3rd grade wrap: - Math: Finish Right Start D/Start E - L/A: Continue reading anything & everything, audio books, Spelling Power, Continue creative writing/journal writing/letter writing - Music: Continue piano and guitar lessons - Science/Engineering: Continue local micro-school classes - Social Studies: Continue with SOTW, Read historical fiction, spontaneous research based on reading, conversations, & travel - Art: Continue self directed work and classes at local micro-school - Character Development: Continued chores/playdates/park days/volunteer work - PE: Soccer, hiking, running, skiing, archery Summer: - Math: Check out Beast Academy, Lots of RS math games - L/A: Continue reading anything & everything, audio books, Spelling Power, Continue creative writing/journal writing/letter writing - Music: Continue piano and guitar lessons - Science/Engineering: spontaneous research based on self directed interest - Social Studies: Continue with SOTW, Read historical fiction, spontaneous research based on reading, conversations, & travel - Art: Continue self directed work - Character Development: Continued chores/playdates/park days/volunteer work, Camping - PE: Soccer, hiking, running, swimming, archery 4th grade plan: - Math: Right Start E, then ? G not sure yet - L/A: Continue reading anything & everything, audio books, Spelling Power, Continue creative writing/journal writing/letter writing, Begin Latin (curricula TBD) - Music: Continue piano and guitar lessons - Science/Engineering: Continue local micro-school classes - Social Studies: Continue with SOTW, Read historical fiction, spontaneous research based on reading, conversations, & travel - Art: Continue self directed work and classes at local micro-school - Character Development: Continued chores/playdates/park days/volunteer work - PE: Soccer, hiking, running, swimming, archery *edited as there is not RS F :(

I completely agree - the AL Abacus from Right Start is excellent at teaching place value, along with so many other calculation concepts.

This happened when my now 9 YO was 7, but I sent an email to my dad describing it so have a good memory of it. I've had so many moments like this with this kid of mine. It wasn't until we started homeschooling that she finally started to seem normal, rather than always being the oddball "quirky" kid: She went to a "drop off" birthday party with a bunch of former public school classmates. When I arrived to pick her up, my daughter was annoyed. She complained that one little girl pretended to see a snake, and all the other girls started screaming and running around, and then the adults started yelling and running around, and it was a huge disruption to the party. In the end it turned out there was no snake, and the little girl made it all up. After describing the scene to me, my daughter said, "It was hysteria and pandemonium and the party disintegrated into chaos." All the adults around us dropped their jaws, but then they started nodding, and one finally said, "that about sums it up." Her line came nearly word for word from the chapter on Tehuti from our Egyptian Myths book, but I didn't tell them that.

My girls also loved all the Oz books, plus check out the other books by Baum (Enchanted Island of Yew, Sky Island, etc) They enjoyed Thornton Burgess at that age, as well as the Black Beauty books, Anne of Green Gables, Alice in Wonderland, Swiss Family Robinson, The Secret Garden. There are the Laura Ingalls Wilder Books and the Birchbark series that are a nice companion. They also liked the Kaya series by Janet Shaw, and I know a lot of kids like the other "American Girl" books but mine haven't tried them. There's also the "Sarah Plain & Tall" series. They LOVED the Swallows and Amazons series as well as the Green Knowe series. They have enjoyed several of the "Dear America" book series as well as the "Royal Diaries" series.

At least so far, no. I'm 1/2 way through D. Part of what keeps it so teacher intensive is the games. My daughter can do the worksheets independently, but they are so short (which I like, because I don't believe in drilling concepts she already knows) but they usually only take her 5 minutes or less. It's the games that take the time. When I can, I bring both girls into the games, (my level C and my level D). Frankly, I feel that most of D has been review for my daughter - she doesn't have her x-tables memorized yet but will soon, but she understands the concept of multiplication and can get to the answer after a few seconds just by using number sense and addition or subtraction. If I were in a hurry I would probably skip a lot of D... so depending on your child you could probably keep the lessons really short and skip days here and there when you need to focus more time on your other child, and/or bring your other child into the games of D. Hope that's helpful, I know it's hard to juggle and finding the right mix can be really a job of it's own!

I have used both Right Start and Singapore (as well as MEP Y2). I am familiar with the 2nd half of Right Start B, all of C, and 1/2 of D (Which is where we are now). We also dabbled in Singapore 1 and 2. Personally I prefer Right Start - it works well for me and it's perfect for one of my very visually inclined daughters. She tried Singapore and she hated it. My other daughter is fine with any program and she isn't exactly challenged by Right Start currently but she is above grade level and I don't want to push her too far ahead. She really LIKES RS and she gives me no groans when it's time to do math (unlike with other programs we've tried). Both my girls love the math games that are an integral part of Right Start and in my opinion the games really cement the concepts and make using the calculating skills fun. Having used both programs, I feel like RS is a more comprehensive program and it's process makes more sense to me. It is more hands on in a lot of ways but I think that is a good thing. Some lessons are repetitive and others step up very incrementally, which can be skipped by the intuitive/advanced learner, but this method works really well for the kids that are not natural math kids and who need lots of success and confidence building. I do skip lessons regularly or combine lessons for both my girls, one more than the other. I like that the lessons are short, so combining is easy if we want to move ahead faster.

