I printed it all at once and filed it. We love it. We've done one full year of review with it through the summer and started on our next year for each child. So glad I can print it again for each! My kids like math now, finally! btw, I put the whole thing when completely finished by the child back through my printer upside down and printed the 2nd year on the back. It hasn't bothered them in the least! Free paper!

how'd i miss those interactive pages? Thanks! We are using Math Mammoth this year --love, love, love it. For some reason, i didn't prefer singapore. Anyway, we just do 1 page of MEP a day too. It is much for intense thought processing than we are used to, and I think it has been great to stretch us.

Here's one. http://www.amazon.com/X-Acto-Ranger-Wall-Mount-Heavy-Duty-Sharpener/dp/B00006IEI2 Does anyone have one that seems better before i hit the order button? Our electric one is taped together!

i prefer the notebook suggested on this forum. We do memory of longer pieces so this works better for us. I type them up, print 4 copies for the kids, insert them in a page protector if we will work on it for long, and in it goes into each kid's notebook. http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B2uLJHGaFdQ9OGRhNTBhNmItNWVlMS00YTE4LTk5OTktOTNiMTI1MTQ1OGMw&hl=en Mnemosyne memory work system.

Warning - I emailed the manufacturer of my printer to ask about the transparency film bc/ they sell it with and without a strip on the edge and i wondered which my printer needs. The manufacturer said my nice laser printer can't do any transparency film. Warning #2 - then I decided to save $ by using up old cardstock from my creative memories days. I fed it through my laser printer and suddenly started getting black streaks on all of my printing. There IS a reason the manufacturer limits the paper types! I got ink on the drum. I emailed them for directions to clean it, but haven't tried yet. Woah is me! Warning #3 - haha. I can't figure out a fast way to print these TT cd's. Why didn't she make a pdf of all the white regular paper pages and one of the colored cardstock and so on? I did them page by page. I have so far printed the composers (LOVE IT!), and the New World Explorers (just did week 1 of it so far but printed it all. It was a PAIN to print, but I think we will enjoy it so much. I went ahead and cut everything for the kids for composers after trying to solicit their help cutting and pasting the orchestra parts. Not worth it, at least with my kids. They were cheerful, as in cheerfully cutting it wrong, like on fold lines. Not worth it.

We thought long and hard about this question just this year. We've always done math first - our hardest. I found this past year that my dd9 loved to do it in the quiet of the evening alone with me and got it done about THREE times faster that way! It used to make our day so slow and long to do it in the mornings. So this year I set up our schedule with math LAST. Let's face it, I will do math. It is my priority. So doing the non-core subjects first makes me do them and get them done when in the past I would just drop them because we are all tired late into the day. Now, we all work diligently. I've committed to giving them 100% of me without distractions this year. We do math last and often do it the night before. Our days are going the fastest ever and everyone is happy. Plus, we are doing the extras because we do them first. HTH!

:iagree: Don't skip problems. if any, there are too few. My dd7 is very strong in math. there are just enough for him. maybe not even quite enough. i don't think my dd's could have handled this clock section from mm2 with the amount of review there is before they add in a new concept to consider. they fly through it, adding in new facets extremely quickly!

my dd7 often wants to do lots at one time. so this summer he did about 5 pp a day in MM1 and completed it. Many days he told me the answers and I did all of the writing. He loved it and loves finishing things. I gave him a small present after every chapter. Now he is doing MM2 and has slowed way, way down. The clocks are hard! Yesterday it asked him to find the clock which showed the time that is 30 minutes after quarter till 2. Holy smokes!

we are using BF but added in the Time Travelers cd's for activities. So far my children love Leif the Lucky and really liked doing the coloring. I made copies of the D'Aulaire pages as suggested and put them in our files for the correct weeks and days. That has helped. I also typed the scriptures for copywork using a penmanship font I downloaded. We just began on Monday and we've only done one TT activity, but I thought it was a hit! I love the BF book selections!

MEP reception (K) math: http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/primary/default.htm

Geopuzzles are a fun addition.

we loved rightstart k even more than saxon k. MEP reception year is free online too and great. way too easy for my k'ers, so maybe good for preK

this is a bit of a tangent, but an option might be to use Sentence Family first. We loved it!

I recently called Amy Pak to pay a fee to use a cd in a co-op setting, and took the opportunity to ask if she'd be doing ancients. She said no. Bummer! She said they each take about a year and she doesn't have the time to invest further. We just started Explorers and I am so excited! And we are doing composers with a co-op and I just printed it all. looks so, so good.

We are right beside Concord Mills :)

One l Michele- Can you elaborate if you have time? Your plan sounds so fun! How do you do freewrite and how exactly do you do drive and when/how often? any details you can provide to help me catch this vision would be so appreciated!

My daughter says Sentence Family is the funnest thing we've ever done in school.

