We just started A Guided Inquiry, and so far I like it. But I'm still in the honeymoon stage... Send me a pm if you'd like some sample pages

I really like OUP The World in Ancient Times (I think that's the name..I don't have my books with me now). They also have a series on the medieval and early modern world. Right now, my 6th grader is using American History from Beautiful Feet. It uses books like George Washington's World as the spines.

If it's any comfort, I pulled my oldest out of school over Christmas in second grade. She tested into SM 2A, so I have never been "on grade level". Even my boys, who had SM from the start have moved through the books at different rates. And I get bored and switch programs and then everything's all messed up. [emoji39] So I stopped worrying at some point and made my goal to just keep swimming. DS11 is the first child to stick with SM through elementary school (but I'm super close to jumping to BA). He's on 5B, but he's covering some of the same topics that ds13 is getting in pre-algebra. As far as your original question MM 4 topics were very similar to SM4 topics. DD15 made that switch when she was in 4th grade.

Your oldest and mine would get along very well. DD15 spends a lot of her free time on the 17th Shard forums writing fan fiction and drawing pictures for people (those forums are related to a fantasy author we adore). She does have interests, but they are things like acting, reading, playing ukelele.... It's kinda frustrating, but I know she won't excel in subjects that I push her in. (Ahem...math). She just won't be pushed around. I think it's ok to give a 14yo time to goof off. In just the last few months, DD15 has matured a lot. She's started thinking about what she wants to do in life. She's become more self-aware, and she's startung to push herself towards future goals. She still needs a lot of scaffolding and reminders to keep working. The key is for me to consult with her, to make sure she is on board with whatever I'm helping her do, and to act as a facilitator rather than a task-master. My ds13 is even worse in the unmotivated category. His only interest is shooting younger siblings with nerf guns. :glare: He did go out and shovel all our neighbors' driveways today, so I know he can get things done and care about other people. With him, I sit him down and say, "Here are the requirements. Do you agree to this? Do you want to make any changes?" He won't decide to do things in his own, but he needs to have some choice. For literature, I gave him a long list of books to choose from this semester. He has to read 5 of them (with at least two of them being classics). I know I will have to remind him daily to do all his work, but allowing him some freedom to choose keeps him from getting too muley about it. He's actually a lot like me. I was one of those gifted underperformers. I didn't have any interests but animals and gymnastics and reading fantasy novels as a kid. I did the least amount of work I could get away with through most of high school. It wasn't until my sophomore year of college that I figured out what I wanted to major in. Not learning to work hard as a kid has made "adulting" harder, but I can function in the adult world. I wish my parents had encouraged me to do more, but at the same time I'm so grateful they weren't breathing down my neck forcing me to succeed. I really just need a slower pace in life to think and contemplate things.

Wow!! My jaw is dropping. That's awesome!

Is there a place where we get to brag about test scores?? Does anyone want to come celebrate their child's success with me? DD15 took the ACT for the first time in Dec. She hasn't even finished Algebra 1, so I was concerned that her scores would be low. This was just a practice to get a baseline. I prepped dd and dh for a low score by looking up stats that told me the average 15yo scores something like 18 overall on the ACT. But shockingly...she could get into college now with her scores. I think she could get into the honors program at the university I went to. Of course her math was lower than the overall score, but still acceptable (25). Anything over a 22 exempts her from taking college math at her current school of choice (she won't be going into a STEM field). I don't know whether to be thrilled with dd's scores, or despair that a child who has only one semester of high school math did better than the average high school senior.

Also, FYI, if you decide to take an AP class through flvs, they have strict timetables. You must register by October for the class, and your child signs a contract saying that they will take the AP exam in May. I tried to register for an AP class mid-year (the system will let you) and the teacher called me up and told me it was a bad idea, because dd would be expected to finish the class in less than a semester.

