We tried it a few years ago and it was an epic fail for us. What I've learned with 8 yr old is that school needs to start by 8 a.m to have a good productive day. On days we're delayed we do okay as long as we start by 10 a.m. If we start any time after 10 a.m. it's a total loss. His attention is completely gone.

I just today received Cursive First and, meh, I'm not very impressed. In fact I think I'm going to send it back. First off, all the pages are loose and frankly I feel kind of ripped off - I mean it looks like someone just ran them through their printer and shipped them off to me. Secondly it uses the clock-face: it seems that most of the instruction says things like, "follow around, in the direction that we read, to the 8 on a clock-face." Well, my youngest is 4 and is not familiar enough yet with a clock and my oldest is in 3rd grade but struggles terribly with reading a clock. So I feel like I'd have to change all the verbiage in which case all I've paid for are some worksheets I could have made at home. So right now I'm toying with 3 options: 1) Logic of English has a cursive writing program. LOE is, I believe, Spalding based and we're using Spalding (a la WRTR) for dd's language arts and ds's spelling. 2) HWOT cursive. I like how they do the lines on their paper but I'd have to modify some of the lessons for my youngest since it's geared toward 3rd graders. 3) Just teaching them myself

:iagree: This sounds beyond the normal amount of forgetting.

I know this an old thread but I'm bumping it up in hopes someone will answer. I'm wondering the exact same thing. My ds who is starting 3rd grade this year HATES to write. Anything more than 1 or 2 words and he's in tears. We think he has dysgraphia and it's seriously impeded his creativity. I'm considering using Stack the Deck after having him learn to type and having him do the work on a computer.

I think I've decided to use BA as a supplement to MUS. Ds is starting 3rd grade this year and will be using the delta level of MUS. He buzzed through alpha & beta in 1st grade. I slowed him waaaay down in 2nd grade and we worked through the gamma book slowly this entire year. I felt like he was getting too ahead of himself and he would have a hard time remembering all the concepts. He does almost all math in his head and much quicker than me (and I'm a math nerd). I know eventually if we stick with MUS we'll get to everything but in the mean time there are definite "holes" in MUS since it's mastery and I feel it's holding him back in some ways. Anyways, I think BA will work really awesome for some kids. I'm pretty sure my ds will love it - he loves the comic book style and learns well from it.

We follow the BCP lesson plans for history & geography. Easy and free (we get all our history books from the library as we need them). http://www.baltimorecp.org/lessons/draft_lessons.html BCP follows the Core Knowledge Series btw so it should closely follow What your Kindergartner Needs to Know - in fact they often use excerpts from that series of books. ETA: We used k12 last year for 2nd grade language arts and I quickly noticed that many of the books we were reading were overlapping with our history curriculum. I looked it up, and yep, k12 history curriculum appears to follow BCP & the Core Knowledge Series very closely (for way more money of course)

I think I decided to go with Cursive First since I can get the phonogram cards in cursive from them as well and they correspond with the WRTR phonograms. Plus in searches here Cursive First gets good reviews. Ellie, I've decided to start with cursive instead of manuscript which is why I was looking for something outside of WRTR.

What do you do if there aren't any vision places for him to be evaluated? We live in a small town that doesn't typically have many specialists of any sort. I did a search and the nearest one is almost a 4 hr drive from here.

I think I FINALLY figured it out! I don't know how I didn't find this before but this morning I just chanced upon an article about dysgraphia and it described my 8 yr old ds perfectly. The only thing that didn't coincide with the whole thing was his love of legos and ability to build lots of complex lego models. He has always hated writing. As a toddler he refused to color or draw. He still cannot color in the lines and still hates every second of having to color something. He will on occassion draw something but it looks like something my dd drew when she was around 3 yrs old. We have sat for hours at the table trying to write just a few sentences. Last year, he wept everytime I brought out HWOT. He'll have lots of good ideas but then will only write the absolute very least he needs to write on a paper. He went to public kindy for half the year before I pulled him out and they told me he was behind in math skills. Turns out he was just getting marked wrong over and over again on his "number grids" where they were supposed to fill in boxes with 1 - 100. FTR, he's exceptional at math and was doing 2nd grade math work by the end of kindy. When he does write, his letters float up off the line and he still does not space his words correctly. The list goes on and on. So now what?

Thanks! And MIL got back to me and is offering to me all her teacher guides (she has all K-6 of them) plus her training manual plus all the other random materials she has. Woot!

