For now I am focusing on retained reflexes and some hand eye coordination work then she will probably do some vision therapy. I think vision therapy takes longer before the reflexes are integrated and it led to sensory overload in my son to do reflex integration exercises and vision therapy at the same time.

She is just finishing up 1st grade and will be finished with 1st and in 2nd when she finishes Barton 3 so she is on the border. It looks like the first one would work a little better as is but when she is done I would want to practice the r controlled vowels and oi and aw. She does know short vowels well. So 10-33 in the older student one except for the oll one she could do.

What age do you mean for younger students? She actually does better with large print because she has vision things going on too but I see the one for older students goes a little farther but it probably is too fast a sequence I think.

I had her listen to the audiobook and then I asked the questions in the activity guide. I reread the parts she could not answer questions for and then she did a narration. She did the coloring pages and maps but I eventually ran out of time for maps at the end. I wanted to do extra reading but I could not fit it in this year. I will try next year with byl and audiobooks and starting the spine earlier in the year. It was almost mid year when I started it so to finish we just used our time reading SOtW instead of other books. Over the summer we might read some books aloud or listen to audiobooks on the topic. I did none of the hands on activities in the activity guide.

This board definietely skews higher income and on the older side for homeschoolers. People also skew more intelligent. I am younger and much lower income then the norm here and in a higher income area with crappy health insurance. If it is hard for people making good money in high income areas, it is even worse for those that are not. I definitely feel that people here are living very different lives then me and have a very different perspective.

I thought I saw it mentioned that the middle school level SWIB taught similar things to SWIA but the reading material was at a higher level. Is the output similar or more in B? How long are the lessons? I am considering B for my 6th grader but I wonder if it could work for my 4th grader. He is a reluctant writer though so I am not sure. He can comprehend at a high level.

With what you describe I do not think it would work independently. The workbook directions are pretty hard to understand how to work a problem. You do need to read it very carefully. I am using it with one if my kids who can often do Signapore on her own but needs help with the directions in BA.

I have very mixed feelings about Barton and what I really do not like is how long it will take to get dd reading but there are things that I do see the benefit of. Dd is near the end of level 3 although I am pretty certain she will need to redo some lessons. I was thinking of finishing level 3 then taking a break to do some thing like phonics pathways or blend phonics to do the one syllable stuff like silent Es and vowel teams then doing Barton level 4 after that. She can read silent e from some lexia lessons she had on it and she used to know phonograms. Obviously that is not a recommended sequence but I think it could maybe get her reading.

This exactly. A lot of the success stories are the ones that do intuit the other stuff probably because a lot of them did other stuff before Barton but expecting a kid to be at a higher reading level just from level 5 is encouraging guessing in those that only picked up level 5 skills. It other wise takes around 3 years.

Barton Level 5 did not even get to silent e words, many vowel teams or r controlled vowels yet. It actually says on the Barton website that they she does not recommend reading books until they are past level 8 because they will not have the decoding skills for most books. Some kids may intuit it and get to a 3rd or 4th level or more at level 5 but not off what is coming from the Barton lessons. They still have more patterns to learn. https://bartonreading.com/levels/ I found where she said that in the question where they asked if there are stand alone books like the stories in the level. She says that until they get past level 8 they can not read most library books and can revert to guessing. I liked using the level 1 books when I was using level 3 and could not use Barton because we were away. It was good practice. The level 2 have silent e but if they could do silent e words they might be good fluency practice.

At level is what they can comfortably read by themselves without many errors. Instructional level can be around 95 percent accuracy or so and is done aloud to stretch them. Below level would be something that is below the grade level of at level to work on fluency.

Yea I did RSO this year and I want a break from it. I like all it covers but the format was not my favorite. Since elemental is neutral I did not want that either but the format might of been better. I just am doing something else for science. There are more secular options over time at least but I wish there were more options out there for secular curriculum.

This year I found free notebooking paper for SOTW1 that someone made and let others use for free on Pinterest. All it was was handwriting paper with the chapter and subchapter headings but I really liked having that. They have some similar for SoTW 3 and 4 but not 2 which I may use with my youngest child plus my older kids are using something different for history anyway and I like the idea of having it for science notebooks too. Is there a program where you can chose a type of paper either 3 lined or 2 and put your own headings up top? I am not looking something pre made that will not quite fit the curriculum we are using but just a way to design headings on handwriting paper.

