Keep: ELTL, Sequential Spelling, Math on the Level Ditch: RLTL, RSO Chemistry, BookShark

Not sure if this is helpful, but we used it for a couple of months and then dropped it. DS was already a very strong reader, and I was hoping to use it as a spelling program. DS can sound out words, but we never really did phonograms, so we had to start at the beginning with learning them. We used the suggested schedule in the back for using the program as a spelling program, and got through learning all the phonograms and started doing spelling lists. But it felt like a lot of wasted effort for us: all that time memorizing the phonograms, and then starting to learn the marking rules for spelling, using words he could already spell pretty easily... in the end we dropped it, and switched over to Sequential Spelling, which is a much better fit for us. I still think it's probably a really good program, just not a good fit for our particular situation.

Just throwing in my two cents... My ds is also 8 and also very mathy. What I've found in our case is that just doing flashcards works best for him. He did Reflex math for a while, and some other games, but we eventually dropped them because he just wanted something to get 'er done and get it over with, without all the extra flash. At the beginning of this year we worked on the times tables, and for about a month and a half, that's all we did for math Monday- Thursday (Friday is always fun math - like a game). We worked through them slowly, starting with just the easiest ones, and only adding in more once he had the previous ones learned, day by day, until he knew them all cold. We tend to do short lessons anyway, and all we did was the flashcards, so it was short and sweet. I figured that trying to remember all those facts was fairly mentally taxing, and I didn't want to burn him out on math, so we didn't do any other math lessons until he knew the facts. My thought was that not doing anything else allowed us to focus our attention on just learning those facts, and therefore didn't draw it out any longer than it had to be. (As an aside: I was that kid in AP Calculus in high school who still had to count on her fingers because I wasn't solid on my basic math facts. I was an adult before I really got good at basic adding and subtracting, mostly out of self-defense so I could keep up with my kid. It was embarrassing to have him add something in his head, and then fifteen seconds later have me go "yes, that's right!" It sure would have made my life easier to have learned them a little earlier. :))

Wasn't it a boardie who wrote the Build Your Library curriculum?

This is FaceBook group: Build Your Library Families. Like mo2 said, you have to ask to join, but they're pretty quick about approving people.

I was wondering if these Yahoo groups are still active? According to the group page, it looks like the last activity in Motherly Reflections was in February, and I just had my request to join rejected because it hadn't been approved within two weeks. (I'm planning on using it in the fall, so I was hoping to get some insight into how others were using it, and see if there were any tips or tricks I should know going in to it.) If they're not, is there someplace else (besides this thread :)) where people are talking about it? Thanks!

Just adding my own experience here: we used BookShark grade 2 this year, and next year we're switching over to BYL grade 3. I just really, really didn't like the books used in BookShark. My son is pretty mature for his age (8), but the last book we read (Captain Nobody) revolved around the main character's brother being in a coma, and then later everyone thought one of the characters was going to commit suicide because of bullying. That just seemed like awfully heavy material for a second grader. But even besides that, I found most of the books extremely boring. We prefer books with a little more plot and action- some tension and excitement. That's not something wrong with BookShark necessarily, just personal preference. (Apparently Amazon reviews that refer to something as a "sweet story" should be a warning sign for me. :))

My son is another HUGE fan of this game, so I'm also curious about this. I'm looking at the membership page, and it says "access to all education content" is available to both free and paid users, and it looks (to me) like the only things you get with a membership are in-game goodies (things to make it "more fun," but not necessarily anything that makes it more educational). They claim "members learn more than non-members," but I wonder if that's because the heavy users are more likely to get the membership (so they'd be learning more anyway), or because it makes it more fun for the kids, so they use it more? I'm just guessing here, and would love to hear from someone who's actually bought the membership. :)

DS8 has been playing Chess Free on my phone for a few years now. It's free, and it has "12 play levels (Novice->Expert) This uses intelligent weakening for lower levels. Good for beginners." It's worked very well for my son.

Our most-used creative toy is Zoobs. Not sure how well known they are (we're the only family I know in IRL that has them or has even heard of them)? DS uses his Legos almost exclusively to build cars, but his Zoobs have been cars, swords, axes, working bows and arrows (with the addition of a couple of rubber bands), crowns, balls, baskets, golf clubs...

I just bought SS a month of so ago, and like PP said, yes, you just need the teacher's guide. However, I tried to get the revised student workbook (the one with additional review and games), but it was unavailable at Rainbow Resource. I did a chat with them, and they didn't know if they would even be getting any more in. :/ I ended up getting the "classic" book, but in hindsight I wish I'd skipped it, since DS prefers to do spelling words on a whiteboard anyway.

