If we could afford it, we would definitely homeschool. My husband supports my decision either way. Our oldest is turning 18 and never wanted to be homeschooled. The twins are in third grade PS, and it breaks my heart to have to send them to school every day. They are very advanced (not gifted) and usually learn the material much faster than their classmates. There is a lot of busy work, and much sitting around. I also feel, that with the school day being so long, there is no time to teach them real life skills. Both younger boys come home at 4pm, homework takes about 1 hour until everything is put away and ready to go for the next day, dinner, shower, reading and lights out. No room for activities or afterschooling. That said, we could make homeschooling work financially, but there'd be nothing left for extras. No field trips, no gymnastics or swimming, no annual trips to my home country Germany. So when you weigh these options, I feel that our family benefits more if I work and bring in the additional income. It is unfortunate, but at least we can both say that we made one decision over another. If childcare was free, I'd homeschool in a heartbeat!

My twins' school also uses enVision. First and second grade gets to be extremely repetitive, but in 3rd grade I'm noticing a huge step up. We have always afterschooled with MEP, picking and choosing only some of the problems. I feel that this has prepared them extremelely well and both boys are now ahead of the curve. MEP is very challenging, but it increases the difficulty gradually. I don't think many young kids enjoy coming across a problem they can't solve right away. To them it is only black and white: I can either do it or I can't! I see it changing somewhat at age 8 almost 9 now, but this change comes with frustration. One of my sons will attempt a problem, have a meltdown and run off into his room, only to come back with the answer to his problem. Have you taken a look at MEP?

If nothing else helps, and you can't convince the young man otherwise, he could wear sunglasses in your class that are covered from the inside so he can't see anything, but still hear everything. Have him do an audio recording of each class with his own comments on it. Sit a student who is academically equally inclined next to him and have the student comment on what is happening. I have never btdt, but those ideas came to mind.

Another strong vote against Touchmath! Touchmath has the students count by the shape of the number, and it is virtually impossible to develop number sense this way. It's as if the Base 10 concept doesn't exist with this program. The kids cannot "unsee" the dots on each number and will just count on every single time. Please do not use Touchmath.

Typing web, now just typing dot com, is excellent! It has incremental sections and your DD could do one a day. They start out with letters, then words, sentences and special characters, and lastly stories. Best of all, it's totally free!

I work in a third grade classroom. They use envision as their curriculum and division gets introduced in third grade, shortly after multiplication. There are some times tests and facts should be somewhat memorized. I do believe that they will revisit the concept in fourth though. Long division is not covered in third at my school. If your son did fairly well with MUS, he should easily be able to see how multiplication and division relate to each other. Practice a bit with the blocks during the summer and he should be fine.

Gut gemacht!!! That is quite the accomplishment! I have the same question as wintermom: Die she study anything foreign language related previously?

Just listening in here. Could you elaborate on this please, Heigh Ho? Specifically on the difference of scoring well and writing well, and how you would help your child achieve one or the other.

I would suggest you post this on the accelerated forum. Some members have had their kids do the Russian Math Olympiad that is associated with this company/website.

If you are leaning towards MEP, you could try Step up to A-Level maths. It has 4 quick studyguides and is designed to give you a review of already learned material in order to prepare you for higher level mathematics. If you have difficulties with any of the problems, there are links that will bring you to the part of MEP where this specific problem is taught with more detail.

My twin boys are only in 2nd grade, so we are not very far into this journey. Initially, we were afterschooling mainly for reading, so that they could learn phonics instead of sight words. The boys are also learning German. Since there are 180 days of school, that left us with 185 days of afterschooling. That is at what we did in Kindergarten. This never took more than about 30 minutes a day, and we routinely switched what we did. Since we've moved, their school day starts at 9am, and they don't get home until about 3:45pm. There are usually two homework assignments, plus any pending projects. Our solution was to do our "afterschooling" before school. The twins get up at 7am and do 30 minutes of work while eating breakfast. They are now both very advanced readers and don't need more reading instruction. We have since switched to doing MEP math in the mornings, and German read alouds at night before bed. It is not ideal, since German gets left behind somewhat, but I noticed that I constantly have to remediate what the kids "learn" in school for math. This routine works for us now. I am constantly on the lookout for saving us more time, as school takes up so much of that. It helps that I walk the kids to school in the mornings as late as possible and pick them up again. It's a time commitment on my part, but less time for them spent on the long bus ride. Plus they get some fresh air and exercise. At this point in time, their only extracurricular is on Sundays, so thankfully I don't have to work around that. We also take bike rides, go for walks, and go to the playground. If your children have many extracurriculars, work around that by using the 185 days that there is no school. It also helps, that I severely limit the kids' screen time. One more thing you could do, if you are in the car a lot, is car schooling. Mental math, books, audiobooks, latin, all is game as long as there are no screens allowed. Same goes for any other wait times you encounter (doctor's and dentist's visits, DMV, waiting while another sibling is doing their sport, etc.). HTH!

Ask your local library. Many Students need volunteer time for the Honor Society, this is where you may be able to find them.

I've been looking at your job for quite some time now, but I'm in CT. I also need to improve my typing speed first. Working as a transcriber in a University sounds like a dream job!

Thanks Binip!

Binip, what German book are you using? We are also debating getting BA for afterschooling (instead of MEP). Now that you posted your update, and seeing how much you like it, we may just do it starting this summer.