It has vocabulary, memory work, maps, copy work and dictation, narration, comprehension questions and timeline stuff too. I actually like having the schedule of books. I know I can figure it out ahead of time but I did not do so good with trying to combine spines and extra books this year. I was working through my spine too slowly. I did one of the unit studies in the past and it was really well liked so I wanted to try a full year. I do wish the dictation and narration had a clear direction though like WWE or the SOTW activity guide because I would really like a writing accross the curriculum plan laid out for me but I really like the way it combines spines with literature type books as well as factual type books with a schedule to follow. I also prefer that it sticks with the theme rather then jumping around with a bunch of different types of unit studies like MBTP does. I do like unit studies for topics of interest that are hard to cover well time wise in a full year curriculum. I like that it uses narration and has work to go with it but not tons of worksheets like MBTP. I like a lot of the themes they chose but I also like the world history cycle too so not sure what years I will use. I also do not like their science (elemental) so I wish it had more choices for that but I think they are changing that part. Non secular choices are not an option for me though.

I actually did the thing with seeing if you are a super taster by counting taste buds for one of my kid's science fair projects. We dyed tongues and used this little ring then did a questionnaire that asked if they were picky or liked spicy food. I was a super taster according to the taste buds and I was very picky as a kid. I actually like things spicy or flavored though and do not find things that are very mild spicy at all like some people. There are a lot of tastes I do not like though like coffee, beer, wine and lots of vegetables etc. My mom cannot handle things with much flavor and prefers things very bland so that is how she cooked while I was growing up which contrasted with me as a child who much prefers flavor and spice. A lot of the super tasters we tested did end up picky and more did not like spicy food but there were exceptions on both sides.

Considering Language Arts: Barton and either Build Your Own Library or Torchlight plus narrating across the curriculum Math: Singapore and Beast Academy History: Middle Ages Year 2 with either Torchlight or Build Your Own Library Science: Mr Q Earth Science PE: Swimming and martial arts Considering adding piano and voice with not sure what maybe Hoffman for piano?

Will post in other thread.

I like learning ally so far. We just got approved recently. It has a pretty big selection of books and textbooks and you only have a yearly fee not a fee per book like with audible. Libravox has a pretty small selection. Learning ally has the textbooks I was considering for next year which will be nice. There have been a few stories where the people have not been very animated and the telling of the book was a little dry but most have been fine.

Wow that is really horrible. I am so sorry you are going through that. I know pancreatic cancer is not good but I hope somehow it was caught early enough and she beats the odds.

Eh some kids are harder then others. I think the adults in this situation were the rude ones more so then a child who is still in an earlier developmental sage and still learning. 7 (or 9) year olds say different kinds of things then 3 year olds. What he said is not at all shocking for a kid that age. Kids go through all sorts of stages. Ones that are easy at 3 can be challenging down the road and vise versa. You have one easy going child at their current stage but down the road you may have a child that is more challenging and I am sure you wouldn't want people to judge you and walk off in huff after one thing a small child says and one interaction with a parent. Plus everyone has bad days. I try to be more accepting and understanding of children and their parents instead of judging them. It is not good to be isolated but especially when going through the parenting of children all by yourself.

I agree with the person whose house it is that it is neither messy nor tidy. It would only take a few minutes to tidy that up and it is not dirty so it is not messy to me. My house does not have things in the wall or decorations and furniture that matches. Some walls are still painted white. I also hang coats on doors. I guess people can judge me for that.

Cursing in the right context is fine like if something upsetting, stressful or painful happens and it is not directed at someone. Cursing directed at someone is different and not ok. Teachers are human so if it was an isolated incident during an emotional situation that would be one thing. A teacher or coach cursing on social media and directing at specific students is very unacceptable. It shows no restraint as the adult leader especially since he is doing it after the fact when he has time to think through his actions and it is very hurtful to the kids he is calling out in a very public manner. That behavior is completely unacceptable.

It is a generalization to say 2nd marriages with kids do not turn out well. It is not an outlier to have a second marriage with kids go well. It is not that rare. There are some studies out there that say kids do better when parents stay single but there are also ones that say that kids in step households fare better. The studies out there about how kids do with remarriage are very mixed. Plus correlation does not mean causation. There could be another reason that kids fare worse and studies that show how kids fare in a unhealthy marriage with bio parents are no better. It is harder then a first marriage because of the confounding factors but there is certainly plenty of advice out there on how to find healthy partners and how to go about integrating a blended family so it goes smoothly. Every one will need time to adjust. Second marriages are more likely to end in divorce but that does not mean all will. Some people probably still have bad habits if the first marriage did not work out but there is plenty of things someone can do to learn healthier ways and to look out for secure people the next time around. I do know several blended families that have yours mine and ours and similar configurations that are doing well with well adjusted children. There may have been some growing pains and it can take time for bonding and adjusting at first but they are faring fine and grow to love all their children.

We have a public safety patrol to call for stuff like that through the fire department. I did call once for someone passed out on the sidewalk. By the time I could pull over to call it in someone else already did.

I feel ready to throw in the towel too and I am only in level 3. It has been driving me crazy. I also do not like the order of things. I think I will do level 4 even though I heard that one is hard but I think that one might be useful with attack skills for multi syllabic words but after that I do wish she was exposed to more phonograms.