I love BCP. We started off with SOTW in kindy and neither I nor my ds enjoyed it at all. Thankfully I stumbled across the BCP and we've been following their history plans ever since. I get books from the library for each lesson, both fiction & non-fiction, and then we read our way through history and I make up projects sometimes to go along. We also watch documentaries when we can - my ds has always loved documentaries so it works well for him. Last year we used K12 for language arts and it pretty much followed BCP & CK step by step. I could have saved myself a lot of money and just followed BCP's LA. I used some of the science from BCP but then we discovered BFSU last year and we're sticking with that. The yahoo group for BFSU is awesome and the author regularly responds to posts.

Yes and I've heard the 6th edition has really good instruction. I've only had the 4th edition so far (complete with record in the back) but I just ordered the 6th edition so I'm holding off on buying any other handwriting curriculum until I see this one. As for grammar, sometimes I need something that REALLY holds my hand because it's something that never "clicked" for me in school. I couldn't explain what a direct object is if my life depended on it.

Thanks so much! And funny enough that school you linked is where my MIL used to be a principal. I'm hoping she helps me learn Spalding (she's a Spalding instructor) but I'm not sure she will so I might be on my own.

Boy and the handwriting stuff has been going on forever. He never liked to color/draw/paint either as a toddler. And yep, I was going to try typing this year. I gave it a lot of thought over the summer and decided that at first we'll try writing since he'll be learning cursive this year but if that ends in the same amount of usual tears then we're moving on to typing and I'll let him type out all his work. Btw, who exactly do you go to for an evaluation of reasons that ds could have such issues with writing?

No phonogram bingo even? Darn, I like bingo. I admit, the games are usually what I enjoy - it's a nice way to start a school day and I'm a game junky - I'm one of those people who would sit around playing board games all day if only I could find someone to play with me! lol. In all seriousness though, thanks for the info! I just ordered the 6th edition of WRTR - I had the 4th edition from the library, complete with record in the back lol. In your experience how long does it take each day to teach it? It doesn't seem like it will take very long especially once we've learned all the phonograms right? Of course my 3rd grader HATES writing so we'll see if we can get through this or not for him but my kindy dd loves to write.

I'm trying to purchase everything now and get ready and then have a few weeks "off" before we start school this year. Obviously all I really and truly need is the manual. I'm sure however there are things that help, right? Any particular notebooks? Games? I'm using it to teach dd reading & writing (and spelling obviously) for kindy this year and my 3rd grader will be using it just for spelling.

Thanks for all the help everyone. More than anything sometimes I just need to "talk" things out to organize it all in my mind, kwim? For right now I've decided to go with WRTR for dd. I asked MIL to help me out - not sure if she will or not but I've read the book a few times now and I think I "get" it. If it's not jiving for us after a bit then I'll make a switch but I figure I should start with our cheapest option first and then work our way up if we need to. I'm going to use WRTR for my 3rd grader's spelling curriculum. He could use some extra instruction in phonics since we skipped around a lot previously and I'm sure it'll help him spell larger words. I haven't decided on a handwriting program yet but I've got another thread going on that topic. I'm going to teach both the kids cursive - I'm thinking either HWOT or LoE's cursive program.

Well right now I just have the 4th edition from the library (it has a record in the back lol) but I planned on buying the 6th edition plus my MIL is a Spalding instructor so she's going to help me out some. I know handwriting isn't so complicated but I really wanted something I could just "open and go" because somehow I managed to choose teacher-intensive curriculums for every single other subject for both kids.

I used HWT last year for manuscript for my ds and really liked it. Do you feel it's adaptable to your average kindergartner? My dd is just turning 5 but she has good fine motor skills and likes to write. Also, if you don't mind me asking, what part of FL are you in? We're moving there in 6-8 weeks, to the Fort Walton Beach area, and I'm having a hard time finding HSing groups.

This coming year I have dd starting kindy and ds starting 3rd grade. I'd like to teach both of them cursive. Handwriting has always been a HUGE struggle for my ds and I'm hoping perhaps cursive will feel better for him (and if not we're switching to mostly typing everything because it's seriously impeding his creativity, i.e. he'll only write the absolute least amount he can get away with). We'll be using WRTR for language arts which is why I was considering using either Cursive First or the Logic of English cursive program. I haven't been able to find any Cursive First sample pages?

