I grew up multilingual, I am Hungarian who grew up in Romania. From first grade I had 3 languages, Hungarian, Romanian and German taken in school. Hungarian and Romanian every day, German 3 x a week. We had only 4 hours of school a day, 50 min long classes with 10 -15 min recess. In middle school, from 5th grade, I had to take Russian too, twice per week and Latin in 7 and 8th grades. In middle school we had 5 or 6 classes per day, same format with 50 min class and 10-15 min recess. In high school the school dropped Latin, but all the other 4 languages stayed till the end. During high school we had usually 6 classes , if we had 7 classes it was ART or PE class that day and we schooled 6 days a week. Since I attended a Hungarian school all the classes were taught by native Hungarian teachers, the Romanian by a native Romanian, but the German and Russian languages were not native teachers, but were excellent professors without any accent. All classes were conducted only in that corresponding language, rarely did the teachers instruct us in our native language. All the languages had, phonetic instruction in elementary, lots of reading, poetry memorization, grammar, literature, copy work, narration, talking in class, outside in the real world, lots of translations in German and Russian, essays... We were also tested orally and in writing, but not multiple choice questions :) After high school I traveled a lot, and living in Spain I picked up Spanish in a month. I learned English when I came to the USA but I still have a strong accent! 4 Year college here was easy, it corresponded to a high school level education back home only in English. When I went to Indonesia several years ago, I met several tour guides; one in Borobudur had excellent English accent. I asked him where did he learned to speak so well? He said he never left Indonesia, or his hometown, he learned it watching BBC and other TV channels that he had access to. Amazing, what people can achieve if they want it. My son, 10 yo, currently learns 3 languages, English, Hungarian, Latin. He wants to start French (that I do not speak at all:) and Spanish too.

Yes, the unabridged version has a richer vocabulary and content. Now that he read the abridged version he can listen to the unabridged one for a change. My son just turned 9 today, and he reads these books.

Here are some that I can think of, there are thousands more of course:) Peter Pan Princess and Goblin Princess and Curdie At the back of the North Wind Men of Iron Swallows and Amazons The Saturdays Alice's Adventures n Wonderland Through he looking glass Roald Dahl book Black Beauty Pollyanna The Secret Garden The Moffatts The Borrowers Gone Away Lake Robinson Crusoe The Peterkin Papers Rip Van Winkle Oliver Twist Kim Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Prince and the Pauper Captains Courageous Treasure Island Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates

Another option is "The Sentence Family: Introducing Grammar Through Art and Story" http://www.stmichaelschool.us/sentencefamily.html

You can find Language Arts albums and other albums at Cultivating Dharma's website: http://www.freemontessori.org/?page_id=9

Retention is pretty low at this age. We did FLL 1& 2 previous years with my now 8 yo son, and always struggled with parts of speech. He chose Abeka LA this year over R&S because it is colorful. What we did is used some Montessori grammar materials over the summer, that is color coded and pretty simple. It helped him understanding the content better. You can download Montessori Grammar manuals from the internet for free.

Waldorf's third grade curriculum is focusing on farming and gardening.

We are using Intermediate 4 now and the only difference from Saxon 54 is that Intermediate 4 has a separate workbook with the lesson problems. Otherwise no difference whatsoever. Intermediate 4 is for younger students who get tired easily from writing or copying the exercises from the textbook.

Well, this is what happened with my son and then we changed to a spiral curriculum. He needs constant review. We love Singapore though!

My son is 7 yo going into third grade this fall, completed Saxon 3 last year. He is no way ready for the copying and writing in Saxon 54. So last month one of Saxon's rep at a homeschool conference advised to use Saxon Intermediate 4 instead of Saxon 54 or Saxon Intermediate 5 for Saxon 65 respectively. She said Intermediate is exactly the same as regular Saxon but with a workbook that has the problems already in it. Anyone has any experience with it? Katalin

We are using Saxon3 Currently with my son. The Daily Meeting and Calendar is like a math circle time. You fill in the corresponding month's calendar days, you have a number of the day where he has to write three number sentences for that number, you have to record today's temperature, skip counting - which is very helpful, currently we skip counting by 1/4 up till 5 and backwards. You have a today's pattern - where he fills out the given pattern, clock - where he practices to tell and write down clock time, problem of the day where he has to solve the given problem, coin cup where he has to figure out the value of the given coins or if the value is given then the number and types of coins used. It is 10 minutes, but very helpful in reviewing the facts.

There is the Mathematics An Illustrated History of Numbers (100 Ponderables), who did what, when... http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Illustrated-History-Numbers-Ponderables/dp/0985323043 Hope it is helpful. Katalin

We did WRTR with my first grader last year. I was skeptical in the beginning but it worked. It does not take 3 hours, since you are homeschooling. You also start teaching the handwriting. What we did is: start the phonics, review them everY day. Then start teaching the ayers words list, 30 a week. You also show with your hand as you spell the word the phonograms. When we finished writing the word we underlined what we had to, discussed the rules and noted the rule numbers next to the word. Last year my son rarely told me what rules applied. This year however, he is the one telling me the rules (most of the time). Big change. I am amazed. So the programm really worked. We got from level 0 to 3.2 grade level spelling by the end of the year. I also had the teacher's book but it is not necessary if you are not following it. We did different grammar and writing programs. Good luck to you.

I had the same problem with my son. He is more of a visual learner. After reading a story or a book I required him to draw one thing he remembered. Try to connect his drawing with one or two keywords from the story for vocabulary enrichment.

I had the same problem with my DS5, so I did phonemic awareness activities with him: rhyming words, syllable segmentation, beginning sound substitution, sound isolation, phonemic segmentation. Then we started to use ABeka's blending ladder activities. It helped a lot. Here is a very helpful site http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/phonics-printables It doesn't mean your son is not ready, he might need a different approach to teach him.