Over that last year our family has spent ten month living in Haiti. We're temporarily back in Canada for my husband to do a little work for money. Most of the time we were living on a mountain top a couple of hours from Port au Prince. We were constantly interacting with the local people. I don't know if I met a single woman there that was literate. Many of the men are illiterate too. It really struck me how profoundly their lack of education shapes them. I'll try to explain. These people have a terribly ignorant understanding of agriculture. They grow their crops but they don't give back to the soil in any way. They don't compost or add manure or anything. They don't terrace. They don't clear rocks. Their animal ruin many of the plants as they're growing. Their land is practically barren. I so wish to help them do better. The problem though is that they don't realize that there is any way to better. They lived their whole life without access to science. They don't access the internet or even television. When we told one fellow that we heard that there was a hurricane coming via the internet he was surprised that "they know that there". When we showed people pictures of our home most people didn't even know what snow was and were surprised that it was too cold to grow bananas in Canada. The people that were trying to help medically had never heard of protein or iodine. They just don't even know that there is knowledge out there that can help them if they were to go looking for it. Where could they even start looking? The only book that any of them own is a Bible and maybe some primitive school books. There's no library. Even if they get internet access on their phones how many webpages out there are in Creole? It's very sad. We didn't intend to stay so long when we left but there were many hold ups to returning. Consequently I didn't bring a lot of resources for my children. Our internet connection was also REALLY poor (hence my absence here). I felt like my right hand was cut off. I don't allow much of any screen time for my children but I do show the odd supplemental youtube video, etc. I use the internet for research all the time. I realized that if some reason we become stuck there I would need some really good textbooks and old fashioned hard work to manage to educate my children. Since being home I bought a massive sd card and downloaded wikipedia. 🙂 I'm stocking up all around. We also got a chance to watch a local school as we were housed in an apartment attached to an elementary school for several weeks. There were four classes running simultaneously in one large room. Wow, rote learning stinks. Lots of times tables chanting. Those children were constantly getting strapped. Education has come a long way in the developed world. All of these observations got me thinking about unschooling in Canada and the US. How does it ever work? How do people end up even remotely educated? The conclusion that I came to is that we're just so rich here that knowledge is everywhere. Intentional education is better but unschooling sort-of works when children are in a rich enough environment. Count your blessings.

This was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks 🙂

Thanks everyone for your feedback. Someone asked what I've tried. My favorite so far has been Science in the Beginning by Wile. My children just couldn't handle the textbook component. My next thought was to just do the demonstrations and follow the outline, summarizing the written component in my own words. The next set-back we ran into was that we're transitioning to living full time in Haiti as missionaries. All of sudden finding a balloon or jello powder has become impossible. I do have library books via the internet though so I've been thinking of trying to cover various topics with living books. Unschooling fails flat on it's face if you don't have engaging material for children to stumble upon. I just want to make sure that I provide those resources if I'm going to go that route.

My children seem to hate anything that looks like a science textbook but of course they're like every other child and science exploration runs in their blood. I'm thinking of ditching the curriculum outright, at least for elementary school, and switch to living books from the library. Rather than just winging it I would like a list for myself to consult now and then to see where my holes are. So basically what I'm looking for is a giant list of elementary school science topics to cover.

Thanks! I'm not sure if I'm going to find a perfect fit or if any non-consumable primary texts except the vintage ones and MEP (and it's consumable when it really comes down to it) even exist. We're using MEP but not at grade level. My 9yo is in the middle of y2 and my 7yo is in the middle of y1. I feel like 9yo would be capable of doing more difficult problems if the abstract stuff was removed. One of my older children had this issue too. She would cry every time she saw a table and took the longest time to figure out how to write the algebraic rule for the problem. Can even 10% of six year olds figure out a problem like this?: a 9 7 6 _ 4 9 b 3 5 _ 8 _ _ Write the rule for the table three different ways: (expected answer: a+b=12, 12-a=b, 12-b=a)

