I'm having trouble answering this question because it doesn't seem to happen the same way every day. Theoretically we all sit at the table together and they all do the same subject at the and time and I go around helping anyone who needs it or checking papers that are done and then they fix. In reality some kids like to get a jumpstart on their independent work so as to be done sooner so they can go play (and this seems to be in reverse correlation with their age. Lol). So when it comes time for teaching lessons, I grab one kid go over any new teaching I have planned and their finished work. And which kid does it which way varies from day to day. Which makes me feel out of control sometimes.

Found the answer to my question. Singapore math website has a comparison chart for the supplement books. US edition does not have the friendly notes, standards and common core do.

Oh! When I went to look at the extra practice books, I saw the US edition... These look great for my purpose because they are slimmer than the standards edition. Does anyone know if they include the 'friendly notes'? I can't tell from the smokes at rainbow resource. The notes would be useful as we get to the upper level books, just so I know what the purpose of each section is.

Well, for my oldest I'm thinking of using beast academy (he's done 3a already). So I think doing it after zeta would be OK because it is so puzzle-y. But your suggestion of buying more time before rushing on to the next level is a good one, I think my daughter would benefit from doing it that way. I'm not sure what to use to supplement for her, beast academy would not be a good fit. What do you use to supplement? I like the idea of using Singapore, but don't want to do two whole curriculums. Perhaps just the extra practice book? That has teaching reminders for each section. She just started gamma a few weeks ago, I was thinking of stopping when she gets thru all the times tables and saving multi digit multiplication for next year. Idk if she could get thru all of Singapore 2 EP book before the end of the year. I'm not totally opposed to doing some over the summer. In fact I'd saved the MUS test book to use for just that (don't want her forgetting her times tables over the summer!) But maybe I could use the Singapore EP book instead... Tho there's not a lot of multiplication in that book. Hmm

MUS is working well for us. I'm finding it doable to teach to several kids and they are learning and retaining well. We've tried several other programs over the years and this has really been the best fit. That said, I do know it doesn't go quite as deep as other programs. I'm debating over how to schedule supplementing it. At this time I don't want to do both at the same time. Do we do that for the last part of the year, after they finish their current book, or keep going on to the next level? Waiting and spending a year going deeper after they finish zeta?

Hits: ELTL. This is going pretty well. I love the ease of an all in one, three days a week schedule. We're not crazy about some of the poems, but I'm not chucking it over that. My oldest son complains about how long the lessons are, but he always complains about writing type subjects. Sometimes I wish I'd put him in level 4 to stretch his writing, but this was his first time studying formal grammar so level 3 is a good fit there. RLTL. This is working good for my oldest. MUS. This is working well for everyone. I'm debating over what to do for the last bit of the year, after they finish their current book, either doing enrichment type stuff (beast academy or Singapore) or keep going on to the next level and then spend a year going deeper after they finish zeta. I may need to start a new thread for that one. :D HWOT kindy book. I thought this was great for teaching letter formation. Spelling you see. This is turning out to be a good fit too. I had just my kindergartner using it for writing practice, I ended up bumping him up a level because he needed more challenge (as in he was actually asking for it). But now my daughter is using it too and it really seems to be helping her. She's a perfectionist and refuses to write because she can't spell everything, on top of that she needs a lot of repetition for things to sink in. The multiple days studying the same passage, as well as repeatedly marking the same passage, is helping the words sink in. I finally sat down and watched the videos to go with it, and following their suggestions is working. She is feeling more confident and therefore willing to try the writing (instead of shutting down). AAR. I have a love/hate relationship with this program. Lol. It works great for my daughter with the explicit, incremental teaching. But only when she's working at an easy-for-her level. Or maybe it's just that she needs breaks from it to read read read and build up her stamina. But we keep going thru a cycle of it working great, then it not working at all, then a break from it, and then we pick it back up and start the cycle over again. :Shrug Block scheduling. Focusing on science for the first half of the year and history for the second half. This was an experiment this year and I plan to do it again next year. Misses: RLTL. Yup, this is in both categories. It caused serious meltdowns and regression in my daughter. I've shelved it and brought AAR and spelling you see back out. I may try RLTL with her again next year, or whenever I think she's ready for more analytical thinking.

