I'm impressed you can do it that fast. It takes us more like 30-35 minutes just to do the oral review, read the chapter, and do the class practice orally. That's before he even starts any written work. Add that in and it's close to an hour total. We're doing Grade 7. I'm not really sure why it's taking so long. He understands it fine and enjoys learning new topics in grammar. He is pretty talkative, though, and likes to add lots of commentary to everything. Maybe that's where our time is going. I already feel like I'm constantly rushing him along and cutting him off, though. I'm not really sure how to make it faster.

GrandMary is what my mother picked! It didn't stick, though. The first grandchild changed it to something completely different and all the other grandchildren have followed suit. I think I'd like to be Granny or Gram or maybe Nana. I don't particularly like Grandma, though.

Those bolded things are all pretty bulky. I can see how your cart(s) would fill up quickly that way! I have about a 30 minute tolerance for grocery shopping (and a small family) so my cart is never that full. Once a year or so, my dh gets it into his head to go to the big grocery store a half-hour away and do a big stock-up. Then our cart does get pretty full but even then it's just one cart.

Thanks!

Yes, I like this book too. Do you have any civics resources to recommend?

How do you deal with this issue? I suppose a classroom teacher has a large body of students and over the years collects a lot of data about what is an easy test and what is a hard test. As homeschoolers we have just the one chance. How on earth can we create evaluation standards that are meaningful? We're doing our first exams this year, and I'm grateful that our math curriculum comes with a final exam in the book. I'm a little stymied on how to write science and history tests, though.

Someone mentioned Mark Kistler above. I'm not familiar with the online lessons, but Draw Squad is a great self-teaching course and very affordable.

Well, we learn the correct terminology through a separate grammar program and then, as knowledge grows, begin to apply that knowledge to writing. For example, first we covered compound sentences in our grammar program (how to recognize them, how to diagram them, how to punctuate them). Once that was a pretty solid concept, I would start to add discussion of it to our editing sessions. "What kind of a sentence is this? How do you know? Shall we diagram it? Okay, then what rule do we know about punctuation in a compound sentence?" And so with each concept. It means that I don't address every issue in every revision but generally only concepts he has learned. I sometimes mention a few other things, explaining, "You haven't learned this yet, but here's a rule about . . . ." I'm sure you could do the same thing without using a separate grammar program. I find my son does best learning a skill in isolation before being expected to apply it in his writing, but YMMV. But if you yourself don't know why the comma goes where it does, then I'm not sure how you would do it. Perhaps a grammar reference book would help?

:iagree: And the CAT comes with *explicit* instructions on what to say if a child asks for help. You say something very vague like, "Make your best choice and mark your answer." If they finish early, the directions also say something about, "If you have more time, you may check your answers again." Those are the only kind of "coaching" allowed. I follow the script to the letter with my son. I try not to even look at his page lest I inadvertently signal something with body language.

I've never seen it with "brown" repeated. Is that a variation? I've seen: The quick red fox jumps over the lazy brown dog. and A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. I just noticed that the one in the poster doesn't have an "s" by using "jumped" instead of "jumps"!

I've been making some of these shifts as well. Ds has had test in some subjects for the first time this year. Next year he will have tests in more subjects as well as cumulative grades (per semester? per year? not sure yet). One thing I have realized that I need to do is build time into our schedule both for him to study and for me to give some direct instruction on study skills. He has some of it -- outlining, for example -- but he doesn't have a very cohesive idea of how to study a topic or prepare for an exam. So, for 7th grade I'm going to be building some "study hall" time into his schedule expressly for that purpose. And I'll be doing some research this summer to refresh my memory about just what good study skills look like. Re: the bolded. Same with my ds. :) Not so much commiseration with peers -- he and his friends never seem to talk about school -- but identification with his idea of school from books and movies. He frets about the tests some, but it's really just theatrics. He enjoys them and seems to like the "officialness" that testing adds to his school.

Another in favor of this. It would taste delicious on top!

