FWIW, I'm doing the same thing with my K-5 dd, just doing mm at her pace, as often as she asks to do it (which is pretty often). The very, very best thing I've read about math teaching and learning so far (and I've read a lot in the past few months ;)) is Math Power by Patricia Clark Kenschaft. She goes through all of the learning stages (she calls them "meadows") and talks about the conceptual leaps that occur in moving from one to the other. It has really helped me understand dd5's behaviors around numbers and counting, and to see that what she's doing in terms of manipulatives is perfectly normal (she counts her fingers by tapping each, one by one, on her nose :D!)

DD is reading The View from the oak: the private worlds of other creatures by Judith Kohl (it's a National book award winner, FWIW). It's an amazing book, and she is captivated. We do a lot of our science reading together/aloud, but after taking a look at this book, I gave it to hear to read alone, and I'm glad I did - it's all about the subjectivity of experience, how each creature experiences the world differently depending on their own life history and perceptual apparatus. It's a mind blower for a 9 yo who is just entering the logic stage. Just thought I'd give it a plug . . .

I've been reading and loving Curious Minds: How a child becomes a scientist edited by John Brockman. It is a series of autobiographical essays by eminent scientists about what set their feet on the path. What interesting and diverse people, but what they seem to have in common is that a) they don't attribute their success to ps eductation ;) b) they almost all skipped traditional high school or took very alternative paths to/through college c) they were all raised by parents who afforded them a great deal of intellectual freedom and provided them a ton of space to find and follow their genius. Anyway, I'm really enjoying it and think a lot of you would appreciate it!!

I was just thinking I need to do the same thing! I can handle 4th grade math so far, but . . . ;) I am using Khan academy. I was thinking of getting an AoPS book - would you suggest starting with the prealgebra? What about Mathematics, a Human Endeavor by Jacobs? Would that be a good conceptual refresher for a grown-up?

Sounds like we're in similar situations - I just started hsing dd9 in October, after 1 quarter of 4th grade. You can see in my sig line what we are using . . . I just wanted to add that IMO, First Language Lessons 4 is a great, easy intro to grammar for a ps kid. It starts at the beginning (which I'm assuming is review if you've used the previous FLLs?) and she has had no trouble following it. In fact, when we started, she "didn't like" grammar, now she loves it, especially diagramming! We've also been really enjoying Writing With Ease 3, which I've found to be fine for a 4th grader - you can modify the instructions to make it more challenging as she develops. For example, I now have her do the summary w/o the comprehension questions, and I really have her keep working until she comes up with a *good* 3-4 sentence summary, whereas at the beginning I accepted anything reasonable. I've seen a lot of progress in just 2 months. I'm planning on going from WWE3 to WWS in 5th grade, I think she'll be ready for it (without spending a year on WWE4). For DD5, we are using the Bob books to supplement a phonics program, as well as various easy readers I get from the library. She has been liking the School Zone Start To Read books, too.

I had a similar reaction initially - I picked up book one (years ago, pre-kids), and thought - ok, it's an average kid's book, what's the big deal? I never thought I'd read the series. Then, stuck in a motel in Missouri in a snow storm, I watched one of the movies - The Goblet of Fire - and was immediately interested. It was much darker and more interesting than I had thought. I ended up reading the whole series with Dd when she was in 1st-3rd grades, and she absolutely loved it. I really liked it too. And - I have found it a really easy way to introduce literary analysis: who is the protaganist? what does he want? who is the antagonist? what does he want? it's such a simple story, from that point of view, and she knows it so well, it's made it much easier to do LA with harder (more complex) books. And, now a part of our family mythology, is the great quote "It is not our abilities that make us who we are, it is our choices." I'd read it again just for that ;)

Sadly, I can't get my pdfs to a readable-size font. I have a Kindle Touch, and the instructions for the other Kindle versions don't work, nor does anything I can find online. Has anyone had any luck resizing with a Kindle Touch? Or getting it into landscape? I can make it bigger by moving my fingers on the screen, but then half the text disappears and you have to scroll back and forth - a huge disapointment, because I was hoping to use BFSU and the FLL TM on the Kindle.

Black Ships Before Troy - Rosemary Sutcliff Tales from the Odyssey - Mary Pope Osborne My Dd also loves the "You wouldn't want to be a . . . " series

Adrienne, I have been exactly where you are, having a really, really tough day and wanting to reach out for some help and support. I am *so sorry* that you got slammed by some very cruel responses. FWIW, they made me cry too. Hang in there. :grouphug::grouphug::grouphug::grouphug::grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

We're only using TT5, but so far my dd hasn't cracked the text at all - she does it on the computer and uses notebook paper on the side.

Thanks, Capt Uhuru. c'mon, I know lots of you out there is using WWS . . . are you assigning additional writing in other curriculum areas, like science, lit or history? or is WWS "enough" writing for your 5th grader? :bigear:

Okay, just spent a frustrating 20 minutes on the kindle website trying to figure out how to do this - landscape mode to read pdfs. Can you help??? Thanks!

:bigear: I have similar questions about spelling/spelling workout. My dd is using E, and is clearly not as good of a speller as your son :tongue_smilie:, but I don't find that she gets much out of the lessons - she doesn't pay attention to the tips/rules unless I make her, and she often misspells words in the practice. It feels like busywork. I've been considering dropping it and just focusing on practicing words she misspells in writing assignments. But I'd love to hear what the hive thinks of other spelling programs . . .

