I recently started teaching my 2 11yo children grammar (yes, we're behind). The first few lessons have been so sad. Lesson 1 was nouns, lesson 2 was verbs, lesson 3 was adjectives. Each lesson was just a basic introduction, no subcatagories. By the time we were on lesson 3 my dd had forgotton what a noun was! She struggles so much with any vocabulary related learning which seems to be all of grammar. Do any of you have any tips or curriculum suggestions that we might be able to work with?

I got thinking recently about my two eleven year olds and some of their struggles with learning. Both of the them are extremely different. I just recently learned about visual-spacial learners and first I thought it might be my dd but on a closer look I was surprised to identify my son quite clearly. I'm going to try some visual techniques to improve his spelling and consider how I might work with his writing issues given this discovery. My daughter, though, I still don't know how to understand. Maybe some of you could help. She's bright, can naturally spell, struggles some with math concepts but does quite well on tests because she's slow and cautious (unlike ds). She's flighty and distractable but way more empathetic than me. She also a really creative writer although her grammar lags. She tries to use punctuation and grammar that is above her knowledge because she's seen it in books. She loves to sing. She is also very disorderly. A sequential, systematic approach to life alludes her. She can take 4 hours to do a half hours worth of math or two hours to wash dishes but she can read a book that she enjoys for hours. She cries whenever she doesn't understand something right away. Does anyone have any thoughts on what I'm describing?

So how do you teach a right brained students when you're not even sure you have a right brain?

Intersting idea. I love mep. My two older children are doing y4 as well. I definitely skip things in the teachers book. I try to focus on the parts that I know will challenge my children. That, after all, is the point. With my son I would love to jump him ahead because the work book is too easy for him BUT the teacher lessons are still challenging. So much of y4 part b seems to be training them in problem solving and how to create and manipulate their own equations in order to solve more complicated word problems. It seems like the foundation of algebra. I just can't bring myself to allow him to jump past that. I like your idea though. I think that I will start skipping day 5 with him in order accelerate a little.

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Hi all, I recently found in our dump's reuse shed a wonderful treasure. It's a textbook for education students called Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally by John A. Van de Walle and Sandra Folk. It seems like a great supplement to any math curriculum. You can use it whenever your students need a little more help to figure out where their understanding is holding them up and then it provides specific lesson suggestions to help them through the hurdle. I've appreciated the book but I've also discovered that the book's online companion site is really helpful as well. It provides a number of resources such as liturature supplements to complement different math concepts. What I've appreciated most though are what they call the Blackline Masters which are printable pdfs that are visual aids or free manipulatives. I hope you enjoy them. Rose

Thank you. :)

Do you have lists like this for any other subjects? You've done a much better job at organizing your resources than I have. I've just got scads of books on a usb key sorted by subjects. Reading level would be a great idea. I love public domain. :)

Let me overwhelm you all. :) http://physicsdatabase.com/book-list-by-title/

I'm sure you all have had many threads like this before but I really could use a little help. :) I have 2 eleven year old children. We've been basically been largely unschooling with some haphazard writing instruction and assignments from various public domain sources. They can handle sitting down and being disciplined for awhile but their writing skills are definitely below grade level. I'm not sure exactly where to place them. Writing has always seemed like an elusive subject for me to teach. I'm ready to buckle down with them and do some more formal eduction but I'm not sure what curriculum to start with. I'm looking seriously at wwe3 or wwe4 or maybe wws1. I want them to find the work interesting enough to engage them which is why I'm considering wws1 but I'm just not sure they're ready. Do you suppose wwe3 or wwe4 would be stimulating enough for 11 yos? Do you think that wws1 could work with bright 11 yos without a solid background in writing. Any other suggestions? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

This has been a question for me for years. We're young early Christians and have found soooo many books to come from an evolutionary perspective. For the most part when they were younger I just told them that other people believe x but we believe y because we believe the Bible is true. Some books I've just said aren't for us. With some ancient history like dinosaurs I've just told them that I don't know how they fit in with the Bible and have suggested a few possibilities (they went extinct pre-flood, they never existed, etc). I've dealt with so many issues that way. I read them a secular ancient history book and just said several times through the first few chapters that I didn't know how it all fit together but that I have faith that it does. I also point out that the secular historians are piecing together evidence into a plausible story that fits their assumptions as much as we are. Both sides take faith and some pretty big assumptions. This gives me some peace in just saying that I don't know. Nobody empiracally knows even if they state things as if they do. No one alive today was there to tell us how it all actually came about. There's really no shame in saying that you believe something simply because you believe the Bible to be true. The scientific evidence doesn't need to intimidate you. You believe that the Bible is true without having to understand how it all fits together; your children can too.

Hello, I'm a new poster here. This seemed like a good forum to seek answer from. :) I have a 10 & 11 year old. We're Canadian but we're looking immigrating to the US (OR to be specific) at some point. I've looked at the state laws for homeschoolers and see that it involves some standardized testing. I'm concerned that they'll flunk the history sections. We've done a bunch of ancient and biblical history but no American history whatsoever. They could probably name 2 or 3 presidents, list maybe 3 or 4 of the original colonies and tell you which side of the continent was settled first. :laugh: I suppose they do know all the history to be gleaned from the Little House books. Anyways, I was thinking of having them read a history book, preferably a narrative style history or maybe read one to them. I'm just thinking of a brief overview hitting on major events and people. I have a great preferance for public domain free books but I'll buy one if I'm in a pinch. I read the negative reviews on Amazon for This Country of Ours by H.E. Marshall and was a little frightened. I'm also not particularly interested in anything with a heavy patriotic bias. That's pretty hard to find in a US history book! Do you have suggestions?