Ok, so I'm gonna show my ignorance here, but maybe I have an excuse since oldest only just turned 8. But what exactly is DE for a homeschooler? I think I understand it in the context of normal high school - classes you get both hs and college credit for - but I don't understand it in the context of homeschooling at all. Why would a college level course not count towards high school?

You're right and that does usually work. I think I was just so frustrated yesterday (it was a bad day for a lot of reasons!), coming on the heels of a week full of complaining older kids and sick little kids, that I was feeling punitive and I shouldn't have posted probably. Though now I am curious if something like this could even exist (maybe a live feed from a classroom?). :) Thank you all for both the encouragement and sympathy, as well as the gentle reminders that there are better ways.

See, my kid could get his stuff done in about 3 hours: 1 of those is just reading, half in English, half in German, and another 1 is practicing viola and piano - which is the highlight of his day, and another half hour is his daily chores, leaving just 30ish extra minutes of "school". But he dilly dally's so much that he was rushing to finish stuff before dinner tonight so that he could still go to Awanas. He seems to feel it's completely unfair that his preschool age siblings don't have chores or "work" that takes as long as his. So, since their chores only take 5-10 minutes, and his take 20-30, he spends an hour complaining and playing with the laundry, and then still has 20 minutes of it left after that... lol. He is mostly a cheerful kid who is very thankful to be homeschooled. He's been known to brag to our friends and family that he gets to learn piano AND viola AND he still has time to build with legos and play outside every day. But occasionally he loses sight of that, and needs to be reminded of how thankful he actually is. ;) We moved recently, so he doesn't have any close friends who go to school, and he tends to forget how lucky he is when he doesn't have peers around who aren't allowed to play in the afternoon because they had school until 3 and now still have homework.

Yes. And this is exactly why I want it.... A certain 8 year old has been using the phrase "It's not fair" way, way too much much for my liking lately...

Does anyone know if there are any full-length videos of a day of elementary school? Like, the full 8 hours, lunch-time, recess, etc.

I think this may be one of the truest things I've read today.

I love Giver like no other. It is one of my all-time favorite books. And while it is similar to 1984 and Brave New world in a lot of ways, I couldn't stand the tragedy in the latter two, while I continue to re-read the Giver occasionally even as an adult. Things like divergent and hunger games are way beyond what I would want an 11 yo to read, but I think that may be just me. I'd rather preserve innocence for as long as possible. I think the other books in the Giver "series" would be good, as well as some of the others folks have mentioned, but I would stay far away from Hunger Games for now! :)

I don't think it's been obvious at one moment for any of our kids so far. Maybe that's because they're not as gifted as many other kids out there? I don't know. I feel like they had mostly normal early years honestly (though we did have some 2E issues with the oldest, and then subsequent children got less attention once they outnumbered me, so who knows what they would've done if they'd had more of my time and attention). Sometime around 4 or 4.5, I generally tried to start teaching them some basic math and reading - maybe 5-10 min a day - and then they just progressed rapidly from there. Everything was at their own pace, but by the age of 6, it's been clear that they were far ahead of their peers (in some areas - others may still lag, but I just accept asynchronicity as part of the deal), and that they're continuing to accelerate (rather than just keeping pace a few years ahead). I've felt awkward around my friends who really push their 3 yo's to read when my 5 yo can't yet (especially when my kid starts asking me why the 3 yo can read better than them, but I saw no reason to push them to read when they were happy to play in the dirt and build stick-forts), and then six months later, my kid has not only "caught up" but excelled beyond that and is reading library books of their choosing fluently and actually retaining. ETA: Potty training came easy and early for us, but I always attributed that to putting them on the potty early and often. So my kids were day-trained at 15 mos, 14 most, 16 most, and 20 months, but the 3rd was also night trained at 18 most bc she just refused to keep her diaper on anymore and I gave up one night and told her just to pee on herself then (she didn't and she never wore another diaper) and my 4th had a significant hearing/speech delay that made communicating with her regarding her potty needs challenging (she finally started using it regularly only after we had the inspiration to teach her a sign for toilet - sounds dumb now, but we didn't figure out until pretty late in the game that something was wrong with her hearing... for a long time, we just assumed that she was talking less because she had three older siblings.)

My 6 yo gets her stuff done in 30 minutes. My 8 yo *can* get his done in 3 hrs, though he often takes longer because he's easily distracted. Since the question of "what counts as school?" has come up, that 3 hours includes 30 min each of English reading, German reading, Piano, and Viola, and the other hour is math, spelling, writing (including drawing something for his writing), and some other German curriculum we do together. I don't count our read alouds, hiking, taking walks, legos/snap circuits, etc.

