Yes, all 4 operations with fractions are covered again in the "original" MM6A in chapter 5. You could also add some extra review using the Key To Fractions booklets, or just print extra practice worksheets from the MM worksheet generator.

Thanks for this and for mentioning the Biology Corner website. I'm planning bio next year and that's one I had not seen before.

I don't know about most kids, but my experience with DS is that his fine motor control and hand strength improved as he got a bit older, which improved his handwriting. In other words, his handwriting just got better as he got older. And this was after I had sort of given up on improving it, let him learn to type, and did much of his work verbally, especially narrations. And when he was younger, it seemed like he talked nonstop. And sang and related long made-up stories. And told jokes, constantly. He's not that way anymore. He's still very happy and witty, but now laid-back, quiet, and studious. Almost like a different kid. So, for him it apparently *was* an age thing. Can't wait to see what comes next. :)

I saw this NASA explanation earlier today and it seems pretty straightforward & kid-accessible. Might be more if you poke around their website. HTH. http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/polar-vortex-enters-northern-us/#.UsuArbQxjed

I bet part of it is simply her age. And some people are just extremely verbal. Hang in there. Have you started teaching her to type yet? For my DS, being able to type his writing assignments, plus just getting a bit older, helped a lot. :grouphug:

OK, I'll share my 2 cents, but it may not be what you're wanting to hear. :) My DS took the OnlineG3 class for Grammar Town and Caesar's English 1. It was our first exposure to an online, live class. Here are his thoughts and mine: Pros: The live weekly 50-minute webinars included a student "chat" feature, as well as the ability for students to ask questions via microphone, during the webinars. All the students could see each other's "chat" text and hear all the verbal questions. The instructor used a virtual whiteboard which was what we saw on our computer screen. (At no time did we ever see other students, i.e., no live webcam.) The weekly webinars were recorded and accessible online at a later time (I think the same day or maybe the next day) if a student had a schedule conflict during the live class time. The OnlineG3 website kept track of the online weekly tasks as they were assigned (one week at a time, not all available at once) and checked them off as they were completed by the student. This applied to things like supplemental online games, viewing a Brain Pop video, etc. The technology/software worked well and was simple to set up, with clear instructions. Cons: The instructor constantly allowed the same couple of students to dominate the speaking opportunities during the webinars. My DS often "raised his hand" electronically to ask for the chance to speak but rarely got to ask a question or offer an answer. (The instructor controls who gets to speak via the microphone and when.) The student "chat" usually went far off-topic while the instructor was conducting class during the webinars. My DS had to turn it off so it wouldn't distract him, so that feature was useless for us. Apparently there are multiple versions/editions of the required MCT books for GT & CE1, and they each have different page numbering. Upfront, the class instructions stated that *any* version/edition was OK, rather than specifying which one to buy. I bought mine new from the publisher, assuming that would be the safest and best route. However, the instructor seemed confused and frazzled by all the different page numbers, and the issue never got resolved. She stated repeatedly that she would contact all the parents, ascertain which editions we had, and issue assignments with the appropriate page numbers noted for each edition . . . but I was personally never contacted, and I always had to adjust the assigned page numbers and find the correct ones for my DS to complete each week. That part was really annoying, and for the price of the class I felt I shouldn't have had to do that. That aspect was unprofessional and disorganized. Could be pro or con depending on your viewpoint and/or your student’s preferences: The independent weekly reading assignments were pretty evenly balanced between Grammar Town vs. Caesar's English, but the time spent in the weekly webinar seemed to be about 75% Grammar Town and 25% Caesar's English. That was surprising and disappointing to me, but might be a "pro" rather than a "con" for some students. I felt this should have been disclosed upfront. The stated course objectives on the OnlineG3 website included: "study parts of speech, sentence structure, phrases and clauses through videos and stories; learn Michael Clay Thompson's 4-level sentence labeling system; and study word roots and vocabulary in the context of great literature." All of those things, with the exception of any videos, are accomplished via the MCT books themselves. You don’t need this class to do that for you, unless your student just requires the structure and accountability of an online instructor. The stated course objectives also included “practice with exciting games and activitiesâ€. Well, the weekly assignments typically included a simple online matching game or a Brain Pop video or a Schoolhouse Rock video to complement the reading assignment. These games/activities were short and took only a few minutes (usually less than 10) to complete each week. My DS thought the games and videos were OK but he says they didn't add anything to what he had already learned just from reading the MCT books. He said he wouldn’t exactly call them “excitingâ€. LOL. Finally, the course objectives stated that students would "write stories and create presentations with new vocabulary words". The opportunity to interact this way with like-minded students was my main motivation for enrolling DS in the class. However, he never got to write a story OR create a presentation, so it shouldn't have been included in the course description, and I felt misled by it. Other reviews of OnlineG3 that I’ve found seem to be pretty positive overall, but I don’t feel we got what was advertised. DS doesn’t want to take any more of their classes. We will, however, continue to use MCT materials on our own. :coolgleamA: I definitely learned some things from this experience and now I am much more informed about what kinds of questions to ask before enrolling my DS in any future classes from any provider. I hope this helps you too. ETA: To address your specific question about poetry and essays, no, I don't recall those topics being mentioned. There was no new ground covered, only what's already in the MCT Grammar Town and Caesar's English books.

