A Faraway Island is a decent book. It's about a couple of German Jewish girls who find refuge in Sweden during WW2 and goes through some of their trials there. Diary of Anne Frank Snow Treasure is great classic but isn't quite the region you're asking for.

Thanks for the help. As for curriculum choice, we settled on TGATB after trying WWS. I had used WWS for my older children but this particular child is strongly ADHD. He just couldn't handle the concentration needed to read through all the instructions and then to do the "boring" assignments. He kept trying to infuse wild creativity and informal language into those assignments and I had no idea how to handle that. I think that he was just too young and unaccustomed to focused academic work. TGATB is definitely not rigorous but he finds it stimulating enough and I'm seeing some improvements in his work as the year goes on. We may switch back to WWS when he's older but we'll see. I'll take a look at Jump In! too.

This is great advise. Thanks. I'll plan to do something along these lines. I was also thinking after I posted that I might introduce him to the concept of filler and see what he can identify on his own.

I've been using TGATB level 6 with some amendments. Can someone here give me some feedback on how to help my son improveon an essay about Australian wildlife. There are so many things to address her I don't know where to start. Factual issues are easy enough to deal with. Obviously grammar and punctuation are issues. I can address these in a straightforward manner. The tone of the whole thing just seems so juvenile but he is juvenile! Should I even address that? How can I tell him to sound more serious and yet try to engage his readers and be interesting? He's pretty sensitive. Thoughts? ————— Introduction a for “Wildlife Of Australia”. Australia has the best and craziest and exiting fauna ever. Wow, just read on. Australia is simply crazy it has between 200,000 to 300,000 animals. Guess how many species of animals there are in Australia. Well I’ll tell you there are actually 250 species of animals in Australia! Although there aren’t very many placental animals in Australia, but there are a lot of Marsupials. Introduction to possums. Possums are really some of cutest animals in Australia. All of those really cute and awesome possums have really great hearing. Male possums are called Jacks and the females are called Jill's. Wow now isn't that cool. Now I’ll tell you one more thing a family of possums are called a passel. Now we are done the opening paragraph for possums. That was fun wasn’t it. Possum No.1 The pygmy possum. Pygmy possums are arguably Australia’s cutest marsupials. Wow cool. Actually there are five different species of pygmy possums. Pygmy possums only eat nectar. Yum. Did you know that pygmy possums only live in trees. They have large eyes and long ears. They also have long whiskers. When there is lots of food pygmy possums tails swell with fat. Pygmy possums are nocturnal. The Greater Glider The greater gliders are primarily nocturnal. They are also extremely cute. They have have a tail about there body size. Wow now isn’t that cool. The grater gliders are actually 3 different species of marsupials. Now the most cool thing is that The greater Gliders can glide from tree to tree. Wow, how interesting. Greater Glider can glide up to 100 meters. They are in the family of Ringtail Possums. Wombats Wombats are some of the most cute and adorable animals. They are marsupials and they are born in a pouch. Wombats are particularly well known for their poo because it is square. Also adult Wombats use their bum to shield themselves from enemies. Gross. Smashed Dingo skulls have been found near wombat holes, some researchers think that they smash predators heads against the ceiling of their burrows. Fat Tailed Dunnart Fat Tailed Dunnarts are marsupials. They actually only eat meat. No fair. Dunnart babies are smaller than a grain of rice when they are born. That’s crazy. The Dunnarts tails are carrot shape because they will then have have extra fat for when there is famine. The Dunnart is a mouse like marsupial. Dunnarts are in the same family as the Tasmanian devil. If Dunnarts are captured they will gladly eat hard boiled eggs and minced meat. Dunnarts will actually eat common house mice when hungry, and they will cuddlle with them when cold. Wallaby Wallabies are marsupials native to Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Wallabies eat grass, leaves, and roots. There are nine species of the Wallaby. Adult Wallabies are called does, fryers, or Jill’s. The wallabies enemies are Dingo’s, Feral Dogs, feral cats, and red foxes. Humans are also a big threat to Wallabies due to making more and more cities. Wallabies can defend themselves by kicking and biting. They are like small kangaroos. And they are really cute. Closing To end, I just wanted to tell you that I picked some more of the cuter animals of Australia. If you ever have a chance to go to Australia I think you should try to see some of the animals from my essay. See you next time.

