Bumping...

I know these programs are quite different from each other, but they both seem to be highly recommended. My question would be, how would you know which would be a good fit? For example, my child is good at ____ so ____ worked really well. Or, my child really needs help with ____ so ____ worked well. I'm sure there will be different opinions, but I thought the replies might be interesting.

I am looking at k12 literature for next year. You can get the readers at cbd for a decent price. Then you would have to search amazon and ebay for copies of the worksheets and teacher's books. My DD does read in her free time, but she too loves short and sweet lessons for homeschool. Get in, get out, get it done...unless it's art.

We do use a separate grammar program. We use Winston along with Daily Grams. Taking it slow, reviewing a lot, and adding in Mad Libs. She has also done BJU and GWG in the past, but those didn't stick as well. I hadn't really considered Writing Strands since all I had heard was people not liking it. I'll have to look into it. I also looked at Killgallon, but wasn't sure if it would be too complex for her.

I looked at BW once upon a time, but really couldn't figure it out. I need a lot of hand-holding in the writing department, and it seemed too open-ended. Maybe things have changed though. Yes, her spelling has improved a lot thanks to A&P. We are still in Book C of that. Her Buster the dog story is quite developed. That's her longest piece. She came up with that one as a spin-off of Big Bad Bruce by Bill Peet. 100% original ideas are harder for her.

I'm just about set on my decisions for the upcoming school year, but keep going back and forth for writing. A bit of a background. My DD will be 11 for the upcoming year, but has dyslexia and is very behind in her writing skills. She also shows some signs of dysgraphia. We are teaching her typing, but she isn't fluent at it yet. We have used a few different things over the past few years including WriteShop Junior D, IEW ATFF, and Writing Skills A by Diana Hanbury King. WriteShop D was dropped pretty quickly. My DD loved the activities and games, but the writing called for too many leaps. We had tears. She does fine with IEW ATFF, but the key word outlines really stifled her creativity. She's had the best luck with Writing Skills, but I have trouble scheduling it since it isn't quite a complete program. Here are a couple of paragraphs she has churned out using Writing Skills: There are many good places for field trips. The zoo is a good place for a trip. There are awesome things to see in the museum. Roller skating and ice skating are good field trips too. There are many places for a field trip. There are many Ninjago characters. Cole is a great ninja leader. Jay is really funny. Zane is really smart. Cole is great at leading ninja. Obviously these are below grade level, and we haven't begun work on adding more interesting words. But they are an idea of where she is at. She is also quite a creative girl. She frequently starts writing mini-stories...usually by taking stories she already knows and changing the characters or events. Here are a couple samples of her free-time writing...spelling and grammar mistakes not corrected. The poem of the red urchin The Red urchins looks like it's fuzzy. They look cuddy. Red urchins look frendly but they are not. They have orange spikes. Red urchins roll around like balls. They are cute. When They are happy and mad. They live in a fire place and come out of a hole with stone over it. They sometimes roll into fire. And that is the poem of the red urchin. The End The Adventures of Buster the dog Chapter 1- Buster is a beagle. He has been sad and lonly sints He was Three years old, and now Buster is six years old. Why Buster is sad an lonly because He has no frends. And why he has been sad is He is tired of being a dog is that He dosn't want to be a dog but He wanted to be a larg bear, so Buster ran away. He ran and ran. Buster sudenly stoped, He was in the middle of a forest. Chapter 2- Buster look around Him, then He desided to look around the forest. He crosed a running stream, then He desided to have lunch. He ate some blueberries. When Buster was done, He moved on. He spotted a hut in a tree. A little witch look out a window and spotted Buster. She clibmed down a latter and looked at Buster up and down. Chapter 3- "So you want to be a bear, eh? Then I, Witchy Clever, shall turn you, doggy, into a bear." So Witchy Clever pulled out her wand. "Growl, grab, giant, geo. Turn this dog into a...BEAR!" Instantly, Buster was a bear. Chapter 4- He growled thanks, then galloped off. Looking back, he saw Witchy Clever waving. When he got home, he realized that he liked Witchy Clever, he wanted to stay with her forever. Buster wanted to be a dog again, but Just then Witchy Clever came, "Guss you, Buster, want to be a dog again, don't you?" Buster nodded yes. Chapter 5- "Bipidy-bopidy-boo. Turn this bear into a dog again." Soon Buster was a dog again. He pawd the door, The door flung open, Mat, Buster's owner, was so happy that he cried. So, I'm really open to any suggestions. I have been looking at using the full SWI-A, or CAP, or ...? Don't know...just been looking at a lot. During school time she is very aware of her spelling issues (she has come a long way). She also knows capitalization rules, but lowercase H and T cause her a lot of problems, so I frequently see those as capital letters in her writing. If you've read this far...thanks :)

