Would this thread be helpful to you? http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/667652-singapore-6-or-aops-pre-algebra/

The Y worker apologized for the situation, and said she was unaware of it (my kids explained what happened to me in front of the Y worker - not trying to tattle, but just in response to me asking them why they looked so glum). I think it's true that he may come across as bossy sometimes, but I think it's more likely (from watching him interact at 4H while I tended younger kids from afar) that he's just not forward enough at other times. The most recent thing at the Y was an example: he asked to play with some kids who were starting up a basketball game. They asked if he knew how to play, and he said, "No" when what he meant was that he didn't really know a lot about it but wanted to learn anyway. So they told him he couldn't play, and he didn't know what to say or do, except sit on the sidelines and watch them play (and take up the entire gym while they were at it so there was really nothing he could do but watch, which I do think was on the adult present at that point). But in other situations, I have to reign in his inadvertent bossiness a lot and remind him that other kids don't have to follow his rules to have fun. :)

Wow, that surely is an early bedtime! I have two kids who don't sleep well at all, and two who fall asleep within 15 minutes.... lol. I've really struggled with bed and wake times. My oldest does best when he wakes up at 6 and does some stuff where he needs me for an hour before the others wake up, and then he transitions to his independent stuff. But recently he's been sleeping in, because he says he's so tired, and at the same time, my youngers are often up by 615 or 630. Philosophically, I like the idea of letting tired kids sleep if they need it. Practically speaking, I think they'd all do better with set wake times. But my 4 and 6 yo wake up ravenous and keeping them in bed longer is torture (according to them, at least... lol.) I may revisit waking them up at a set time again, just to help me with consistency and them to know what to expect...

Yeah, it's a bit painful to watch. We have some social thinking materials, but they haven't been a big hit over here. Maybe I'll revisit them. We're have an appointment now to meet with some folks who do ABA in town. There are only two options for us here (one that does in-home and one that does center-based), so we'll see how that goes. Both have told me that they really prefer to start students before 48 months old, but oh well. You're right that he's incredibly self-aware. A while back, he started changing into his martial arts outfit before going to the Y (he spent time in the youth room before going to martial arts), and I asked him why, and he was totally straight-forward in his answer: "People play with me more when I'm wearing my Taekwondo outfit. When I'm not and I ask them to play, they usually say no, but if I ask them to play while wearing it, then they usually say yes." Or when I asked him what he was thinking in the car once, and he responded, "I don't really know. I have too many thoughts to say what they are. You know how when you're watching TV and all of a sudden the screen flashes and see a hundred pictures at once but you can't really see any of them well? That's how my thoughts are." He says a lot of note-worthy things. :) He's also very motivated to get people liking him, so I'm hoping we can make up for lost time quickly... We'll see!

