Have you looked at Apples and Pears?

My oldest child is a boy and has ADHD. He has only now become ready for sit down type of work. He's almost 7. He writes cursive letters and his numbers well. My almost 5 yr old girl seems to be able as well, though her attention span for traditional work seems about 20 min shorter. We take frequent mini-trampoline breaks. I really like combining them for content. I feel like we could combine for more skills as well if I caught her up. She has the readiness (phonemic awareness, etc.) he didn't have at his age but I haven't spent much time teaching her how to write her letters or numbers, so I'm transcribing a lot for her and having her trace just some of my writing. She does know most of her letter sounds and blends easily. I guess I'm just wondering how much of a disservice I would be doing my son to take some of his tutor time on reading to help her with the writing and catch her up to his reading level (CVC words, simple silent E words, some consonant digraph words). Then we could do more group reading and spelling dictation lessons. He does seem to like doing the easier work with her because it makes him feel like the big brother who knows more :) But I worry that she will feel stupid by comparing himself to her. Has anyone done this? Do you regret it?

Thank you. That helps me feel like I'm not alone. Good suggestions. Mine are almost 7, almost 5 and almost 3.

After advice from this forum, I read the lessons, made notes and then do individual tutoring my way, which is faster.

SWR has decent explanations for even these. They are still a stretch though :) Eye supposedly has two silent e's because it would look weird for the "y" to be alone? Each "e" can be pictured as a bag under the eyes. One and once have the root words of one and alone and only? This is what is taught; I cannot verify if it's true.

I'm really having a hard time knowing if and when to cut my two chatty kids off during lessons. They are both super creative, and all their comments and rabbit trails are insightful. They make awesome connections, even if they are not on topic. I usually encourage this kind of thing. But the problem is that it takes us FOREVER to get through a lesson because of it, and I'm starting to get aggravated. I am constantly being interrupted by one of the kids. I also do wonder if it would be a good social skill for them to learn that not everyone is always interested in hearing it lol! This balance is really hard...

The older child asks to keep going after it's over, so I can give him see extra things to do while she breaks, like MEP sheets or the creative writing I mentioned.

Great advice about stopping sooner. Maybe I'll break each workbook into 2 sessions with breaks.

Instead of wading through the Dolch list, I would love to find a list of words that are truly rule-breakers and cannot be sounded out with phonograms. Anyone know of such a resource?

The phonics is why I like it :)

His sister that is

He also colors while his catches up

Thanks Rosie. I stress too much :) my son loves the workbook. Just a year ago he hated them. But I think what he likes about this one is that he colors it. He's very artistic and the lack of color in the books helps him express that

I don't Know but I hate them! Just kidding :)

I really like interest-led learning but recently started CLE math 1 for my almost 7 yr old (review and filling in gaps for him) and almost 5 yr old (new for her) due to my own teaching style issues (parental ADD and OCD). It gets done, and We are really loving it. I transcribe for my daughter when she starts to zone or or get that "I'm done" look. I add in some Right Start and c-rod stuff when a new conceptual topic appears. I'm really thinking of adding CLE reading and then language light units, just for 1st and half or 2nd grade. After that I plan to just do SWR or Logic of English Essentials combined with lots of interest-led creative writing. But I'm concerned that doing 2 subjects of workbooks will burn the kids out or make them hate learning, especially the younger child. Right now they love learning and I don't want to ruin that!!! Maybe I could spread out the workbooks by having more informal child-led projects every third day or something. My son likes writing stories to go with drawings to make a book, for example. Or we like math labs sometimes. I love the workbook approach in some ways, at least for this first grade year but I've heard so many anti-workbook statements that I'm afraid to do too much workbooky stuff.

https://pronunciationcoach.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/the-sounds-of-u/

LOE would say that "fun" is not schwa. They would also say that "love" is not schwa, but just a schwa-like sound. https://www.logicofenglish.com/blog/60-spelling/389-the-clever-monks-why-o-sometimes-says-short-u

It probably doesn't matter, but it's bothering my OCD :)

I agree. I think it's pronounced the same way. It's just a matter of whether the É™ symbol or the word "schwa" accurately represents the sound in the word "fun" or "love" or if it should only be used for words like "afraid".

Oh, and to further complicated it, LOE says schwa can sound like short "i"!

I have noticed that some curricula, such as Logic of English, teach that the schwa sound is only in unaccented syllables and words. Others, such as CLE, seem to teach that any short "u" sound is schwa, such as in "come", "love", etc. Can someone clear this up for me?

Hope it helps somebody. http://www.eyeq.com.au/staff-resources/vision-training/eye-tracking/

Is this worth the money for independent practice? We already have an ipad that the grandparents gave us, and we use that.

Any audiobook can also be used this way. My Bible app will play an audio version of the Bible. For Bible dictation, I can just have my child play a sentence and pause it. Then write it. But it will work with non-religious material too, of course.

I do feel a little pushed into it though, because my son self-taught manuscript and he's forming some letters incorrectly. Should I just ignore it? His cursive lowercase letters are established. He knows some uppercase cursive.