Honestly, I doubt anyone is really going to make my brother think differently about this. In fact, I think he would probably be absolutely *horrified* at the idea that drugs would change brain function to such an extent. I'm also curious, now that the first generation of medicated ADHD kids are growing up and having their OWN kids, how many of them will have the same opinion he does... Like I said in my first post, he credits his ADHD with a lot of his *success*.

…wow

School was always pretty easy for me and I was terribly disorganized. These things together means that while I'd ace tests, I never managed to get my homework in on time. Consequently, I graduated HS in the middle of my class.

I'm another who thinks 5 kids between 2 and 10 is probably the biggest challenge you've got. So pure classical isn't working right now? Well, move to something that will. You have time! You can always try a more classical approach in a few years when the 10 year old is in high school and the youngers are a little less so.

No, actually. You can easily get by with just the student text and the CD-rom resource. The CD will have worksheets, tests, lab pages, etc. on it. Really, the only thing the T M will have is the answers to the in-book questions/reviews.

Oh I've run in to people who are fairly unsupportive, and occasionally even downright hostile, but no one who was ever in a position to "harass" or "persecute."

My mother has floated the theory (having raised a kid with ADHD, as well as having grown up with a brother with it) that there must be something beneficial to it for it to have survived the evolutionary train for so long. I'm not sure that's true. I mean, hemophilia has survived the evolutionary train for a long time, too... But, my brother the Google engineer, thinks ADHD has definitely given him an advantage in his job with his ability to hyper-focus on things that interest him. Fortunately, most of his job interests him. My SIL said they've even been talking already about what tracks they'll take if their boys turn out to have ADHD (the 5 year old is already looking very suspicious, but the 2 year old is still pretty young). My brother really doesn't want to medicate until they're at least teens, so he was talking homeschooling (!) His theory is that he wants them to learn to deal with their ADHD and begin to appreciate the benefits before being put on meds.

We've run TWO cats through a pickup motor at different times. Both were lucky enough to live to tell the tale. Trap ran our housecat through one morning about 7 years ago when he fired up his work pickup (we didn't even realize she was out there). He came in and told me I'd better go try to find my cat because all he heard was a yowl, followed by a puff of black fur from under the hood. Then he saw her go streaking across the yard. It broke her pelvis but she healed fine. She's curled up on the couch next to me. Seventeen this year. The other was a couple years ago when I was taking the pickup to town for something. I went out and cranked it but it died immediately and then wouldn't crank again. I shut off the key, puzzled, open the door as Trap was coming to the driveway and told him I didn't know, it just died. He said it would probably run better if I'd get the cat out first. Sure enough, when I quit talking, I could hear a cat with this pitiful meow coming from under the hood. His head was trapped between the serpentine belt and a pulley. We pulled him out, apologized profusely, and he walked off shaking each of his limbs, like they were wet, as he'd walk.

And yet it's "modern math" that sent men to the moon, invented the iPad and created surgical procedures from a mere beam of light (laser).

But how long does the free trial last?

I've never seen a math series that doesn't work this way... Seriously, unless you're talking something from a century ago, they're ALL conceptual.

Cool! Obviously you want it on an iPad though, rather than your computer. The full version is $65! compared to the iOS version at $10.

A lot of Mark Twain's stuff (beyond just Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn) is boy-friendly as well as adaptations of the Iliad or the Odyssey...

I've used/researched a number of math programs over the years, both as a homeschooling mom and a public school teacher. I honestly can't think of ANY that aren't "conceptual." Near as I can tell, they all start out teaching the concept, before moving on to an algorithm to represent it. I think the only real variance is how long they do JUST the concrete before moving on to reliance on the algorithm. As well as how often a previously taught skill comes back into the lesson. If someone says, "________ isn't conceptual" what that usually means to me is that they didn't get it, not that the text didn't try to teach it. I remember being in college in my math methods classes many moons ago, learning concrete teaching methods for things like adding, multiplication, algebra, etc. and telling my mom it's too bad this stuff wasn't taught when I was in school, I might have done better at math. She gave me this puzzled look and said it WAS, then drug out an old math book to show me. Sure enough. It's just that the only part that clicked with me were the algorithms, so that's the part I remembered to the exclusion of the "concept."