I wouldn't say Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride are particularly similar; however, these are three of our family's favorite games! Settlers is tops IMO. I could play it every day. :) I suggest you look at boardgamegeek.com for all kinds of details about the games, including suggested ages. It's a great resource for games.

SL does this, more or less. Well, what cores are you looking at? Certainly in the American History cores, the lit is definitely tied to the history. What happens, though, is that a read-aloud may be take several weeks to finish and in the meantime you've moved on to other topics in history study. Or conversely, you may start the read aloud a bit before you get to that topic in history. What they do is select the lit, line it up in chronological order and it gets "pretty close". It's easy enough to get it right on if you're using short picture books. But if you've every tried to do your own history schedule using longer chapter books, you've probably run into the same problems.

Dry clean 100% cotton? If I did that, I'd be dry-cleaning 90% of my family's laundry.

Let's assume that teaching a new concept has three components to it: A -- the teacher presents the topic in a lecture form B -- the student asks questions to clarify his understanding C -- the student applies the new knowledge to some exercises or applications In a traditional classroom, components A and B take place in the classroom while component C takes place primarily at home. In the flipped classroom, components B and C take place in the classroom while component A takes place at home. It's meant to address the fact that ideally a student would have a knowledgeable teacher or tutor during both component B and C. If a student struggles with the homework (part C) and does not have a parent or tutor who can actually help him, then that time may be a complete waste. Technology has made it possible for part A to happen at home. I like some things about this idea. Lecturing is a skill. Why not take the time to hone the lecture to make it as clear as it can be? As a homeschooler, I certainly enjoy being able to access the lectures of some excellent teachers through open courseware and The Teaching Company, etc. I feel I'm getting the best of the best, right in the comfort of my home. On the other hand, I'm not sure how it actually works in practice. A + B + C still have to add up to a certain, limited amount of time. In elementary, particularly, A should be a very small proportion of that total. Actually, in elementary I'd prefer that students not have ANY school responsibilities to take home. At least with a flipped classroom model, the time spent on homework would be explicitly limited by the length of the video. Also, I'm not sure that the premise I expressed at the beginning of my post is correct. Surely the best teaching is when A and B happen in concert, not separate from each other. I thought even years ago that lecture teaching was supposed to be dying out, particularly in the pre-college setting.

I hope they have a great experience. Swim team can be a great sport. My niece and nephews in NOVA just started swim team practice today too. :)

Thanks, Doodler! I've read your post and I've marked it so I can come back later to ponder over this summer. I have already been planning do spend a chunk of time doing research and thinking about where to go next with writing for my son. Your story is resonating with me and definitely giving me some ideas.

Human Odyssey on Amazon Amazon doesn't have a look inside for this book, but here is a WTM thread where some samples are posted (scroll down until you see the attachments): http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158963

Have you looked at K12 Human Odyssey? (This is not the Spielvogel book.) There are three volumes, the first of which covers ancients (roughly to 500 AD).

What an interesting approach! I would love to hear more about how this worked for you and your dd. Have you posted about it in other threads?

A pot of nastiness called West African Peanut Soup. Now, I have eaten many delicious peanut soups and even have one beloved family favorite. But this one was atrocious. It had tomatoes as well as peanuts and, when roughly blended as the recipe instructed, had the exact texture and color of vomit. Bleah. It turns my stomach just recalling it.

Correct. The subject "Ralph" is singular, so they corrected the verb to be singular as well. Perhaps it's the "s" on the end that is throwing you off? It is an oddity of English that third person singular verbs use an "s" at the end.

I like Hydrangea Hill. :) It sounds like something my family would come up with.

http://www.divediscover.whoi.edu/vents/index.html -- A very thorough introduction to hydrothermal ocean vents, including the science AND the history of their discovery. Click the link at the bottom labeled "Dive into hydrothermal vents" to launch a new window. After an hour or so on this site, my ds is all afire about writing his paper and says he wants to become an oceanographer now. :lol: