Yesterday was our first day back and was awful! I ended up in my bathrobe with a glass of blueberry wine by the end of it and my husband, bless him, cooked supper. I was thinking if today didn't go better I could be an alcoholic by midterm! I actually threatened to send my dd (11 yrs) to public school. Today was great! Total turn around. Both kids great attitudes, who knew? Honestly the difference in 1 day is enormous. Funny to read about others going through the same thing:) I guess it is all to be expected. But I forgot to expect it - hahaha:lol:

My daughter is the same way and it started in the early years. She's 11 now and still has "her" way of doing it. MEP encourages us to show them alternate methods and it really irritated my daughter as well but last year she started to tolerate my sharing that info with her. She still of course does it "her" way! I think they show us other methods to find one that works for each student. Remember MEP is designed to be taught to a class full of kids - not one on one. In hindsight, I probably should have just let her do it her way all these years and not bothered to tell her the other methods every single time they mentioned it! May have made for less frustration.

I have an Abi too! She is also very bright. I am sure I could bump her ahead but I don't because I don't think it is really the best thing for her. MEP informed me recently that, ideally, the school year should be 50% review and 50% new concepts. That helped me tremendously! That's about what we have now so we are sticking to it. Now, I don't give the lessons if it is repetitive and she understand the concept but I do daily go over the mental maths at the beginning of the lessons and any parts of the lesson that are puzzles etc. We are finishing up Year 5 and starting Year 6 this year. Good luck and God Bless, Cat

MEP - it's fun for the kiddies and just a great programme.

Our plan for Year 6! Religion6th year CCF Sundays. Christian Studies IV Mem Press and Baltimore Catechism Latin First Form Memoria Press Maths MEP (finish 3 months of Y5 and move to Y6) English Rod & Staff English 6 and Intermediate Language Lessons by Emma Serl Spelling Rod & Staff Spelling 7 Composition Fable Stage Mem Press for 6 or 7 lessons and then Narrative stage, a HistoryGreek Mythology & Famous Men of Greece (MP) ScienceAstronomy workbook from MP and then Insects MP Literature The Trojan War, Anne of Green Gables, The Hobbit, Horatius at the Bridge Modern History American Studies from MP 6th Year - Grueber

We go to the beach a lot because we live on a sailboat. Must say, prefer beaches that are in the Caribbean vs Florida though because there's less humidity and we can always find a desolate island. Miami beach....no thanks:)

Thanks:) I have been panicked over 6th grade so I should be a complete wreck by high school and have subscribed to these threads! Wisdom that cannot be found in any how to books and thanks for sharing. Peace & Blessings, Cat

and I forgot to mention one other thing we do which helps with attitude - this one is more important to my 9yr old than 11 yr old...... I bribe them with 1 hour of game time on Fridays for acing spelling tests and having good attitudes all week. I stand very firm on this and don't give game time away lightly, so there were tears in the beginning while they figured out exactly what good attitude towards Mom and school work was acceptable.

Love love love reading these posts:) I feel like i am not alone! We have met the hormone dilemma and a couple of things we have done to help our situation are: 1 Speak to my 11 yr old less like a toddler and more like an adult ut what is expected of her and why, (my husband's idea) and this really helps. She responds well to this. 2 Start our day with full bellies:) 3 Begin each school day with morning prayers and daily reading (we are Catholic). This is when attitudes really improved! 4 Have lessons outside whenever possible and get fresh air. This doesn't mean my kids aren't dreading this school year. It is a hormone thing and that is all. I tell them they can do the work happily or all upset about it, has to get done either way. I bought a box curriculum this year from Memoria Press for my 4th and 6th graders to take some of the stress of me and curriculum searching etc. Lesson plans are laid out for us & everyone knows what they have to do:) I let my 6th grader see the plans, she takes it better from a piece of paper than her mom as to her instructions for the day! Also, I hope to have more mom time this way outside of lessons because I am not on the computer researching curriculum. We usually do year round schooling but we took the past summer off and I got back in touch with being just the mom and it was wonderful. My 11 yr old loves to bake and we did that together. My son & I shot arrows together. Seems to be less fun time these past couple of years because of schooling. I think we will take lengthy Christmas breaks and summer holidays again! God Bless all the moms on this path and on this calling. The sheer fact that we are on this forum says we care enough to give them the best. Don't let those hormones beat you!! I also bought a prayer book for mothers after I bought my curriculum:) Peace, Catherine