Last year I used the spiral notebook method, but I found myself writing the same things over and over and over. So this year I made up a simple weekly checklist in Excel that I hand write page numbers on. This has the benefit of being just one page for the whole week and the repetitive parts are taken care of for me, but I still have flexibility to cross stuff off if we're having a weird week. I put five columns, Mon to Fri, and then have math page _____, copy work _____, piano, etc. They get to decide what order to do them in. I also put the books they need to read on there. My 6&9yo kids I assign specific chapters to be read each day. My 11yo I assign books/chapters to be read for the week and he decides which ones and how much to read each day. I'm trying to decide how to work him up to more responsibility in this, but I don't want to give him a checklist of all his week's work to go thru as he likes because I just see that leading to Fridays with a week's worth of math still to do. Lol. But maybe next year I'll include him in the making up the weekly checklist process. Give him a list of what needs to be done each week (math 5x, typing 3x, etc) and let him divvy them up.

I'm flipping thru the gold American literature book and it looks pretty good. I definitely have some boys who just want to get school done. But then, I suppose I can get the gold books later if I need them. So far modern, easy to use, plenty of white space, shiney ;) stuff has worked a lot better around here. Off to find TWTM sale boards. I've got these plus a few other things that never worked for us that I need to get out of my house!

I took them out for a last look.. opened up the purple book to see what my oldest would be doing right if I'd used this this year. The lessons seemed so varied and interesting! Lol. Then I picked up next year's book, tan, and started flipping thru... And I'm seeing the same problems as last year. Using actual telephone books, going to bike shops to do price comparisons (who has time for that?), Reading a consumer report, assigning Dewey decimal numbers to books... These books definitely need a new home.

Lol. Yeah this is my problem. It's been sitting there for over a year and I keep second guessing it Now I just need to FIND one of these... Huh. That sounds like a very particular type of student that LLATL gold is good for. OK, gold is going too... Thank You! :D

So I have a whole set of LLATL teacher manuals (actually two sets, original and revised) 1-8. Part of me says get rid of them, I'm not using them and the other part of me wants to hang on to them just in case. And I'm really attracted to the all in one, get 'r done aspect. :D I've only used one level (orange) for a couple months. The old school-y-ness of them is kinda attractive to me, but when it came time to actually use it I found that old school stuff very inconvenient. It required stuff that I didn't have easy access to. And there's stupid little things that annoy me. Like the way the workbook runs everything together. Trying to save paper I guess. But I like a new day to start on a new page. ;) And there were a lot of projects in the orange level, sewing books and making newspapers. I'm not a project-y mom. Lol And when I think about my kids, it doesn't work for them. My oldest, the only one who's used it, needs more space to write, but that's probably it. My daughter, most advanced in handwriting but slowest in reading, does fit into a level pretty well, but she needs much more explicit instruction. LLATL reading would not have been enough for her and I doubt the spelling would be either. My third kiddo could read before he started kindergarten, beyond the reading covered in red and blue (1st & 2nd), but he's a wiggly little boy. No way I want to jump him into the third grade book. Writing all that out it does seem like getting rid of it should be a no brainer. Lol. But I keep going but, but, but... :D I do have one gold highschool book, maybe I want to keep that one?

This describes my oldest son perfectly. I may need to look into IEW... :o We're currently using ELTL.

Wow, how have I never heard of this before? It looks simple, but with laid out lessons. I'm now totally tempted to add this to what we're already doing (ELTL). :D Frankly, I don't even know exactly what ELTL covers in the upper levels. Lol. It looked doable and like more than I would know how to do on my own, but not over the top complicated. ;)

