Ok the only thing I see that would not work due to my own experience is the science behind math. I like to schedule science after a subject where I am not needed as much. If she needs you for math, you will not have time to set up science experiments etc...Especially if you are only slotting 30 mins. I would switch science and math around. That way science will come after the break, you can use the break to set out your "stuff".

At my house, everyone is better behaved after some exercise. I would begin the day with a quick breakfast then EVERYONE out for a walk. The dogs, kids and mom. And I would have the toddler walk the last part of it. Older kid can take the stroller, mom takes the dogs and the goal is to tire out everyone just a bit. Come home, give them a snack and perhaps some PBS. I know, I know...TV is never a great idea but it is better than mass chaos. I restricted TV time when they were young so that when I needed to use it, they gave it their whole attention. I would tackle the most important, mom intensive subjects directly after getting back in the house. I truly believe good routines are the key to structure and wearing out kids makes for calmer kids. Of course a toddler is only worn out for a bit.

The National Geographic Family Atlas. It is a big heavy book but my son loves it. He studies the maps very intently. Also his SmartGlobe has been worth every single penny. He knows national anthems (the first line), the leaders of many countries as well as the geography. There is just so much information at his finger tips with that globe and the games are fun for both kids to play.

We are gluten free, have been for over 9 years. I do not bother to try to educate others how to cook for us. I usually just take a pot of my own and let them know that we will need to have access to their kitchen. This is for the times we have to stay several days. If it is just for dinner, we bring our own food. Or we invite friends to our house. I do not trust other kitchens to not cross contaminate our food. A colander used for glutenous pasta would be nearly impossible to clean well enough. A wooden cutting board has been the source of contamination for us. And now, so many foods are labeled gluten free and still have oats or other grains that are not tolerated. It is just too difficult.

First of all, and someone please correct me if I am wrong, the vowel sound in "stair" is a vowel team. Get the LOE app and let them work through it. I think LOE is totally doable. I just like the format of Barton better and think it is a bit easier to remember when it comes to the rules. Barton is not $3000 out of pocket. You buy the first level, used if you can. Sell it to pay for the next one and so forth. At the end of all of this, I should only have maybe $100 out of pocket for all of my Barton use. Schools are not trained to deal with dyslexia, of course your children are not getting what they need at public school. No matter how awesome a teacher is, if they do not have the right tools, it is not going to do any good. The best hammer in the world is not going to help me drive a screw. Take a deep breathe. And remember to read to your children. Often. Quite a bit.

I am using Barton with my son and LOE with my older daughter. Using both programs simultaneously, I will say this...the way that the spelling rules are taught in Barton is far more effective than the way they are taught in LOE. Barton is definitely worth the time and price. I would be very careful about skipping 1 and 2. You are laying the foundation for a lifetime of good reading and spelling skills, in the grand scheme of things, a few more months of Barton will pay off if needed. I am teaching my daughter quite a few "tricks" from Barton and her LOE experience is being greatly enhanced by her exposure to some of the ideas behind Susan Barton's work. I also want to add that my Barton using son is also utilizing the LOE phoneme app. It is worth every penny of the $2.99 I spent on it for phoneme drills. I cannot reccomend it highly enough.

I try to keep clutter to a minimum, which would shock many of you if you saw my shelves ;) So when my kids have completed workbooks, I struggle with just pitching them in the recycling bin. It felt weird yesterday when my youngest finished his Beast Academy workbook and I looked over the answers then walked over to the recycling bin to pitch it. Should I be keep these? I do not really see the point in keeping elementary work unless I want to compare where he was at one point to what he has achieved after a period of time. I feel so conflicted. It is like my inner type A clean freak fights with my sentimental maybe-I-will-need-this-later freak.

I wish this were also going to be available on the droid platform. Bah! I would LOVE to use this but not sure I want to have to buy an expensive iPad to use them. I have a kindle already. errgh!