I'm just about set on my decisions for the upcoming school year, but keep going back and forth for writing. A bit of a background. My DD will be 11 for the upcoming year, but has dyslexia and is very behind in her writing skills. She also shows some signs of dysgraphia. We are teaching her typing, but she isn't fluent at it yet. We have used a few different things over the past few years including WriteShop Junior D, IEW ATFF, and Writing Skills A by Diana Hanbury King. WriteShop D was dropped pretty quickly. My DD loved the activities and games, but the writing called for too many leaps. We had tears. She does fine with IEW ATFF, but the key word outlines really stifled her creativity. She's had the best luck with Writing Skills, but I have trouble scheduling it since it isn't quite a complete program. Here are a couple of paragraphs she has churned out using Writing Skills: There are many good places for field trips. The zoo is a good place for a trip. There are awesome things to see in the museum. Roller skating and ice skating are good field trips too. There are many places for a field trip. There are many Ninjago characters. Cole is a great ninja leader. Jay is really funny. Zane is really smart. Cole is great at leading ninja. Obviously these are below grade level, and we haven't begun work on adding more interesting words. But they are an idea of where she is at. She is also quite a creative girl. She frequently starts writing mini-stories...usually by taking stories she already knows and changing the characters or events. Here are a couple samples of her free-time writing...spelling and grammar mistakes not corrected. The poem of the red urchin The Red urchins looks like it's fuzzy. They look cuddy. Red urchins look frendly but they are not. They have orange spikes. Red urchins roll around like balls. They are cute. When They are happy and mad. They live in a fire place and come out of a hole with stone over it. They sometimes roll into fire. And that is the poem of the red urchin. The End The Adventures of Buster the dog Chapter 1- Buster is a beagle. He has been sad and lonly sints He was Three years old, and now Buster is six years old. Why Buster is sad an lonly because He has no frends. And why he has been sad is He is tired of being a dog is that He dosn't want to be a dog but He wanted to be a larg bear, so Buster ran away. He ran and ran. Buster sudenly stoped, He was in the middle of a forest. Chapter 2- Buster look around Him, then He desided to look around the forest. He crosed a running stream, then He desided to have lunch. He ate some blueberries. When Buster was done, He moved on. He spotted a hut in a tree. A little witch look out a window and spotted Buster. She clibmed down a latter and looked at Buster up and down. Chapter 3- "So you want to be a bear, eh? Then I, Witchy Clever, shall turn you, doggy, into a bear." So Witchy Clever pulled out her wand. "Growl, grab, giant, geo. Turn this dog into a...BEAR!" Instantly, Buster was a bear. Chapter 4- He growled thanks, then galloped off. Looking back, he saw Witchy Clever waving. When he got home, he realized that he liked Witchy Clever, he wanted to stay with her forever. Buster wanted to be a dog again, but Just then Witchy Clever came, "Guss you, Buster, want to be a dog again, don't you?" Buster nodded yes. Chapter 5- "Bipidy-bopidy-boo. Turn this bear into a dog again." Soon Buster was a dog again. He pawd the door, The door flung open, Mat, Buster's owner, was so happy that he cried. So, I'm really open to any suggestions. I have been looking at using the full SWI-A, or CAP, or ...? Don't know...just been looking at a lot. During school time she is very aware of her spelling issues (she has come a long way). She also knows capitalization rules, but lowercase H and T cause her a lot of problems, so I frequently see those as capital letters in her writing. If you've read this far...thanks :)

Wow! Great suggestions. I'm going to run them by my DS to see what looks most interesting to him.

Can somebody recommend a resource for Algebra prep over that summer? My DS just finished his 7th grade year at school doing basically pre-algebra (Holt Course 3). However, they didn't make it much more than half-way through the book during the course of the year. My DS really wants to make sure he is prepared for algebra for 8th grade, if not possibly come in a little bit ahead. I don't want to purchase a full curriculum, since we really only have about 2 months to work on it before he goes back. Our local Barnes and Noble didn't have anything helpful though. Ideas?

Nope, as far as I could tell, the test was very similar to last year's test. Both were form C, just one level up. The types of questions seemed very similar as well. She does have dyslexia, but we have remediated enough that she is reading at grade level. Her reading scores were fine. Her vocabulary scores went up. We have continued to stick with the IOWA test because she has done it each year since 1st grade. I figured that sticking with it would give the best indication of growth instead of switching from one test to another. I also never expected her to be ranking as average or grade level equivalent while working a grade level behind, but since CLE is supposedly advanced, I would expect a score less behind than what we received. I think I will chalk it up to either a bad day or working too slowly. It's just disheartening to not know.

