Bumping for those who might have missed it. Thank you for sharing this!

Will you be administering the ITBS test yourself? You may already know this, but if you're administering it yourself, you can purchase a practice test from your test provider, along with the actual test materials. If you want more than that, or aren't administering it yourself, just googling something like "ITBS practice test" will give you more choices.

Seconding Pantone's post. Also, we enjoy Alton Brown's TV series Good Eats. He demonstrates technique but also explains the why behind it (cooking is as much about chemistry as it is about cooking) and he's entertaining too. I don't know if they're still on, but his episodes used to be available via streaming on Amazon and Netflix.

Yeah, that might seem odd at first glance, and I haven't studied their S&S in detail, but the longer I homeschool, the more I see that after a certain point most grammar programs do actually just repeat the same things year after year. The detail and complexity of the exercises increases, but the concepts are the same. In Hake, levels 5 and 6 have nearly identical TOC, as do levels 7 and 8. DS will be doing only two of those four levels instead of all four, since there's so much review, and stretching each over more than a year. Then I expect to be "done" with generalized grammar instruction, with targeted review of specific grammar concepts only as needed (if/when specific problems show up in his writing) in high school. That's my plan anyway. ;)

I agree! This describes our IEW experience too.

Hake grammar scope & sequence document on the publisher's website: http://www.hakepublishing.com/support-files/grammar_and_writing_scope_and_sequence.pdf You can also see the Table of Contents for each level at christianbook.com, and perhaps other sites too. Here's a link to the TOC for the level 8 student textbook. http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product_slideshow?sku=998581&actual_sku=998581&slide=1 I haven't BTDT yet, as DS is currently using Hake 7, but I expect to be finished with grammar study by the end of middle school (8th grade). SWB says in TWTM that students should have learned everything they need to know in grammar by the end of logic stage, with review as needed in high school. If DS needs it, we might use something like Analytical Grammar's high school reinforcement materials.

Welcome! Bumping for you. :001_smile: My DS likes Wordly Wise and Caesar's English for vocab. They are quite different from each other in format and approach but he likes them both. Links are in my signature under WW8 and CE1. We've dropped spelling as a separate subject, so I can't personally recommend anything there for an 8th grader. SWB recommends Spelling Workout but it is a workbook that seems to work best for kids who are already pretty good spellers, so I don't know if that would be helpful. A friend of mine likes Megawords for spelling but I've never used it. All About Spelling seems to be popular here on the forum but I don't know anything about it. So there's a few for you to look at. Hope you get more advice. ETA: What has your 8th grader used previously, and liked/disliked, for vocab & spelling? That info might help generate better suggestions for you.

You really only need the original version TM for studying the vocab. The newer version has the same word lists and vocab info plus more (much more) extraneous Roman historical info and photographs, but no new vocab material. If your child would enjoy that extra material, go with the newer one. (My DS would not have liked it, LOL, but I'm sure some kids do.)

Here's a YouTube video of SWB doing dictation with her own son. There are actually two parts, but this is the first one. She keeps it real, LOL. She gives more help/support than the instructions in the book and keeps the phrases shorter with more repetitions. This helped me to have more realistic expectations when my DS was doing dictation in WWE4. HTH. Dictation With Dan, Part 1

My DS is that way too. :001_smile: How about: Foerster (algebra and up) Writing With Style, depending on the student Ellen McHenry's science Killgallon for middle & high school Hake Grammar, but might be too dry/workbooky for some Visual Link Spanish (link in my signature)

I was just coming in to tell you about Horrible Books too. Here's a link: http://www.horriblebooks.com/galoreparkbooklist.htm I've also bought Galore Park books used on Amazon.

IEW. I shouldn't have resisted it for so long. It was exactly what my DS needed at the time, worked beautifully for him.

Yep, we did this with MM too. For an even tighter spiral, you could also skip some of the questions in each lesson, and then over subsequent days come back to the skipped questions as review.

Ruth, this is brilliant. I love it. Thank you for sharing your approach with us.

After completing WWE4 in 4th grade, I knew DS wasn't ready for WWS1 as a 5th grader. So he did IEW's SWI-B in 5th grade, which greatly built his confidence, provided the structure he craved, and gave him practice with lots of different writing tools to put into his mental toolbox. We followed that with a quick run through some other (easier than WWS1) resources to build his outlining and paragraphing skills, namely Outlining by Remedia Publications, parts of Writing Skills by Diana Hanbury King, and Paragraph Writing Made Easy. All of those set him up really well for WWS1, and he just told me today - as a 6th grader, halfway through WWS1 - that writing is now his favorite subject because of WWS!!! We could have probably fought our way through WWS1 at half-speed starting last year, but I really believe a lot of it would have gone over his head, so waiting a year - and that one year truly made a big difference - was a good decision, for us. Disclaimer: DS seems to have a brain geared towards something like an engineering career and is very much a parts-to-whole learner. So all of the curricula/resources I've mentioned were chosen with that in mind. If he wasn't that type of kid, I would have spent his 5th grade year teaching him to write across the curriculum as prescribed in TWTM.

