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walkermamaof4

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Everything posted by walkermamaof4

  1. DS11's handwriting isn't good. His print is actually worse than his cursive, but both are pretty bad. Which handwriting books really help or what has worked for your ds? He has used Reason for Handwriting and Italic in the past. His cursive did improve a bit this year but is still bad.
  2. We've used R&S and Shurley as well as FLL. CLE is our favorite. DD14 is using 8th now, DS11 is finishing 5th, DS9 is finishing 3rd. We switched to it 2 years ago. Love it. We switched dd to CLE math and love it too.
  3. I've used HOD, SL, and MFW (1850-Mod). I own 6 SL cores. We use and love HOD. Next year will be our 3rd year with it. It has just the right amount of reading for us. SL had too much lit for us. I struggled to get it done with my dd who didn't enjoy reading. I didn't like the MFW book choices as much. And we love the extras in HOD. We love owning all of the books and not using the library. It has been a great fit for us.
  4. I was contemplating using this with ds. Can you tell me more details about your statement? I'd be glad to learn from your experience! Thanks.
  5. BF Early American Primary was our favorite year! I liked the guide too. It doesn't provide that much info, but it gave us a schedule. And I especially liked the suggestion in it to copy the b&w pics from D'Aulaire's books and have the kids color them. My kids loved that so much that I enlarged many pics from Story of the Pilgrims for them to color also. Additionally, I found some free lap books online to add to our studies that year. It was a fabulous year. I love that it gave us enough time in our day to also memorize poetry and cover lots of other ground. We have since switched to HOD and find that it is similar and provides us all of the books in one purchase. No library. No decisions about book choices. Excellent books. I love both. I wish BF had a sequential year after year program. I would have continued with it if they did.
  6. We did Preparing and Beyond as our first year with HOD last year. Eventually I dropped Beyond and moved the younger ds into Preparing. Often times I find myself questioning that decision. I think he would have fared better staying in Beyond. But it has worked well overall to move him. We have loved HOD. I especially appreciate it even more now as I have been reading the independent work with the younger ds and am really seeing all of what the children are learning. It is a good amount of work for us. This year we have continued with HOD using CTC. We love the water painting although we find the directions vague and are very grateful for the FB group and the Garden for Sara blog. I joined the RSS feed to that blog so I have her paintings in my email and we search by unit each week and use hers as examples. We will use HOD RTR next year with extensions for the olders and no extensions for the younger. I haven't loved DITHOR but do love the reading choices. I think I'll add in Lightning Lit next year. We love the poetry too.THe book choices are fabulous. I love owning everything. I love not having any prep time. And this year with Voskamp's geography has been great too.
  7. BTW, Math Mammoth was far too quick paced and conceptual for my dd. My two boys thrive on it though. I don't think imo that it is for a struggling math student.
  8. Been there!!! This was my dd at right about the same time. We had used R&S, Math Mammoth, and BJU. I used MUS for another dd and this one for K. So, I was at my rope's end! I think that I switched to CLE at the recommendation of someone on this board. I had her take the placement tests and I think we dropped back a whole year. It has been absolutely perfect for us. Once we had to use Khan to cement something. But there is so much review over the course of the year that I've found everything gets cemented eventually. She is doing phenomenally with it. She still struggles with word problems and needs my input often with them, but can do all of the rote mathematics well now. I'd recommend you try it.
  9. Ah - this probably isn't what I need then. I like the sounds of your post. I'll give it thorough consideration.
  10. Lori D - I always love your posts! Thank you SO much. I'll study this post! I was also considering the LL Speech Pack. Have you seen or used it? Any thoughts? Calming Tea - I hadn't heard of PAC before. Where have I been? The Biology looks like it might be great for her as well!
  11. Do you think that someone who isn't a strong reader/writer could manage it ok? She just doesn't enjoy reading and I haven't pushed her in writing. I'm an avid reader and got a 5 on my AP English Exam, so she is a foreigner to me in this regard! DS is also an avid reader and a stronger writer than her. We will be using IEW's Medieval Writing next year but haven't used IEW before.
  12. We were successful in catching up on grammar using CLE at a double pace. It wasn't too difficult. But we need more literary analysis. Is Lightning Lit something we can speed through? DD is entering 9th grade and I was thinking about going through 7th and 8th grades of this next year in addition to her other work. Might this work? Another option I've been thinking through is to use progeny press guides for some of her assigned reading. I see guides for Door in the Wall and Bronze Bow and could add those to her reading list to give her some more in depth analysis. But I was thinking folks thought LL had more analysis than PP. Any thoughts or input would be appreciated!