English from the Roots Up flashcards with notebooking, and Caesar's English by Michael Clay Thompson (original version, not the newest version that adds lots of extraneous Roman history) were hits here. For us, Vocab from Classical Roots was a bust - poorly organized, no retention. If I *had* to use it, I'd pull out the word lists, which I think are fine, and make my own lessons and exercises. There are better products out there (see above) so we never went back to it.

Look at TOPS. Here's a list of all their books by grade level and you can buy supply kits for each one. Inexpensive and well done. There are even some free activities listed for each title if you poke around the website for things you might be interested in.

We love Mosdos here too. We use it for lit only though and do a separate program for explicit writing/composition instruction. DS does the Mosdos reading and then tells me about the intro (literary elements), the author background, and the actual story, then we cover the questions in the book verbally. My DS is in the middle of his 2nd year with it, and he's already requested to use it again next year too. Around here, spelling as a subject morphed into/was replaced by a vocab program around 5th grade. (I do still keep a list of any misspelled words from his writing and we go over those occasionally.) If your DS still needs spelling, I wouldn't try to do both spelling and vocab separately yet if it makes LA take too much of your day. Until then, your DS will probably pick up quite a bit of new vocab from quality reading materials anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much about that yet. Similarly, penmanship/cursive gradually faded away and was replaced by typing instruction. Finally, if you want a mostly independent grammar workbook program, also look at Easy Grammar or Hake Grammar.

My son and I really enjoyed these free, short videos available on education-portal.com related to the French Revolution and Napoleon. Each video is around 5 minutes long and there are six of them. They don't look sophisticated at first glance, but they are quite well done. I learned a lot myself. They tied in nicely with the chapters on French Rev in our history text (K12 Human Odyssey). http://education-portal.com/academy/topic/the-french-revolution-and-napoleon-bonaparte-1780-1815.html

For those ages, one of the science packages sold by Sonlight might work. Here's a link to their Science D package, which is geared to ages 7 - 10. If you need secular materials for science, you can secularize Sonlight science by skipping the one book in the package that is written from a Christian viewpoint and the related Christian-viewpoint comments in the TM. The other books in the package are secular. (We're secular homeschoolers and used it this way with no issues.) The package I linked includes the TOPS labs for "Radishes" and "Corn and Beans", which are two of the best TOPS sets I've ever used. I bet your kids would enjoy them too. The Discover and Do DVDs coordinate with the TOPS science books and supply kits for hands-on labs. On the DVDs, the presenter demonstrates and explains all the steps of the labs. Even if your kids don't actually do the labs themselves, they can learn by watching the presenter. There's no formal lecturing in this program, but there is learning via reading the various books in the package. (Note that the Discover and Do weekly labs do not always directly tie in to that week's reading material, but that never bothered us, especially considering the age level.) I don't remember it having any formal tests (could be wrong), but there are worksheets you could use that way if you wanted to. The only component you have to buy directly from Sonlight is the TM, unless you buy a used version. The TM is mainly just a schedule, worksheets, and answer key. I bought all the other components I needed on the used market or directly from the source (i.e., TOPS).

The suggested schedule in the TM indicates it can be completed in 30 weeks. There's no rule that says you have to complete it all within the same "school" year or grade. I'd say start it now and let it take however long it takes. FWIW, when my DS did SWI-B, he finished it a few weeks ahead of schedule, simply because the schedule allowed more time for certain assignments than he needed. And he was initially a very reluctant writer. :coolgleamA:

Math Minutes does exactly that. It is a workbook of daily worksheets. No teaching, just 10 quick problems per page, designed as a daily warmup. We're using level 6 and each problem spirals through fractions, decimals, percent, etc. There are also levels 7 and 8 plus one called "middle school". Samples here, this is level 6, but you can navigate to the other levels too: http://www.creativeteaching.com/products/math-minutes-6th-grade Available at any book retailer, Amazon, etc. Also available from the publisher's website as an ebook if you prefer that format.

My DS prefers working independently too. We make an effort to choose curricula with the "teaching" printed explicitly in the student text, rather than scripted lessons that must be read from a Teacher's Manual. Everything we use is listed in my signature.

Yes, I hear you on that! Either way, I hope your kids do well with IEW. I resisted it for too long (because I didn't understand how it worked and I foolishly listened to negative reviews from people who had never even used it!) but it turned out to be exactly what my DS needed at that time. It completely changed his attitude toward writing, in a good way. (In case you didn't know, even SWB recommended IEW in TWTM before she wrote her own writing curriculum.) Best of luck!

Have you looked at the SWI samples on the IEW website? You know your DD best. Look at the student reading resources in the different A and B samples, and see what you think. My DS was a very young 5th grader - that's upper elementary to me - and he used level B. Personally, I think IEW's grade guidelines are a bit off, because after using level B, I would expect an average 8th grader with no LDs to be capable of more than what's required in level B.