This is the time of year I always assess how things are going and what I want to change for the second half of the year... Most things are going pretty well. I tried a block schedule for science and history this year and I'm liking it. We just finished science last week, a whole month later than I'd planned. Oh well. For December were going to do composer study. I need to pick something else light to do in January because we will be taking two weeks off for a trip, even just focus on books for the 6yo. The big kids still listen. Lol. Then in February we start SOTW 2. The only thing I'm changing for next semester is dropping RLTL spelling for my 6&9 yo kids. Switching the 9yo to spelling you see and bumping the 6yo up a level in SYS. Good thing he has a little brother who can use his barely used SYS level A book! His MUS primer book too. Lol. I didn't realize he was ready for first grade work. :D Eta: oh, thought of another change. I decided to pick AAR back up for my 9yo. i dropped it for this year because we were going to use RLTL. But that hasn't worked out, so back to AAR. I have a love/hate relationship with AAR. Lol Since I'm done thinkin about next semester, I find myself starting to think about next year. Lol. But no, must wait till February. Planning for next year is how I get thru the February blues. ;)

I'm just amazed how many people have the energy and brain power to not only do chores after school, but to organize their kids chores. :D By the time the school day is done, I'm wiped. Getting dinner on the table is my only priority at that point, anything else is bonus. And yes, my house is a mess. I hate it.

This sounds so simple, and then when I try to decide what to do about cursive, it gets so complicated. Lol. Because just cause you've taught them cursive doesn't mean they can easily do all their work in it. After a full year of cursive Copywork, with me making her read it to me every time, she can now read it easily. So maybe even the cursive Copywork will help her spelling at this point. Tho because of her not being a visual learner, I wonder if printed Copywork would help more, just like SUS claims.

Haha now I'm thinking of ways I could tweak RLTL. I could switch to flashcards for the phonograms instead of the chart I'm using. I could review just the phonograms she's used so far and only include the others when they come up in the lists. Forget that, I think she needs to finish AAR. Maybe next year when we pick up RLTL again I will try tweaking it. For copywork I could print some of the eltl copywork each week in manuscript, only doing some of it in cursive. Rather than having her do cursive ELTL Copywork and spelling you see Copywork.

Thank you! Sometimes you need a fresh pair of eyes looking at your problem. Lol. I didn't want to have to keep doing English for an extra three weeks into the summer, but maybe trying to catch up is throwing me into a tizzy for the next three months. Put that way, 3 weeks is way better than 3 months. That would certainly take some pressure off. MUS is working well, I'm not changing that. :) 6yo- sounds perfect. I'm using spelling you see as his Copywork, though technically he isn't at the Copywork level yet. I was using it for practicing lowercase letters, which are new to him and level a had bigger lines. Tho at this point I'm wishing I had gone with level b because he's picking it up fast and that level has Copywork in it which would help him more. Level a is all words which he can already spell. I think I will go ahead and get him the next level. I can save this book for his younger brother. 9yo- well she is doing daily Copywork, but it's in cursive. I can see that the cursive Copywork is not helping her spelling. I probably shouldn't have switched her to it last year, but she wanted to learn. I don't want to totally drop cursive lest she forget. Her cursive Copywork is from ELTL 1 and is quite short, so I think she could do it in cursive plus do print Copywork by using the SUS level B part 2 book I have. It's Copywork, with just the addition of color coding vowel teams, silent e's, etc. I hate to drop ELTL with her because she's really enjoying it and that is our poems, art study, aesops fables, cursive Copywork, and she listens to the stories at bedtime. And it literally takes only five minutes. Sooo... AAR, ELTL and SUS? 11yo- ELTL is working. If I drop it back to 3 days a week, then I will have more time to do RLTL spelling with him.

Well that was very long and rambling. I think I shouldn't post these late at night, I'm too muddled. :D This morning I woke up thinking, of course I can't skip any of these. I'm just in a mid winter funk. We are getting way too late of a start in the mornings. And yes, teaching three kids is going to take longer than teaching two. I just need to accept that. The fact RLTL was getting skipped is what made me start thinking about whether it's working. It HAS worked well for my oldest son. But I don't feel like it's working so good for my daughter. I could switch her back to AAR and spelling you see. It would not take less time, but if she doesn't fight it as much it could be easier on me. Which leads me to my 6yo... At the rate he's doing RLTL it will be a long long time before he gets to any reading instruction that he needs (he was in AAR 3). RLTL replaces both AAR and spelling you see, which is why I switched this year. To streamline things. But I'm wondering if the switch was a good one...