I rarely FORBID anything. I mean of course, if something is illegal it is forbidden. If something is unhealthy or life threatening, we don't allow that either. But taking something away and forbidding it is not really my parenting style. I try to control the environment rather than the children. I usually try to work through behavior with my kids. I mean, ultimately, I have "veto power" in the house but forbidding minecraft would set up a power struggle that would be both unnecessary and damaging to our relationship. I will save that kind of thing for the really truly big and ugly stuff should it come about in our home. However, setting boundaries and parameters in which this kind of stuff is allowed is totally in line with how we do things around here. I have been letting him play it on his ipod and sometimes on my kindle. But my issue is that it is the only thing he wants to do during screen time. It is nuts. I wish he were engaging in a more diverse range of screen time activities. I am still trying to find the solution that feels right for us. Perhaps he will outgrow this obsession while I am searching for an answer.

Where do you stand on this? I keep flip flopping. Both of my kids love it but my 9 year old is obsessed with it. He thinks about it all of the time. The first words out of his mouth in the morning are usually about minecraft. I oscillate between thinking it is mind rotting, time wasting twaddle and finding some value in it. Last weekend he and some friends made a model of our house in minecraft. They alternated designing rooms on the kindle. It was actually pretty cool and led to some interesting discussions on how to design the roof. Anyway...sometimes I see some interesting value in it, other times I am just annoyed by the obsession. As I type this, he is standing on the other side of the table trying to convince me to download it on the computer. As it is, he can only play it on the ipod or the kindle and that is just pocket edition which is severely limited. Help me flesh out my conflicting emotions about this and come up with a logical approach to my kid's minecraft obsession.

Wow! What a thread! I just want to put my two cents in this conversation. Everytime I spend a dollar, I am voting with it. That vote gives value to the objects I purchase. So when I choose and buy, even second hand curriculum, I am giving that curriculum value. I do not value any curriculum provider that does not ardently seek to be factual. Thus, I do not want to purchase any materials from Sonlight or give any of the materials re-sale value by purchasing them used. Sonlight is on my boycott list with hydrogenated oil, msg, horror flicks and honey boo boo; in other words, stuff some folks like but not my cup of tea. I will keep spending my money with great curriculum authors whom I trust.

My fitness pal is a great (and free) app that tracks calories, nutrients etc... I have a kid that is a dancer and she watches her diet for optimal performance, she uses this app. It is always nice when my kid comes up to me and asks if I can make sweet potatoes for dinner because she has not had enough vitamin A for the week.

We are using 3a now. My 9 year old has completed MathUSee Gamma and I am taking the summer to complete BA 3 before we move on to division in Delta. BA totally jives with the way in which he approaches math and I think that it presents ideas in a manner which is different and illuminates the WHY we do some things. I LOVE this program and so does my kid.

Well, we were told not to expect impeccability from this curriculum provider.

Thank you John for taking the time to defend your position. The above quote really speaks volumes to me about the attitude with which you approach your work. I do my research. I am teaching my children many different subjects on a daily basis. It is absurd to think that I can delve into each subject so deeply that I can be an authority on the subject matter. This is why I do take the time to scrutinize my curriculum choices. Which is what prompted this thread. Impeccability is something we strive to achieve daily in our house. If I expect it from my children, I certainly expect it from the curriculum that I provide for their education. This discussion has made my decision regarding the second-hand purchase of this guide to be a very easy one. On another note, I am learning so much from this thread and loving it. Perhaps I should post the other topics which caused me to pause while perusing the Core 100 IG. If we collectively rebutt the rebuttals that Holzman makes regarding Hakim's work, we may have the fodder for a very solid U.S. History course.

1.5 years into it, Barton is working for us and very well. We are now on level 4 and my kid is so encouraged by his ability to understand how words are put together. For me the success of this program is measured but the ease of use, my kid does not balk at doing the work as it has not been too hard, yet. And the results, he gets it and is able to apply those rules and abilities in other places.

I am considering using Hakim's History of US. Someone lent their Sonlight 100 core so that I could read John Holzman's remarks about the book thus giving a more well rounded view of the civil war. I opened it to this comments about slavery. He cites the WAP slave narratives and seems to me, to be trying to say that while slavery is not right, many slaves had a good life while slaves. His attitude seems like white washing a very deplorable part of our history that still has social implications today. First of all, I have no illusion that life after slavery was easy for ex-slaves. But I find that the Slave Narratives should be considered in the cultural context in which they were recorded. They were recorded in the 30's by people who were slaves as children. They were also recorded by white people interviewing ex-slaves. I would bet my lunch that most of these folks were not comfortable talking poorly of whites to whites. I mean really! Anyway, there are a few other areas that leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. This being the primary issue I have with the rebuttal of Hakim's work. Has anyone else encountered this, or am I just being overly sensitive?