I also wanted to give a mention to something I just found out about a few weeks ago: MIT's App Inventor. Very similar setup to Scratch, but slightly more complicated, IMO. You can put the apps you make on a smartphone, and apparently even upload them to the app store. We've just started playing around with it, but there are some nice tutorials.

Listening in.... what is RFWP? (And here I thought I knew all the acronyms!) (This caught my eye because I just heard of problem based learning for the first time two days ago: a friend was telling me about how Australians do med school. Now I'm intrigued...)

I'm in a very similar boat. My 8-year-old has been playing with Scratch for a while, and I wish there was a book with more advanced Scratch projects for him to work his way through. What we've done so far is look up YouTube videos for tutorials on things he's interested in doing. So when he wanted to learn how to make a platform game, or a scrolling game, I found him a few videos that looked good, and let him watch them and then spend a while making a bunch of his own games. I also just came across this website, which looks like it has ideas for different programs you can make. Sadly, it hasn't been updated in over 3 years, but it has a handful of ideas that look interesting. I'm very interested in hearing what other people have to say! :bigear:

I did something a little different with planning this year, and it's made my weekly planning so easy. Over the summer I sat down and basically followed Donna Young's subject planner method: for each subject, on one of her subject sheets I wrote down what we'd do for the year. (They're basically sheets of boxes, with five across and 9 down on each side. I use one row per week.) So if it's a "do the next thing" curriculum like ELTL, I just wrote the lesson numbers down in each box. We do science twice a week using RSO, so I'd write each of the days' pages to cover in a box, and then in the third box for the week I'd write what we need for that week's science experiments, and highlighted the things we don't normally have on hand, so they stood out. For math I have a list of topics I'd like to cover, so I just listed them out, with their page numbers, one per week. And if I found some activity that would go well with that topic, I listed it in that "week." I even have a page for "fun math," where I listed out games and interesting pages from Mathemagic and Family Math, so I don't forget about them during the school year. I keep all of these pages (one for each subject) in a folder in my planner. Then when the weekend rolls around, I pull out the subject pages, cross off the things we accomplished that week, and then write the next thing in my planner. When I get to the science sheet I check that we have everything we need for the experiment that week, and also glance at upcoming weeks, to see if there's any highlighted supplies I should start looking for. So all I need to plan are my planner, a pencil, and my subject pages. It required more work up front, but once I got in the groove for each subject it went pretty quickly. And now weekly planning is very quick, and I don't have to reinvent the wheel each week with figuring out what to do next. I do my planning at our school desk, which has our pens and pencils on one of those rotating organizer things, and all of our books and supplies are on a bookshelf behind my chair. (I only have the one kid, so we fit on one bookshelf :)) But I could theoretically do it anywhere.

When I was 8 and my mom was pregnant with my brother, my grandmother gave me a copy of "Where Did I Come From?" It is a very frank explanation of sex and how babies are made. I remember it including a couple of cartoony yet accurate drawings of of a naked man and woman, and of sex. As I recall, my mother was not particularly pleased that my grandma had given it to me, but that was more because she did so without warning or asking my mom first, rather than because the book itself was not a good one. :)

It's not as pretty as some of the other ones mentioned, but I've been very happy with my A Plan in Place planner (sorry, on my phone so I can't link). You get to pick what you want in it (how many rows, columns, what the labels are, extra spaces, etc.), including any quotes you want in it. It's black and white (so not very decorative), but you can make it be just about anything you want. Plus, the price was very reasonable.

I feel pretty good/set about most things, except (or course :glare: science) History/Literature: Build Your Library Grade 3 Math: Continue Math on the Level, aiming to get through 14 concepts a year (which puts us on track to start Algebra in 8th grade) Grammar: ELTL 2 Spelling: Sequential Spelling 1-2 Science: This is where I'm still unsure. Right now I'm thinking I might use the ChildCraft book "The Green Kingdom," read a few pages each week, and plan out experiments and demonstrations and other extras to go along with it. Or I could use "Everyday Science Mysteries" in a similar way (reading one story each week). Or work our way through the Snap Circuit student guide. Or maybe spend a while reading and working our way through Steve Cane's Ultimate Building book? :confused1: Latin: GSWL Art: Home Art Studio Music: Simply Music, maybe finally get around to using SQUILT PE: Golf in the Spring/Summer/Fall, basketball in the winter, and swimming year round

I don't know if there's an "easy" way, but I just copied and pasted everything. It took a while, but it let me organize as I went. Plus, it was a chance to re-read all my notes, which was a great reminder of some interesting things I'd forgotten, and a chance to clean out and delete notes that I no longer needed.