Memoria press will have their 7th grade curriculum together by the end of August. We are using 6th and 4th this year. It is the only boxed curriculum we liked, a solid classical curriculum and affordable. I did change out the maths however to stick with our current maths programme (MEP). Good luck! Cat_cornish

Many thanks for the valuable links and information. Singapore math looks like an excellent programme and I am really impressed. I had no idea how good it was and have mostly not trusted any products offered in America for maths. That is because when I was 12 and moved to the UK I was 3-4 years behind in maths! Singapore maths isn't one of those such offered programmes that I had really studied though because they are using it in some public schools and so, naturally, I wasn't drawn to it. Shows my own ignorance doesn't it but I am very pleased to discover a decent maths programme outside of MEP. I am, however, happy to stay with MEP for now and upcoming years as my kids do really well with it and MEP allayed my concerns over GCSEs. My kids will be in UK for college/university so it makes more sense to stay with MEP. I am going to order the books this year and save myself the printing! Regards, Cat

To Jennynd I didn't see any speed/ratio equations in the samples that I viewed. I went to Singapore Math site and Christian Math to view samples. What is IP6? Thanks, Catherine

Hi, I got an email from Russell Geach from MEP and below are the questions I asked and his responses. 1 Does the MEP programme meet the UK Standards? Yes, MEP covers all aspects of the current UK National Curriculum 2 Could my children take GCSE's having followed MEP all the way and be properly prepared? Yes, in fact several schools who do IGCSE Maths prefer to use the MEP GCSE course rather than the ones developed by the exam boards 3 Can we possibly order the workbooks from you if we only need resources for 6th and 4th years at this time? You are very welcome to order workbooks but please be aware that if ordering from the US there will be additional shipping charges 4 Do you have any plans for creating simplified or more "homeschool friendly" lesson plans? With more parents homeschooling their children each year it could be great for them and me! We don’t have any plans to tailor the course for homeschool use as at its heart is the belief in whole class interactive teaching which is often difficult to replicate in a homeschool scenario. However, you may find this independent yahoo site helpful; http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mep-homeschoolers/ 5 How does MEP compare to other programmes on offer in the US, for example, Saxon Math, Singapore Math or Rod & Staff Math (the latter we opted out of in our curriculum packages this year in favour of MEP)? Being based in the UK, we are not familiar with most of the US programmes. However, many of the secondary exercises and activities have been adapted from those used in Singapore 6 Could I home-school to college/university level with the MEP programme? We have full resources available for ages 5 to 18 in the UK so in theory everything up to the end of US high school maths should be covered We are planning to stick with MEP. After looking through some of the other options I can see we are onto a great thing with MEP and happy to carry on our studies all the way through high school:)

NCERT looks really good! Do you just need the one book for students? I ask because MEP has Lesson plans for teacher, ohp slides (for teaching) and then the student practice book. Do you really need lesson plans for the NCERT course. Has anyone used the course and gone onto take GCSE's no problem?

So I have had a look at Singapore DM 1A. Do you know what year/age level this is taught? We have covered all that we see in the sample pages with the exception of page 6 index notation this past year in MEP year 5. I am thankful for the links to MEP forum and also the India Math NCERT which hadn't been forgotten or missed but on the list in fact to research today:) I too am curious to hear more from NCERT users. Until yesterday I had never heard of anyone else that uses MEP! Now I discover NCERT, wow! Forums can be so informative:) Does year 1 represent 1st grade or Kindy in NCERT? Thanks, Cat