I voted full face everyday but it's not really every day. Maybe every other or so. Full face special occasions didn't fit b/c it's way more often and even though I go for a natural look, it's not light. If we are homeschooling only and I never leave, I don't put it on but I am usually out and about most days and I do try to do my face before leaving.

yes it is full of hands on activities. MBTP is known to be a literature and project-based curriculum. Our project table had several things to display :)

We used the Moving Beyond the Page Hobbit Unit (found under the 11-13 age grouping on their site) and it was our favorite unit of the year so far. We used the annotated version from the library. It was very fun, and full, had grammar weaved in, etc. We have ours here on the shelf if you have any questions.

Great ideas..thank you again.

Thank you, that is reassuring. I need to keep reminding myself that any learning is progress. And, of course, how much she is changing and growing right now. I'll check out Alg Antics!

Thank you. I have talked to her 6th grade public school teacher (she's DS's current teacher) about the math and she was very shocked at what I had to say. I wanted to know if she saw the same things and she said she thought of DD as a very solid math student, very accurate, etc. I showed her some of the work she'd done and she didn't know what to say. I'm wondering what has changed now that she is homeschooling. It started on day #1 here. When DD talks to me about it, she says shes so confused about why she is having math issues. She said she has never thought of herself as having math difficulty till this year. I guess before now she and I had thought of her as a math student who had it coming naturally to her. I agree with what you're saying, but I thought we were already 'there' with things coming naturally to her. I expected some adjustment, but if that's what this is, it is way *more* than I bargained for. I just want to look back, maybe when she's in Alg 2 or Geometry and just laugh at how much it worried me. :)

Yes, we grade daily. I have considered not 'entering' her math grades into our grade spreadsheet (which is very important to her) because even though I am listing all these issues we are having with math, she is not concerned about them daily in the least.......until you mention grade averages. In first grade she declared she wanted to be a straight A student, at least through 12th grade and she has repeated this every year since. she certainly puts a lot of pressure on herself. Her average in math is dipping wildly and causing her much stress. So, to take the pressure off of this and relax her enough to concentrate daily, I just stopped averaging her math grades. I wish our grades looked like yours! Last week she got a 17%, 53%, 85 and 95 on daily work. She had to correct the first two of course but still..

Also wanted to add that we go through stretches of over 85% on tests, and moving through one lesson after another, and then suddenly she will start getting past concepts/lessons wrong, almost like her retention is a problem. Is she still adjusting?

That's my understanding too. Just taking a look at her test scores, they are all over the place. As many 50% as 90%. We back up only on a low test score as well but as we re-work through those lessons again, she aces them. :/ I'm unsure I'm seeing her true understanding via her work. Regardless, we do similar. I'm beginning to wonder if this is just how a first year of homeschooling again is going to go for math.

So do you think it's important to pay attention to a continuum of 'sloppy' mistakes and encourage them to be corrected? Or, just have her correct and move on? Or? I am certainly willing to consider that maturity is the issue but I'm wondering, then, how much attention should be paid to being sloppy? I'm also interested in what sources you are using to spiral in last yr with current, etc? TIA!

Ok, I see. We have the independent part down as she is to only come to me once she's re-worked it herself and cannot figure it out. The only thing we lack is a list to check off, so I will try to incorporate that. thanks! Editing to say....... it also alarms me a little bit that she went over and over the problem and didn't catch a simple multiplication error. I looked over and saw her working on it for a bit. She hands me the paper, it took me 2 seconds and the funny thing is, as I was seeing it, her hand was going towards it to point right to the math error. WHAT is that about? How many times must she have written the wrong answer for 7x4 and not caught it, but with me over her shoulder, her light bulb goes off. I'm just so perplexed about all of this.

I guess I don't order enough from amazon to appreciate the feature LOL I get deliveries about 2 times a week, but this feature drives me insane! I want a smaller priced item, and don't want to wait, but it forces me to or it forces me to order bigger, which I won't do if I don't need to. I don't like being forced! LOL And, there are 4 of us in the house ordering so ideally I could do one order a week and combine stuff ot make this work, but try as I might, we are all like ships passing in the night and can never coordinate this one aspect to make this feature work for us. blech. glad some of you guys can use it!