  13. I think that we used the placement test. If I recall correctly, I started using CLE when dd was in 7th and she went through CLE 5 and 6 in 7th and then CLE7 and 8 in 8th. She has managed 2 lessons a day just fine. CLE 5 wasn't difficult but covered some topics she didn't know well. It was so worthwhile. I am very thankful we made the effort to plug away. Now grammar is her strongest subject.
  14. Can someone compare Lightning Lit to the Progeny Press guides? I'm trying to decide between a few guides vs doing LL. We already have a Dickinson poetry study planned. Thank you!
  15. We use CLE and love it. We tried Cozy and couldn't stand the DVD presentations. We tried R&S and found it long and boring. CLE covers the same things, has 10 inexpensive workbooks per year, and my daughter's grammar end of year test score sky-rocketed after we completed two years of CLE! It has the perfect amount of review in it for her.
  16. I'll share because ours is so abnormal I think. My kids asked if we could please do our "dependent" work or work we do together first thing, before breakfast! That way they aren't waiting on anyone to finish their school work each day. Once their dependent work is done, they can take as long as they'd like for their independent work and chores. This has really encouraged them to work hard and steadily at their independent work, and some even do their independent work the night before. So we do dictation and spelling for the ones who are on the same level while the others wake up or start other work, read aloud, scripture memory, poetry, and then they are free. I stay in the school room while the eldest makes breakfast. Recently the fastest worker has decided he wants to help make breakfast and so he does. We get done our school day so much faster with this routine! It is almost unreal how well this works for us. They grab a banana if they want before school starts. Breakfast has protein always and is hearty, just later than it used to be! I think being able to schedule our days any way we want and change it and tweak it all year long is a tremendous advantage to homeschooling! One night this week dh was out of town and they asked to do dependent work for the next day at 8pm after several of them did their independent work for the next day. We did and they had a "free day" the next day. I love homeschooling!
  17. We use Hod so have been using their schedule. This year we studied Robert Frost poems, one per week. At the end of the week we watercolor painted a picture that related to the poem. We also tell the poem to each other to the best of our peaking ability. We memorized several of his poems throughout the year. It has been perfect. Next year is Emily Dickinson. Yay! Before HOD, we used Pudewa's http://iew.com/shop/products/linguistic-development-through-poetry-memorization-book-cds and memorized quite a lot of poetry that way. Both methods have been great. Even if you learn only one poem this year, that is great! They stick with you for life, are fun to learn, offer a sense of accomplishment, and add beauty to our days. We also memorize books of the Bible - one chapter per year. Some folks memorize much, much more than us. But for us, this works.
  18. I'd highly recommend ordering an IgG test through Great Plains Labs. We had ds's done through Metametrix but since then a friend with a child with life-threatening allergies told me she has used both and that metametrix missed some of her child's known allergies (including gluten) while Great Plains did not. Anyway, an IgG will show sensitivities to foods. For ds these included dairy, eggs, cinnamon, grapes, spinach, pinto beans, and peanuts. So when we took ds off of these, dd who had been having stomach cramp issues, asked to go off dairy too. But it didn't help her issues. Oh -we all went gf at the same time. So it wasn't gluten or dairy. Finally I asked a doctor to do an IgE for her as that particular doctor didn't do IgG's. Her IgE showed that it was sesame. I would have NEVER discerned this on my own but afterwards realized she was always sick after eating chinese food, among other things. Sad but true. So, my moral is that you can mess around trying all kinds of elimination diets. But the quickest route is an IgG and from lots of research I think Great Plains offers the cheapest, most complete one that I know of. HTH!
  19. Muttichen - how do you mix it? I haven't heard of using TSP in the dishwasher and will try it. Do you pour both detergent and TSP into some other container and mix it up? And can you tell me what a "large" box of detergent is so I get this right? Thank you! I tried making my own and we hated it. I was so excited bc/ I made it in ice cube trays and it looked just like tabs, but it didn't do the job.
  20. I'd love to save some money on this without using coupons. What's the cheapest and can you share here how much you pay PER LOAD so we can see if anyone has a cheaper cost? Thanks!
  21. Thanks. I just wanted real life details from folks who have done this as to attachment of children and what ages the kids were and if they had other kids then what ages were they...
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