I'm a Fl resident. I've used FLVS for a few classes, but I probably won't use it again, except for drivers ed. On the plus side, they have rolling enrollment, so you can jump in at any time. You can also choose just one semester of a class, or drop the second semester after you finish the first of it's not working out. Dd liked 8th grade science. She had an excellent teacher who was a homeschool dad. Once she got to high school classes, they were pretty rigid in the schedule. The lack of flexibility was a big issue for me. She could schedule one break week per semester ahead of time, but if something came up and she didn't get 3 assignments completed that week, she was in danger of being dropped. This is especially true the first two weeks. You are expected to complete the first module of any high school class within 2 weeks. If I had known that ahead of time, maybe it wouldn't have annoyed me so much. Second, neither dd nor ds did well with an entirely online curriculum. They like real books. Reading and watching instructional videos online felt like a waste of time. There was a lot of busy work too. It wasn't any different than the public schools in our area, but that's why I left the system. She did one semester of high school biology through flvs, then we dropped the second semester. She read a biology text and learned more from reading a chapter than from the hours of creating a power point assignment to turn in to flvs. Oh, and collaboration projects. There is one or two collaborative assignments due each semester. This has the potential to be really frustrating. But they set up live online lessons so sometimes these projects can be completed in one hour with a teacher mediating the class. My cons may not be an issue for you. If your child will thrive with more structure and with "interactive" videos, it could work very well. I think my problem was that I was caught off guard by the way it was set up. Flvs is very much a public school program--just with slightly more flexibility in when you turn in assignments during the week.

This one looks great! She's signed up for Spring term. :)

I agree, you need to seek out a therapist in addition to a psychiatrist. My first psych felt like my decision to homeschool (and just to have 4 kids) was the root of all my problems. I would come out of sessions shaking and it took me the rest of the day to recover from my anger with him. Right after my last visit with him, I sought out an excellent therapist who had been recommended to me by a friend. I got lucky with her. She was never judgmental, and I have always been completely comfortable with her. So I asked her for a recommendation for a new psychiatrist. New psych is so much better. Her job is to listen and evaluate if I need medication changes. My appointments with her are only 15 minutes (first appointment was longer) so we stick to discussing my mood and how I'm doing with meds. Any other issues I need to talk about are worked out with the therapist at a different time.

DD15 currently wants to study animation in college. The program she wants to get into is quite competitive, and I'd like to have her try out some related classes before college. She does a lot of drawing, but doesn't have much experience with the programming aspect of animation. Can I get some recommendations for online classes in computer animation or graphics?

The Mud books are literature, right? They weren't out yet when we used Island level, but if they are like the other literature trilogies, just read through them aloud at your own pace. With only 3 books for the whole year, you can choose whether to read them at a leisurely pace or sprinkle them in between other read-alouds. I lean towards doing the latter. Slow reading works for some families, but we need to keep the storyline moving to keep interest high. I don't think they have any particular tie-in to specific parts of the LA curriculum, but I'd definitely read Grammar Island first so that everyone is familiar with Mud's character. ETA: Read Sentence Island first. That's the one with a story line.

My DS really liked The Way Things Work when he was that age. Plus library books and documentaries. I wouldn't necessarily use science for copywork. If you want something with selections already chosen, something like Spelling Wisdom or Bravewriter issues of the Arrow would give you material.

She may still be a little young for most of these, but I wish I had know about strider bikes when I had littles. https://www.babble.com/toddler/the-best-balance-bikes-for-toddlers/ Pedals were really hard for my preschoolers to use, but they could have been learning balance and steering, even before the coordination kicked in.

My dd15 loves Prismacolor colored pencils. She just got a set in manga colors and adores it. She says the best markers out there are Copic markers. (Eta: but probably too expensive for a 7yo) And she has a whole Amazon wish list of art supplies. If you want me to share it with you, send me a pm. I also really like to do chalk pastels with my 7yo.

Yes, all the time. Cell phone and GPS take most of the worry out of it. My biggest concern now is that I get sleepy in the car. The last road trip I took with the kids (supposedly 13 hours) took 16 hours over 2 days, because I have to stop and walk around and get some caffeine every hour or so.

:iagree: Forty-two gave a great review. I haven't used IP for a few years, but ds11 flies through the workbooks with little trouble. Using the text and the WB are kinda redundant for him, so I usually only do a few problems in the TB to make sure he understands it, then move on to the WB. He's finishing up 5A today, and I just ordered IP for 5B. I will use it in place of the workbook (I did this when he was in 2B too) and spend more time with the basic concepts in the TB. I wouldn't necessarily do this for my other kids, but it has worked well for him in the past, because he gets concepts easily and needs work to extend his thinking, rather than just practice. Singapore math has samples here. Just click on the book you're interested in, click on Contents_Sample tab, and scroll down to see links for the samples.

In case anyone comes looking for an answer to this later, here's what I found on CAP's website under the FAQs Now I wish we'd spent last semester working through Narrative II... He's not familiar with essays, but he can write several paragraphs of a narrative without too much whining. I have Cheria on order. We started Narrative II this week, and I'll evaluate Cheria over winter break to see if I want to move him up.

