Goldilocks
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Posts posted by Goldilocks
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I think RS G is really cool! My son worked on RS G during 6th grade. He really enjoyed it. He had done the earlier levels and really enjoyed the drawing component. Some of the lessons were a bit frustrating because if his angle was just slightly off it wouldn't work out right. He didn't mind that he had done a lot of tedious drawing for nothing, though. He really liked using the tools. If I had it to do over again with him, I would set a limit to how many long division or large multiplication problems he needed to do by hand and after he was at his limit let him use a calculator.
I don't think I will be using RS G for my daughter. She is good at math, but hates tedious work. She would give me a lot of grief about it.
So, I really think that it depends on the temperament of the child...
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Did you watch the sample lesson? It kept my interest for about 5 minutes, but the video was 20 minutes long.
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Another vote for learning phonics through spelling. I love AAS.
You don't need to rush it, though. Especially if he doesn't write well.
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I liked E because it took a lot less time for the teacher. I could teach the lesson in about 10 to 15 minutes and then my children practice with the worksheet.
I think E will teach a child everything they need to know before pre algebra, but they just may need more practice. For example, long division is taught in lesson 122, but there are only 131 lessons. Multiplying fractions is lesson 128.
I waited until 6th grade to do RS G with my oldest. I didn't need to, though. It wasn't very hard. He learned a lot of cool things about math. However, a lot of the work in G is tedious. You need a child who loves playing around with math and will be patient about spending time on a drawing that never works out.
I switched to MM 5 after RS E for my DD. She is not learning anything new, but getting more chance to practice mathematical concepts.
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My youngest is starting first grade next fall and we use much of the same curriculum you do. This is how I have streamlined it in the past and what I plan to do with him this year...
SOTW dictates just about everything. Doing a notebook page for each section our writing. But "writing" in 1st is just narration. We will read aloud from the selections in the activity guide (when my oldest was in first I added in from Sonlight and other book lists, too.) then the fun part of school is the weekly chapter activity.
We have a daily memory work time. I went through the CC sentences and put them in chronological order. When we get to that topic in SOTW we also learn the sentence.
Handwriting and grammar and a reading lesson take only take a few minutes each day.
I do not do spelling with my boys until later as well as SS Latin.
For science we have done (and will do) just as the WTM suggests.
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I have had it happen a few times, too. It is terribly disappointing for my child.
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We take about 6 weeks off in the summer. Usually that is when we are done with the book. If they are done early, they don't get a new one until August. If they aren't done, we take a break from it.
We celebrate the start of our break with a "project fair." We got the idea from our local homeschool group. Each child would bring a project and have the opportunity to perform something. To make it more enjoyable for extended family we do our own project fair. The kids display projects and papers from the past year. Anything they want to show off. We have family over and serve ice cream. This year one of the projects was a pinata, so we will have fun breaking that.
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I like AWANA because it is a drop off program. There are no outside commitments (like camping or selling stuff) and my kids are learning so many verses and having fun.
I have never done Christian scouts, but we did do cub scouts for a few years. Cub scouts is a family commitment. At least once a month we had a ceremony to attend or a camp out to go to. My son loved this as well, but at the cub scout level, didn't really learn anything he didn't already know.
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This is our first year in 4-H too. There is so much to learn about the projects!
At our meetings, the kids sewed a small pillow. This can be their project. They also made a poster about the benefits of milk, and a craft that showed the life cycle of a chicken. I was told that all of these could be entered as projects.
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Our local homeschool group enters this as a "school." My dd won at this level and went on to the next level in our city. The next level would have been in Washington D. C. It was a great experience.
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If you already have the Ordinary Parents Guide you could just look through it and decide where it looks like he might be. Start 5 - 10 lessons before that point and start reading. I always get to a point in OPG that I am not *teaching* my children anymore. They have just figured out how to read. For one child that was 9 years old, for another it was 5 years old. It just depends. So you may be fine just getting books from the library and reading like you do with your 4 year old. The point of the book is to learn to read. Once the child can read and is practicing with real books that interest him, then you are done with the book.
Sounds like you are well prepared and on your way! Good luck!
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I am so sorry.
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We usually start out with the WTM way, and it has worked some years, and some years it has not.
For astronomy, it was great. We purchased the high powered binoculars and star-gazed as a family whenever we could. During the school day, my son would research space topics and write papers following the writing program we were doing that year (IEW).