We use it a level behind SM as well with my oldest, and that's why I was thinking she'd probably finish most of SM3 by sometime next spring! And I should've mentioned that she has a birthday soon, so she'll be 6.5-6.75 by the time I anticipate her actually finishing up sm3, though you know those things are hard to guess. :)

I have a 5 yo (6 in a few weeks) who just finished Singapore PM 2a, and I know BA 2a just went to the printer. I'm unsure if I should get BA 2 as it comes out slowly over the next year, and just let the forced slow pace be something kind of "fun" for kiddo, or if it might just exasperate and so I should wait until she's ready for BA3 maybe sometime next Spring (whenever she finishes SM3) and go straight from there. I'm sure other folks on here have been around long enough to deal with these issues of kids moving faster than BA's publishing pace, so I'd love to hear any thoughts! I have two younger children yet, so I'll be getting BA2 eventually anyway. And since I already have an older child, I already have all the rest of BA. I'm just not sure where to start with level 2 coming out this year, you know?

Thanks for the resource! I'll check it out. I have a kiddo who doesn't intuit spelling and wants to be given rules and reasons, which is how I ended up with Spalding after trying and failing with half a dozen other reading programs. :)

Thanks! I really enjoyed that kind of word study too and that word up dvd looks great (though I think it's funny that it's labeled vol 1 but there's no vol 2 that I can find!) I'm pretty unsure of what our future language plans are, honestly. I don't want to take on much more of anything that they can't do independently, honestly, because I feel kinda stretched already. I've never wanted to study latin with my kids and preferred to focus on the language I'm actually trying to get them fluent in, but I hear so many arguments for latin-study being good for vocabulary and grammar learning that I waffle a bit on this subject. My kids like languages - but the truth is that they'd always be happier with less "schoolwork" and more time to build legos and practice handstands and play with the new dog. :)

It looks like my 8 yo is going to actually finish the extended Ayres list this year at the back of my Spalding book. I'm curious what you all move to at that point? He's a decent speller and a good reader. I know that I LOVED learning new vocabulary/spelling and then looking for those words in my reading when I was old enough, but we didn't start that in school until middle school and I don't know how I would've felt about it at a younger age. Is it worth it to do something like AAS or another spelling program, is it worth it just to give him extra reading time, would starting latin be a better idea for learning word roots and all that (we do already speak a 2nd language and he's doing grade-level work in German, so another language wouldn't be completely unfamiliar to him), or would it be worthwhile to do some other vocabulary program?

I don't know exactly what level this is (though I know it's beyond most 7 year olds), but my 7 year old just started reading the Warrior cats books, and it's great for him. Exciting and full of adventure, much more plot than stuff like the Box Car children (that was his last series, so I feel like he made quite a leap here...), and very advanced language. When I read reviews online before, I read how violent they were, but I read a few of them and didn't find them violent at all (there's a big difference to me between having a cat claw at another cat's underbelly, or even get killed in battle and be bleeding, than the kind of violence I feel they're exposed to in stuff like 39 clues, which I did NOT let him read once I had read a few of them... but maybe that's just me!)

Hmm. I suppose I can see what you mean by it not being open-and-go, in the sense that I had to read the book a few times to really absorb all the information (4th edition, so older - came with an lp for teaching phonogram sounds... lol). But now that I've ALREADY absorbed that information, I find it very open-and-go. Thanks for answering!

I'm curios what you mean by Spalding not having a planned lesson? The lesson plan to me seems very simple: teach the next (blank number) of words each day. Review the last (blank) words. Review (blank number) of phonograms each day. I've never done AAS or any other spelling, so I have nothing to compare it to! I'm just curious, because the "plan" seems completely straight-forward to me, so I'd love to hear more from you! :)

Have you looked at Spalding? Major focus on correct letter formation, correct pronunciation, and yes, it has dictation (but only in the sense that you dictate a word and then analyze it in order to spell it), but it teaches the rules explicitly and simply. My kids love that they can sit down and get it done quickly (we do the spelling for 5-10 min a day, and additional phonogram practice about 5 more min a day). When we took a 6 month break to just spend more time reading, I noticed that my kids read a ton more but their spelling deteriorated. As soon as we started using Spalding again, spelling went right back up. I think they'd just stopped making a habit of really thinking before they wrote, and once they started thinking again, they were able to recall rules quickly and apply them easily. The beginning would be a bit simple for her, if she's reading this well, but you can tear through it pretty quickly. Once my oldest was more advanced, we took the advice in the book to start out with a "spelling test" each year, where I dictate about as many words as he can handle in one sitting (they suggest 100, but it's more like 40 a day for us), and so long as he gets them all right (including almost all the markings), we just keep going. Then we slow down a lot once we start getting to words that challenge him. This is his first year (he's turning 8 this week) that he actually has hope of finishing the *entire* list, and it's very motivating to him that if he finishes the *entire* list, he won't have spelling for the rest of the school year. :)

