The fluency sheets are what makes it take the extra day for us too. It's the only part he dislikes but I picked up a few tips on the aal forum. I highlight every other line in different colors and then he chooses which one he wants to read so he only does half. For the other half we use a doll to read it aloud while he follows along to make sure the doll gets it correct. Sometimes I throw something random in to make sure he's following and that usually gets a laugh. I've also cut them up so it doesn't seem so overwhelming.

We spend 10-15min on aar each day and we do the steps that are just stories in 1 day. The steps that are new teaching, activity, and fluency sheets we do over 2 days and sometimes 3 if there is a second activity or a lot of new info.

By the end of y6 they're supposed to be prepared for algebra so you'd be at no disadvantage by placing her in y2 even if it appears a bit behind in early years. This is, of course, presuming you're not worried about tx back into another program.

I agree! DS was recently using them for counting and place value. He said 53, 54, fifty-yellow, 56 without missing a beat. :lol: A few more weeks and I'm sure he'll have them all memorized but as you can see, that's all the better for the conceptual part.

Crimson Wife, When you say it's neutral do you mean neutral on intelligent design vs. everything by chance or do you mean neutral on old earth vs. young earth?

I see you already decided but I was also going to say that AAR is great. It's open and go and it's the sort of program that I would expect to work well with the overwhelming majority of kids. We are finishing up lvl 1 and just received lvl 2 and I must say I'm even more impressed with lvl2 than 1. It's certainly more expensive than some other alternatives but it's also the sort of thing you can be very confident will work and you won't be switching back and forth.

My son will be 4 in Dec and we are working on Miquon orange along with Mep 1A. The nice thing about the Miquon is the discovery aspect of it so it sort of lends itself to a broader age range. It's also easy to use without doing any writing and the manipulatives make it fun. We've been doing addition and he's been starting with the lab sheets and sort of going off on his own using the rods to discover all sorts of other things to do with the numbers. I haven't used SM so I can't compare but I think Miquon is very nice for a young dc that is ready for more than prek math.

Yep, that's it.

Mep actually gives you a lot of options because it's in PDFs. You could eliminate free papers by simply printing the whole year's pb and having it bound for a couple dollars. There's also notability or the interactive books if you want to go paperless. Or you could just put lesson plans on iPad so there's less of a juggling feeling. That would also allow you to zoom in on the lp instead of recreating the bb stuff on your whiteboard.

You need to print out the practice book-that is essentially the student's only book. You can print out the lesson plans or just read them online from ipad/laptop etc. We are in y1 and so far the copy masters don't really need to be printed. They are often large size reproductions of problems in the workbook and are not necessary for 1 on 1 use. I'm not totally sure if this is true later. The student workbook is sized to uk paper so you ned to check the box that says "do not scale" when you print the workbook. It will cut off the page number but that hasn't been a problem for us. Just do 1 page/day or you could number every other page yourself if you wish. I print off the lesson plans shrunk down to 2/page double sided so I have 4 lesson plans per sheet. Sometimes we view the posters on the ipad. You will probably want a small whiteboard available some days or perhaps some scratch paper handy instead. I don't think you need to print the answer key. If there is a question you can view it online.

We really like AAR1. I'm using it with an oldish 3 yo that currently has no interest in writing. The only reason I was looking at other things is because he went through it pretty fast and I thought I could get away with something less expensive with less built in review but it turns out there just isn't anything that will meet our needs as well without me putting in mega hours in tweaking. I hope they hurry on the other levels though. I fear I will be tweaking opgtr after aar2.

I agree, it's annoying enough that I'm going to drop another $100 on AAR2 instead of using OPGTR.

I had a similar thought in mind because I know my ds would freak out if he saw all the other text on the pages in addition to what he was supposed to read. I downloaded the sample of the ebook and I was not able to c&p into word, which means I would have to go through and type everything out-not my cuppa tea. It seems it would be just as easy to type it out from the book. The only benefit I can see with the ebook is you could zoom in so they are only looking at their words but then you would have to scroll a little and the page will move when you touch it to cover up the words.

Yeah, I was kind of getting a headache thinking about it. I guess that settles it. Thanks again for the input. :001_smile:

Thank you for all the input everyone. My hangup with the spelling is the markings. If I were to do the whole program I could use the aalp tiles to spell but I'm not sure how I would do the markings. The multi letter phonograms are in a different color so I guess that would take care of that part. Would I just have him tell me what to do and I would mark it? I guess I could make dashes and number tiles too. Could that possibly work? otoh, maybe that's too much fussing and I should just do aar and/or opgtr. I appreciate the sounding board. I'm sure it's already saved me hours of frustration.

Hmm, maybe I'll just get AAR2 for now and keep OPGTR in mind if/when we get ahead of publishing. I do love the content and layout of sound beginnings for teaching spelling but it sounds like it might be best to save it for when I'm ready to use it as intended?

I'm not sure I see a point in teaching a non-writer to spell but I'm open to input on that. So you would consider spalding-esque methods to be ineffective for reading if I'm not going to do the spelling?

When you use a spalding type method (I have sound beginnings) to teach reading to a child that's not writing yet do you just go over the flash cards more often? We can do some salt box activities but I'm wondering if there's anything else to replace the reinforcement that writing provides. I'm sure I'm not the first to adapt it so I'd love to hear other ideas.:bigear: Also, do I have the idea right that you just use the spelling dictations to read instead of spell in this case? I'm not really looking to teach spelling yet, just trying to decide if I want to try this for reading or order AAR2. For reference, we're about a month from finishing AAR1 and ds has gone through it very quickly. AAR1 has been very good for us and ds likes it but a) idk if I need to spend the money on a program like aar if we don't really need all that review and b) I suspect we'll outpace the publishing so I'm going to need to change at some point anyway.

There's an intro chapter about how they came to be in America and maps to show the land bridge. There's a brief blurb about the development of agriculture. Then, they try to hit the main tribe in each geographic location in the layout described by pp. The pictures are pretty good. I have the entire set from when I was a kid and this is one of them that I read repeatedly without prompting. I have it handy if you have any specific questions.

No box here. I couldn't find anything that would be right for us in all the areas so I'm mixing and matching.

I may live in a microcosm but until I dove into the homeschool world I didn't know YE creationists still existed in any appreciable numbers. I only knew athiests and theistic evolutionists so evolution was accepted either way. The debate was on intelligent design or chance. I don't think society in general sets up atheistic evolutionists against ye christians. That is peculiar to homeschooling, where ye christians are represented in much higher numbers than the general population. Imagine my surprise the first time I looked at what I thought was a just Christian science book.

Happy Dance :hurray: That will be in plenty of time for us since mine are still young.

No color really in mep but I pull up the posters on the ipad and those have lots colors. Not sure on the higher level but level 1 involves a lot of student coloring as well so it will be colorful when you're finished.

You're such a tease, how many more?:bigear:

Thank you, I was wondering about that. Sever of the Catholic publishers use a few Protestant texts and I was wondering if/how they dealt with that. Very good to know.