I've had thick, wavy hair all my life, and I too hate the dreaded "poofy" hair. It drives me nutty when I get my hair cut and afterwards the stylist brushes and blow dries in a way to give it volume. I don't need volume, thank you very much! Anyway, I had my hair very short in my 20s, but I ended up growing it out because I hated all the product I had to put in it to make it not fluff up. I also frequently wore barrettes to keep it from falling forward (along with the gel). But, I am considering going shorter again (maybe chin length), because I have discovered *magical* shampoo and conditioner. It's Herbal Essences "Tousle Me Softly," and is specifically for wavy hair. For the first time in my life, I can wear my hair down! It's not fluffy pyramid hair that's taking over my head. It's soft, nicely wavey (bordering on light curls) hair that lays nicely. Seriously, it's miracle shampoo and conditioner!

This summer I sat down and wrote out our plans for each subject on separate sheets of paper (a la Donna Young), and it's made planning so much easier this year. Each weekend I sit down and cross off what we did last week, and write next week's plans down (in my A Plan in Place planner), and it's so quick! We started a homeschool swim class at a different YMCA, and DS is loving it! He gets to hang out in the pool and play for an extra 45 minutes after class. It's already made a huge difference in his swimming ability, confidence, and enjoyment of lessons. And I like that is a nice pool, and I get to spend the time chatting with other homeschool parents. Also, I started meditating with the Headspace app in November, and I love it. I'm calmer and more patient, which makes everything we do nicer. :)

I moved all my homeschool notes from Evernote over to OneNote this past year. Evernote has everything just in a big list, in whatever order you entered them. You can filter by tag and notebooks, but that requires remembering to tag everything, and you can't sort things any further. I disliked that I couldn't move things around, so stuff that went together was near each other. (I do still use it for lots of other notes, just things I want to remember but don't need organized, but I needed something more organized for all my homeschool stuff.) My OneNote setup: Across the top, the tabs I have are Records, Plans, each of the subject areas (language arts, math, science, etc.), and misc. Under Records, I have a page for each year from kindergarten on up (well, it's only up to 2nd grade so far, because that's where we are, but eventually it will go all the way up :)). On each page I have headings for the subject areas, and under each one I just make a note of what we do, as we do it. (That's the important part - otherwise I get to the end of the year and can't remember half of what we did!) Under math I write down all the topics we cover as we finish them up. I keep a note of all the books we read aloud, the books we listen to as audiobooks, and the books DH reads to DS before bed. Plus I keep note of our curriculum, activities and any field trips. Basically it's a one page summary of everything we did that year. Under plans, I again have a page for each year. This is where I keep ideas that are grade specific. Like when Lewelma did her great post on developing advanced reading skills, I copy and pasted the goals for each grade on the appropriate grade's planning sheet. Or if I see a science curriculum that I really want to check out in the fourth grade, I put it on the fourth grade sheet. And as I'm planning for the next year, I keep all my ideas about what to use on that year's page (including books I want to keep an eye out for, budget, curriculum I want to use, etc.). I like having it all in one place. Finally, the subject tabs. These are a collection of pages relating to a specific subject. I keep quotes from threads, curriculum reviews, etc. under these. And I refer to them when planning for the next year, giving them a quick read to make sure there's not something I wanted to include later on that I've since forgotten about. So my Latin tab, for instance, has pages on Minimus, Lively Latin, a thread on what to do after GSWL, and a page on Song School Latin. The Misc tab has notes about subjects that don't have their own tab yet (usually things I only have one note on). If I end up with a few notes about the same subject, it gets moved to its own tab. I do this to try to (somewhat) keep down the number of tabs I have. I don't do my day to day planning in OneNote (I'm a paper and pencil girl), but I do all my long-range and big picture planning in it.

I'm glad I'm not alone in already thinking about next year! It started last week with thinking about how we're going to do Latin next year, and when that got figured out quickly and easily, I decided to start obsessing about <deep sigh> science. I've got about five different options (which require varying levels of work from me) that I need to compare. Part of the reason I'm thinking about it is because DS is going to spend a week with my parents in early March, which of course means it's a perfect time to plan next year. A week completely to myself! Think of the homeschool-related research I can do! :001_rolleyes:

It's not just you! I was getting that same half-blank Tapatalk page yesterday, too! (I feel like I could access the forum in the morning, but it stopped working partway through the day.) I was trying to access the forum on my phone through wireless (I'm on Frontier), and without it (I'm on AT&T). I was doing a Google search to find threads, and I could never get the forum to load. I assumed it was just my crummy Frontier internet acting up again.

Like other people, I vote for fixing it, because of speed issues down the line. Just a thought- when I was re-teaching my son how to write some numbers/letters I would sit with him and remind him to do it a certain way before he started that number/letter, every time. That way he wasn't getting extra practice writing it the wrong way, and he was writing it the correct way while "in the thick of things," not just when he was particularly working on that number. I wanted to build up the muscle memory of doing it right the first time, in between writing other numbers "in real life."