I managed to scrounge up about 6-8 partially used workbooks from my other kids (joys of being 3rd in line, right?), things like Kumon numbers and mazes, as well as various cutting and pasting and dot-to-dot and drawing booklets, and she's been very happy with those for the last three days. Once those run out, I think I'll get the Abeka k5 curriculum for her if she's still not quite ready for PM 1A (just depends on how long these booklets last! :D ). I really appreciate all the advice! I love the look of Abekas k5 for her: it's right on her level (based on the online samples, at least) and fun and colorful, but I would've NEVER thought to check it out since I'm not an Abeka fan for older grades. So thank you very much!!

The only thing about dollar store workbooks is that I find them to be very heavy on tracing letters. Even when they teach numbers and math, they have pages and pages of having the kid actually trace out "eight", which she's not so into! :)

I'm not opposed to giving her math! I just wasn't sure where to go with it, since she's not content with the hands-on stuff I did with my others, and I don't feel like Singapore 1A is the right fit for her right now. I'm also not opposed to some electronics, and she plays DB numbers occasionally, but it's pretty easy for her. The running game not so much, bc her hand-eye coordination still leaves much to be desired, but I've also not checked out Big Numbers, because I heard pretty poor reviews of it previously. We got the bundle with Numbers, Elements, Algebra5 and Algebra12. She has been working on her clock and Roman Numerals (via place-mats and talking it over with older sibs... lol) but that's a good idea too. :) I've never considered saxon because I didn't like it at all. Too boring and too much drill. But I don't think I ever looked at their K curriculum, so I'll check it out. Thanks!

double post

Thanks for the great ideas! I haven't ever looked at Abeka, but I will take a look at it. She's done the writing letters, numbers, tracing, and cutting ones, and maybe one or more of the easy mazes? She loved them and was finished all of them before she even turned 3. lol. But maybe that would satisfy, since it sure did then. They'd completely fallen off my radar since she whizzed through them so quickly, but I know they have a lot more than what I did with her so that's a great idea. I've never even considered getting her number stamps. I'm not sure why I never thought of it, but that's an amazing idea. Thank you!

My 3rd child is 3(.75 -- will be 4 this fall) and has been begging for math work for the past 4 months. I have four kids, and no real desire to do seat work with her, and I've done what I can think of to dissuade her: extra 1-on-1 time, extra playtime and cuddles (in case she was just feeling lost amidst the other three kids), lots of fun math talk, playing with C-rods (lots of activities with those, like addition/subtraction, parity, teens, counting on, etc.). But she REALLY wants a workbook to sit and do. So somebody help me out here with what would be right for her (seems good at math, gets concepts quickly, but can't write numbers yet - I don't mind scribing, but she wants to write in HER workbook). I tried the first few pages of Singapore 1A, and the concepts were easy for her, but I feel like it's going to ramp up too quickly for her. I never thought I'd consider a preschool math curriculum for my kid, since I'm a mathematician and can do anything preschool related on the fly. My older kids both just started Singapore 1A around 4.5yo (they were also chomping at the bit to do math - perhaps inevitable with a mathematician parent?) and we went at their pace. So I expect child #3 will follow most of the same path, but I need something else to get me through the next 8 months of begging for a workbook and I'd love your thoughts. I've looked at Essentials, Earlybird, and Miquon, but am open to whatever. I don't need help with teaching the math or coming up with fun, hands-on ideas or creative ways to use my c-rods or other manipulatives. I just need a workbook that will satisfy a 3-yo! lol.

Good Morning! I was just wondering what, if anything, you do to help kids remember the books they read? Not just school books, but the books they read just for fun! :) I've found that my almost-8 yo tears through some books, but he has very little memory after the fact of what he read. We found this on teachers pay teachers and he's excited to start doing it when he finishes a book, and I think it'll be a fun project to look back on: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Reading-Log-Extraordinaire-3244078 But I just wondered what other ideas you have? He has a hard time just talking about anything he's reading, and tends to answer questions with a lot of "I don't know how to explain it." lol.