our spelling rule cards yet, so I'm not sure the difference on the card yet... The third card...Oh man...I'm looking through... I think it's the "tch" phonogram, but I'm not sure. My phonograms are opened up...So I need to see if I have two "tch" cards. For some reason I have a "tch" card off to the side, alone, so I'm assuming it's the other corrected card...

I'm only in week 2 of WWE2 for my DS7, but he hasn't had a problem yet. Today is week 2 dictation...I'll see how he does. He did better than I expected in week 1, but he did copy the same sentence the day before, so he had seen the words and knew how to write them. My DD9, on the other hand, is doing WWE4 and she will ask for spelling help. Like on the word renaissance. She had trouble writing that one from memory. Can't blame her. It's a tough word.

I probably don't count as I work from home and do the school time with the kids (husband works outside the house). I have set times and start work at 3 am and work until 11. I have a two-hour lull from 7-9 am, so I'm adamant about starting right at 7 am. We eat breakfast at 6:30 and then start at 7 and get as much of the mommy-led stuff done before 9 am. Then I send them out for recess (where they are right now) and I catch-up on any work-related issues I may have missed while working with the kids. I always have my computer open and I sometimes have to stop whatever we're doing to reply to an email or work on something urgent. Ugh. Work. Anyway, After recess we try and do independent study subjects, but nothing is independent for my K'er...He has to sit right next to me and I help him as time allows while my other two work independently. At 11, I'm off work and I can then take the reigns over learning again. :) So, it's 7 am sharp in our house... Angie

I've never used Sonlight, but we're using LLATL red book now. I've read many reviews that people think it's a "light" curriculum. I'm not sure if they're correct yet or not as we're only in the second week, but I've noticed a change in my DS when he does his LA work. Last year he would cry and complain about having to do his LA work (we used A Beka last year), but this year he laughs and smiles and enjoys it. It's like night and day. Wish I had some Sonlight experience to compare them though. Sorry.

Yes. We used WPs American Story 1 last year with my then 1st-grade son. My DD was in 3rd and then my youngest was only 4. Obviously, the 4-year-old wasn't much into it, but he listened to all the read-alouds. My 3rd-grader got the most out of it, but she's one of those who loves to do school work. My 1st-grader was bored by some of the read-alouds, but did learn a lot and found a lot of the Revolutionary war to be interesting. The favorite read aloud, not only from my 1st-grader, but from all of us was The Birchbark House. All my kids still talk about that book--even my youngest!

Our days are around 5 hours a day, but that includes a half an hour of Bible, a half hour writing workshop and a half hour fresh-air (recess) break along with math, language arts, and either science or history, oh, and we do LOE together, but it's mainly for the K'er. I just have my 2nd and 4th graders help out with it, but that only takes about 15 minutes... Maybe I'm doing too much. I have been thinking of dropping the writing workshop and doing it once a week instead of every day of the week. I do have a few things we didn't get to this past week. He only did reading once and we never got to his logic puzzles or our Spanish. So I think we'll drop writing workshop and do reading in the morning instead as it's more important. It's been hard for me to figure out how to schedule our day. It takes my 2nd grader a whole hour to do his math and I set the timer so some days he isn't finishing his math work. He's three pages behind where he should be and that's only after the first week. It's not that he doesn't get the math. He's just drawing pictures and paying more attention to what I'm doing with my K'er instead of what he's supposed to be doing. :(

That's the sentence my son had to write this past week. He could remember it when saying it to me before writing it, but when he went to write it, he got stuck half way through, on the word "throw". I knew he knew the sentence in his head before he started writing. I think he got stuck because it took him a while to write out the first half of the sentence. Ugh. I gave him the one word he got stuck on and then he was able to finish it himself. I did read the sentence to him three times before instead of twice though, and I let him try to say it by memory after each time instead of making him wait until after I'd said it three times to try to say it himself. That way I knew where he was struggling and could speak slower over the words he was having a hard time with. I just asked him if he remembers the sentence and he said it word-for-word...I think getting it from the brain onto the paper is the hard part for him and I expect that with this practice each week that he'll get better and better at it. I would just keep at it. Lessen the amount of words in the sentence for a bit, or give a one-word hint when she gets stuck to see if that helps. I find it hard to do everything exactly as the Teacher's Manual says to do it because all kids are different.

Thank you both! I do have her write down words she doesn't know when reading, but it's easier to get her to remember to do it when reading for school versus reading for pleasure. She hates taking the time out of her books to *gasp* write unknown words down. LOL I'll get better at insisting she do so, starting today! BugsMama, I love the idea of a latin root-based vocabulary! Do you have any recommendations? I'm going to search the forums and see what I find. Thanks!

