:eek: This makes me nervous since it is out of stock at SM and christianbook.com Anyone know where I can find it online or in a sale swap?

With Sing, Spell Read and Write they make sure that they get lots of practice with short vowels and blending sounds before moving on to long vowel sounds. This allows for mastery and builds confidence when decoding words in the reader. The tricky blends are added later (eg. gh=f). HTH

My kid had the same problem on the ITBS and we plan on attacking it by doing mental math exercises where she has to think quickly through a set of simple computations. It's points based where the faster you answer the more points you get. I plan on using regular playing cards and dice for simple computation and fake money for the larger stuff (50's, 100's, 1000's). We did this with her multiplication tables later in the year so she hadn't had much practice with working quickly like this. It really helped her she just needs more practice with it. HTH.

I'm going to sound really old school but Sing, Spell, Read and Write has kept it simple and fun for my rising 1st grader. As a matter of fact my rising 5th grader would sing along with all of his phonics songs and is spelling better just by listening in. DD and I both struggled with WRTR this year (I was so bored trying to teach this method) and the phonograms though helpful didn't really stick like they do when a tune is added. DS and I just used the workbooks and song CD. If we run into a word he hasn't seen he's been able to decode it with only a little assistance. Don't be sucked into spending $$$ on the "kits" the workbooks and CD are all you really need to get going.

I hadn't heard of it until reading the OP and your blog post. I'm excited to read your review.

Hmm...this seems to play to my girl's strengths and wee will be doing SM 3b after our short break. I showed her a sample and she got so excited...this is the little girl that started the homeschool year hating math and now she's excited! I'll give her the pretest and see where we end up.

You know the schools are bad when, your kid has trouble you go and talk to the teacher and she pretty much blows you off with a "Everything will work out." The condescension was just too much. Especially when at her previous school she was an excellent student. I had to reteach 3rd grade this year because of that. They were teaching her to take the SOL's not teach her the concepts to help her figure it out. Lord willing my boys will never have to deal with that insanity. I believe in strong public education but in some areas its just not working.

What is A level work?

1-Homeschool day in a jar helped us to get back on track after lazily coming out from a month of Christmas/New Year's/Gma's bday celebrations. The Children get to pick subjects and times and race to finish their work without a lot of cajoling that goes on after a long break. They are focused and the work is done in a timely way. 2-I learned my oldest did not respond to the Spalding curriculum and would rather sing phonics songs like her little brothers. She is truly a kinesthetic learner. So much so we will be using c-rods this summer for math enrichment along with the Winning version of SSRW. 3-Speaking of SSRW, I told my mother that she was right and I was wrong. My rising 1st grader will be moving into small chapter books this summer after completing level 1. I never had to fuss with him to practice his phonics or to read because the program makes it easy for kids to put it together with some practice. 4-Having the children help keep the common/working areas straight is more conducive to learning (and my own sanity) and doesn't take time away from school like I thought it would. More hands make light work.

This website has Daily Bible grammar practice the student workbooks are about $6 http://www.dgppublishing.com/contents/scope/scopeandsequencebible.pdf

That is helpful. Thanks :) Now I'm thinking I should probably snatch them up before they are completely unavailable. Where would ending at NEM 3 place her? Would she then go into calculus? Sorry for all of the questions I just want to really give her a solid foundation. She wants to study weather/climate/space.

Since SM is discontinuing NEM 3 & 4 what do you guys think about jumping into AoPS? Where would we begin in AoPS? What if it's not a good fit? I'm not Sure what NEM 3 & 4 S&S cover or if there is an equivalent in the Discovering Math series. Any input would help this mom out quite a bit...

This is good to know. TY for the insight.

:001_huh: Do people think before they speak anymore?

You don't have to prove your educational decisions to anybody. Not even "family". I wish some of these concerntrolls would work on fixing PS if they are really so worried about children failing in this country. There are far more children slipping through the cracks in B&M schools than those that homeschool.