Well, our long-standing psych who we've seen for the last four years put him at a level 2. The neuropsych didn't do a separate eval for the autism, and neither did the ADOS, so it's possible his level was misdiagnosed? The thing is - I saw his test results. Yes, he's bright, but I have a hard time believing he's the brightest she's seen, unless she only sees problem kids. Over on the AL board, there are boatloads of kids much brighter than him. Also, you had commented on a different post where I was asking about dyslexia with regards to my daughter, and I'd mentioned that we're seeing a new neuropsych with her (there are a whopping two that see kids in the city I live in...) Well, this might help explain why I said I so adamantly wanted to find someone else and not go back to the one who did my son's evals. lol. The other thing is that not getting help is destroying his self-esteem at this point. He recently started talking to us about how the kids at the Y treat him when we drop him off at the kids area while we work out. He definitely does not get any sort of pass from other kids, and is systematically excluded, picked on, and made fun of. He's smart enough to see exactly what's going on, but has absolutely no idea what to do about it. It just about broke this mama's heart. No, the 6 yo wasn't the one with the hearing loss (that was the 2 yo). We haven't rule out that the 6 yo may also be on the spectrum, though I doubt anyone would diagnose her as such unless they have a lot of experience with bright kids - and particularly girls - on the spectrum. She's completely different than her older brother, but does a lot of really odd things that make us scrath our heads... Thanks for this. I don't think anything is dire. Maybe this partly that February blues everyone talks about. lol. Already, just getting some feedback here is really helping me to put things into perspective. Yes, this is something we run up against. He's been able to get by just by seeming quirky until pretty recently. He'd get in a lot of trouble in swim lessons or something, and always seemed to be the naughty kid. He'd talk to us about how people treat him like he's a bad boy and he didn't understand why. Part of the reason it took us a long time to even get evals was because my friends all told me I was crazy and overreacting and that he was totally normal - albeit weird and different. (??) But he's 8 now and rapidly hitting the wall where people are getting irritated at him for the same things he did a year ago and most folks overlooked. Friends are dropping him because he insists on wearing his pants tucked into his socks or other weird things. He's super sensitive to their displeasure with him and gets hurt by it, but also has no idea how to fix the situation. And things that were overlooked or unnoticed in the past are no longer overlooked or unnoticed... I don't know if strangers see it or not. We had a roommate for some months last year (long story, but college student), who commented after a bit (ver tentatively, lol) that our children, and particularly my oldest, seemed high maintenance. I laughed and just explained the autism thing, and he had this look of relief on his face and confessed that he'd been thinking, "Whew! Living with these kids is great motivation for responsible birth control!!" Ha ha. I don't know if the fact that he doesn't get a social pass means that his diagnosed level is mistaken, honestly. I haven't really wondered about it, because I don't know that the level really matters to me, and the whole thing seems a little fluid anyway.

I don't know. This was sort of what I was afraid of. Somehow, there are always so many threads about how to juggle lots of kids on the Gen Ed board and people seem to have all sorts of tricks that made life so much easier, that maybe I was hoping for something that's impossible. :) I don't think we're in the car SO much, but the 4 yo goes to preschool 3X/week, oldest has viola 2X/week, 6 yo has ballet 3X/week (it's the only thing that helps her intensity), etc. I'm honestly not sure. Now that you mention it, I had looked into bringing in ABA workers about a year ago, but then my husband blew out his knee (tore both menisci, ACL, MCL, and chipped bone) and I spent 4 months driving him around after surgery to various therapies 3-4X/week and caring for him at home, and right after that was when we discovered our youngest had significant hearing problems (which was a relief at the time, because we had done a bunch of evals because we thought her lack of communication skills were possibly because she was also on the spectrum, so it was actually rather encouraging to , all-in-all, to realize her issues could be addressed with just surgery, speech therapy, and more time). But now that you've reminded me of this, I just sent another email to the ABA folks we were talking with last year before all of this happened. I'm not sure how it completely fell out of my brain for the last year! They're all going in 4 different directions, and the oldest (w/ autism who also wants more academics) really struggles with the younger kids getting so much more playtime. Sometimes it definitely feels like a lose-lose situation, because if I send the littles off to play on their own some so I can spend some time alone with the oldest, then he gets upset because he has to work while everyone else plays. This is good food for thought. I'm not sure what exactly to think of it right now, because I confess it seems a bit disheartening, honestly, because it seems then that the answer really is that I just can't do everything I'm trying to do right now. Maybe this is a good thing, but right now it feels a bit disheartening. This is probably true, and it will be a trick to figure out what will actually help. I like being with my kids. Despite their challenges, they're pretty cool kids, and I really like spending time with them. I don't want to send them off to school for someone else to deal with. But I don't want to keep feeling like I'm short-changing some of them either. Thank you for all of your thoughts and suggestions. You've definitely given me a lot to chew on as well as a great reminder that I'd wanted to see what sort of help ABA could be to us (I really don't know anything about it except that it's supposed to be great for kids with autism). I guess we did a neuropsych eval with my oldest last year, and the results were disheartening. The lady basically said that, since he has onest of the highest IQ's she's ever seen, that we should try to just treat him normally so that he doesn't feel defined by his ASD/weaknesses. And I understood that we want to play up his strengths and not define him by his weaknesses, but I also felt totally discouraged that I was just supposed to continue on as normal without getting any extra help. I didn't want to seem like I was ignoring doctor's orders or making a mountain out of a molehill, so tried to do as she suggested and just move on with our lives.