I've never seen inside one of the TE's, so I'm not sure what they include. Hopefully someone else will chime in for you. The ISBN for the 1985/1988 Dolciani Pre-Algebra Solution Key I have is 0395359899. Unfortunately, a quick check (of Amazon and a couple of other websites where I've previously purchased used books) doesn't show any currently listed for sale, but if you're not in a hurry you might be able to find one later, perhaps later in the spring when more folks are selling off the things they're finished with. HTH.

As a mom whose DS successfully completed WWE4 as a 4th grader, but wasn't nearly ready to move straight into WWS1 as a 5th grader, I am vigorously nodding my head and agreeing with many things I've seen mentioned already in this thread. I haven't seen it recently, but some folks in other threads have even mentioned WWE4 being "optional" and were discussing moving from WWE3 straight to WWS1. It concerns me enough that I think the below quote from Rose is worth repeating, and I hope others pondering this will see this thread and take heed. FWIW, we spent DS's 5th grade year waiting for more academic maturity, doing IEW's SWI-B, and focusing on outlining and paragraphs with easier resources like Remedia's Outlining workbook, Paragraph Writing Made Easy, and Diana Hanbury King's Writing Skills. It was a brief detour away from SWB's writing curricula and I believe it set us up very well for WWS1 this year (6th grade).

I paid $12 for mine on Amazon, described as being in "very good" condition, about a year ago. Honestly, it doesn't really meet Amazon's definition of "very good" (actually a "good" at best), but I'm OK with it. BTW, mine is ISBN 039543050X, which is listed on Amazon as a 1987 edition, but the cover page inside the book officially indicates copyright "1988, 1985". I'm pretty certain this is the same book I used in school. :coolgleamA: Wapiti is correct, the final answers to the odds are in the back of the student text. I assign evens for that reason. For saving time, I also tracked down the companion paperback "Solution Key" (technically not a "Teacher's Edition") which has fully worked out solutions, step by step, for every problem. If you have more time for grading and/or only assign odds, you likely wouldn't need it.

Noeo Chemistry might fit the bill. The level 3 package comes with student books, teacher guide, and a nice Thames & Kosmos chemistry set (CHEM2000). (The package price seems high at first glance, but the T&M chemistry set is selling for almost $130 by itself on Amazon currently, so that's where a big chunk of it goes.) My DS will be starting it later this year. There's also Elemental Science-Chemistry for logic stage. It doesn't come with its own kit, though. I am a fan of Elemental Science but we haven't used that one.

The Mosdos Press literature series is like that, and it works really well here. It uses secular, values-based stories. It is pricey to buy new, but you can find it used if you're not in a hurry to buy. DS really enjoys the stories and he's asked to do the next level next year. We just do the activities in the student text, but there is also a student workbook and a teacher manual if you want to use the program to its fullest.

I don't have any real answers for you, but I wanted to let you know, there is hope. My DS at age 9 had really sloppy handwriting. At Staples I bought that special lined paper that "little kids" learn to write with, with a solid line on the bottom and top of a row, and a dashed line in the middle. DS did two or three sentences of copywork every day on that and it had to be done neatly/correctly, or he had to do it over again. Also, like the PPs above, if I couldn't read his writing on math problems, spelling words, etc., he had to do them over again neatly. Beyond that, I let him type all of his other written work. Now, at age 12, his handwriting has significantly improved. He's actually apalled at how bad it used to be, when he sees a paper that he wrote on two or three years ago. Anyway, we just kept plugging along, and I think his penmanship improved mostly due to me not harping too much, a small amount of daily focused practice, more written work as he approached middle school, and mostly a simple matter of more maturity.

ScienceFusion? Through Saxon Homeschool: http://saxonhomeschool.hmhco.com/en/products/default.htm?level2Code=M0010&level3Code=M31099 It used to be offered through HSBC but I just checked and they don't have it offered currently, might again in the future.

Yay for your son! That's awesome. We like Caesar's English too. 😊

I agree with Arcadia. This book on perfectionism, plus gaining some maturity, helped my DS. Your son is young but maybe you could read it with/to him. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1575422344?cache=fd965bf8664a6c8dbbc25c59bfe3f6d8&pi=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70#ref=mp_s_a_1_8&qid=1392944815&sr=8-8

We use Hake for grammar and it works well for us. There are lots of threads about it - it feels like I've posted quite a bit about it myself. Did you do a search? Or google forums.welltrainedmind.com + hake.