I found an unused copy of grade 1 CWP as I was getting ready to sell tons of stuff if you need it. pm me. also, i like these

I think my daughter might be a perfect paula type. we did R&S for 4 years and she knows her facts cold. She scored 8th grade equivalent this year (at gr 4) for facts. Don't get too excited. She also had no clue what she was doing, as much as I tried and tried to explain. She scored first grade for conceptual understanding of math. No joke. We bought MM after she completed R&S 4. I printed 4th grade. She absolutely couldn't understand it. I printed 3rd grade. She worked hard at learning it, says she LOVES it, begs not to go back ever, and is spending about 1 hour a day on it this summer to complete grade 3 quickly. After doing MM for a bit, I can see where exactly she lacks conceptual understanding and have been developing more of a strategy to help. I love that I can print pages from other levels or even the same level to have her practice those concepts more. My hope is to have her continue at this pace through 4th grade and then take it easy through 5th which is where she should be. I don't know if that helps you at all. I just wanted to make a case for trying out MM1 and watching closely for where her struggles lie and trying to remedy those. You may need to use MEP or R&S or something super inexpensive to give her extra practice. She may just never be super strong in math. But I think that switching a child to R&S if they struggle might not give them the foundation of understanding which they already lack.It will cement their math facts and technique though. BTW, I have a 7 y.o. son. For many reasons we've done very little math. We own RS and I did some of A and some of B with him last summer and none since. I handed him MM1 and he has flown through it. He has almost completed it entirely in one month. He reads the instructions and does it with almost no help from me; thank goodness since I am helping his sister!!! So, I have come to realize it has a lot to do with the child and some might struggle no matter what they use. If that is the case, I want them to at least love what they use. And we've found that in MM for both of mine!

:iagree: Having done 4 years of R&S I can say it is drill and kill. MEP is a joy in comparison and all you will need and free. Skip the R&S. If you need drill practice eventually, use the free online one on the mathusee site. Does the trick. But my dd7 doesn't seem to need any practice and he is the first I haven't used R&S with!

On a totally different note, have you considered ambleside? It is CM. We did year 1 this year by reading them online on google books and listening to those on librivox. about half of them are on librivox and if you google you can find a list of which ones are. We loved it. And it was free. I personally like holding books - aaahhhh books! - so I am slowly now buying ambleside books. But, honestly it works without owning any. And they are delightful books! (BTW, we did SOTW 1 with the audio and AG and very little extra this year too and enjoyed it. no library, no extras. I was targeting a 4/5 yr old and a 6/7 yr old and it was enough for us.)

No, it is for any age, but suited well for younger kids. We just found it last year, so we all did it together - ages 5 to 13 and me.

The stories are fun and once you did it then the pronoun picture makes sense. The use of color to symbolize was really helpful. My dd is 10 and she is the one who asked to please do it again. But all 4 of my kids loved it. Each child makes their own picture. I drew them too. We had a great time and I think remember the sentence types and parts of speech much better. This time through we will diagram as well. We've always done Shurley. This was a pleasant change! My dd said it would make a fun birthday present :tongue_smilie: not kidding!

We too like music or at least an audio cd. So we bought Pudewa's cd accompaniment to Poetry Memorization - A Linguistic Approach. And I just ordered a cd of Robert Louis Stevenson's Child's Garden of verses. We are learning the Preamble by youtubes School house rock version. For some things though, we just add them to our daily list and it says the child must say it to me 5 times every day. We are hoping to begin the review system recommended on Simply Charlotte Mason so the things we learn stay for good. We memorized a lot this year and had fun doing it. Oh, I record them on video saying it. That way they can watch and see how they present themselves. We bought a flip video to make this super easy.

I thought the slow is better way seemed right with my older ones, but then read WTM and somehow decided to try my boys at age 4. I am SO glad I did! We did it slowly, no pressure. One loved it and reads a lot to me each day and is now 7, reading a lot on his own as well. The other doesn't love it as much, but is happy to be doing what his sibs do, and I think really feels accomplished and loves the attention and time with me. The best part is, by age 6/7 they are so glad to be able to really read! They can read directions in their books and such. I am happy with my decision to start younger with them. BTW, we used SSRW prek, k, 1 and 2. Just skip the writing if she can't handle it. You won't need the 1st of the 1st grade workbooks if you school year-round. It is an entire repeat of the 2nd of the K workbooks. If you have the time, the songs and games are fun. i skipped them with my boys but did them with my first 2. I got a bit tired of SSRW and am using OPFTTR with my 4th child. I don't like the stories as much and am glad I kept my SSRW readers. We also love to read the I Can Read It series from Sonlight and the R&S Bible and Nurture books. I usually start them once my child is through K, so that they can read them fairly easily and enjoy them. The stories are great.