I had the exact same experience! Coupled with the fact that there are almost no early science books like the one Nebel recommends in Dutch (in The Netherlands we do not start science at such a young age), made that I felt that I was 'lecturing' to my dd all the time. When we came to things like molecules....there was no way that she could make those connections herself, she had to totally rely on me, if I had told her that everything was made from very small marshmallows or swiss cheese she would have believed it :tongue_smilie:. I shelved the book and am not doing much science at all. I have to say that the American way of teaching very young children chemistry and physics is just not making sense to me (unless you have a child obsessed with it, of course).

Emma, I'm not trying to be snarky, but what method do you use for subtracting? I have always used the Singapore way, I think Dutch math is quiet similar to Singapore math. So if you would do 43-8=....., what do you do? If I know what you do, I can try to explain what the difference is with SM math. Oke?

Your daughters method is *also* in the SM teachers manual (at least in my Standard Edition). It is on page 75-76. They say that you can teach this strategy to children who find the first strategy (subtracting from the tens) difficult. My daughter also came up with this strategy herself and was at first resistant to doing it the other way. So we practised both. Now in 1B she only uses the subtracting from tens, because it is easier. If you make sure that she can use both methods, she will be fine. I have noticed that I also use both methods, BTW.:)

Fascinating thread! And Charles Wallace and Ester Maria...please continue ranting, I'm :bigear: and totally :iagree:!!!!!!!

Congratulations!

Tammy, you are in Germany now, right? How did you manage to get the set for 114 $ including shipping??? My shipping (to the Netherlands) was 62$ :blink:. Maybe you could order two sets and ship one to me :lol:....

It sounds awesome!!! :thumbup: Let her do it. Let her research, let her experiment. This will be a year she will always remember.

I'm having the same problem and I'm in The Netherlands. That's not a remote part of the world...., everybody else is in a remote part of the world :lol:.

Try tracing the markings made with the permanent marker with a normal white board marker, usually you can then wipe it all off. (I'm assuming the kids did not paint the whole white board with the permanent marker :D).

Thanks, Stripe. It looks like I will have to work around google books..grrrr, but the Internet Archive is great.

I never understand this Google-book thing :confused:. Can someone help me, please! Where do I look to find the actual texts? Just pretend I'm really, really dumb :D and describe to me what you do/where you click to read them. With my luck...google will probably tell me that they are 'copyrighted' so I can't read them (google does that all the time for non-US readers).

Hi Hannah, I'm from the Netherlands and had the same problem last week, the error message said that my transaction had been denied :glare:! I e-mailed them and received an e-mail back telling me to call them or fax my credit card info. Calling them is costly and I'm not really happy with faxing. I have not yet responded to their e-mail, as my kids are having the stomage flu :001_huh:, but I'm sure that they will work something out. Now that you are having the same problem, they might be able to fix their system, I do not think that they had noticed that I'm outside the US when they responded to my e-mail.

KarenAnne, thank you for your review of GEMS! I had never heard of it, but from your review it looks great!

Forget about the woods! :lol: That's hilarious! Totally hijacking this thread, Aubrey can I pm you about ESL? I could use some advice.

Me too! Me too! It is just that writing it all down makes it look very cumbersome. Wait untill you come to double digit addition or subtraction. My dd had no problem what so ever, except that she wanted to tell me every little small step.....:tongue_smilie: Then you get something like this: 23 + 18 well, mum, you have 20 and 3 and 10 and 8. The 8 is 7 and 1, so you give the 7 to the 3 to make 10, but remember, mum, you still have a 1... bla bla bla bla For every sum. Every. Sum.:lol:

What Bill said :D For 6+7, you would know that 7 is made up of 3 and 4, so you give the 4 to the 6 to make 10, you still have 3, so 10 + 3 is 13. 6 + 7 = 6 + 4 + 3 = 10 + 3 =13 Other way around, 6 is made up of 3 and 3, so you would give 3 to 7 to make 10, you still have 3 left, 10 + 3 is 13. 6 + 7 = 3 + 3 + 7 = 3 + 10 = 13 I know it sounds quiet convoluted :001_smile:, but it is very necessary for calculations with larger numbers and if your child understands this well, adding and subtracting larger numbers is a breeze.

4+5, would be either just memorised or as double 4 plus 1 or double 5 minus 1. 5+6, 6+7, 7+8 , making tens (you could also do doubles plus/minus one, but making tens is the most important). This is all in Singapore Primary Math 1A. HTH.

Thank you for this list, Esther Maria! Sigh, I wish you could homeschool me :D.

I read Oedipus Rex and Agamemnon and am now reading Herodotus - Histories (WTM 9th grade recommendations).....man, Herodotus (bla, bla) is going to take awhile. I'm busy with Analytical Grammar, I'm really enjoying it! I'm working my way through a Dutch high school Latin course, it is going quiet well, although the amount of vocabulary is holding me back. Grammar, no problem, but I seem to have lost my speed with memorizing vocab :lol:. And when I'm too tired to study Latin at night, I read some Lingua Latina.

Julianna, thank you for your review and the comparison with First Favorites. Sounds like I made the right choice by going with StoryTime Treasures, which is always nice to hear while you are waiting for your order to arrive :D.

I ordered it from ChristianBooks.com, because the European seller is not carrying it :glare:, but it is going to ship on 3/28...aaaargh (impatient smiley).

I was going to recommend these too! We are using them, although our situation is a bit different, with English a foreign language. The stories are funny! An no sight words anywhere.

Dear Tanya, I REALLY do hope you did not take my questions as a criticism of Highlands Latin School or the message boards at Memoria Press! :blushing: I do not doubt your honesty in reporting these test scores at all! From reading the message board here, I learned that certain standardized tests are easier than others, and being a foreigner I was wondering how the ITBS and National Merit Scholars fit into that. (The education situation in the Netherlands is very different: anyone who passes the final exams of the 'university track' can attend any university they want, with the exception of medical school.) Thank you for answering!

Hi Pamela, I'm familiar with the Latin Centered Curriculum and I plan to use it with my dds. i think it is great! :001_smile: However I HAVE to add English as a foreign language and I would like to get my dd working at grade level as soon as possible. Problem is: I need to buy all the English books, our library does not carry any English books except for Harry Potter and LotR, and I do not really know what are the right books (content, difficulty) for my dds to read/study. So I was thinking of using the summer reading lists of Highlands Latin School and the Memoria Press literature guides as a benchmark. I was just curious if their test scores really indicate that what they are doing is superior or if this is just clever marketing? I'm not so sure if it would be wise to ask that question on the Memoria Press message board :D. (BTW, I'm not implying anything bad about them, I'm sure they are nice and honest people.) Do you think their test scores are exceptional? BTW, there is a very good yahoogroup for LCC, you might like to join: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LatinClassicalEd/

I was looking at the summer reading lists of Highlands Latin School and noticed that on the front of their website they proudly display the test scores of the students (see here ). It looks really impressive and now Memoria Press is starting to sell the materials and guides the Highlands Latin School uses, I'm very tempted to use some as a benchmark on what to cover for English, especially literature (English is a foreign language for us). I'm not an American and have NO experience with these tests, the SAT and ITBS, or with the National Merit program. So my question is: are their scores really as impressive as they sound? How easy (or difficult) is it to duplicate this as a homeschooler (I'm not talking of taking these test, but of the quality of the education)? Is this just clever marketing or are their results really very good?