I really think this depends on the child, and almost ..depends on the day. My DD13 (7th grade) is exceptionally responsible in most all ways at her age. But she is still a 13 yr old ..so depending on the day, she can be scattered and all over the place without my eagle eye. There are days we sit together a large part of the school day and days we don't see much of each other. Most of the time I've previewed her work to make sure I think she should be left alone for that portion. There are many times where I look ahead and feel more of a need to guide. She likes to be completely alone in her math, but we come together if she struggles with it. Lately though, I may change to actively teaching her math, daily as she is having some problems..not sure yet. I do ask her to check her math work and re-work the problems she got wrong. Then check again, but do NOT change or re-work a second time. With other subjects, she fully gets what to do so I leave her to it but I do make sure I insert myself into her space/activity several times here and there because when I am completely hands off, she acts like, well, a 13 yr old LOL She decides for herself to skip stuff or write down one word answers or skims. I also insist on certain things (neat work, complete sentences, complete all steps, instead of only the ones she chooses, etc) or she is to go back, taking twice or three times as long, and redo. Mostly I know I have to prepare for the week myself, do a lesson plan for the week and continue to check up, some days completely being with her. Sometimes not. I check her work daily so not much is left to 'slide'. I guess I"m saying it's probably going to depend on the kid and the day. I think during the middle yrs it can go either way, but with every year, I do turn a little more over to her and in high school, I will certainly expect more independence with out the shenanigans. :)

Wapiti: Saxon is very drillish but in such a wide spiral that she doesn’t get to practice the new skill much at first. Sometimes she does need me to print off work that is more practice on the new concept. Just a bit of an explanation to the purpose of keeping her in PreA if she is getting the math… I am not going on to the next lesson until we are at 80 or 85%, regardless of why the problems are missed. I’m doing this because a high school math teacher advised me (and my calculus-in-tenth-grade husband wholeheartedly agreed LOL) that if she is allowed to advance despite these types of mistakes, even though she is getting the mathematical portion, that her math ‘structure’ or foundation will not be as solid as she needs for her higher math and eventually she will begin to struggle b/c *some* of the fundamentals of the way the brain organizes the math problems will be less exercised. He described it as not fully having her math legs underneath her but still trying to climb a ladder. I guess that made sense to me, and since I am not a mathy person, and wouldn’t know if it was really good or bad advice, I’m going with it b/c, well, it made sense. Lol Laura Corin: We have discussed double checking work in detail. But since you brought it up, I’m going to readdress it with her, just to make sure. Earlier today we talked, again, about looking over her work fully before turning it in and as I sit here typing, she just had a light bulb moment as she checked it… I thought, “alright!”. The next problem, she brought me her paper and said no matter how she worked it, she wasn’t getting it right. I went over it with her, and the problem was that she 26 instead of 28 for 7x4 ….aaaahhhagalkad%!41!$*!! We just had to laugh, b/c..really?? sigh….. Nerdybirdy: thank you for the book suggestion. I’m not sure about the worksheet thing. In the beginning it seemed to have caused her problems to not have had to write her work herself, and it has gotten better than what it was. She has a long way to go, though, obviously. Still thinking on it… Heathermomster: there are some days we do the ‘rest’ of her math (when she decides herself that she’s had enough) during what we call ‘homework’ time. Generally around 4 pm, when she would have normally done homework when in public school. Maybe I’ll actually plan to do that instead of leaving it up to her. With her Type A tendencies, I think she thinks she has to plow straight through. Kiana: as far as space, I did have to re-train her not to squish stuff together, real small in a tiny space. She used to try to get all 30 problems on one page. On our chalkboard I’ve given her a visual of how to space out her math problems. She is finally doing ok in spacing. Today one of her problems did come from doing her work right up against the equation. I asked her to re-do it and show her ‘work’ in the work column (right half of the paper) and it came out beautifully. Again, very symptomatic of her problems: the smaller details, like where she does her work, messing her up. And you are right, her errors largely do not come from lack of understanding. And, when she checks her work, she is asked to look at it herself first, and even re-work the problem on her own first. If she still struggles, we do the work together on separate white boards. I am usually the only one who refers to the Solution’s Manual. I was of the thinking that she was learning better when she was proving it to herself. I tell her, “mistakes are where the learning happens” …well, anyway..do you suggest I change it up? I really like the suggestion to have her do only one more similar problem. I still have a nagging feeling though, that Saxon may not be the best style for her. I wonder if we need a spiral program that allows for more practice the day of the new concept. She took the online placement tests for Saxon and only missed going into Alg 1 by a hair. I am not home right now so I can’t look into her folder, but I remember being on the fence about which one to go with because it was pretty close. It might be good to add that we started this year w/ AOPS. I really did want it to work for us, but it just quickly proved to NOT at ALLLLLL be her style of math. My 11 yr old, whom I will be schooling next year (he’s in 6th public now) is headed toward an engineering degree and is a STEM kid and plays w/ AOPS for fun LOL So I’ll use it with him. My creative, whimsical, colorful, free-flowing minded daughter just could NOT put it together. I posted on the WTM facebook group way back, that we were really struggling with math once we switched to Saxon and I was strongly advised not to switch math programs on her AGAIN. So I think we will probably be finishing out Saxon this year, but I am open to a different spiral program for her next yr. She absolutely loves spiral work, but I do think she needs more practice on new concepts. On her small mistakes being the problem, I am going to try a lot of different suggestions I got here, and I REALLY appreciate them all. But I’m still not sure the way to go about helping her to overcome them all. And I can’t afford a math tutor..I’ve checked at the local high schools and universities and the kids are charging big bucks these days! Lol I really REALLY do appreciate you guys hanging in with me on this. This has all turned into quite the novel. (blush)