Thanks again, Lori! You're fantastic. :)

I'm subbing today in American History and Government classes and had a student come in first thing this morning. He told me I just had to show this video to my classes today and he was right. I ran it a total of 6 times to kids between the ages of 13 and 18. Not a one of them can really remember 9/11/01 and yet every last one was silenced. The conversations afterward were excellent.

Yet another vote for "it depends." I always double check when shopping to see if the OOP is listed as being applicable after deductible or if it's inclusive.

How about the idea of shifting into a more independent direction, away from TOG? I only have the first two units of Year 1 and I might be ready to go a more self-selected route. Are there any of the above that people prefer from an analysis standpoint? (Most of the classics have generic study-guide type questions, free for the taking, all over the web. I'm hunting for something a bit deeper, possibly including vocab.)

Thanks for the great ideas Lori. And no, I wasn't looking at adding another full program. I would either change out TOG at the same time, or do both and lighten…something like that.

Really, for the western half of the US, 70 miles isn't a relevant distance in the measurement of the state. Even "little" states (i.e., not TX or CA lol) are still a good 350-450 miles across... And I have to admit, I used to live in a county that was the size of CT and RI put together. Seriously. There were fewer than 6000 people in the entire county and we had single stoplight. It was in the "big town" (2000 people). lol That was one of the ranches we've lived on where mail only came out every other day. ...Too few people in too big of an area.

Yeah, I'm not really seeing any of that in TOG… Nor have I see any historical lit in the rhetoric level, either in our current year, or reviewing future years in Bookshelf. Really our only complaint is that the lit selections seem so thin. Mostly I'm wondering how other providers handle literary analysis (theme, plot, images, etc) as well as deeper-thinking questions within their lit. guides.

I usually rolled things into units when I taught country school. K-8 would be working on the same unit, but different levels within it, if that makes sense.

My brother was sporting Samsung's(?) watch when I saw him last week. A Google engineer, he always has the latest and greatest because they hand out Android devices to employees like everyone else does Post-Its or free pens… :rolleyes: Frankly, I wasn't overly impressed. And his still needed to have the phone handy as its "base."

You're describing my father. He's a voracious reader and has never had any trouble with either the basics of decoding or the more complexities of comprehension. But spelling? Writing constructs? Holy mackerel... :rolleyes: And yet he obviously has a mastery of the language as he was a well-respected attorney for decades. He's always joked that that's why he went into a profession that came with a secretary. lol I have no doubt that my son's more profound dyslexia can be linked back to Grandpa.

We bailed in to rhetoric-level TOG this year and so far so good. :) Dyslexia or no, Buck has always enjoyed a good story, so long as he didn't have to physically read the entire thing. Even the ancient Egyptian poetry, found in Yr1U1 is good stuff. He sees the commonalities shared amongst people, regardless of their time or place in history. It's no Tom Sawyer or anything, but it's still interesting enough to hang on to him. However, he has made the complaint that he's not reading enough. Up til now, we've done Sonlight. Sonlight, in the younger years anyway, has a STACK of good books and he loved almost all of it. The (accurate) argument can be made that he wasn't delving as deeply into it, but merely hitting the high spots, as well as the fact that if he wants more now, he CAN read (listen) to as many books as he wants on his own. TOG, for example, has alternate readings in every week if he wants to read more... I like the discussions in TOG. Everyone makes this big deal out of the Socratic discussions, but frankly, that's how I've always taught, even before I started teacher ed. classes many moons ago and was given a label for what I was doing, so I'm not seeing it as something for which I need a guide. However I do like the lit analysis guidance. I would probably even say I need the lit analysis guidance and there really isn't any that accompanies the "alternate readings." (Or maybe I'm finally getting to the point of wanting to venture out a bit more on our own…?) But that's my question-- If I want to flesh out TOG literature a bit more, which way should I go? I'm looking at Veritas' Omnibus texts as well as the individual guides from Progeny Press and Memoria Press. I've looked at multiple samples of all of the above and am now curious what the Hive thinks. For those who've used more than one of these, what are your opinions, so far as the literature analysis in particular? How about vocabulary? Who do you think handles this well?