Now there's a good idea! (The movie, that is. Not the scary basement.) :D Mary Ellen

Sorry for the confusion, I can see now that I didn't explain myself well in the OP. I'm more worried about filling his time. It might come from having five (loud, energetic) siblings, but he doesn't like to do too much on his own. He does enjoy reading, but after a full morning of school, he'll only read for 30 minutes or so, then he wants to hang out with me. I love that, but I just can't think of a whole lot of things for us to do. I'm okay with entertaining him for now. He's had five years of public school to be bored, and I'm trying to make this year as positive as possible. I was thinking this while I was reading a thread on the logic stage board today! Thanks, Mary Ellen

Wow! I guess I'm the only one with this problem! :001_smile: Thanks so much for humoring me. The truth is, we do some of those things, just not during the "school day." He plays two sports, but those are in the evening. He practices the violin every day, but Dh sits with him in the morning before work. We go to the library about twice a week, but my younger boys like to come, so we go after school. I guess it's just this "dead time" in the early afternoon that's driving me a little crazy. :D The Y is a great idea - I think he's too young (and definitely too small) to work out with me, but maybe he could play basketball in the gym or something? I'll have to call over tomorrow. He's really not interested in joining a homeschool group, but I have met two families who I could try to arrange a field trip with. We did two "field trips" in early September, but he thought they "super lame, Mom," so I've arranged for us to go along with my 2nd grader's class on any field trips they do, but I haven't heard of any so far. I guess a little more reading couldn't hurt. ;) Thanks again! Mary Ellen

How do you fill in your day? I left my job to be able to homeschool my 5th grader this year, so I'm not used to having this free time, and neither is he. I feel like we're doing enough schoolwork (but feel free to tell me if we're not!). I'm having him do about an hour of "homework" in the evenings while his brothers are doing theirs, so we're finishing most of his other work by lunch time. We have several hours of downtime before I have to pick the other boys up from school at 3:30. Filling that in with Law and Order reruns and unnecessary errands isn't going to be productive in the long run, but I don't want to pile schoolwork on and neither of us are hobbyists. What am I missing? Thanks! Mary Ellen

I'm sorry I missed this, I haven't been checking here regularly. Did you get anything sorted out with your daughter? It certainly sounds like selective mutism to me. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to. :grouphug: While I'm at it, I'll just update on my son - he loves homeschooling! Loves, loves, loves it. Can't-believe-we-wasted-five-years-in-public-school loves it. And I love it too. :D I'm attaching his "first day of school" picture, with a big smile in the car on the way home from dropping his brothers off at school (although that smile could have something to do with Colby, who we'd only had for about two weeks at this point). :) Mary Ellen

Our schools finished on June 4th and open on August 16th. It feels like a good length to me. :) Mary Ellen

As nervous as I am and as unprepared as I feel, I'm actually quite excited. :) Mary Ellen

Thanks again! I think I'm going to stick with my list, but hold off on spelling unless I notice he needs it. I have a few things picked out to use and think it'll take us about 4 - 4 1/2 hours per day, including reading.

Thanks for all the different perspectives. I have read WTM and really love the suggestions for reading and history; I'm just trying to figure out how it'll work for us now. Thanks for the audiolecture suggestions! I'm not sure how I missed those before. In our state, there aren't any required subjects, but we have to do testing in "English grammar, reading, spelling, and mathematics." That gives me a little more wiggle room than I'm comfortable with for the rest of the subjects. He's strong in math, reading and spelling, but isn't super interested in science or history. We'll try to change that this year ;). He hasn't had much grammar, but I think he'll like it and catch on quickly. Does it seem reasonable to start with: Math (1 core and 1 supplement) Science History (including some Geography) Grammar Writing Spelling Literature (a few books to go along with history, a few others of my choosing and lots of his own) And add in later, if we have time: Logic Vocabulary French or Spanish I think we're going to hold off on Latin for this year, he has specifically asked not to do art, and music and phys. ed are covered by piano lessons, baseball and swimming. Am I missing anything?

