My two older dc really needed solid intentional grammar instruction. I jumped around until landing on R&S and haven't looked back. I just couldn't get them to grasp when to use a comma, for instance, without solid, systematic instruction into the order of English. To me it's like trying to take a whole language approach to reading or maybe a better example would be only presenting math through word problems without any of the symbols as tools.

I fall somewhere in the middle. NYC subway would make me nervous even with an 18yo but I do allow my 14yos to bike freely around the city as long as I have a time that I know that they'll be back by (aka. the magic time that I'm allowed to start getting anxious at). They've been doing this for a couple of years now. We recently sent them on the rapid transit together for a special errand. What still makes me nervous though is letting my 14yo dd go out alone, especially after dark. It's not that I don't trust her, it's that I don't trust men. I think that those pre-teen years are really the best time to start letting the leash out. It's so helpful for me to think about how dc this age have held responsibility in different times and places. Some 14yos get married! It works our for them. Maybe it's not ideal but it works, probably because they had to take responsibility really young. I think that it's our society that is strange (that said, I'm not match-making for my 2 14yos any time soon).

These are really common in Canada. Pretty much all neighbourhoods are switching over, even in the cities. They've been the norm in rural location for as long as I can remember. Canada is different though in that mail was traditionally delivered to a mail box right at your door or through a drop slot in the door. I guess the community boxes were started in the areas where the mail carriers would have had to walk much to far to complete their routes. Things are changing now though and Canada Post is feeling the pinch from the courier companies so they're trying to save money wherever they can.

Good job. Before you know it you'll be a full fledge free range parent sending him on the NYC subway by himself :D

I've tried to start many times but we never can stick with it. I think that it seems so aimless to me. It's like this: go for a walk, find something "interesting", come home, draw it, write a few sentences. This just doesn't engage my children the way that I long to see them engaged in nature. I think that I might have killed the any possible joy of this in my older two but I still have hope for my new batch of littles. We do go for walks and explore nature all the time. Just the other day, dc6 found a dead grasshopper on his own and came and showed me his treasure. We made an origami box to save it in. I had him count the legs and pointed out that it had six legs like all insects. Maybe we could have journaled that. Maybe I should have found a "living" book about grasshoppers. I suppose that I still could do that. How do you implement nature journaling? Do you do guide your dc in what to look for or do units like the Handbook of Nature Study suggests? What resources do you use for further research? Do your dc like the research? How has your implementation changed as your children have grown? Do you have any good links?

I'm thinking of blogs that cover middle or highschool although some stuff for littles is fine too. I lean toward CM but am definitely not all the way there. I'd like to see stuff that would inspire learning in older children.

This is what I would do.

I heartily suggest MEP. My older two didn't read until they were 7 and 8 but were thoroughly enmeshed in MEP at that point. The only thing that I would add to the get yourself started instructions above is to make sure that you don't scale the A4 pages to 8.5x11 or else all the measuring exercises will be thrown off. The only thing that will get cut off will be the page numbers. You can pencil them in afterward. There's a yahoogroup that has a heap of files and lots of archived discussions that can help answer any question. You can also ask me. We've been doing it for years now. I currently have 3 in different levels of MEP.

What do you have for me? I need some mental stimulation. :)

Grey made me wonder if there might be some other ey words that are retained in British spelling but are dropped in American spelling.

I don't have anything to add to the discussion but I wanted to say that I'm looking forward to seeing what you end up producing. :)

I'm resurrecting a dead thread. Is this a sin? :scared: Anyway, I was wondering if you either know where I can find this list now or have a copy of it somewhere in your records.

I'm just doing a little research. Goodreads has a bunch of books by this title. Do you know that author?

My two 14yos have decided that biology is boring. I've been thinking of introducing some narrative style books to put some life into biology studies. Biographies of biologists like Pasteur or the story of medical discoveries would probably work well. Books that touch on how biological studies impact our daily lives would be particularly helpful. I don't think that they've grasped how important biology really is. I've personally enjoyed Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich but I don't think that this sort of book will work for them. I think that they would have a hard time grasping why anyone would spend some much time studying ravens and I doubt they would appreciate learning so much about them themselves. I think that Fabre's books would similarly not work here. We need books that really show the value of biology. Does that make sense? We've read through Red Madness and that was a good hit. We need more of those sorts. Other branches of biology besides medicine would also be helpful.

Have you thought about National Georgraphic articles or the likes? My dc have loved NG for years now.

Beautiful!

I think that author singled out Japan because there seems to be a lot of respect here for Japanese society.

Yeah, that is definitely a weak point in the article. Even if Canadians are more anxious there could be scores of others reasons for that.

I'll change the subject to avoid ambiguity. I've always assumed that that term means that the government uses laws to protect people whether they like it or not.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/protecting-kids-from-childhood-1.4297653 I know that we've all talked about the nanny state before. This article hits close to home because we live in BC. I lean heavily toward the free-range parenting style. I'm hoping that just the fact that there is press coverage of this situation is an indication that tides might be changing. What do you all think?

R&S English MEP math. Oldest two started in MEP 2 and are now on MEP 6 & 7. DS 6 is half way through MEP 1. I really appreciate MEP.

Thank you for this advise. I appreciate having a concrete plan to execute. I've just spent a little more time cruising through your website. I think that I located everything that you're referring to on this page: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/syllablesspellsu.html . The only thing that I seemed have a bit of trouble finding was the 3 versions of the nonsense words. Could you link to them here?

I'm just getting my feet wet with Webster's. I've got two children that I'm working with neither of whom are in your target age range. As I mentioned in a recent thread, my 6.5yo is struggling to differentiate some of the short vowel sounds. We're Canadian; I don't think that it's our regional accent. I started trying to implement some of your suggestions for simplifying matters. My lessons right now are about 10 minutes long. I have him spell about 5-10 syllables, read about 15 of them, then spell maybe 5 or 6 two syllable words. He likes putting these into sentences so I usually try to make up a sentence that would be easy for him to understand phonetically. For example, yesterday I think we had "A gi-ant is bad." This may seem like a long lesson for his age but he's got a pretty good attention span. Does this sound about right to you? For my older ds, I'm a little confused how to proceed. He's 14yo and I'm pretty sure that he's dyslexic. He learned to read late with 100EZ lessons and then we used SWR for years. His reading now is just fine, probably above grade level, except with nonsense words, then he's startlingly bad. His most common mistake is to swap letters around. For example, bamsplat might become splambat. His spelling is another issue all together. His inability to spot errors on his own seems directly related to his inability to read the nonsense words. According to the SWR assessment he's at a grade 4.5 spelling level. I've recently showed him how to read the syllables. He's working through your spelling videos although most of it is review for him from SWR. Now when we face a spelling mistake in any of his writing we break it apart into syllables and sound it out. We then try to fix the errors using spelling rules and phonics principles. How else do you think that I could use Webster's to help him improve his spelling? Before too long here I'm going to be adding my 4.5yo to our Webster's lessons. Do you have any tips for starting with a brand new student with no other exposures? I also want to add a hearty thank you for your efforts. I love these boards for the help that they've been to us but it's the people here that make them so valuable so thanks again. :)

Thank you all for your advise. We're going out of town for the weekend so I'll have to process your advise on Monday. Thanks again.

We were trying just this with Alphaphonics. He just couldn't get ahead because of the vowels. We slogged through till probably lesson 40 and I kept prompting him figuring that he'd catch on sooner or later but it didn't happen. That's what motivated the switch. I was aiming for something more fundamental than even Alphaphonics. Off to google auditory processing disorder...