We use it. Or, we used to. We've fallen out of the habit. If you want to save money, you can definitely use it without the CD. I like the CD, because we can just recite along with it and the kids pick up some of the inflections that add meaning to the poem. There is no analysis, just poems to memorize. We started out reciting one poem until it was memorized, then continued to recite all our memorized poems along with the new poem. Andrew Pudewa's mantra was "recite every poem, every day" so you don't forget. I think he studied with Suzuki and borrowed some of Suzuki's methods. The first poems are short and fun, so that was easy. Once we got 15-20 poems memorized, it got tedious, and I moved to reciting a new poem, plus four memorized ones every day. We completed two levels of 20 poems each (there are 4 levels in my edition, but I think the new edition has a 5th level, which IIRC has a lot of Shakespeare and famous speeches). Just memorizing poems has enriched our family culture immensely. There are so many times when something happens, and someone connects it to a poem and starts quoting. Like when my youngest was 3 or 4, we were driving home (against her will) and she bust out, "Home's not the best place for people like me!!" The older kids had just memorized Jonathan Bing and even my little preschooler had absorbed the language of our poems. ETA: I've started some poetry analysis in high school, but before that, this is all we've used.

If you were starting W&R with a 6th grader, where would you start? Ok, technically we aren't just starting, but I'm curious. DS11 just completed Narrative 1, and it was somewhat easy--probably about the right challenge level as he got to the longer amplifications at the end. I'm curious if others who have used this program would skip ahead or try to move through the books quickly with a child who is above the listed grade level.

I agree with everyone else. Spend as much time outside with him as you possibly can. Let him get that physical activity he needs. Read aloud while he hangs upside down on the couch (or whatever he can do quietly enough to hear you--my boys were just always flopping around upside down). Listen to audiobooks in the car. Get some cuisenaire rods and play games. Watch Education Unboxed videos for ideas on how to use them, but just letting him play however he wants is okay. If he's ready, teach him letter formation. If not...put it off for later.

I vote to take a break from US history and let her dig into the time period she's interested in. I pushed ancients with oldest dd when she really wanted to study modern history, and she vows she will never read another Geek myth, ever. She knows "everything" there is to know about them. She won't even read Till We Have Faces, because it's a retelling of a Greek myth. :sad:

We've gotten behind over the years with things that were grade appropriate when started. I had a long battle with depression that I managed to emerge from this summer, and I'm finally tackling some of the fallout from that. Plus, this is my easy-going, non-squeaky wheel kid. He's fallen through the cracks a little. :( Honestly, he has a late summer birthday, so he could easily be a 5th grader. I've kind of vacillated on what level he is. All my kids have birthdays between July and October, so it would make so much more sense to start new grade levels in January. Alas, I just can't seem to live in that kind of bubble, so grade levels change in August with the rest of the community. SM is now getting accelerated, which seems to be working well, as long as I'm right there with him, pushing him to work more than 10 min. W&R--He just finished Narrative I. Would you skip Narrative II altogether and move on to Cheria? Grammar--I listed the wrong level. We just finished Grammar Town, and he's started Practice Town. I think it's appropriate as an intro to grammar for 6th grade. Foreign Language--he has been doing Latin. We started LC when I felt FFL would be too hard, but it's time to move on. This week, I have been contemplating moving him to a modern language. So I'll talk to him, and either move him up to FFL or start a modern language. Spelling--I've started thinking he needs something more. He gets some dictation already in W&R, and it seems redundant. I don't know if I should find a new spelling program or move him up a level in SW. Hmm. For history, I just discovered that BF has an Intermediate Early American history using the books I'm already using. It's such a relief to have something that gives him a pace and writing assignments. They expect quite a bit more than I was. Writing is my weakest subject, and I have never managed to just write across the curriculum. Both my older kids now do writing classes through someone else. Hopefully the BF guide will give me some more structure to increase his output. Thanks ladies, for helping me think out loud and proving some input. :D Oh, and btw, Youth Digital Mod Design has been going really well. A month in, and he's more than halfway through the course. DS13 never even got this far before when he did this course a couple years ago. His year was up by the time he got halfway through. I think I've found a passion to nurture. :hurray:

I have had the exact same experience with lots of other things. Fighting over toys? Take away all but a few toys. Whining for more snacks during church? Stop bringing snacks to church... In every case, they are happier with less. It's so weird. I need to remember that for everything.

My only question is...what will Walmart do? The last time I went to Walmart, I brought reusable bags. The cashier asked if I would help with bagging. I was like, "sure, whatever," while I loaded groceries into the belt. So...he just stood there and refused to ring anything up or bag anything until I was able to bag my own groceries. Grrr.