Thanks everyone. Kiana, I really want to explore what you bring up about below level work. I have advanced her through lessons by testing out at times, but I'm still getting a grasp on where exactly she falls in preA. Can you give me some suggestions on how to avoid under level work. I guess I just figured to strengthen and practice now that she was out of public school, the material needed to be a bit easier to start. I mean, we had to go back to multiplication facts, and graphs like I mentioned. Ug, maybe I went about it all wrong..... Nerdybirdy, all her examples come from completely different math concepts LOL But just yesterday's example, on order of operations, ..she did her brackets first, parenthesis, then multiplication just fine. Then at the tail end of the problem was her division: 5/0. She brought the problem down correctly but instead of bringing the zero down in her div problem, she brought the 5 down. One one problem she just wrote the problem down wrong by one number, therefore it was all thrown off. On another, she just did a multiplication fact wrong and the rest was wrong afterwards, of course. Last example, and this one is pretty common with her... the problem was pi (6) ...etc 2 She multiplied pi times 6 and took THAT answer to the next step instead of dividing by 2 and taking the correct answer over. This one she is continually doing...forgetting to divide by two (in most triangle area work). FriedClams, I was excited by your link! I was doing JUST that with her during the first quarter of the year as I tried to assess where she fell. Now, when she grinds to halt, I still pull out the white board and we both work the problems. The one thing different I see from your link is that I can now try to just daily do her math with her. And yes, maybe I can also really encourage her to slow down. Althoug......I have been monitoring her and it is taking 1.5 hours for her to plug away at one Saxon lesson of 30 problems. She hasn't been satisfied to do 1/2 a lesson a day when she read somewhere that Saxon works best doing it one lesson a day, all 30 problems LOL She's a very structured, Type A personality. She doesn't complain how long it takes, but does complain if I rush her if I have an appt, and won't even sit down to do her math unless she knows she has a lot of time for it..the reason we do it first thing in the morning. If she slowed down even more, I'm not really sure what that would look like LOL Seems like if she slowed down more she'd be sleeping haha. But I do think I'm going to experiment starting next week, doing all of math, every day together with her to see where it gets us. Verbally doing math.. I am going to do some of that too. B/c she has been able to talk me through almost anything she flips to in her math book and she is always correct. But I know she has to be able to do it on paper too. Keep it coming ladies. Math is the only portion this year that we are so unsure and unsteady on. It makes me sad b/c she is really good at math. She was a math mentor in her public school during 6th grade for pre-A and her test scores fell off the page (high). I know it's all a different format at home, but I can't seem to find out how to bring her to her potential HERE. :(

DD is 13, 7th grade, working through Saxon's Algebra 1/2. A little background: this is our first year homeschooling (again...we homeschooled in earlier elem yrs). She's done pre-A since the end of 5th grade and fully in 6th grade in public school. She tested toward the very end of the Saxon Alg 1/2. I am having SUCH a difficult time this year advancing through the work! Until now she's always been considered a very strong math student...scores through the roof..yada yada. First, I had to de-school her math-wise. Take the calculator away, have her write her problems out (they used all worksheets in school so I had to go ALL the way back to graph paper to line her work up), strengthen up her 'math muscles'. Now, on concepts she's cooking along but making VERY poor grades solely on sloppy mistakes and no matter what I've tried...and I've tried a LOT of things, she is still transposing enough to make a difference, carrying cancelled numbers in the problem still, writing the wrong problem down from book to paper, etc etc. Today she had a math test, missed 7 and only ONE was because she truly got the problem/facts wrong. The other 6 were sloppy mistakes, that, when she took one glance back at them, muttered, "oooooohhhhhhhh...." because she saw it right away. This has been all year long, no matter how many 'just practice' days we take on the lessons she seems weaker on, no matter how many worksheets I generate on ONLY volume of a cylinder or semicircle, etc., work for her to do, She doesn't seem to be rushing, she's been asked to go back and check her work so the ohhhhhh comes before she turns the paper in. OH and the lack of equation structure. She just KEEPS skipping steps in equations so there's way it can be right. I have had her practice writing the full equations out and though some is mental math along the way, I have her write every bit of it out so it can lead her to the right answer. When she does this, her work is much, much better. But this is rare. A combination of all of those things and nothing really improving on the sloppiness of it and I'm wondering what to do next. I don't think it's the math we've chosen, she has no learning disabilities so things aren't getting switched en route that I know of, other than a lack of motivation. When I offer an incentive, she manages to do much better. Not even sure if I should be concerned. Of course, I want her to do her math RIGHT and firm things up so we can go on to Alg. 1 eventually. I'm not in a hurry whatsoever, but I'm wondering how many years she will be in pre-A. The mathematical functions, facts and concepts she picks up very quickly and doesn't forget, and can explain very well to me. This sloppy stuff is really 'getting' her. ETA: during the 2nd month of the school year I even decided to just go back to the very first part of the Pre-A book to get her going with simple stuff to begin with and work through and we are still only on lesson 76 of 123. She flipped toward the last 10 chapters and told me she knew most of the end of the book and I told her when she consistently got above 75% on her daily work we might progress that way. It's frustrating to me that she very well knows at least 90% of pre-A yet she scores pretty low and we aren't progressing through the material. I don't know what to address (that I haven't already addressed) or what to do next. Sigh..help. lol!