Okay...I'll add the percentiles for comparison. 3rd grade - 8th % total (12th % concepts, 8th % problem solving, 18th % computation) 4th grade - 42nd % total (33rd % concepts, 50th % problem solving, 54 % computation) 5th grade - 27th % total (22nd % concepts, 32nd % problem solving, 20th % computation) I did not look at her answers before sending it in. I used to do that, but it stressed me out too much. So now I just seal it and send it. The bottom of the results do give a breakdown of what areas are strong and which are weaker. Like I said, I feel like we've had a great year and don't intend to switch at this time, just look at our options on how to get better results on next year's test via supplementing or ....

I received our IOWA test results back last week, and have to say I'm a bit puzzled/disappointed about my DD's math scores. I'll start with the long story short...DD has dyslexia and is behind grade level. At the end of 3rd grade, she took the 3rd grade IOWA test. We'd had a rough math year with Saxon 3 to start and then switched over to the end of CLE 200 series. She scored a grade equivalent of 2.2 at the end of 3rd grade. At the end of 4th grade, she took the 4th grade IOWA test. We used all of CLE 300 series that year. Her score jumped up to a grade equivalent of 4.5. This year, 5th grade, we did the 5th grade IOWA test after doing CLE 400 this year. Her confidence has been much higher and I thought that she had done really well. Her score this year was a grade equivalent of 4.5. No change or growth at all. Now, I'm not one to base an entire year on a single test, but I would have liked to see change at least. Do I chalk it up to just a bad test day? Do I start to wonder if something went wrong in our instruction this year? Overall, we have had great success with CLE, though I have lately been wondering about it's pace and lack of challenging word problems.

I'm going to have to agree with Peter Pan. We did finally manage to make it through, but were this close to giving up on it.

My DD has grown a lot in her understanding by using Winston Grammar. We add in some Daily Grams for punctuation work. It's been pretty quick and painless. I haven't used this yet, so take the recommendation with a grain of salt, but we are looking into using Marie's Words for vocabulary next year. Very visual in it's presentation.

We are somewhat in the same boat, just a few years behind you. My DD is also dyslexic and behind in certain areas. She has a mid-July birthday, so she is young for her grade. We have debated holding her back since 1st grade due to her learning differences and she continues to lag behind 1/2-1 year in most subjects. She is just finishing up her "5th grade" year. Though most of her work is closer to 4th grade level. We are planning to just keep advancing her at this point, but if she needs another year before high school, we'll call her 8th grade for 2 years. That seems to be a pretty common practice around here. I do see ourselves as being lucky she has a summer birthday, so we have that flexibility to pick a grade without it standing out too much. It took me a while to get to that mindset though.

My DD has dysgraphia and can only handle 1 page of A&P a day. So a "level" takes us 3 days. It's still working at that pace for us. Occasionally she'll have a few words that give her problems and those are the ones that I will have her rewrite 3x each day until it sticks. We usually do spelling early in the morning, so any reinforcement we do in the afternoon.

I used it for my DS when he was still homeschooling. It was cheap, it worked, and it got the job done. He was an early reader and a natural speller. I do think sometimes the words were hard or not appropriate for the level, but overall it worked really well. I wouldn't be able to use it for my DD though. She has dyslexia and isn't a natural speller. It would have been too hard for her. She uses Apples & Pears now. Other good spelling workbook programs I considered were Rod & Staff and Bob Jones.

While my DD loved Follow My Leader, I didn't particularly like reading it aloud. There were a lot of conversations between the characters. Too much quoting always is difficult for me to read aloud. My DD had no interest in Pedro's Journal so we didn't finish.

Sounds a little bit like Math Rider.

You could look into something like Megawords.

Darn, I don't have the COVD or speech report. Our COVD was very good but they have since hired a new therapist. Our speech therapist was a joke...no help there. I do still have the report from the learning center we visited. They diagnosed dyslexia and auditory processing problems, but nothing official. And of course they wanted us to pay a gajillion dollars to do their therapy.

I would also suggest Winston Grammar Basic. It starts at the beginning and will get him up to grade level. The reading is pretty minimal and the writing is limited to making marks on the sentences.

Great! I'm going to be calling the 2 I have it narrowed down to this afternoon. We have been to special testing in the past (COVD, learning center, speech therapist). Some have been helpful, some have been a complete waste of time. I really want to finally have a good answer on how to help my DD.

Thanks OhElizabeth! That helped so much. I'll also make sure to watch out for boring doorknobs and smokers :)

For those of you that have already BTDT, what questions were helpful to ask before setting up a NP appointment. Should I ask about what tests they cover, how they feel about homeschoolers, ... ? I'm not quite sure how to get started.