I've read lots of posts on juggling kids, especially when you have littles. And I've read lots of posts on homeschooling kids with some learning challenges. But I don't see too much overlap between the two, so I'm wondering if anyone wants to chime in with some advice and/or encouragement? Both my 8 and 6 yo's need excessive amounts of my time and energy to do pretty much anything (8 yo has ASD2, SPD, and a few other dxs, 6 yo has an eval coming up, but I strongly suspect SPD, ADHD, anxiety, dyslexia, and maybe a few others), and I also have a 4 yo at home chomping on the bit to start "doing school" and a 2.5 yo who also demands lots and lots of attention (who is delayed as a result of partial deafness that has since been rectified, but at 18 months she couldn't speak at all and mostly communicated by throwing violent tantrums... so we've come a long way in the last year, but much is still left to be desired!). I find myself remembering fondly when I just homeschooled the oldest during naptime, because - well, everyone else actually took a nap at the same time and I had blessed peace and quiet to just focus on one kiddo at a time. My husband has started asking if homeschooling is the best option for us, and I'm not certain. On the one hand, I feel completely confident that - for each of my children, individually - homeschooling is their best option. If I only had one - or maybe two, since their issues aren't nearly as severe as they could be - I feel sure that I could manage to homeschool them well. On the other hand, I worry that I'm short-changing them because noone is really getting as much individual time and attention as they need. They all have summer bdays, so they'll be 3, 5, 7, and 9 in just a few short months. Oldest has been asking why he doesn't do as much stuff for school as other kids his age, because we've let history and science slide (at this point it consists entirely of science TV shows during lunchtime and history audiobooks in the car). Any thoughts? Advice? BTDT wisdom? How do you juggle everybody's different needs?

Those look like fun! I'll have to bookmark these for down the road... :)

I managed to get credit in college for completing those Sams "Teach yourself ___ in 21 days" books. It says 21 days, but the last 14 "days" are pretty big lessons (have you seen the size of those books??), so it's not as fluffy as it might seem. I did both C and C++, and emailed all my programs and code to a professor in the CS department, who then signed off on something saying I'd taken the equivalent of a semester long course. I think if you wanted something deeper, you could start with the Teach yourself Java in 21 days book and then follow it up with a java textbook (poke around and just see what they're actually using in full courses) or just go straight to a high quality java textbook. I doesn't have the motivational level of what you'd get from a course with others, but it's highly self-paced and you can spend your $200 getting a really high quality textbook or two instead of paying for a teacher. I felt like programming was easy to teach myself since I was motivated (I really, really wanted to apply for a job that required programming experience - and I got the job! :D). I found that the most motivational part of programming was actually just getting the program to do what I wanted, which is why starting off easy with a "Teach yourself" sort of book was good for me.

Really? This was not my experience with our last neuropsych eval at all!! But I also felt like that neuropsych eval was (almost) a complete waste of time. They asked me what I was looking for, and only did the bare minimum that I asked for, because I didn't know what all was available. The report answered almost none of my questions, and discussed almost exclusively a small number of my son's strengths - but they were strengths I had already highlighted during our initial consultation, so that wasn't super helpful. I felt like the doctor discounted most of what I said, and despite working specifically in pediatric neuropsychology, she didn't not have a child-friendly way of working with my son at all. But, that's why we're seeing someone else this time around, so hopefully this experience will be a lot better! :)

Thank you all for your very helpful feedback. We have an appointment with a nueropsych for next week to do an initial consultation and discuss our concerns. Any suggestions on what tests to request, besides the CTOPP? I was thinking of something for working memory, processing speed, and attention, and I considered a WISC while we're there anyway and insurance is covering the testing. But I don't know if there are other tests that would be more helpful?

