I suggest Getting Started with Latin as a starting point for everyone, too. After that you will be well-prepared to use pretty much any program you like. I am partial to Lively Latin because I like stuff the kids can do mostly independently.

We are doing Greek! So far we have started out with Hey Andrew and a bit of Song School Greek, moved to Elementary Greek, and plan to go to Mounce after EG is finished up. We are learning a lot, even though we only do it for a total of an hour a week! Since I didn't know much about grammar, I found studying Latin first pretty helpful for getting into Greek.

I just wanted to chime in and mention that I also pair Rod and Staff English with Writing and Rhetoric. Actually we have been using Climbing to Good English for the younger grades and then Rod and Staff for upper elementary (the fourth and sixth grade books). I find Rod and Staff to be a complementary resource for Writing and Rhetoric. I just use what we need from each, and we do a lot of it orally so we don't go overboard on written work.

I think maybe ElizabethB had posted that article?

Adventures in Phonics C is a solid phonics workbook with no busy work that can work well for older kids. (It is not secular, if that matters).

It is much easier to teach grammar to an older student. I am a fan of teaching poetry to younger elementary students instead of grammar. We read, memorize and enjoy poetry. I think it gets them a lot further than parsing does at that age. I have used Climbing to Good English 2 for second grade, which includes a little bit of grammar and enough mechanics to get them ready for writing. It is only one page a day... quick and easy. And it leaves us enough time to read stories, memorize poems, and sing songs.

I think it is a first grade problem (definitely in Singapore 1a). I seem to remember that type of problem being suggested in one of the chapter intros for MM 1, but it has been a long time since I looked at it and I could be remembering a different book.

Yep. I think it is kind of like math instruction. A lot of kids are taught how to divide fractions - flip the second fraction and multiply - but what is the point, if they can't apply that to a real problem? Doesn't mean teaching the rule for dividing fractions is bad, it just means it needs something else with it. Some kids pick up the concepts behind math or grammar naturally. Not me, though. I need the "why" of everything explicitly explained, preferably visually in a diagram or bar model. So I will use my Rod and Staff English and my Singapore math and just keep truckin'.

I agree that learning grammar through a foreign language can be really effective. We fly through Rod and Staff English because a huge portion of the concepts are first learned through our Latin and Greek studies.

I remember taking a college course designed to teach grammar and basic linguistics to students earning a teaching degree. Grammar for teachers, basically. We had to spend whole class periods on concepts like comma rules, because no one knew what a clause was. We had another class period on direct objects, just so the professor could explain when to use "whom." Another class period covered dangling modifiers. These were students that had already had general college English courses. It was so stupid. What was even more stupid was the attitude of some of the students in the class... future teachers.... they thought the class was a waste of time, since they got good grades in general English writing. It seemed they didn't care that they couldn't explain *why* writing a sentence one way was better than another.

Studies like that seem to imply that the only purpose of studying grammar is to write "properly." That is only half the picture. I do teach my kids grammar so that I can easily communicate to them how to improve their sentences. But grammar study can also help us understand the writing of others. An excellent book on this topic is "The War Against Grammar" by David Mulroy. I also have friends who grew up in the 80s with no grammar instruction in public school, and they each mentioned that they could not learn a foreign language in college because they did not understand any of the grammar terms and concepts. Whenever I see "studies" showing no benefit to grammar instruction, I assume the studies are really showing that it is the way the teachers are teaching grammar that is the problem, not the study of grammar itself. Or, the researchers are myopically asking the wrong questions about what grammar study is and does. There are so many antedotes coming from private school and homeschooling circles in favor of grammar instruction.... I just can't believe the types of studies that imply it is worthless.

We use Cross Seven (crossseven.org), which is about $4 per month. I haven't found it necessary to buy anything from Claritas, although I can see how some of the printed materials might be nice. I love having the memory work all on one weekly video. It has made Morning Time very easy on me.

As others mentioned you might have better luck finding resources if you search for resources for a specific area of Nor Cal - coast, valley, Sierra Nevada, etc. Each area is really different. But probably the most popular resource has already been mentioned, and that is John Muir Laws. Eta.... Both John Muir AND John Muir Laws are good resources

That is totally normal. You are doing fine!

The only thing a percentile does is tell you how he compares to other kids who took the same test in a particular year. So maybe the curriculum the schools used where they normed the test had a different emphasis on certain things than you did. Maybe he was way "ahead" last year and this year he learned more, but the students he is being compared to have finally caught up to him. If you are bothered by the results, maybe have him take the Stanford 10 or CAT-5 online through Seton and see what it looks like before you do anything drastic. Seton even has an algebra readiness test you could try.

Yes, but since the elder in question would not let the social worker into the house and told him at the door that she was fine, nothing happened. We had to move her into my house since we couldn't get the abuser to leave hers. By the time we got the county to issue and enforce a restraining order without her cooperation (several months), she passed away. I was only able to convince her to move out to my place because her home health care workers told her they would not visit unless she did (they were able to say this because the abuser was a personal safety risk to the workers as well as to the elder). It turned out she had a very happy last few months with us and we didn't regret having her at our house at all.

Singapore. But you kind of have to start from the bottom with it, so I doubt it would be fruitful for your family now. As a supplement for word problems, Thinking Blocks on the desktop site version of MathPlayground.com is excellent (and free).

Both my family of origin and my husband's are like this, except with generally better filters on their mouths. Sounds totally normal, to me.

I like Climbing to Good English and Sequential Spelling online, which are both able to be done without much mom time.

They want you to notice that the -er ending is for someone who teaches or helps, rather than a suffix to show comparison. The -s ending is for third person present tense verbs (writes and hugs) rather than part of a root word or a plural noun.

My 5th grade son enjoyed "Bomb" by Steve Sheinkin. Not exactly a biography, but an interesting science-oriented history narrative.

I have a 5 year old like that right now and she loves working in Singapore PM 1a. I have to help her with Singapore though, since she can't read, but when I am not available she enjoys the math sections on Starfall.

We have this http://cacapital.org/womens-business-center-2/

I personally like using SoTW because it emphasizes the humanity of politics, and tells world history as a story at a level I think is appropriate for kids. As someone who believes Genesis is history, I actually prefer to use history resources that leave out Bible stories. I skip the chapters in SOTW on Joseph, Moses, and Jesus. I like to read Bible passages right from the Bible. And I have no problem with where SOTW begins because it describes what historians know happened after the Tower of Babel. Since there are no reliable records of anything before that besides the Bible, I prefer to use the Bible itself as our history source. I view myself, not books, as the teacher of my kids, so I use lots of resources, including secular ones. I expect all books to contain errors, so the level of errors I are comfortable with may vary from what others are comfortable with. As for errors in SOTW, I don't think the Bible stories were told outright erronously so much as emphasizing certain information differently than what is traditionally expected in some circles. And since it is a world history book, of course it will add extra-Biblical info to Bible stories. That is the whole point of studying history. I noticed a couple of reviews on CBD had a problem with the Abraham story, but they were only looking to Genesis for their info and ignoring Joshua 24 (Abraham's father was a pagan) and Acts 7 (Steven mentions the death of Abraham's father).

I believe you certify that you understand the lawss, then have a friend agree to be the official admin for work permits for your school and issue it to your kid on your behalf. Private schools can do it, but the actual issuer can't be a parent of the kid it is going to. Here is a link: http://www.cheaofca.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.viewPage&pageID=890&nodeID=1#forms Oh I posted before I saw what Calming Tea said. I agree that PSPs are handy for high schoolers for these reasons.