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Staysea

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Everything posted by Staysea

  1. I just meant that it seemed that it was expected that a beginner 7th grader could hand write a 5 paragraph essay in about 40 minutes. That is why she seemed behind to me.
  2. She is currently learning to type. I plan to switch her to mostly typing papers probably after Christmas. Is it not important that they put pen to paper, and learn how to write an essay? She is basically copying the essay from her outline. When I was in 7th grade I had to take statewide writing test in October where I had to handwrite a simple 5-paragraph essay in 40 minutes. I guess that is why I feel she is slow.
  3. My 7th grader qrites so slow on her writing. We are doing really simple essays to get the format of the 5 paragraph essay done. She ADHD, but is medicated. We do a brainstorm, a simple ourline and then a really detailed outline. She already has her paper about written minus conclusion sentences before she has to write her paper. The papers she has to write are only about 25-30 sentences long. She takes about 2.5 hours to write a paper. Problems She writes extremely small and very neat. This seems to be her main focus when writing the paper. She forgets things such as indenting and conclusion sentences even when she is reminded right before writing. She even realizes she forgot whole paragraphs when she is done. She often ends up having to tewrite the paper because of these glaring errors. I told her today that i wanted her paper in extremy messy handwriting. Her handwriting was still adequate, but she insisted that it was so bad it wasn't legible. Here is her rough draft with top being her good handwriting and the bottom being the bad handwriting. Her handwriting is usually even more small and neat, but i was urging her to just write, but she still stuggled to write fast at all.
  4. We tried to use Saxon grammar and it was way too much. The lessons took so long to do, and there was so much work. We didnt use it very long at all because it was taking well over an hour everyday.
  5. Thanks, I thought about doing opgtr, but I just have heard that iris so dry. I wish I could find a copy to look through. I'll have to look into happy phonics. Is progressive phonics dry?
  6. I'm using Mcruffy. I really can't think of any complaints. The complaints that I've heard from othe people are not things that I have a problem with. It's teacher intensive and uses a lot of manipulatives. Dd loves it, and it makes learning math fun.
  7. We've been using AAR2. As we have gotten further into it, I have run into a few problems. 1. It is very meticulous on introducing phonics concepts. One lesson talks about how u can make an oo sound or a you sound. Dd naturally knew this and the lesson confused her. It also has lessons like silent e and silent e with blends and plural silent e that dd didn't need. Basically I find myself skipping a lot of lessons. 2. The stories in the readers seem excessively long. The problem is probably more that dd is 5, but it's not working for us anymore. Dd can read them, but she'd much rather read a real book we cannot finish it in one sitting. 3. The price. Dd is skipping so many lessons that we are going through it too fast. $200 is a lot to spend for a program that I'm having to tweak so much. Dd does love using the tiles and the games with it. I would really like to finish off her phonics with something fun. She catches on really quickly, but she also gets bored really quickly. Any suggestions? TIA
  8. Phonics - AAR3/ AAR4 Reading - 20 minutes of reading a day Math - Mcruffy 1st grade Handwriting - HWOT K and 1st History - SOTW 1 Science - Unit studies on what ever she request to learn about Spanish - Song school spanish Extras - still up in the air since we don't know where we will be living yet. I might tweak because I realize this is kind of a lot for K, but dd is really interested in Science and I think she'll like history. I plan on being very project heavy on the history, and taking more than K to do SOTW. DD has also requested to learn Spanish. I might end up scaling back again, but we will see.
  9. We are half way through AAR2 right now. We don't really do sight words. AAR does teach a few sight words, but not many. I just teach my dd how to sound out words phonetically, and then tell her that its a tricky word, and we pronounce it weird. She seems to learn to automatically pronounce it the right way after a little practice with it. I don't like the idea of her learning that it is ok to just memorize words. The only thing I am supplementing with is actual books. Right now, dd is reading Frog and Toad books. With AAR 1, I would probably do some Dr. Suess. My only complaint with AAR, is that it is very slow on teaching phonics concepts. I'm actually about to skip about half the remaining lessons of AAR2. For instance, it teaches the silent E, and then blends with the silent E, and plurals with the silent E. DD just does not need to go over all of that, so we will probably be in AAR3 by the end of summer, and that gets expensive.
  10. We are doing AAR2 right now. I just review a few cards a day. We spend a maximum of 5 minutes reviewing cards a day. I don't worry about how many cards are in the review. DD is only 5 so I have had to tweak the program a little for her. One thing I do is I write out the fluency sheets on index cards and play a board or card game. Everytime it is her turn she has to read a fluency card. She loves doing the fluency sheets now! Another thing I do, is skip the activities on lessons that she already has a firm grasp on. I would probably do more than 20 minutes a day, and turn the review cards and fluency sheets into games. You could probably get almost a lesson a day done that way.
  11. I use Mcruffy K Math. Its not exactly what you are talking about, but I've heard its more fun then saxon. DD loves it. Its lots of manipulatives, very little workbook work and some fun games thrown in. Its spiral, and just really fun. You could even tweak some of the lessons. Like instead of just counting the money, set up a quick store.
  12. I don't think the half books would work. She doesn't really need more help with the concepts. She can read quite well, but she doesn't think she can. When I put a sentence in front of her, she reads it without any problems. When she sees a lot of sentences on a page, or a whole book, she starts distracting herself, and won't even look at the page. I guess we could slow down, but we only do two pages a day. We've already gone over some of the concepts in books 5 & 6, and she doesn't seem to have a problem with them. I'm open to suggestions, but I really don't want to hold her back just because of her age. If it stops working, or something could work better for her, I'm open to suggestions. I like that ETC has some spelling practice and writing too.
  13. DD is 4. I did not really expect to do a full blown curriculum this year, but she started blending and we started doing ETC. She is halfway through ETC 3, and I have started doing ETC 4 with her online, but will move into ETC 5 workbook when we finish ETC 3. At this pace, she will probably finish ETC by the end of the year. Some issues I'm having. 1. I was planning on starting AAS next year. Do I need to do another phonics program too? She just seems so young to be finished with phonics. What do I do for reading next year? Just read books, and work on comprehension? 2. She hates BOB books, but will read Nora Gaydos Now I'm Reading! books. She's getting more fluent, but still seems to have a mini freak out, any time I put anything in front of her that is more than a short sentence. She gets phonics rule instantaneously, and can read all the words that follow rules that she already knows. Is there anyway to improve her confidence? Will it naturally improve, or should I be doing something to help her?
  14. Thanks, her writing is probably the only skill that isn't up to level right now, so I might just hold off until next year. She probably writes more at like a beginning K level. I'm not really sure, since I don't really know how to gauge how well or how much she should be writing.She can write short sentences, and still has problems with a few of her letters. I write half of her answers in ETC right now, because she gets bogged down by the amount of writing, but lately she has been taking over and writing it all about half the time. She will probably be finished with the ETC series by the summer. I don't think the rest of the curriculum is writing intensive at all, but I don't want to overload the writing. Mcgruffey Math so far has had very little writing, it is mostly manipulatives and games. I'm doing AAS, mosaics, piecemeal unit studies for science, reading, and HWT. I think I might buy it and if it doesn't work, we will just use it the next year.
  15. DD is four this year. I started explode the code with her, and she is over halfway through book two right now. She asked to do some math, so I just bought a math curriculum (mcgruffey), and she is doing awesome. We are working on handwriting too. So, basically, I'm trying to put together a curriculum for her for next year. Would writing with ease be too dificult for a bright 5 year old?
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