Greetings all. I haven't been here for awhile but I wanted to pop in and get some help. Here's my math history. I've been a big mep fan-girl and used it from y2 through gcse with my oldest. I've been working with it for my younger school aged children and am growing frustrated with it's weaknesses. It is an excellent program but I feel like it rushes into way too much abstract problem solving too early. There are too many exercise types and too much variety. My younger children are coming along through it but I'm finding it so teacher heavy because of all the variety. Now that I have so many littles I just can't spend 45 minutes a day with each child. I don't mind teaching but I need something that the children will understand to some extent what they're supposed to be doing when they face the days problem set. I really hate the look of R&S. It looks SO dry. I love math and I want a program that helps a child think and not just how to do the work. That said, I'm not sure grade 1 is the place to start this. Maybe getting some of the facts under their belt and then starting a conceptual program is the way to go. I'm undecided. Math-u-see doesn't really appeal to me either. I don't like doing a whole year of fractions. I can pull out manipulatives if I need them. Basically it looks cheap to me. As a side consideration, I would appreciate a program that is non-consumable if at all possible. I hate the waste and I have a lot of up and coming students. We're also considering missionary work in a very poor country so the fewer books we need to take the better an reordering might be difficult. I also have a younger child with significant delays. I've been thinking of doing something like Strayer-Upton just because it's a getter-done sort of program that we can do at his pace. I'm seriously considering Saxon but I'll probably switch back to MEP for middle school but maybe not. In summary: What I like about MEP: teaches mental math very effectively doesn't just coach children to use standard algorithms but helps them understand what they're actually doing doesn't just have pages full of drill conceptual free non-consumable metric (I'm in Canada) What I don't like about MEP: too teacher intense too abstract early on too much variety in the primary years; the children get confused Suggestions?

I just finished y9 with my DS16. I'm planning to continue with mep and do the GCSE work. I'm wondering how to implement it. He'll be doing the express level. Have any of you done this? How did you implement it? Also does anyone know what is going to happen to the mep yahoo group now that yahoo groups have folded?

Thank you, thank you! 👏I find it interesting how similar all these options are. I wonder at their history a little. There does seem to be some noticable differences I love the theory behind ddbd but I just cant get over all the patriotism. It's just too much to work around after the first book. This is a great tip. I'll have to remember it for later too.

My Father's Dragon Unce Remus - this oneis hillarious but some might find it inappropriate. My older two drove me crazy repeating portions of it after listening to it. Tom Sawyer Our Island Story-not a fairy tale but so good Peter Pan Heidi All found on good ol librivox

I used Our Mother Tongue when my older two were little. I thought it was OK. I'm planning on what to use with my next batch of littles. I keep looking at Serl's PLLbut I can'tfind a free version online. Googlbooks sells a copy but I can't fathom why since it's public domain. I keep wondering though if maybe it's better than Our Mother Tongue or Sheldon's PLL. Do any of you have an opinion or maybe a public domain version of Serl's to share?

My children will snicker at me but I'm going to try it. That would be a nice and easy accommodation.

Hmmm... I find this really interesting. The first link that I came upon when I googled what RAN/RAS scores were mentioned that people with EF dysfunction typically score low. I've known for some time that my EF is quite a bit lower than average. I highly suspect that I'm on the autism spectrum but I've never had this tested. I think that I'll play around with RAN/RAS practice. I'd love if you could find that link but don't sweat it too much. I'll see what I can put together. I'm not sure what else I could do to improve reading speed. I don't know about vision issues. I suppose it's possible but I'd guess that given how rural we are the closest developmental optometrist is probably many, many miles away.

You all have helped me so much with some of my children's issues. It made me wonder if perhaps you could suggest what might be causing some of my reading issues. I will start by saying that at least one of my sons is almost certainly dyslexic maybe that's all that my trouble is but I'm not sure. Ever since I was young I've been a terribly slow reader. I learned to read young but never picked up speed. To this day I can't read any faster in my head than I can out loud. Obviously this stunted my education and it continues to affect my ability to self-educate. I don't seem to have trouble reading complicated texts; I just can't read quickly at all. I realized that there must be something behind this when my dc were around 10 and could read a junk pre-teen novel twice as fast as I could pre-read it. I ended up giving up screening what they were reading and resorted to Goodreads and Amazon reviews to screen books. I felt like I was in highschool again resorting to Cole's Notes to get through English class. Any thoughts?

Thank you. Here's the pdf that I found: La_science_de_l_Oncle_Paul_J-H_Fabre_1926.pdf . The pictures are absolutely lovely.

I had trouble with 100 EZ lessons as well. When my two older children were about 7 I used it with them both. My ds caught on quite well and was truly reading by the time that we were done. My dd on the other hand worked through the lessons but when the markup was removed around lesson 70 she floundered. She just couldn't do without the scaffolding. She learned to read about 6 months to a year later with Spell to Write and Read. I think that her brain just couldn't grasp when to use the different phonemes. English spelling was just too illogical for her little brain. Interestingly though she's quite a good speller today, unlike ds. On a side note, I also wonder if 100 EZ lessons makes some children imprint capitalization errors. My ds, who is almost certainly dyslexic, just cannot remember to consistently capitalize where needed. This maybe just purely a dyslexia problem but I have wondered if 100 EZ lessons compounded the problem by exposing him at a formative stage to poor punctuation. I mentioned this on these boards awhile back and someone else also said that they wondered the same thing about their own child. Research on this subject would be really interesting.

I found the French! Google translate sheds no new light: I guess it just mean the moss that is growing on the hot roofing tiles is fed by God when it receives the rain.