I'll be homeschooling my son for the first time in the fall, when he'll start 5th grade. Reading through what people have planned for next year has me a little stressed out about how many subjects we should be doing. I noticed a huge discrepancy in how many subjects people are doing, how many parts of Language Arts they're covering and how many programs they're using for each subject, and this is all in the same grade. :001_huh: Can you give me some idea of how many and which subjects are absolute "musts" for 5th grade? Which parts of Language Arts have to or should be covered? Do we need to do both History and Geography programs to cover Social Studies? Thank so much for your help, Mary Ellen

Thanks so much for posting this. I gave my son the questions today and got some interesting responses. :) Mary Ellen

My daughter wears the tighter rash guards from Roxy, but the surf shirts are looser.

Whoa, lots of ideas there! Thanks. :) Thanks! :) Mary Ellen

Thanks so much for responding. :) My son writes notes to his teacher, writes answers on the board etc., but over the last year or two he's been trying to avoid drawing attention to himself, so he hasn't been participating as much in class. Thankfully, I don't think we'll have any of the same issues at home. Thanks for letting me know what curriculum works for you - I think we're going to go with Teaching Textbooks as well. I've just started looking at LOF, but I think it looks really fun. I'll have a look at the others you mentioned. Thanks, that actually is helpful. :001_smile: It's always great to hear about a kid who's overcome SM and how. We've decided not to medicate for now, but we're willing to look into it in the future, especially for when he gets closer to high school. Thanks again, Mary Ellen

Thank you all SO much! All of your responses are really helpful and I'm starting to understand why so many people are using more than one math program. He is really quick with math - we started TT at home because he was finishing all his math homework in class and wanted more. So, I'm sure he won't mind having two maths again. :001_smile: Rose - Your post is super helpful. Thanks for taking the time to explain how it worked for you, and how the two programs match up. If I had him start TT6 now and do as much as he wants over the summer, maybe starting MM5 in the fall would work a little better than starting them at the same time? That way he'd get the "lite" version first? I'm just thinking out loud now. :tongue_smilie: It's great to see what there are other choices that fit well and can work too. I'll check out LOF. Thanks again, Mary Ellen

Thanks so much for the welcome, Marie. Of course I'll share a little about him. :001_smile: He does really well in all academic areas, especially reading and math. He reads all the time and writes stories occasionally, but math is definitely his favorite. Because he doesn't ask questions or ask for help at school, we've had to be more involved with his schoolwork than we are with our other children and I think it's actually helped him. With our immediate family, my parents and my sister, he is completely comfortable and doesn't have any issues communicating. He's far from a chatterbox, but he does hold articulate conversations with us, asks questions, tells stories, argues with his brothers, etc. In very small groups where he knows everyone, he'll answer questions with a word or two, but doesn't initiate conversation. At school or in large groups, he freezes up completely. He does have two friends who go to his school and play on his baseball team. My husband coaches, so he's kept these boys on his team for 3 years now. He gets along great with them and the boys seem to really like him, but he's still not speaking comfortably around them. Thanks again, Marie. :001_smile: Mary Ellen

I'll be homeschooling my 9 year old for the first time in the fall and I've just begun seriously looking at material/curricula for him. He's bright and a hard worker, so he'd probably do well with anything, but I want to make sure that what we use prepares him well for whatever direction his education goes in (public school, private school or homeschooling until college). We've always unofficially "afterschooled" a little, but never used a real curriculum until this winter, when I started researching homeschooling and found out how much was out there. In January, I bought Teaching Textbooks 5 and he just finished it last week. He really loved it and asked me to buy him the next level. When I talked to him a little about what we're going to do next year, he asked to stick with Teaching Textbooks. But, I'm a little worried that it's not rigorous or challenging enough. I've read that it's a year or more behind most math programs, so I'm not sure that his liking Teaching Textbooks is enough reason to stay with it. I really like the look of Math Mammoth, so I'm leaning toward using that next year. I guess my questions are: How much say should a 9 year old have in which math he uses? Would it be overkill to use Teaching Textbooks and another math program like Math Mammoth? I can't see how Teaching Textbooks would take him more than 30 minutes per day. If you have any other recommendations/advice for math (or anything), I'm all ears. :bigear: Thanks so much, Mary Ellen

I've been reading the forum on and off over the last few months while I've been contemplating homeschooling my son and haven't seen any mention of selective mutism. Is there anyone homeschooling a child who's been diagnosed with it? We have decided to go ahead and homeschool my son for 5th grade next year, as we've exhausted all our treatment options apart from medication and he's made absolutely no progress socially at school since 1st grade. He absolutely loves the academic side of school, so he's excited to be able to focus completely on that next year. Thanks, Mary Ellen