For us, every day would be too much. We have some major task maintenance issues going on and it would have slowed down our math progress significantly. My goal was to give him the tools he needed to progress. Doing this every Monday is working without this being a "punishment", which I wanted to avoid. 6 weeks into doing this, I am seeing results. The first grid took him 55 minutes, it was one of the worst homeschooling days of my life. Math took 3 hours that day, mostly due to lack of focus. He was excited to beat his time. This Monday, his time was 13.5 minutes. Because he is memorizing them. For us, slow and steady seems to be winning the race.

So another mom of a dyslexic kid (she actually has 3), told me to give my son (9) who was really struggling with multiplication facts, a blank 12 x 12 multiplication grid every Monday. He has to fill out the grid and can use it for math problems all week. On Friday, after he has completed his math, we shred it. The next Monday, I hand him another blank one that he must fill out and use all week. If he loses it, he has to fill out another one. Initially, it took him over an hour to fill out the grid. But after doing this for 2 months, he was able to complete his grid this morning in 14.5 minutes. I have to time his work because his ability to maintain topic focus is really poor and timing him helps him stay focused. He likes to beat his previous time. What I am noticing is that he is memorizing his math facts, SLOWLY but surely. He is also seeing the patterns. This simple accommodation has made the difference between success and failure for this kid. Just wanted to pass this on to others who may find this useful. No more tears of multiplication facts for us.

We are currently using Math U See and my dyslexic son has just completed Gamma. While he struggles with math facts and rote memorization, he seems to have a knack for more conceptual math. Word problems are a strength for him and he often deduces his answers in ways that are very different from the way I see numbers. I just ordered Beast Academy to supplement Math U See for him before we move on to Delta. Does anyone have any experience with this? I am pretty sure I am going to have to read the sections to him (or have my older kid do it so they learn some of this as well). I

We eat dinner as a family, every night. Even when we are busy, we eat together. And I always start the conversation about WHY we are eating what we are eating. My kids have food allergies and I have always been a health nut, so our plates are already pretty nutritious. But this conversation extends to the nights where we miss the mark. Talking about what is in your food makes you aware of it. "Hey kid, why do you think I put that broccoli on your plate?" "Because it is full of vitamin C which keeps you from catching colds, it also has lots of vitamin K which helps your blood clot when you get cut." "What about the chicken on your plate? What's in that?" "Protein, which helps you build more cells and repair cells so you can grow healthier and stronger." "Where did that broccoli come from?" This is also really good in the conversation, because it gets the kids to think about farming and how the food was raised. We try to find as much food from local sources as possible. But sometimes, our food comes from not so great places. I try to raise awareness about that. I have some pretty grocery savvy kids as a result of these on-going conversations. My nine year old will eat more veggies when I highlight what they do for his body. or "Ok, so what about those Ore-Ida French fries, why are we eating those?" "Because they taste good" "But are they healthy?" "I dunno" "Lets look at the label." Also, I do not buy junk. IF I do, it is in small portions and we divide it up and eat it together. Mostly because I try to watch my weight and *I* cannot be trusted. If you want your kid to eat better, you are going to have to model that for her and make it the only choice in the house. Another idea is to grow a garden together. Kids will eat what they grow even if they will not touch it in the kitchen. OR let her help you plan meals and cook.

My 12 year old daughter is currently halfway through MUS Zeta. She is calculating the area and circumference of circles. This morning, she was spending so much time with the long multiplication and re-checking, I just handed her a calculator. My thinking was that in the future, she will always have access to a calculator. It is more important that she remember HOW to get to the answer. She knows how to do the basic math. Am I doing this too early? When did you give your kid a calculator?

We received the student workbook and that was it.

I am going to be combining LOE and MCT for my 11 year old daughter was is a great reader but has poor phonemic awareness. This has caught up to her. Anyway, I have AAS rule cards for levels 1 and 2. Can those be used with LOE? I also have an 8 year old on level 3 of Barton (dyslexic) I have to wonder if I NEED the rule cards and the game cards. Do I NEED to spend that money? I am thinking both kids may enjoy and get quite a bit out of the games. What do you think?