I know, I know but she doesn't live nearby plus she's incredibly busy since she's a professor of both IRL classes & online classes plus she's an author and working on some new stuff. FTR, the pp suggested above that my MIL thinks a "professional" can't learn it but that's not at all what she's like or what she would think. She just doesn't believe in HSing as can be well understood considering public education has been her life work pretty much. She's respectful of our choices but I think she prefers to just stay out of it and let me do my own thing. She will be visiting soon and now I'm thinking of purchasing SWR to have her look at it and tell me what she thinks. Thanks so much for your explanation - that clears it up beautifully. Anyone have any other LA program suggestions? I'm not totally stuck on a Spalding method, I'm open to other ideas. If I were going to use SWR or WRTR what would you use for grammar so that dd is ready for MCT later on?

Thanks for the ideas so far! I should have mentioned that I prefer a secular curriculum, or mostly secular in any case. Also my MIL has discussed Spalding with me a bit but I doubt she'll teach it to me. She doesn't live nearby and whenever I've asked for guidance in regards to HSing she gives me non-answers and changes the subject. She holds several PhD's in education and I'm fairly certain she strongly disagrees with HSing in general but she's respectful enough to keep her thoughts to herself. I'm sure if I have specific questions she would answer them though. I've read The Writing Road to Reading and I think I "get it." Ok so now I'm looking at SWR. Can anyone tell me if it's secular? After much digging I was finally able to find samples online but I also see the website that sells it has bible study available as well. It doesn't have to be totally secular but I'd really rather it not be steeped in religious references. Can I use SWR as a spelling curriculum for my 3rd grader as well? If so that would be fabulous. Does it include handwriting or do I add that on myself? Is grammar included?

This will be my 3rd year of HSing but this year I'm adding my youngest into the mix who's starting kindy. With my oldest who's going into 3rd grade I wasn't expecting to HS. He went to public kindy for half the year and we were so unhappy with it that we pulled him out. He HATED writing, coloring, or anything of the sort and LA was always the hardest subject for us to get through. We bounced around through various curriculums (Sing, Spell, Read, & Write, Explode the Code, and K12) and somehow he managed to still turn into an excellent reader & speller who still detests writing (as in the physical act, not composition). All that to say that I don't want that to happen again with dd. My MIL is actually a Spalding Method instructor for teachers and I like the idea of that method. I should say here that my dd, who will be 5 in a few weeks loves to write. I want something that is mostly open & go. I piece together the kids' science & history myself already and I can't take on doing LA as well. I want something that is a complete LA program and I'd like something that will eventually lead us to MCT which my 3rd grader is starting this year. I'm looking at LOE right now but I'm worried about adapting it for my kindergartner. She went to preschool last year and knows the alphabet and most of their sounds. She likes to write & be creative and she is just dying to learn how to really write & spell so she can make her own stories. I've also looked at All About Reading but I think I'm starting to lean away from it now. Oh and I've looked at The Phonics Road but I ordered the sample pack with DVD and I found the DVD terribly irritating. I really really don't want to have to watch anymore so I think that one is out then. Also, I'm more of an eclectic homeschooler - I just use bits and pieces that seem to work for us. Any ideas? The more I look the more overwhelmed I get.

Anyone in that area of Florida and can point me to some HS groups/activities? We're moving there soon - should be in the next 2 months. We're no longer active duty but my dh is a civilian and we're being transferred to Hurlburt. We're having a tough time selling our house here (Cannon AFB) so I think we're going to rent in FL; probably in the Fort Walton Beach or Mary Esther area. I don't mind a little driving though. We've lived out in the middle of nowhere for the last 3 years and we're all accustomed to driving a few hours just to go shopping. So an hour away or whatever wouldn't faze us much. I do have access to the base & dh does deploy even though he's a civilian so a military group would be nice. Honestly ANY group would be nice since we've never had a group to join! (that middle of nowhere thing again). Oh my kids are 8 & almost 5 going into 3rd grade & kindy.

My ds could not stay focused with SOTW at all either. After that failed attempt we floundered around a bit and finally landed on using the Baltimore Curriculum Project which follows the Core Knowledge Series. We've been doing it for the last 2 yrs with great success. Basically I read through the lesson, I introduce the subject, and then we go to the library and find books about the topic that we read throughout the week. Sometimes I find documentaries or even cartoons on the subject as well that we'll watch (loooove Liberty's Kids on Netflix!). My ds is not big on "projects." He does not like to color, paint, or do crafts so we rarely do much in the way of activities to accompany our history but since he picks out the books we read he enjoys most of them and retains the information. Dd will be in kindy next year though and I plan on doing more activities with her since she enjoys that type of stuff. My ds would much rather watch a documentary from the History Channel or from NOVA.