Mostly from experience. My PhD dealt with an area of math that used a lot of graph theory, combinatorics, and number theory, and I've taught numerous classes in those field at both the undergraduate and graduate level. I like that stuff. :) But I also haven't given my kids a thorough course in it yet, since the eldest is just 8. We just do things on the fly as they come in life or as they come across someone's imagination! :)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoxcjq-8xIDTYp3uz647V5A Just a youtube channel with short, fun math topics. Probably geared towards older kids, but has been great for my ALs. Some go over their heads without extra explanation from me, and some are not super exciting for them, but most of them are interesting and accessible.

We like Number Devil, Math for Smarty Pants, Patty paper geometry, DragonBox Algebra 12+ and Geometry, Numberphile, and a variety of other things. We don't have curriculum for the following but we also do a lot of number theory, graph theory, and cryptography on the fly (e.g., my ds8 was thinking about triangular numbers recently, and started adding up other sequences, so we quick sketched a proof that the sum of the first n odd numbers is n^2 during dinner, complete with accompanying picture on the fridge white board.)

Tangent : how do you find these? When I look for homecoming charter schools, I either get homecoming stuff or charter schools, but they don't seem to be the same thing... At least, I don't seem to find any they also give you freedom to choose your own curriculum.

Thank you so much for your detailed response and encouragement!! She can and does listen to lots of audiobooks of what I think are an appropriately good level for her (Secret Garden, Matilda, Ramona series, etc.) She's extremely verbal and has absolutely no problem having conversations with people in English, and only marginal difficulty conversing with people in German as well. She gets bored a lot and we've recently been dealing with that by giving her lots of audiobooks while she swings on an indoor swing for an hour or two... lol. So I think she's getting lots of good input. Thanks again! I have two books you recommended on hold already at the library. :) Thank you so much for your detailed response and encouragement!! She can and does listen to lots of audiobooks of what I think are an appropriately good level for her (Secret Garden, Matilda, Ramona series, etc.) She's extremely verbal and has absolutely no problem having conversations with people in English, and only marginal difficulty conversing with people in German as well. She gets bored a lot and we've recently been doing

Thanks for the advice, guys. My insurance actually covers neuropsych evals at 100% without a referral, but the facility itself requires a referral from my ped, and I've been reluctant to do that because I fear he'll think we're overreacting (we had an older child get a neuropsych eval last year)... But there have been other issues that I think the neuropsych eval could help us identify (questions of attention/focus/fixations, anxiety, working memory, etc.). I'll start by checking some of those book recommendations out from the library and doing the Barton screening and take some time to consider my other options, I guess...

So I cross posted this on the LC board, but do you have any thoughts on how to interpret this? I took the dynaread dyslexia screening with her, and it gave us the following results *when compared with other struggling 6 year old readers*: 38 %ile in working memory, for common English words she had 71 %ile in accuracy and 77 %ile in fluency, for nonsense words she had 40 %ile accuracy and 60 %ile fluency. ETA I also just had her do the lexercise dyslexia screening, and on the z-screener score it said she reads simple syllables with less than 5% accuracy, but on the San Diego quick Assessment it said she was on target for words (real words, but simple ones) that a K'er should be reading. It's like she's memorized bunches of common words but can't sound out "zac" or "af."

