I voted with, but as I look at it more, it's without. Poorly worded sentance, though. Very confusing.

We use R&S Spelling as well. Just 1 year, for second grade. My niece is (was) also in 2nd and goes to a charter Montesorri school. Her spelling words were pretty on par with his. Many of the words were the same. So, though it seems simple to us, it looks to be about what kids should be doing. I don't know anything about the other program you mentioned. HTH

I got the K books for DD and she loved them. So I decided to try them and bought the whole 2nd grade for my son this year. (we had been using a mismash of things that I switched a ton of times and hadn't settled on) I *love* some things. Reading: I love that it's Bible based. He's getting a solid foundation in the Bible. It seems to be the right level of challenging. It's gotten easier as the year's gone on, and his reading has really taken off. The work mostly has a purpose, not repetetive busywork. Some of it is, and I let him skip sometimes, but most of it's useful to some degree. English: I've heard it's very thurough. It's very gentle, which seems liek it'd be good for slow and fast learners. It's easy to tweek to speed up. Or with a slower child, it'd be a good pace. Either way, they *know* grammer when they're done. Math: Ugh. Don't ask me, I find it incredibly boring. I don't care for the cute, unnecessary posters. DS likes putting bees on the poster, though, so what do I know :) It seems to move incredibly slow, though. But I've heard good things about it being thurough. I think it'll work well with DD, but with him I feel like it's holding him back and not pushing him to his full potential. On the positive side, he is learning his math facts. SS- I don't do this. We do have the books, and he does them on his own when he wants to. Same with Science. He really likes the science book. It's about nature. It does tend to be regional. All in all, we'll be keeping the reading and english. And the books are so cheap we get ss and science for fun extras. Math, who knows. HTH

OK, Thanks. I'm going to have to think and pray about this. Ugh! :)

Is the EPGY Mathematical Aptitude Test online? Or is it something we have to go somewhere for? I'm not seeing that info anywhere.

Do you mind telling how much you make? And how much you pay? I know that's a person question you probably don't want to share. We make about $55, so I'm guessing we're not going to qualify for much. Do they just reduce your cost? Or is it a loan you have to pay back? That program looks about perfect for us, but I don't think I could justify $500 to my husband. And we'd have to get real creative to come up with it. Right now we're using Rod and Staff. We've used BJU and Ray's in the past (he's only in 2nd, I've hopped around a bit trying to find something that works well for him) I love their reading and english, but this math is too much repetition for him. And way too slow. Boring. I'd love to have something that moved at his pace, taking time when he needed and rushed ahead when needed.