These are awesome ideas! I'm going through this thread with my boy and he's super excited. Thank you, Hive!!

Ugggh, I meant to put this on the General Board!

I want to support his passions but I'm tech-challenged and I feel out of my league. :) He likes drawing and building things. He's always talking about robots and he's received a few kits as gifts, but it doesn't seem to be what he's looking for. He likes to make stop-motion videos (very basic), anything to do with computers, snap circuits, games, and puzzles. I feel lame. I spent most of my free time playing sports and reading. I'm delighted to have a little supergeek in the family, but I don't know what to with him. My husband found him some sort of robotics thing with a local company once a month, but I'm looking more for projects he can do on his own. Please point me in the right direction! Thanks :)

#1 The Office. Painfully funny. #2 Seinfeld. I named my cat after Kramer when I was younger. 😊 #3 Big Bang Theory. I'm a little over the constant Christian-bashing, so I don't watch it much. Sheldon reminds me of one of my kids, though, which makes it so much more fun for my husband and I. This same child (age 9)busted out "Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock" last week and I almost lost it. He must listen from his bed at night! I have a soft place in my heart for the TGIF shows from my childhood. 💕

We love WWS and Kilgallon. Abeka grammar gets the job done fairly painlessly.

What does her daily work look like? If it is just the meeting stuff that trips her up, I would move on to 5/4. It has SO MUCH drill and review. My daughter caused me so many sleepless nights at that age. She just had no number sense. We just moved forward slowly and consistently. Just before her 12th birthday it was like a light turned on. She consistently scores over 90% on daily work and tests now. She's finishing 7/6 and will move on to pre-algebra next year.

We have used the worksheets in the back of the consumable book. I proclicked copies of the lesson and test worksheets, along with corresponding fact practice and misc forms. My kids still had to copy the problems, but even my 4th grader with dysgraphia was able to do that without a problem. (Not to say that all children can or should do that, of course.)I appreciated the checklist that reminded them to do lesson corrections, fact practice, etc...

You have a brother that looks like Matthew Fox?! :huh:

And the hipster thing.

Skinny jeans for males. Just no.

I would consider public school. It might help your family get plugged in (definitely more than a small church school would). You can take care of your baby and clean your house and bake cookies before they get home from school. It won't be perfect, but nothing ever is. I'm sorry if I'm not gentle enough, but I do GET it. Honestly, that's why I am being so blunt. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this play out, and how close I came to being in a very similar situation.

You know what kills a child's love of learning more than workbooks? Inconsistency. It sounds like you've found what works for you. Do it!!!

I also think incremental/spiral programs get more difficult as the concepts get more difficult. I haven't seen the way Right Start handles this, so there may be a method that works. But who wants to learn long division or fractions and only have a few problems before zooming off to focus on something else the next day?? Crazy-making!!!

I used Saxon for years because I teach conceptually. I assumed I had intuited my own conceptual understanding and my own children would do the same. I conveniently forgot that my grade 5-6 math teacher was Hungarian and I spent years in math competitions that taught me problem-solving skills. It took many years of being vaguely dissatisfied with traditional math methods before I realized what was lacking. So I switched not because of a bandwagon, but because I wanted a program that explicitly presented concepts I had been presenting on my own (not to mention the outstanding word problems).It saves me TONS of time. Why don't you give Singapore a try? Keep Horizons around in case you hate it, but it isn't a lifetime commitment, ya know? ðŸ˜

The r&s workbook is fine. Have you considered Galloping the Globe (uses Our Father's World workbook) or Cantering the Country? The Complete Book of American History/Geography/Animals Road Trip USA (coah) Evan Moor geography workbooks I was going to suggest the CLP workbooks but I just saw you've already ordered. :) In any case, GTG would save you some time looking for activities/books/recipes.

I have one child who was like this and she has hypothyroidism and vitamin D deficiency. Her main symptoms were excessive fatigue, dark circles under her eyes, and stomach pain. Obviously this is unlikely to apply to you since ALL of your kids are like this, but I do think it is a bit odd. Do you have a family history of autoimmune disorders? DD's suffered for years before she was diagnosed. They just don't look for those things in little children.

I can't seem to get around the phone verification. This is frustrating!

The burner email is perfect! I'll check out hush mail when I get home. I can't seem to access a free option from the mobile site. Thanks!