I have a kiddo who seemed like she was making great progress reading around age 4. It was led by her, and we did as much or little as she wanted. Around the time she turned 5, she didn't want to do it anymore, and I didn't push too hard, but I did continue to cover phonograms with her 5-10 minutes a day. When she was 5.5, I started Spalding with her, and we've been doing that for over a year now. She is currently 6, almost 7, and I feel like she reads now about as well as she did a year ago, despite daily spelling and reading and phonogram practice. Lots of guessing, lots of rushing, lots of just making up her own sentence based on a picture or what she expects will happen. After two years of learning phonograms, she still struggles to remember which one is which when I tell her the sounds one makes, and she has absolutely no idea which one to use in most new words. I know she's young, and I don't want to seem like I'm making a mountain out of a mole-hill, but the kid loves books and audiobooks and yet actual reading seems like torture for her (and me...) And she's really smart - just obviously really smart. I posted on another thread and folks suggested I consider dyslexia. I took the dynaread dyslexia screening with her, and it gave us the following results *when compared with other struggling 6 year old readers*: 38 %ile in working memory, for common English words she had 71 %ile in accuracy and 77 %ile in fluency, for nonsense words she had 40 %ile accuracy and 60 %ile fluency. It walked me through a little bit of what this means, but I still think I don't really understand what it means. Since the percentiles are among other struggling readers, and 6 year olds (while she's closer to 7 than 6), I feel like it seems she might really have a problem, but I'm not really sure how to put the numbers together in a way that my brain can understand what they mean or what to do. But another part of me says maybe it's just normal for a 6 year old? Some can read and some just can't at this age? Maybe I should've been pushier and done more than 10-15 minutes of spelling + 10-15 minutes of reading with her each day and it just reflects badly on me? Maybe she just needs more time and will take off reading in another year? I'm sad that she dislikes reading more each week. We just took an 8 week break for travelling over Christmas, and coming back to it was just as bad as before. I'd really hoped that a break would help. ETA I also just had her do the lexercise dyslexia screening, and on the z-screener score it said she reads simple syllables with less than 5% accuracy, but on the San Diego quick Assessment it said she was on target for words (real words, but simple ones) that a K'er should be reading. It's like she's memorized bunches of common words but can't sound out zac.

She's almost 7. I know that's still young, but it's odd to me that she's plateaued for so long. Her reading level has been mostly the same since she was 4, despite working through Spalding together. She can spell far better than she can read, which seems totally strange to me. After trying a variety of programs with my oldest (100 EZ, HOP, Bob, etc.), finding Spalding was like hitting a jackpot, because he started reading well in 3 months and chapter books in 6 months around age 6. I guess I thought so highly of the program that it never occured to me that it might not be as brilliant for my other kids (especially because I understand the system tons better the second time around!). I'll check out the nonsense word game! Thanks! I'll look into it... It's something I never would've considered because she *can* read sometimes... But your description here sounds exactly like this child too, except that she can actually spell when we do her Spalding lessons... But, now that I think about it, she still looks at me blankly for a lot of words and requires me to indicate if the phonogram is "ee" vs "ea" vs "e _ e" in most situations (and similarly with other sounds that could be made my a variety of phonograms).

So I've never heard of this reading program, and I'm pretty skeptical by nature, so I wanted to see if anyone else has heard of it or has an opinion of it? It passed through my FB feed today and I usually just brush right past these advertisements about how your kid needs (blank) lessons, but it played a bit of the video- and I couldn't help but pause and watch the rest because I feel like he just described my second child to a T. Bright but gets by by memorizing a lot. Some days she reads medium level nonfiction about aircrafts and others she struggles to read a Level 1 Sofia the First Disney Jr book with 5 words per page, you know? She's constantly missing the shortest and most simple words. I hate the idea of spending more money to outsource her reading, but it's really lost its joy for her. She loves to listen to audiobooks like Matilda and Secret Garden and Little Princess and Ella Enchanted and the Ramona series (over and over and over again....), but just won't bother if she has to read anything herself. She spends hours looking at picture books and asking me to read to her. I do, because I know she won't always want me to read with her and I enjoy spending the time with her (and all my other kiddos). I think she'd LOVE reading if I could just get her more fluent, but it's like pulling teeth to even get 2 minutes of focused reading out of her. She's only in 1st grade, but I'm at a loss as to what's going on, when she's bright enough (she learned to read music over a year ago and has taught herself piano), but says reading is so hard, despite an obvious love of books. ETA Totally forgot to attach the link! https://www.facebook.com/easyreadsystem/videos/10213336104627362/?hc_ref=ARRi33D2IprOcgwj_sAnDSFmK8kUPkk8xnKu2Ys1vsvyNGsTfVh2QS6aXQEZYeoKly8&fref=nf