One of my daughter's struggled a lot last year (when she was in second grade). Her twin is much more advanced in math and so she seemed that much more behind and I was very worried. I kept trying to push a curriculum that wasn't working for her (MEP) and it created a lot of stress for us both. Some tears too :( Finally I gave up December through February. When I went back to it I stuck with games, basically super basic dice and money games since those were the only things she was willing to do. We stopped any real math work over summer. We continued to play board games that involved numbers, dice games and card games (21/blackjack) but just from time to time. Now in 3rd grade I decided to try Right Start Level C. (I'd done Right Start B with her sister 2 years ago and we breezed through it). Things are suddenly clicking in a big way. She loves the math balance and she FINALLY sees how the abacus is helping her and she is grouping 5s and 10s in ways she couldn't understand before. I think soon I will need to get Right Start D for her as she is catching up really fast to where she should be. Her twin did Right Start B 2 years ago and the concepts she learned there help her still and she is excellent at mental calculating. All this is to say I recommend you check out Right Start. I think it's an excellent program. I also suggest you try to allow yourself to worry less and let things kind of sink in/settle for your son, because I wish I'd done that more myself. Sometimes I really think it's just a developmental thing and the kid just needs to be ready for certain concepts and there is no way to force it. It comes when it comes. Good luck!

My daughter really likes the Thea Stilton books

I am doing 2 kids, twins, both on MEP Y2. But I do each kid separately except on the days I can convince them to work together. It was a slow start, but once we sort of got the hang of it, we're now on lesson 60. The lessons take 20-30 min each. That's doable for me. It's a lot, but I feel like it's so worth it because I see them thinking about math and numbers in new ways. I'd say hang in there as much as you can. We don't do math every single day, but we do math all year, so it works out. I'd say we do them 3-4x a week on average.

8 YO twin girls: Lots of arts & crafts involving: pens, paper, elmer's glue, glue gun, cardboard, sticks, rocks, jewels, feathers, sculpty clay, beads, string, elastic, fabric, scissors, knives (for cutting cardboard) (they earned their "knife-skills" badge recently so have knife privileges), stapler, hole puncher, needle & thread. Outside play involving: collecting sticks, rocks, seeds, playing with the dog, building forts, making "shelters" for birds and fairies, searching for "pets" like worms, millipedes, snails. Puzzles, making & playing their own board games Pretend play often based on the literature we're reading. Magnatile building, making houses for their figurines

I wouldn't rule out dyslexia and I wouldn't jump to ADHD because often kids who have dyslexia become very stealth at hiding it and doing whatever they can to avoid putting themselves into situations/avoiding situations where their weaknesses will be revealed. And that can look like inattention/ADHD to an outsider. My daughter had a terrible time with copying from the board and that was considered a major indicator by her neuropsychologist. Dyslexia can present in different ways depending on the kid, so not every indicator is going to be true for every kid.

another great source for free audio books is libravox. it takes some getting used to their format. I recommend searching their website online first and the downloading via iTunes when you know what you want. The audio quality can be hit or miss but my girls are loving the Frank Baum Oz series and they also listened to Anne of Green Gables via libravox. Some of the readers are really excellent. Others are just OK.

I have an auditory learner who was comprehending middle school + level books (which I read to her) at the age of five, but could not recognize the word "the" after seeing it twice in a sentence and being told what it was the first time just three words ago. We finally had her privately tested and found out she has dyslexia. We're using the Barton Method now to teach her to read and she is making excellent progress but it is a lot of work. Her determination to learn to read amazes me. We think of reading as "decoding" and for her it's like me learning to read Chinese. She will do it but it is a lot of very hard work and it will take her years to master. But she WILL master it. However in the meantime we supplement with hours of audio books every day. Thank goodness for audio books!

Morning Math - it's a routine my girls don't question and we often do it on weekends too because they're so used to it they just ask when we're going to start. Audio books in the car - we love listening to the classics read to us, often with great British accents! Reading at bedtime - often I read to them for over an hour every night, usually several longer books, a chapter or two from a novel, plus a section or chapter from a nonfiction book, plus a chapter or section from one of our many books of ancient myths from around the world.

I hope it's ok if I jump in here with a question - I just registered so I could ask after lurking in the forum for a few month :) I'm new(ish) to homeschooling, I have twin girls entering 2nd grade, but have only homeschooled one since last January and the other a/o this summer. Last year we started math with Right Start math, but my daughter zoomed through it so I moved to Singapore Math because I was confused by Right Start and wasn't sure what she had learned. She ended up zooming through Singapore 1B also so then I ended the year just playing lots of math games since I was afraid to move on to the next level and leave her sister behind. I'd heard of MEP and CSMP from a friend and this summer finally had time to research them both. I actually find both of them appealing. Now I have a really strange and probably wrong plan of trying to do a combination of Singapore 2A/B, MEP, CSMP, and Beast Academy 3A/B (which we started last year for fun and my girls loved it). I was thinking of taking everything slowly rather than rushing through as we did last year, but mixing it up with these various programs. The reason I'm still "clinging" to Singapore is it personally makes a lot of sense to me and it helps me see where they're at, plus I think they like how colorful it is. I'd love some feedback/advice/words of wisdom from anyone willing to share. I won't have my feelings hurt if you think I'm making a mistake by trying to do so many programs. I'm totally open to dropping one if it just doesn't seem to be working... though I'm not sure which one I'd drop, I'd probably base it on the feedback my girls give me. Also I'd like to hear any thoughts you may have on how to work as a team assuming they are both in the same place with math, but how to manage competition should it arise or other possible issues with 2 kids who are the same age (and sisters) but may not have the same ability/aptitudes. thanks, Monika