Teacher prep? None. Open and go. I watched the SWI videos with my DS. I did not buy or use the TWSS. (TWSS was IEW's original product. IEW later created SWI to give non-confident teachers, like me, the resources and hand-holding needed to teach using SWI methods without the TWSS.) I spent a few minutes grading his completed papers (per the rubrics) but not every day, probably average once per week. And I would check in every day that he was writing. Kids do lessons together? Absolutely. There's a schedule in the teacher materials. We sorta followed the schedule, but we never watched more than 30 minutes of video in one day, and I never made DS write for more than 30 minutes per day. We just stopped and picked it up the next day if it was taking him longer than 30 minutes to write, or if he needed to pause the video to write something down and that caused us to go over 30 minutes. If we got "behind" per the TM's schedule, it was never a problem to catch up again within a couple of days. I think we did it every day unless he finished an assignment early. I recall there was a lot of extra time built into the schedule for finishing certain assignments (especially the later ones) and it often didn't take as long as the schedule said to allow. We finished it several weeks before the end of our school year.

Just to clarify for others reading, because all the different color names can be confusing at first, Math Mammoth light blue series and blue series (there is no "dark blue") contain the same lessons. Light blue is arranged by grade level, while blue is arranged by topics with no denotation of grade levels. One does not contain "more" than the other as long as you're buying the entire series of either one. :coolgleamA:

I would get SWI level B and use it with both kids. My non-dyslexic DS used level B as a 5th grader and it was fine. You could perhaps just expect a bit more from your 7th grader than your 4th grader. (The program supplies grading rubrics so you'll know what is reasonable for their output.) I wouldn't use C with a dyslexic 7th grader. IEW placement is based on reading level, not writing level or previous experience.

Texas does not have a state income tax. The flip side is that property taxes can be high if your house is very large or new. Of course, if you rent a home, its a win-win -- no state income tax and no property taxes on a home. However, the overall cost of housing per square foot will likely still be significantly less than what you're used to in Southern CA. I'm biased, but I'd look at the Hill Country/San Antonio area before DFW or Houston. The weather is better there and so is traffic.

Just curious and want to clarify, are you saying that you are able to airplay Amazon streaming videos from your iPad's Amazon app to your TV wirelessly via AppleTV? If I am understanding that correctly, do you ever experience any sync or skipping problems doing it that way, specifically with the Amazon videos? I had been looking at buying an AppleTV device but was putting it off because, as I understand it, Amazon videos currently are not available directly on the AppleTV device, like Netflix streaming is, for instance. Then I had also thought about using an Apple Lightning Digital AV adapter to connect the iPad to the TV, which wouldn't be wireless so more inconvenient, but perhaps avoiding any sync/skipping issues. Sorry if this is too far off topic. Thanks for any input or suggestions you may have. :coolgleamA:

Writing Skills by Diana Hanbury King is also very PS-ish, and open and go. http://eps.schoolspecialty.com/products/details.cfm?seriesonly=2561M

I modeled dictation after the way SWB did dictation with her son in this video, "Dictation with Dan". She makes it seem more reasonable and do-able than its described in WWE4, for example.

These are just books, not a full curriculum, but my DS and I enjoyed using them last year. The first two are especially good for elementary, the last one is more advanced. The Usborne Complete Book of the Microscope: Internet-Linked The World of the Microscope Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture (DIY Science)

I've used Elemental Science in the past but not with multiple ages. The classic series TMs (and maybe the other products too, I didn't use them) contain some ideas for adjusting to include siblings, but you have quite a wide range of ages, so I'm not sure how feasible that will be. That portion of the TM might even be viewable in the online samples, so look at the samples if you haven't yet and see what you think. My DS was ready for the books used in the logic stage classic series (i.e., Kingfisher) by 4th/5th grade. He wasn't advanced, just already knew the material used in the elementary levels (i.e., Usborne). So look carefully at the books used in each level, look them over on Amazon, etc., and think about what level of input is appropriate for your kids. You can easily adjust the output requirements but getting the appropriate input is key, or else they'll be either bored or overwhelmed. I'd be wary about possibly shortchanging the 6th grader by using something beneath his/her level. In your shoes, I'd probably purchase with the two older kids in mind, and let the younger two tag along using "younger" books or relevant library picture books (depending on their reading level) and "helping" with the weekly labs. In my experience, it is easier to reduce requirements in a program as written, to fit your kids, rather than trying to beef up something that isn't already there. ES is so open and go, and inexpensive, that if you're doing a lot of modifying you might be better off just buying both logic stage AND elementary for the same field (biology, chemistry, etc). You might want to email the Elemental Science author, Paige Hudson, and ask what she recommends. She's usually very helpful and responsive. Here's a link for contacting her. http://www.elementalscience.com/contact/contactform.php I'd recommend subscribing to her blog too. Good tips and ideas there.