Piano can be free or super cheap! We did Hoffman academy and my kids loved it!! The lessons themselves are free, but we paid for the printables (not the monthly subscription, though) and they've been totally worth it. It's kept one kiddo busy on piano for over two years and another kid for almost a year, and the sum total we paid was less than what we would've paid for 4 lessons. It helps that I have some basic piano understanding and that I have a friend who plays piano who agree to watch my kids periodically and check for any bad habits developing. She had never heard of Hoffman academy before and was super leery of "online piano lessons" but has come right out and said the program seems great and my kids have great habits, great posture, great enthusiasm, and are generally very good little pianists. I did the whole first unit without printables, just because I wanted to see if they'd stick with it before investing any money in it. We've never looked back, though!

I should've added this above, but my oldest child was completely different at 6 than my current 6 yo. I think part of it was that I had more time with him, since I only had two other kids, and both of them still napped (as opposed to now when I often feel like I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to stop kids from beating on each other... but that's another story... ll). But he probably did math for 30-60 min most days, because he really enjoyed it. I don't think we started BA until we'd finished Singapore 3B though (there was no BA2 at that point, and I'd heard that it's often better to do BA a level behind singapore), so I think at 6 he was still working on Singapore 2 & 3. We started cursive around then, and he greatly enjoyed that. And near the end of 6 is when he started learning how to read in German as well. We also did a lot more structured art and science projects at that age. We did the (free) inquiry in action program, and he really loved it.

My 6 yo is different because she's incredibly smart, but doesn't like to do a lot of stuff that other "smart" kids like to do. So she'll listen to advanced audiobooks, but has no interest in reading them, for instance. Just as a disclaimer. :) Currently, she spends 10-15 min each day on each "academic" area that she does: spelling/reading & math are the only two I ask of her, though. We listen to or watch brief science/history films or books at lunch most days, but that's the extent of our academics. Otherwise, she spends about an hour each day practicing her ballet, in addition to an hour long class several times a week. She loves to cook, and spends around an hour each day cooking - she's getting pretty good at making bread from scratch, which everyone else around here loves (even if she needs help with some of the muscle). She still spends several hours a day doing pretend play with her siblings. She loves learning piano (on and off - some days, she plays for 2-3 hours, and others she wants nothing to do with it). Several hours a day are also usually spent swinging on an indoor swing and listening to audiobooks on headphones. Our biggest success with her so far was figuring out that - unlike her older brother, who really liked bookish stuff - this child needed other activities, but with the same intensity as he did the bookish stuff. So ballet and piano have been huge hits over her, especially because she can go at her own pace and practice however long she'd like to. She does a lot of physical stuff (like learning to swim last summer), but it's less about the physical activity (for her), and more about the focus and challenge involved.

Ha ha. And it's posts like mine that make me wonder sometimes why I'm even on an AL forum sometimes. I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around how asynchronous these kids can be (when thinking about algebra and number theory come more easily than handwriting, for example...) I just pulled out our lists that we did in September: - My 8 yo wanted to read a long reading list and make it into the advanced Taekwondo class. - My 6 yo wanted to do more reading and get a black belt (I wasn't going to argue too much with her over that one). - My 4 yo wanted to learn to be a dog and take more gymnastics (she graduated the 4/5 class at just over 3, and we weren't really comfortable putting a 3 yo into the elem age class, so she's been getting a bit bored in the prek class). I'd have to think harder about what my goals for the kids actually are. With my oldest being 8 and three younger sisters, I feel like most of my days are either doing the next thing or trying to maintain some semblance of composure and grace without yelling at them (too often...) But I see value in having goals and will have to reflect on this a bit more. I love reading everyone's posts!