For Chemistry (this year), I purchased the large chemistry kit by Thames and Kosmos and my son really enjoyed doing the chemistry "experiments", but it was really difficult to write a lab report about it. Impossible really. The WTM directs the student to answer a series of questions about the experiment. We were never sure what the purpose of the experiment was. What was the question we were trying to answer. There was very little explanation in the instruction manual. When it came to writing a paper, I could find very few books at the library to assist him in researching a chemistry topic. We switched to The Elements and Carbon Chemistry and have had a lot of fun.
For Biology in 5th grade I wish that I had done it the WTM way. We tried elemental science middle school biology. It was boring for my son. Near the end of the year we switched the first book recommended in WTM and enjoyed the last few weeks of school observing insects and setting up experiments.
I haven't quite decided on 8th grade yet.
Hope our experiences help you make a decision!
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Thanks for sharing that. :grouphug:
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You might not want to hear this, but....no.
Sounds like you have it pretty good. You are being taught God's Word and you are part of a church family that loves you and your children. There is always something not to like about a church, and in this case it's kind of big, but not something that could never change. You could pray that it will change, or that your feelings and distraction due to it will change.
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This has not been our experience with my sons endo.
Bring it up with the doctor.
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If you want practice in fixing poorly written sentences, R&S might not be what you are looking for. That is in there, but the sentences are purposely written awkwardly to think through what corrections need to be made and not just what "sounds right."
We are switching to fix-it next year for my oldest to get more practical use of his grammar knowledge.
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Realtors don't get paid until a house sale closes. It sounds like he is desperate for a paycheck. I would call whoever he works for and let them know about his behavior. Depending on how they are set up they might be able to assign someone else to interact with you for the next couple of weeks.
I agree with this. When we sold our house the real estate agent of the buyer kept wanting to move things up. He needed the money.
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I agree with the others about letting him just play and enjoy himself. My oldest was in a similar situation. As he got older, it was easier to just drop him off at practice or games. We also became friends with the coach who volunteered to pick up and drop off. It didn't suck our time as much.
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Foreign money!
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Another class idea might be a crash course for the homeschooling parent in how to teach Latin.
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My 8 year old was struggling with spelling yesterday. He was frustrated that "gentle" wasn't spelled g-e-n-t-i-l like "pencil."
He threw his hands in the air and moaned, "Why does the government have to make everything so complicated!"
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We have recently started something similar. I call it M&M school. It has worked wonders with the whining.I would think of it as 2 separate issues...whining, which is a bad habit, and lack of motivation. One does not need to be motivated to stop whining.
It's rougher the older they get I think so this may be to childish...but when the whining, and getting up from our chairs, and arguing across the table and general unruliness cycle up here, I implement 5 Hershey morsels for 30 minutes of peace during math, our first subject of the day. And then another 5 for the second 30 minutes. The criteria are well defined as we begin. I've also gone so far as to offer 1 for each "yes m'am" when respect is the issue...they get silly about this and that is fine. Or I dock them if they interrupt me talking to the other child. Just depends what the prevalent behavioral issue is at the time. This fades away after a week and seems to buy me a few weeks of improved behavior even though I pretty much let it go the rest of the day.
Of course another option is punishment. If a child is doing Saxon for example, I would let them pick 20 problems, and if there is no whining they are done, but each whine earns an extra problem. I've never actually followed through on extra work though I've extended the length of time when they are clearly not giving me their attention for the full allotted time. I HAVE done checkmarks...3 checkmarks on the board for "bad behavior" earns a chore.
I am sure there must be books/stories out there on how our attitudes impact those around us...I would approach the whining from that perspective.
As far as motivation, you sound frustrated because you can't Externally motivate him, but it souns like he has some internal motivation or at least natural academic interests. I would try to pursue those as much as possible (while making him think it's his idea) :)
Brownie
When I call a start to a subject each child gets 5 M&Ms. If there is any whining they lose one - I actually eat it right in front of them. It makes me feel much better. They get what is left after the subject is done.
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It is a little pricey, but I love Creating a Masterpiece.
All the kids can do it together. We have stuck with the level 1 projects and everyone is challenged, but proud of their "masterpiece"
SOTW volume 4 with a First Grader
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
I am on my second time through SOTW and will have a 9 year old (fourth grader) and a 7 year old (first grader). When my children are in first grade is when I require them to join me for history time and do narrations. However, volume 4 is hard for a squirmy boy to start with. In fact, he rarely stuck with us for volume 3.
Any suggestions about how I can engage him during our history reading? Or any suggestions about another history resource for him? I am not interested in spending much money, since He is my youngest child and I won't be reusing it.