My DD9 took a vocabulary pre-test. It was 60 questions, and out of the 60, she only got 7 wrong. Now I'm not sure if I should continue on with this vocabulary curriculum or change. Should I get the next level up? I have the one for her grade level (4th), or should I still make her go through it? It covers more than 60 words, but the chance that she knows them is pretty high. She's my reader, the one who always has her nose in a book, and she prefers classics. She goes through mine and my husband's books looking for things to read. So, should I just let her continue on with life as is and not worry about vocabulary or go up a level, or continue with this level? I'm really not sure what to do. I don't want her doing something for the sake of doing it, yet I do feel that with her reading books above her maturity level, she's bound to come accross words that she may not be able to infer the correct definition of based on context...Ugh. What would you do?

I was just in Atlanta for five days about two weeks ago. The Aquarium there is awesome and the zoo (not in the city limits, but close by) is one of only four zoos (hope I remember that correctly) in the U.S. that has panda bears. Also, the CNN tour was awesome. Well worth the $17 bucks! The Coke tour, on the other hand, was just so-so. Make sure you go over to Centennial Olympic Park. I loved that place. Someone told me that there is a nicer park in the city, but I didn't make it over to it. Can't remember the name off-hand. I really enjoyed Centennial Olympic Park though. I loved watching the kids play in the water that shoots out of the olympic rings on the ground. I was there right when the olympics had started, so it was neat to see this park for that reason too. Wish I could be of more help. I was there for business, not pleasure, so I didn't get to do too much.

LOL I was hanging out on the site since 4 am lol. They said they were opening it up to 75 people in their newsletter and on their FB page... I'm so psyched to start this. We've only gotten through 6 phonograms so far on our own and I just feel like we're going too fast or we're missing something...

It's up and running! I just registered. To register, you need to add the Beta Testing for Foundations A to your cart and purchase for $50. Here is the link: http://www.logicofenglish.com/store/beta-testing/kindegarten-level-beta-test I wasn't sure if I'd get it since they're only accepting 75 beta testers, but my purchase went through. I'm so psyched!!! Can't wait to get going. I've been teaching my K-child the phongrams, but I do better with a structured curriculum!

Yesterday was our first day and we jumped right in with a full load. If we were to ease into things, my kids would complain that I was adding things. Jumping in with a full load is better for them, especially if I decide to drop something. Then they feel as if the day is lessened than added to later on. ;)

It's a great feeling! We finished our first day today as well. My K'er kept disappearing into his bedroom, hiding with his brother's DS, and my 2nd grader whined about having to do school. Otherwise, it was a great day. We got everything accomplished that I had planned. After a full day of work (full day for us ended at 1:30 pm), we went out and got ice cream and then picked up some fish. I got each of the kids a Betta as class pets as we're studying Swimming Creatures this year. ;) Now let's hope that the excitement from today carries over to tomorrow...

Aah, I wasn't aware. We claim them on our Federal taxes, so I just assumed everyone could. Luckily my friend that I recently told that to lives in the same state as me.

LOVE that!

We're at a little over $1500 right now. I also just bought a color laser printer yesterday (sh! don't tell my husband yet. LOL), but not sure if that counts as costs for school...I can split the cost between school and Thirty-One (I'm an independent Consultant) I guess...either way, we're in for a lot. BUT, save all your receipts. We use them to show costs for schooling. When my kids were in private school, we were alloted a certain amount of their tuition back each year when we filed, so we keep all receipts. Last year, our first year of homeschooling, we were able to deduct the max amount for schooling costs. I was talking to a friend who's been homeschooling for five years and she had no idea that you could claim school costs on tax returns. The look on her face when she found out! So keep that in mind when spending this money. It's an investment on your childrens' lives, and unless you're buying needless things that won't be used, every penny is worth it, in my opinion (as long as you can afford it--There are things I want to buy, but haven't because we are on a budget). And when I compare what I used to pay in private school tuition versus what we pay in curriculum and fees for homeschool groups and field trips, we're spending so much less now! And the best part is that my relationship with my kids is so much better! (not due to how much I spend on curriculum, mind you, but becasue we're homeschooling in general) ;) Unless you're driving yourself into the poor house due to the amount of books you're buying for school, I say go for it. My husband may have a different opinion, but he doesn't count. :tongue_smilie:

I don't have Second Grade, but from what I remember, the first few weeks of Abeka is all review from the previous year. I don't think you'll be missing much if you just look through last year's book and make up a sheet of problems based off what was on the last few tests. And if your child is good at math, don't worry about it at all. Just wait for your book to come in and then start with whatever section you think he'd be good to start in. I remember being frustrated with Abeka last year because I didn't feel as if the first few weeks challenged my kids at all. We're not using A Beka this year, but if we were, we would skip the first few weeks of assignments.

I receive their Science Club kits each month. My friend does as well. I don't use mine for our science curriculum (we use apologia). My friend incorporates them into their science, but she hasn't done all of them yet (neither have I--holding off for rainy days, I suppose). My friend did do a few over the summer and called it "Science Camp". They cover a broad spectrum of science. I could easily see it being the only science done for younger children, but my 4th grader would need more...