I just got my copy of WWS, watched SWB's video, and listened to her middle grade writing MP3. (I'm not planning on starting dd with this till the fall, but am compulsively planning ahead, as usual! :D) In the middle-grade writing MP3 (which predates WWS), SWB suggests that the 5th grade student do short, daily writing assignments across the curriculum. She suggests two outline assignments from science or history, 2 summaries, and 1 literary analysis. Here is my question: Does WWS replace those assignments, or are you guys assigning a daily WWS lesson, *and* an additional writing assignment, in history, science or lit? WWS looks pretty intense to me, and seems like it would be enough direct writing instruction, but I'm wondering what those of you who are using it are finding. Thanks!

The group is great, for sure, and Dr. Nebel is very responsive to questions. BTW, I know it is suggested that you go through all the strands "in tandem", likening it to college when you are taking several different classes at the same time, but for us, studying 7 different subjects at once is enough, I don't need to be doing 2 or 3 different areas of science at once, too! So we definitely focus on one "strand" for awhile, then shift to another, rather than trying to move them all forward at once. Some years I may do parts of 2 or 3 strands in a year, some years just one. Anyway, FWIW.

If you want to do Shakespeare, but want something a little "easier" than the Lambs, any of the Bruce Coville books are great; Hamlet, Macbeth, a Midsummer Night's Dream (a favorite with my kids!) or any others Matilda Bone, Karen Cushman

Yep, MM rocks. I probably have posted about this more than any other subject in my extensive 2 month experience with homeschooling! ;) If it weren't for MM, I would be seriously considering slitting my wrists right now. DD has come *so far* with it, and I am confident that she is finally getting the math education she deserves!!!!

I can cast another enthusiastic vote for Math Mammoth. It sounds like I've had some similar struggles with my DD9 - very poor work habits learned in public school, and it's been a daily struggle to retrain her to focus, to not fall apart when a problem is hard or when she makes a mistake. It's exhausting (for me) and it challenges my patience, but I have seen really strong progress. My basic approach has been to work through MM (we're on 4A) and do every problem (so far). We work for 45 min / day, first thing in the morning (and she has a meltdown almost every day! it's getting better though, I can bring her back to focus more quickly than when we started). If she really seems overwhelmed by the problems in front of her, I go to the MM free worksheets for grade 3 and print out the worksheets corresponding to what we're working on, and have her work through those first before tackling the Level 4 stuff. This seems to work well, and maybe it's an approach that would work for you? You get the MM text at the level that seems right (based on the placement test), and start to work through it systematically, and if she's really lost on something print out the (free) worksheets from the previous grade on that topic, and have her work through those first? Anyway, my DD started out disastrously, and has made huge strides in just two months using this approach. I hope it might help you, too. :grouphug:

I like everything we're using, but the standouts have to be: Math Mammoth BFSU

:iagree: These were great. I'm planning to use these w/ DD on one of the next go-rounds of ancient history.

I would be glad to share my spreadsheet, with the caveat that it is a work in progress and gets added to and changed *a lot* - kind of a "living plan." I will try and figure out google docs, but if you want it quicker, just pm with an email address and I'll send you the excel file . . . that way it will actually happen in 2011! ;)

I'm a dork, I know. But see, if I put it in a spreadsheet, it's *there*, in the world, and I can play with it, manipulate it, change it, ignore it, whatever . . . otherwise it just rattles around in my brain and I keep *thinking* about it at 3 am. :D

Well, I'm waiting for someone more experienced to reply but . . . I love BFSU - the idea of it - but I agree that it can be a little, well, slippery . . . what is it you actually *do* other than talk about some cool ideas and read some great books? So I'm incorporating some other stuff in with it, for sure. What I did - my totally anal planning side - was to put all of BFSU Vol. II & III into a spreadsheet, then add in the Vol. I material that I thought we'd need as background, then played around with the timing & sequence so that we had blocks of time on a subject (we like mastery) but that we got all the threads covered, and then started throwing in other things I've read about or seen or knew I wanted to do, at the time that seems logical based on the BFSU sequence/threads. For example, I already have RS4K Biology level 1, so I plugged in chapters from that (totally out of order) when it seemed to make sense with the BFSU threads. It's a work in progress, but I'm really happy with it as a framework. I see how our science might ;) progress for the next 4 years!! It's liberating. Now, when I read about a cool new resource or book I absolutely have to include, I just plug it into the spreadsheet where it seems to make sense. So I use BFSU as a spine in the true sense of the word, in that it directs our lesson sequence and insures that we don't leave anything out, and that we cover necessary background before more complex material. But we may or may not spend a ton of time on the actual content . . . does that make sense?

Have you checked out Julie's website: http://www.livingmath.net/Home/tabid/250/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Thanks for all the suggestions. I want to HS over the summer, but I already know that life will get in the way. She does a month-long all-day theater camp in July, all day, we take a two week family vacation in August, and usually a week or so off in June . . . so there will be at least 7 weeks between June-Sept. that we won't do much math, if any. But, we will chug through most of June, for sure, and we'll see how far we get . . . I also am going to think about the idea of getting MM 5 and doing some rearranging. I was thinking of doing Fractions right after Division, and saving Geometry for the summer. I know that Maria says feel free to rearrange, as long as you cover the concepts necessary for a new topic (like division before fractions), but being such a newbie I tend to figure she must have had a reason for arranging it as she did . . . good to hear some of you have taken some liberties with the organization, with good results! Anyway, thanks for the ideas and encouragement. I am really proud of DD for working so hard to get back on track with math. I don't want her to feel like she's "behind", especially when she compares what she's doing to what her friends in ps are doing - she is getting it at such a deeper, more conceptual level! That is something to feel really good about. I think she is going to be very strong in math if we stay focused and work on it every day.