I agree with some of what he is saying (I think that loving your work is about more than interests and passions, and I agree with his points about autonomy, competence, and relatedness. I'm having a big disconnect with how that relates to helping a kid narrow down a college major or career choice though. The article you linked in your other post says to "choose a major for your own reasons...and then strive to become excellent at it." What would their reasons be, before they have competence (excellence), if not interests? I can think of jobs where I had competence but didn't particularly enjoy the work. I enjoyed the people (and even enjoyed things like determining how I worked and how often, so I had plenty of autonomy)--but it was largely a mismatch for my personality style, and a partial mismatch for my areas of interest. So, I have a lot of trouble thinking that you can really divorce interests and personality from the equation. BTW, the Parachute book doesn't look just at interests--it also looks at skills (which in my mind relates to competence). In fact, a lot of assessments that we've looked at have included both skills and interests. One of the things my son would like to see is a good link that looks at jobs just by skill-set (not honed skills obviously since he wouldn't have areas of expertise yet). Do any of Newport's books look at it from that angle (or does anyone know of good websites that look strictly from that angle?)

Reading was one area where I felt separate lessons really were best for my kids--so if it were me, I'd do them separately. And one of mine especially did not do well if the other was in the room, so I had something non-school related for the other to do during reading lessons. Something like that might help your youngest not be daily confronted with the differences (perfectly normal!) between her and her sister. I’d emphasize that everyone has areas of gifting, and think about the areas of gifting your youngest has–allow her to shine in those areas and build her up in those areas. Something I tell my kids is that there is always someone who is better than you at something–and always someone who is not as good. Comparing ourselves to others is not healthy. Instead, compare yourself to yourself–am I learning, making progress, growing, beating a previous goal or record? Hey, that’s worth celebrating! And we all should celebrate those things for each other. I know it’s tough parenting through these kinds of situations, hang in there!

Already done, accepted, and had to do a correction (I realized while I was doing my son's that I had entered one line incorrectly on my dd's. Must have had a brain freeze! Submitted a correction last night.)

For tion-shun, AAR and AAS are specifically breaking it down into phonograms. You want him to be able to know ti in partial, patience, negotiate, etc... too. However, both AAR and AAS teach the suffix "tion" and if you want to teach it as a word part and memorize "shun," there's nothing wrong with doing that. AAR 3 has the "tion" suffix tile. WOR is taught as two phonograms in AAR and AAS: W + OR. It teaches that OR says /er/ after W in AAR 3 and AAS 4. So, the concepts are taught as you go through the programs. You could always adjust it to make it exactly how you want it though.

Essentials in Writing worked really well for my kids in middle school and high school. Here's a review I did awhile back. I hope you find something that's a good fit for you and your kids!

Two thoughts: One, 14 is young to decide someone's future. As an electrician, would he perhaps like to own his own business some day? Further education could be helpful. I like, whenever possible, to keep a student's options open to the possibility of a college education, even if they might not choose to go right away. Two, along those lines--there's quite a lot of middle ground between teaching the Odyssey at 14 and not going college prep at all (I'm not sure if that's what you meant by just going with the basics or not academic, so forgive me if I am misreading what you want to do!). Some, and maybe even a lot, of students really aren't ready to discuss many of the great books at 14. That doesn't mean there isn't quality literature he could read that would still be part of a college prep education though. I do think there are ways you can hit the core subject areas and be college prep, without being elite college prep, that might be more palatable to a young man who would rather be doing than sitting and studying. I tend to think there are enough options to creating a college-prep high school diploma without being overly constraining that I'd go for it if at all possible.

What a great update! I love her drive and initiative too!

I'm so sorry. It's heartbreaking to watch our kids struggle and suffer. (((Hugs)))

I tend to think he's young for some of those words too--I wouldn't necessarily expect a lot of 8 year-olds to be reading surgical, disengage, & polygon. I'd just help him with those when they come up. How far is he in AAS? He can start applying some of the syllable rules to longer words if he's at least in level 2. For a word like registration, he did well to chunk the "tion" ending. That leaves us with: registra-tion. The first syllable is tricky. One consonant between two vowels usually goes with the second syllable (so his first attempt re-gist) wasn't far off. It was completely understandable that he might think the prefix "re" was involved. If "registration" is a word he has used a lot and would easily recognize, he might be able to know that it didn't sound like a real word to start it with "re" and could try it the other way--but if not, you would probably have to coach him to try it the other way (this is the same thing we as adults do when we see a new technical term or an unfamiliar name--we try it a couple of ways to try to see if we recognize it or if one way sounds better than another.) For the next syllable, when there are 3 consonants together, you will usually divide after the first one (reg-is-tra-tion). If that doesn't make a familiar word though, the student would have to try dividing after the second consonant. So, that's two syllables in a row where the student has to experiment a bit and it's not cut and dried. That's expecting a lot even if he did know "what we usually do" and "what to try if that doesn't make a real word." So, what might seem straight forward to us isn't necessarily that straight forward to a young reader. To me it sounds like he's actually doing pretty well over all, even if you aren't seeing growth in areas you expected. That doesn't mean I wouldn't work on longer words--but I wouldn't be overly concerned either.

The Teacher's Manual (and I'm not positive now if it was the one for K or 1st grade) is where a lot of instruction is. You can see a visual of the letter in the workbook and know where to start--but the TM has cute stories and teaching suggestions (like a little story about "catching George" with the tail of the G, and not to leave a big garbage can in the middle of your m--just enough room for a Hershey's Kiss.) The stories and teaching ideas really made the program (and the letter formation) memorable for my kids. We didn't have money for the wooden pieces (would have been fun though)--but I felt the TM was valuable for at least one level. Once you know the formation and just want practice, then go with just the workbook.