That's some good food for thought. I'll run the ezine idea by him. I'll have to think about how I might help him find some internal motivation. Writing seems so difficult because as a homeschooler he knows full well that he could communicate any information with me verbally much more easily than through writing. I'm imagine we'll figure this out. Thank you fellow "mother of many!"

I have a few children that really struggle to care about doing a good job on their school work. My 12 year old son in particular races through his work to move onto something more stimulating. His one and only goal is to get it done to a level that I will let him move on to something else. He acts like this with his chores too. I'm sure that this is normal for a lot of children but it seems to me that homeschooling makes this a little worse because a teacher's failing mark is worse than a mothers' and wondering if your peers will look down on you for a failing mark also discourages this. This can be particularly obvious with his writing. This boy oozes creativity from every pore. He writes stories for fun although they're horribly written because he just has to get the story out without pausing to think about grammar or spelling. He has stuff to say but forcing him to slow down and create a logical train of thought and then actually write it out in an engaging manner is like torture. Lately I've just been having him write letters about our life to the grand parents because at least that has the hope of a reply attached to it. But still it comes out something like this: His math suffers too but a little less so. At least with math it's a little easier to hold him accountable. Any thought?

Thanks!

That looks pretty good. Thanks.

Hey everybody. 👋 I haven't been around here in awhile but I always end up back here when I have a question. I have found myself more and more convinced that cutesy media is really not helpful for children. I hate trying to find early elementary resources that aren't sickeningly sweet or cutesy. I'm sure that some of it is the cheapness of producing digital animations that are cute vs. videos of actual people that are capable of giving an age appropriate presentation. Despite the great activities even Khan Academy Kids app annoys me (and my kids). The saccharine "KHAN ACADEMY KIDS!!!" in the introduction makes my hair rise. I feel like it belittles children and even sometimes humiliates them. I figured I might find some support here to find alternative resources. What I'm looking for are apps that are useful learning resources that have minimal cutesiness but are still able to engage young children. A few that I have found for young children that meet my requirements are GCompris, Tux Paint, and Scratch Jr. What do you use?

Hey all! I haven't been here for awhile but I always come back here when I need to find a resource because you all are the most knowledgeable people on the topic of homeschooling anywhere that I've seen on the internet. 💖 I have a very delayed 9yo boy and a very energetic 5yo girl that I would like to find a book to look at with that has some math question prompts. MEP's reception book is basically what I'm looking for but I need more than that. Any ideas?

Hey thanks! I actually just wanted a readable TOC anyways so this was perfect. I forgot about these. Perfect!

My son loves listening to SOTW while he does chores. He would really like a TOC for all four volumes. For some reason only V1 has descriptive chapter titles for the mp3 files. Would it be a copyright violation for someone to share with me the TOC?

Years ago I came upon a youtube channel that had a bunch of little old-school physics animations showing how forces, friction, etc. work. They were really simple line drawn animations made ages ago, maybe in the 60's. Does anyone know what I'm talking about or have a link for me?

I've never considered shorthand. I personally think that many handicrafts are way under valued. I think that some areas of Europe still intentionally teach handwork. Even if the child never takes off with knitting or woodwork at least they learn how to control their hands. I've tried to teach a few adults to knit but they just couldn't get their hands to obey. I suspect the lack of cursive practice is only going to exacerbate this problem. I was just looking into basket making with my children and came upon this old gem: https://archive.org/details/handworkitsplace00plai/page/n13/mode/2up

Interesting, I'm not sure. They do eat the chayote greens, watercress and parsley so I know that they're not adverse to eating greens. I'll have to look into that.