Is there a free email service that doesn't require you to provide a current email address and phone number? I've tried Outlook, gmail, and yahoo. I want to ditch an old email address and I don't want it following me. :) Thanks!

What do your schools use? Our local public schools use Jump Math and Math in Focus. MIF, Singspore, and MM would all transition well. I once sent kids to school after using Saxon and they were all well-prepared. That was in a different district, though.

Oh, and paging my boyfriend before cell phones!😋

I remember calling my bank for the last 10 transactions to balance my bank account. I actually monitored my checking account more faithfully in those days!

We hosted family for Christmas this weekend, so I'm still reading through all of the replies. I gave ds the Barton screening this morning and he failed every section. :( He doesn't have ASD. He is on the waiting list for a full clinic that will do all the evals. I requested this particular clinic because the doctor is the best in the state and I trust him. My insurance will cover anything done through his clinic or with his referral, but anything else is out of pocket. I'm lucky to have received the referral to this clinic in the first place and I had to fight tooth and nail to get it. The local school is overcrowded and giving me the run-around, which is why I wanted ds to be evaluated at the clinic with the educational psychologist in office. This doctor is great with adhd/gifted kiddos because he and his own children have the same diagnosis. :) He was able to qualify my older ds for a state disability scholarship without an ASD diagnosis and he will do his best to get younger ds all of the accomodations and invervention he possibly can. All that to say, we're heading in the right direction as far as getting help but it is going to be a few months before we get there. DS can look at pictures and match it with the letter that begins its name, as long as he has already learned the letters and sounds. For example, his ETC A book had a page that showed a turtle, belt, tent, money, television, fence, kitten, and balloon. There is a wheel that has m,b,t,b,f,k and he is able to match the correct pictures and letters. He doesn't know the letter names, though, just the sounds. And if he sees the letter b in isolation, he might say /d/. I was discouraged at the Barton screening, but maybe I just need to use something more explicit until we get the evals and find out exactly what is going on. ETA: I'm going to make an appointment to see his primary care physician and see if he will give us a referral to see a SLP. He needs speech anyways, but his family practice doctor didn't see a need last time I asked him. I usually have to push. *sigh* They can give the CTOPP? That might get us help a little bit earlier.

What sort of difficulties should I look out for? Sometimes I don't *see* things, KWIM? Dekodiphukan looks brilliant! Thanks! I found the screening and I'll give it to him this week. Yeah, the discrepancy is what really bothers me. I used to tutor ps kindergarteners who were having trouble learning letters and sounds, but this just seems different to me. What is CTOPP? The neuroped is because both he and older brother were flagged for ASD at one point. The neuroped hasn't seen him yet but he gave us some advice to help him with his insane sleep issues. Now that we have that under control, we're not seeing a lot of those red flags anymore. The doctor still wants to see him because we both feel like he could benefit from the full evaluation. I tried to call the school to see if I could get him evaluated but they are unable to take/return calls. What else should I be doing? I've taught Abeka phonics and I usually use Phonics/Reading Pathways, but you just can't progress without learning letter sounds. We've done blend ladders and he melts down. We use tiles and he melts down. I'm trying to imagine a more explicit phonics method than PP or Abeka, but I can't even imagine what that would look like. But then I see the sound cards a pp mentioned and I can see where that might lead to blending, so apparently there ARE more incremental (?) methods out there that I know nothing about. What do you recommend? Thanks :) We have processing and working memory discrepancies, too. I don't really even understand how to address everything yet. I'm paralyzed with too much information right now! I didn't realize an OT can do all of those things. A doctor had recommended an OT eval for my older son but they completely missed his dysgraphia, hypotonia, and a few other things. This son has amazing core strength (he stands on his head a lot! lol) but he's always falling all over the place during his soccer games. It is weird. Ladies, thank you so much for your input. I feel like I waited too long for interventions with my older kids and I didn't know if I was overreacting the other way this time. I'm going to start with the Barton screening and see how that goes.

We're still stuck on letter sounds! I can't even get him to blend s-a, even though he firmly knows the sound for both of those letters. Right now we're using letter tiles, foam puzzles, flashcards, songs, and games I make up to practice letter sounds. He finished ETC A (minus the handwriting) which has worked on some phonemic awareness stuff. I usually use Phonics Pathways to teach phonics, but he isn't to a place where he can work through that book yet.