Does anyone read French here that would care to weigh in? I suppose I could try to get a hint from google translate but we all know how good that is.

I agree. I feel like by the time my littles were old enough to understand the language they would be too old to enjoy the wonder of creation that is presented in the story. My older two did enjoy the story when they were younger but the language was definitely a barrier and I edited a lot on the fly.

I'm reading The Story Book of Science by Jean-Henri Fabre updating the language a chapter at a time before reading it out loud, so that my children can actually understand the story. If I manage to finish the project I'll post my updated version free online. Can anyone decipher for me what tile might mean in this context? I did check if it was a missed OCR error but it's the same in the image files from archive.org.

I've been thinking about this thread. I think I'm coming to the conclusion that having a large family necessarily does take some things away from our children BUT I'm also convinced that there are innumerable blessings in having a large family as well. I can't read so often to my younger children as I did with my older children but my younger children have so many more companions. I've noticed that when my older children were young I had more time for special projects but I also controlled much more of what they did. Now with my young children it's the opposite; I don't have time for all the projects but I allow them much more freedom because I just need them to be busy. My parenting style is completely different but I think that my children are better off now. They do get short changed in some ways but I really do think that it's worth it, even from their perspective.

WOW! My God's hand be with you. 👏

I hear you. I long to have more time to expand our studying. I've got one with dyslexia and my 5yo is probably on the autism spectrum. There's just absolutely no more hours in the day to squeeze out more. It's encouraging to me to see my older two on their way to becoming functional adults. For composer study, you could rely on audio as well. We found some classics for kids cassettes that my littles really enjoy. They're audio dramas about the famous composers. Here's an example of one we've listened to: Vivaldi's Ring Mystery. There might be some other ways to squeeze out a few extras if you're creative.

I don't know if you can see my signature but I've also got my hands full with 2 16yos, an 8yo, 6yo, 5yo, 4yo, 3yo, 1yo and a baby almost due. I've been thinking about how to streamline things too. I've been focusing on Bible as my focus with reading, writing and arithmetic as well. We have a family Bible time with memory work and hymn singing every morning. This almost always happens. I've been using various things to teach reading but once they're reading I like to use the Pathway readers, either for free reading or if they don't read much themselves as something they're required to read. I've been using MEP for math but I don't think that I can keep it up. I think that I need something quicker. I've been thinking about Ray's. I've also used R&S English for my older two. I really appreciated it. I plan to start my younger ones with the year 3 book when they're about 9yo. I've been reading SOTW1 to a couple of my little as just a read-aloud. Mostly though, I just use library books to cover history and science until about age 12. I just try to be intentional about the books that I pick. We're rural so they get a lot of nature exposure naturally. I'd probably do more intentional science if we lived in an urban environment. Just yesterday though I found a blog of a mother of 15 doing some CM style work. Here's the link: http://momdelights.com/index.php/2017/07/31/charlotte-mason-real-moms/. I found the idea of doing narrations with several children for the same text interesting and the idea of using copywork/dictation as a core part of our language arts a nice way to streamline school work. If you're interested in considering a gentler approach than Latin, you could consider English from the Roots Up. It's really nice. Librivox.org has a really good audio version of Our Island Story. You could use some audio books to cover your knowledge based subjects (e.g. history, science) and focus your school time on the skill based subjects (e.g. math, reading, writing, piano).

Thank you so much for all this food for thought. My ds8's older brother is mildly dyslexic with his main trouble manifesting itself in his writing. My 16ds still can't properly use capital letters or punctuation. I've never had any testing done but I strongly suspect that I could be diagnosed as autistic, with moderate EF disability. It really hadn't crossed my mind that ds8 might have similar difficulties to myself or ds16. When I mentioned WWS I wasn't really thinking of trying to start that anytime soon with ds8. I was just mentioning it because that's about the scope of my experience teaching writing and I'm not sure that it will fit ds8 very well when we get there because of how constrained the assignments are. We're actually still picking our way through WWS2 with my 16yos. Dd could probably get into something more mature but ds is definitely NOT ready to move on from there. I think for the time being I'm going to stick with the SWR and delve heavily into WWE. I'll probably modify it a bit. I'm not sure he needs much copy work. Just this morning he copied on his own initiative an entire hymn with only a few spelling errors. The spelling is only an issue when he's trying to do it from memory. Narration and dictation work would probably help him though. I'll also start looking at him a little more closely to consider SLD's.

I appreciate this. I'm quite short on time and so this is rather appealing to me. I can talk while I cook but I can't mark writing then. I just didn't want to short change him. I think that he feels a pressure to out perform his 16yo brother but obviously in most areas he just can't compete. This is one area that I think that he might stand a chance to form his own identity apart from his brother. I guess my follow up question would be what materials do you think would be helpful to him?