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Kristie in Florida

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Everything posted by Kristie in Florida

  1. I was recently gifted some textbooks and I have a few questions. Having these free textbooks given to us was a huge blessing because we are currently having money issues so I would like to use them. Regarding a United States history textbook from 1987: What would I have to look for in terms of racism, prejudice, and historical inaccuracies? I can't think of any specific examples at the moment, but I am aware that I would possibly have issues with a textbook written before the sixties. I'm not sure if a textbook written in the 1980's would have similar issues. I plan on doing Logic stage history exactly as it is outlined in WTM, and I already have the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia. This textbook would just fill in any gaps that I couldn't fill at the library and be another text to outline from I assume. Regarding science textbooks: I haven't the slightest idea HOW to use it and what to assign. I don't have the teacher's edition. I can't afford to buy lots of extra kits so the WTM way of science is pretty useless to me, I think. Although now that I am writing this I can come up with a few free things, like nature study to go along with biology, for example. Any other ideas? The particular textbook is biology which is amazing because that was my plan for next year, but the mom who gifted these to me has other books to pass along as well. So for the next year I have a biology textbook, an internet connection (netflix), and the library. I have spent so much brain energy wrapping my brain around how to do the other subjects in a way that I can afford, I have no more to spare for science. Before today I was going to just make do with the library and the internet. I had found CK-12 and was pretty excited, but we prefer real live books., not books we'd have to read with the Kindle app on the computer. The CK-12 books had teacher editions so I had the answers and a plan. I guess I just need the answers and a plan. My baby is teething and I didn't get much sleep, so please excuse any run on sentences and other silly things. I hope this all made sense! Oh yeah, this is for "fifth grade" but my daughter is above grade level.
  2. TOG became a very expensive booklist for us. We had R&S math, English, and spelling fail for us this year too. We are a Christian family and I couldn't understand before how something was too Christian. Now I do.
  3. Very glad that I'm not the only one threatening public school. Confession: We are apparently taking the afternoon off. She did amazing before lunch and I forgot to tell her to get back to work after lunch. I probably won't. Also, she had brownies with a side of waffles for breakfast.
  4. Thank you, Hunter. We are saving up for the curriculum that she really really wants and Language Arts was pushed into the pile of "I can figure it out for free because my degree was in Middle Grades Reading and Language Arts." Heh. She is am amazing reader and writer and truly really wants to learn and self educate. Her spelling issues really threw me for a loop and I didn't know how to help her. She LOVES diagramming, algebra, and thinking through things. Spelling just wasn't making sense.
  5. This! You pretty much said what I've been slowly realizing lately.
  6. We've been using that website. The only problem is that sometimes it will give more than one suggestion and I don't have enough background in grammar to know which one would be best.
  7. Thank you! She reads all the time. She is currently reading Little Women and Princess and the Goblin. She'she is ten. She is also exasperated when words don't spell the way that she thinks they should, and she wants to know why. She wants to know, for example, why secret, forget, and other et ending words don't end with it. Her dad told her yesterday that it is because we took the words from other languages, kept the spelling, but changed how we said them, so now it makes sense to her. We also started having the dictionary on the computer pronounce the trouble word instead of me, because sometimes my pronunciation sucks. Having all of these free resources is amazing. I'm just learning how to use them. Our library is also pretty good, I also have family that will help as soon as I ask for help. I think the asking is the worst part.
  8. Okay then, I shall hijack. :) We were doing Spelling Workout Level D because I read that that is where a fourth grade poor speller should start. After awhile though the exercises became busy work, and she wasn't internalizing the rules in order to spell similar words correct in her writing. She would bomb the weekly spelling test most times. She went to public school through Kindergarten to third grade and I was starting to think that she didn't learn phonics rules. In her third grade class they didn't teach spelling at all. I dropped Spelling Workout and we started writing letters back in forth in a notebook, in order for her to write in a fun way that didn't seem like school work, but I don't know how to explain each spelling mistake that she makes to her. I have noticed some improvement. In case some examples helps: secrit for secret grate for great skreems for screams wate for wait calpicated for complicated exepchion for exception Seeing it on the screen makes me think that she knows the sounds, but not the words. She was getting very exasperated with herself when she saw that she was getting 18 words wrong out of 20 on tests so we dropped spelling as a formal subject. I began to wonder if I had to change how I taught spelling. So far I have narrowed it down to All About Spelling or Spelling Power, but I have no way of buying curriculum for months.
  9. Regarding the spelling lists, would the video workshop I haven't had time to watch yet (I'm also a mother of a seven month old that won't nap) teach me how to actually use the lists and a list of common spelling rules? I don't know if I actually know how to teach spelling. I don't want to high jack your thread with our spelling woes so I won't get into them here.
  10. Hunter, I've been lurking for years and only started to officially home school my daughter (4th grade) this past July. I made an account today just to reply to this post. It is exactly what I've been looking for. Our previous LA curriculum was just so not working and we didn't have money in the budget for more. Things suddenly got so dire I might not have money for next year's schooling at all. This post and others like it are a godsend to me and I just wanted to say thank you! I will stop being a stranger now.
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