Thanks Sbgrace. My first moment of realizing that math could be beautiful was looking at a wall of Montessori math, but I had no idea how to either afford or use it all. Finding education unboxed was an exciting moment for me. There's patterns in math! Pretty colourful patterns. :) Emerald Stoker, thank you, I think Jousting Armadillos and the other two books from that company will be perfect for us after fractions and decimals. I'm not sure I trust Stan Schmidt to teach me algebra, and not sure we'll be ready for AOPS at that point. JA is even designed to be done with a partner, so daughter and I can do it together.

Thanks for the links Emerald Stoker. There are definitely things about math we're starting to like. It still isn't what we spend our spare time doing, though. :) I've been thinking lately of why I'm having her do math... Because she's supposed to, or because she'll need it to get into university... just doesn't seem like a good enough reason. You could say, she'll need for daily life, but I managed fine without it, so that's not a convincing argument here. She could possibly go into a related career, but she's always writing or drawing, and rolls out of bed in the morning talking about spelling and metaphors. I think really math is good exercise for her brain. It's teaching her to deal with frustration, to problem solve, to play with ideas, that if she's getting everything right what she's doing is too easy and she's not learning....

lprstn, could you tell me why you're recommending those programs? What is it about them that you think would be helpful? Thanks.

Hi, I need some help deciding what to do with math for my daughter over the next couple of years. I have poor math skills myself. When I took my daughter out of public school in the middle of grade 3 she was terrified of math. She asked for math with manipulatives, so I got her MathUSee Alpha and Beta. At first she was excited about being able to understand the math, but she found the worksheets boring. Then she got Life of Fred and loved it. I started putting some interesting questions from MEP on a whiteboard for her. When we were about to start MathUSee Gamma, she told me she wanted "more interesting math that makes me think." Enter Beast Academy. She still doesn't like math, but she does like Fred and Beast Academy. I find that Fred elementary is good at explaining why something is useful, and how to do it, but doesn't always explain why algorithms work. Daughter keeps asking why things work. So we're using a lot of manipulatives and also education unboxed to figure out why things work. And we're playing a lot of math and strategy games. I am also working through Life of Fred and Beast myself, because I don't think it's fair to make her learn math that I don't know. Also they're interesting. So I'm not sure what to do next with my remedial math student who doesn't want easy math. Next year she should be ready for fractions and decimals. So Life of Fred Fractions and Decimals? I'm considering getting just the teaching manuals from MathUSee for when we need a different explanation. I like how MUS explains fractions. We also have Hands On Equations to play with. And the rest of the gr. 4 Beast Academy should be out. But then what? I'm looking at the Art of Problem Solving, but that seems crazy for two people who don't like math. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Ariadne, the projects in partnership writing also work for faltering ownership. :) If your child needs more help, you help more; if they need less, you give them space. It's a flexible program. If the projects appeal to your son, it will work.

"Maybe I just don't "get" Flylady." You need to read Flylady like you've signed up for fitness bootcamp and she's your personal trainer. If you don't need a personal trainer, just sift through the bossiness to find the info that is useful for you.

Not free, but the New Nine Note Recorder Method book is excellent. I think Amazon.com carries it, and we ordered ours from Sonlight.

Does anyone know what topics will be in 4A?

Susan, here: http://www.educationunboxed.com/decimals.html

The Ten Days in... games are good. (Ten Days in Europe; Ten Days in Asia; etc) Also the Kingfisher Geography Encyclopedia is worth owning.

The Nook won't work unless you use Calibre. You don't need a PC, though. Here are some options: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_361458882_3?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-9&pf_rd_r=1GH0P3M4G8QFE6MAMZ0R&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_p=1354791522&pf_rd_i=1000426311

If it isn't just a one time glitch... my daughter struggled with freewriting at first (she came out of public school hating writing, and cried every time she wrote), so in the beginning I had her narrate her freewrites. I also modelled freewrites for her (complete with random punctuation and episodes of "I don't know what to write I don't know what to write I don't know what to write"). Make sure, if he's writing himself, that he knows that he doesn't have to show it to you if he doesn't want to.

Mskelly, will he narrate?

Now daughter has moved on to designing an island. Maybe I should give her back the book?

Mskelly, he could perhaps do a number of freewrites and then pick one to revise? I was using writing activities from The Writer's Jungle this year, and just got Partnership Writing. There's nothing surprisingly new in it, but I like how it's put together. I also liked that I could sit down with my daughter and show it to her. She now has a good idea of what her next year is going to look like. She went through the projects, chose the ones she liked, and decided what order she'll do them in. Then I had to wrestle the book away from her. She wants to start the projects now, but we're going to take the summer to get the lifestyle elements in place, and then start with the projects in Sept. Theoretically. Daughter is busily creating secret codes. I read some Arrows, but don't use them (I have a lit degree, and my biggest problem with teaching lit is remembering to shut up :) ). Instead I take a passage from our fiction read aloud, and put it up on a whiteboard for a week. We discuss it; I put up one of the sentences for her to diagram; we use a sentence for dictation. I also (and this is not Bravewriter at all) go through her writing to see what she needs help with, and do the occasional whiteboard lesson on grammar or spelling. We're going to read one MCT book (Paragraph Town TM), and do Excavating English, but otherwise this should be a very Bravewriter year. I thought of doing just parts of Bravewriter, but the more I look at it, the more it comes together into a cohesive whole. I even followed the advice in the lifestyle section and got daughter a musical instrument (a recorder and the nine-note method book), and she's so excited about it. She's never expressed an interest in music before. I've never considered the connections between music and writing. But it makes so much sense when you consider poetry, reading sheet music, the rhythm and emotion in music....