Overall our year is going pretty well and I'm happy with most things we are using. I'm just feeling spread thin and find the same thing keeps getting dropped every week. :) This is my first year with three students. Between math, English and spelling I'm struggling to get it all in. But I don't want to leave out anything important either. I'm trying to find a balance between being involved as their teacher but not too parent intense. Lol. Can someone look over what we're doing and help me? Either to cut duplicate stuff or find a way to loop this stuff? :D Math- all the kids are using MUS. Theoretically I only need to teach each kid once a week, but my 11yo is nearing the end of delta and he's got it down and I am trying to catch him up so he needs me to teach a new lesson 1-2x per week. My 9yo just started gamma, and it's super easy at he beginning so she's doing 2 lessons per week, tho she will soon be to new material and will slow down to once a week -probably next week. My 6yo is in alpha and he's just picking it up so fast, he's been doing two new lessons a week too. I'm hoping soon to slow him to one a week, once we get a little further in and the review pages contain more than the super simple stuff (+0, +1, +2). English lessons thru literature- my oldest two are doing this. It's a 3 day a week program, but because we're behind we are doing it four days a week for the next three months. For my 9yo the lesson takes only 5-10 min, but for my 11yo it does take longer. Spelling and phonics- here's where I'm really having trouble. When ELTL was 3 days a week that left 2 days for reading lessons thru literature as our spelling program. With us doing ELTL 4x per week, we either only have one day for spelling or I have to do both English and spelling on the same day, making our day much longer. I used RLTL last year with my two oldest and was very happy with it, but this year it's just not getting done. I keep skipping it. With my 11yo, it's clicked and the lists he's doing, mid level 3, are so easy he can almost always spell the words without my help. Not sure if I should just skip forward to words he can't spell? He's also doing dictation this year, so I'm wondering if I should drop RLTL and just discuss rules as they apply to his dictation passage? But will I remember to do it? With my 6yo I was trying to do just five words, half a list, once a week. He reads at a 2-3 grade level, and spells well for his age I think. He picks everything up so fast, I've dropped AAR with him and figured I'd cover the further syllabication and phonograms with RLTL for spelling. He's also doing spelling you see level A. He can already spell all the words in there, but I'm using it for handwriting practice because he really needs that and he already finished his HWOT book. My 9yo... I dropped AAR with her this year because I felt like it and RLTL overlapped too much. But now RLTL is not getting done and she's the one who doesn't have spelling covered somewhere else. She didn't like RLTL last year, but I pushed on with it this year. But I'm feeling more and more like it doesn't work for her. With AAR we drilled phonograms, but new ones were presented one at a time. With RLTL all 75, including all their sounds, are taught up front. She seems completely overwhelmed and now doesn't know even the ones she used to know. She hates the rules because they're not true ALL the time. I'm thinking about switching her to spelling you see. She's actually asking to make this switch. I have level B that she used part 1 of last year, so I could use part 2 with her. It would require me to go over anything new on Monday and dictate to her on Friday, the rest she could do on her own. I think it would take less time each week than RLTL. She is not a visual learner and so much of spelling is visual, I wonder if the color coding might really help her? But then I've lost all syllabication and advanced phonogram work (her reading out loud to me has gotten dropped too) so do I pick up AAR again? Maybe just once a week we could go over the new teaching and read the story? Idk, i feel like I have oo many different optIons here and I just feel bounced arose nod between them. I need o make sure to cover all aspects of language arts, but also want to keep it simple and not duplicate anything. Which combination of these programs will do that?

Please update if you hear anthing. I'm using a lot of BR stuff, before I go all in I'd like to know if it's not gong to be finished.

Last year I built some really big problems with my oldest. Lol. We got more sets of used blocks so we could do it but it took the whole front room floor. This sounds like it would give a similar visual of what's happening but in a more space saving way. How big did you make the squares?

I'm curious about this. Could you elaborate? Do you use the 1-9 unit blocks in the tens and hundreds squares too? Not the 10 blocks and hundreds flats?

My late reader daughter did that too. The pretend cursive. She would fill pages and pages. I used HWOT print with her and then At 8 I taught her cursive. She has lovely cursive writing. Lol. Better than her older brother.

Do you find it easy to customize wayfarers? I've poured over the samples and I'm a little overwhelmed by how much is included each day.