I think you should let her test out batteries and see what she finds. Is her hypothesis (that some will last longer than others) correct? (FWIW, Consumer Reports says that some ARE better than others--so hopefully she would find a pattern. I would have her test several batteries from each brand to see if she notices an overall trend. She might try to research about each one to see if she can discover whether there are differences in how they are made that account for why some last longer than others.) I LOVE the idea of her also building her own battery.

I'm probably confusing it in my mind with the idea of applying but then taking a year off & then applying again. I thought I had read something along those lines being frowned upon.

Hm, that's a good question, thanks!

You might have fun with these Latin Roots with Word Trees.

I think I was wondering (since you have to put a school down), if there's any negative to a school receiving the FAFSA and then a student not applying (especially if he ends up applying there the next year).

Interesting, I wonder why? (I've actually ended up revising FAFSAs in the past though--seems like an easy process...)

I've tried googling but am not coming up with any answers to this. My son completes his AA degree in the spring but still isn't sure what he'd like to do in the future--and until he knows, he doesn't want to transfer to a 4-year school. However, our state offers financial aid on a first come, first served basis, so waiting until Spring (if he decides by then) to do the FAFSA would be too late...so I was thinking of having ds do a FAFSA form anyway. Is there any negative repercussion to filling it out if he ends up not going? Also, since our other child will also be filling out a FAFSA, would it be better to list on her application that there are 2 students in college and have to change it later to 1 if he decides not to go--or list 1 child in college and possibly have to change it later to 2?

Great question! I wrote a blog post about some things to think through before deciding to switch curricula: Grass is Greener Syndrome. There are definitely some times that we found switching helpful, but we also found it helpful to work through the tougher spots of curricula that had otherwise worked for us--so it definitely takes knowing your student and your situation as you decide what's best. Welcome to homeschooling! I hope you and your kids have a great year!

My favorite opportunities were supplemental--PE at the Y, art classes, choral groups, speech class...things that were harder to do at home. It's harder to make core classes work--people want to use such different curricula.

I didn't read everything, but I read a lot. If I didn't think my student's answers made sense, then I read until I understood either why they were wrong or what they were trying to say. I asked them questions about what they wrote and why they thought what they did. We had lots of conversations. We discussed literature whether I had read them, studied them, read some cursory notes, or had very little knowledge of the book at all. I asked lots and lots of questions and they had to be able to explain what they thought and why, and back it up. Most of the literature papers they wrote were on works I had read and knew well. For subjects like science, history, world views, psychology and so on, I could usually skim what my students had read and find the information I needed, but occasionally spent an additional hour or so studying if I had a strong question about something my student had written.

A helpful trick with the fist/thumb idea--tell the child to give themselves a fist-bump to make sure they are looking at the correct side of their hand (I'm working with a little one right now who held out the fist with the back of the hand facing her). Fist bumps make it instantly recognizable to the student which way their hands need to face! It seems to take less forethought than figuring out how to make a bed--but once they see the bed, then you can go to that analogy quickly. I find the air-writing with large arm movements helpful too--letter reversal ideas.

All About Spelling is a complete phonics program, so you will eventually cover it all and fill in any gaps. It just doesn't have fluency/reading practice built in. Some kids really need that, while some kids seem to take off in reading on their own. If your daughter isn't struggling with reading and is making steady progress, having her read aloud to you daily would seem to be working. If she hits a road block with learning to sound out longer words, then you may want to add a reading program.

LOL, your story reminded me of the tech problems we had in the 80's--the computers we used (with green print on black screens) were all on banks of long tables, back to back in the library, with the cords hanging down between the tables. You learned to save early and save often (like the old Chicago voting joke), because if you accidentally kicked the cords you would lose everything you wrote. Oy!

Honestly, if AAR was working, I think I would pick back up with it. You already invested the money--why not continue with it? The author was told her son had severe dyslexia and would never read or write (see her video)--which led to her creating the program. It has worked for lots of dyslexic students. In the latest edition of The Well-Trained Mind, Susan Wise Bauer calls it "the most age-appropriate and parent-friendly Orton-Gillingham program on the market." If it wasn't working and he wasn't making progress then I'd investigate why, but if he is, why stop? I would get back into it though, and help him progress so that he can get to long vowels and more complex words in his timeframe. AAR takes students up to high school level word-attack skills, so it's a complete "learn to read" program. You may want to visit their Dyslexia Resources page. And, if you are seeing specific trouble spots (like working on fluency), you can always email for support. HTH some!

Sometimes you just need a break. Sorry it's painful getting back into things though. My oldest completely forgot how to write almost all letters between first and second grade, even though he'd been writing them since K. We spent 2 months working on making them automatic again. It was a long time before I tried more than a 6 week summer off again! Anyway...it won't always be like this for your child, and it won't take forever to regain the knowledge. The "easiest" thing to do is just accept it. I know that's not easy, but the impatience largely comes from expecting it should be different--I found just "giving in" and saying, "okay, this is where we are, now let's get to work" helped. Does your math program have placement tests? Maybe doing the tests for the last two grades would help you identify the gaps that exist right now, so that you could fill those in before restarting the program? (((Hugs))) to you--I know it's not easy!