We also enjoyed Great Medieval Projects You Can Build Yourself. There is a lot of info in the book as well as projects.

Got a Facebook update from PP saying tomorrow (Thursday, Jan 30) is a "Snow Day Sale, Save 25% off on all History Odyssey and REAL Science Odyssey." Thought I'd pass it on.

cool, I didn't know about the price tracking, thanks!

Ok, I'll do some checking around. I routinely see the set drop to $115 for a day at the time now and then.

Do you use the books?

Great ladies, thanks! I have been watching the set for some time now and plan to snag it when it drops real low again. Didn't know about the battery eliminator, so I'll grab that too. DS is going crazy trying to be patient till I order this. lol

This question is for next year as I school my DD13 and DS11. Ds is exceptionally mathy, and he's very scientific. He's already 'played' quite a bit with snap circuits in public school. I’m looking at this one http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000IXMP6Q/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=1XHYM2YBP1YWZ&coliid=IUDG3V4LOAVVD because it describes this one as a training program and explains how it goes more in depth with more and says..â€The Student Guide for the SC-750R includes 138 pages of educational curriculum. Written with the help of educators, the Student Guide is essential in covering all topics related to electricity and electronics being taught in middle schools and above. Includes real world applications and problem solving quizzes.†Has anyone used this one in particular that can share their experience? I plan on doing this as part of the kids curriculum next year as a break from stretches of chemistry that we will be doing. This one caught my eye b/c of the ‘curriculum’ included. Also, if you use this one, did you buy the optional Teacher’s PAK Model TG-750 it mentions in the description? The last thing I want to do is buy a smaller kit (pricey enough on their own) thinking it will be enough, only to find out we need something more. This one looks pretty meaty? If you like another one, which one? TIA!

Well, DD13 is in 7th this year (late birthday) and will be in 8th next yr. DS11 is in 6th this year and will be in 7th next yr, so I'll have a 7th and 8th grader. I thought I'd try it this one year they are both in middle school. I'm pretty sure that if we are able to maintain a 4 day a week schedule in middle school, it will change in high school, back to 5 days. BUT I am not short cutting anything, even now, if we do 4 days a week. I will be doing a yr round 'like' schedule and will do the same amt of work, same amt of days, but with a more relaxed, yet longer schedule. Well, that's the original idea anyway lol The motivation behind it is really trying to avoid a slump from taking a break in the summer. Both kids seem to keep things tight and retained when there's not 2.5 to 3 months of being completely off. I'm just trying to think it out.

Thanks for all the input! Lots to think on here. The way I figure it, we have 365 days to do 180 days worth of work (sort of like the 7 weeks off above). I think we will like a year-round..ish.. schedule with some months (like summertime) being a little more relaxed. The kids have said if they get Fridays off, they won't mind having an abbreviated schedule through some summer months. I figure there will be plenty weeks where a 5 day schedule is necessary (yes, life! lol and dwaddling) Since our curriculum is not written by week, but rather, do-the-next-thing, I think the curriculum part of this is fine. Math, though will rarely be skipped, maybe only doing Math on Fridays if it works out. I think we will try it. At least if we start an abbreviated schedule in July and August and we find the need to go to a 5 day schedule, we will be ahead. I'll worry about high school when we get there. My kids seem very adaptable so if we have to get used a to a 5 day schedule, I don't see much of a problem there. As I've learned through this journey, I'll stay flexible and change back to 5 days if needed.