We enrolled ds (almost 8) in coach-pitched baseball and last night was his first practice. He missed the first two practice sessions because he was ill and we registered him late (this is the first time we've enrolled any of our children in sports like this, and ds is our oldest). It was a complete disaster. He didn't follow direction at all, and dh says he's that way at cub scouts, too. You have to speak to him directly, and then he'll do whatever you say, but if you tell the group, it's like he's in la-la land or something and he doesn't follow the crowd and figure out what to do at all. We send him to Sunday school and I take him to storytime at the library and he seems to do fine in both of those, but he's done that for a while and knows the routine. When it was his turn at bat, he would swing the bat long after the ball went by and had been caught by the catcher. We take him to a homeschool track and field day every year (twice) and he's dead-last in every race because of his delayed response when the starting gun goes off. He never did hit the ball even after about 20 pitches. At one point he was in the outfield and was picking dandelions and putting them in his glove because he liked how they looked, and of course a ball came his way and he wasn't paying attention at all. At one point when he was playing in the infield, he had his glove on his head (again, totally in la-la land instead of engaged in what was going on). He can catch the ball either. He throws, but very poorly. My husband practiced with him at home and got him to go from throwing about 5 feet to about 15 feet, but still, nowhere near the level of other boys his age. So what to do. I was terrible at sports and simply endured PE. I never did any little league or anything like that. My dh was athletic, but his clueless parents got the wrong schedule one year in little league and took him to the wrong games where he played with boys older than him and he was so traumatized by being below level that he never had any interest in it again. DH won all the races when he was in grade school even though he was wearing braces. DH says he wanted to be able to do something with ds where he could enjoy watching ds participate (a la little league). DS is musically inclined and enjoys going to band concerts and taking piano lessons. I came from a very musical, non-athletic family, so music was what our lives revolved around. DH was from more of a sports family. His dad played clarinet in the marching band in college so there is some musical talent, but dh never took any music lessons and can't carry a tune unless he's singing by himself (he can't sing with someone else). So my questions: Should ds continue doing little league since he seems to have no aptitude for it? I am afraid the boys won't like him because he's such a dud and since his social experiences are limited due to being homeschooled and not spending hours every week with other children, I am afraid it will be even more of a detriment to his social development than it would be if he was just bad at PE in school. How do you teach a kid to follow the crowd enough to function in a group setting? We thought Sunday school and cub scouts and other homeschool group activities would help with that, but he's just not getting it. I think he is definitely a right-brained learner, which means it's just as much nature as lack of experience, no? If not little league, what activities can he do that my dh could enjoy doing with him? They both enjoy fishing, but the lakes around here are over-fished so dh says it's not much fun. DS enjoys reading, but that's not really a group or father-son activity. We're trying to see if he could be put in with the kids doing tee-ball since he is small for his age and that might be more his speed. But the questions about learning to follow the crowd (at least a little!) and extracurricular activities with dad remain. Thanks for your wisdom!

I think if Right Start had a more salad bar approach, I would have been more happy with it. Had I been able to choose the order of the topics like I can with MM I think we would have done better. I would buy it again if they rewrote it with the warmups in one section, the main topics in another section, and so forth. A bit of a description of what is going on and the point of what the exercises are trying to accomplish would have been very helpful, too. We would do the activities, but I was never sure if ds had mastered the concept and if we were ready to go on because I wasn't sure what exactly the concept was that we were supposed to get. I still am in love with the idea of Right Start and how they learn mental math and such. But the reality of Right Start simply didn't work for us. That doesn't mean it doesn't work well for other people. It just didn't work well for us.

I'm a Rightstart failure, too. I tried year B with DS twice and never got past about the 12th lesson. We are now doing Math Mammoth which incorporates much of the mathematical thinking RS uses. I like it because the chapters are laid out so I can see what we're doing (i.e. money, measurement, addition, subtraction). We generally work on two chapters simultaneously doing one page from each every day. That way we don't get bogged down with one thing and ds doesn't lose interest. If we are having a difficult time with something (like telling time), I can drop it and come back to it later. RS just seemed quite scatterbrained to me in how it was set up. My child is very much a thinker who absorbs things but doesn't necessarily demonstrate understanding right away - he has to digest things and later on knows them very well. So with RS, I could never figure out if we were ready to move on to the next lesson or not or if I was getting him completely lost in math. With MM, I have far more control over the content and we are both much happier. I kept RS for a while to use as a resource, but when I wanted help with how to teach a particular concept, such as telling time, it was scattered throughout the book and it was really difficult to figure out what the RS method was without doing the entire year's worth of math. So I got aggervated with it and quit. I've heard of various concepts that it teaches and I love the idea of how RS supposedly teaches math, but when it came down to actually using the curriculum, I was a complete failure. So you are not alone. Math was my best subject in school and it is very much a part of what I do as a part time job from home now. So I'm not math-retarded - I'm just RS-retarded.

If we went by time, we would get nothing done. I set goals for what we are to accomplish, and I only spend so much time with my ds or he has to do it on his own after we are finished for the day. But I assign what should only take a small chunk of time. One MM worksheet should take ten minutes if it's done in a timely fashion. We do two or three pages per day, but not all from the same chapter so that helps to break it up as well. Sometimes we do math for ten minutes then do something else than math for another ten minutes, etc. until we finish what we set out to accomplish for the day. I know how many days of school we have and what we need to get done daily in order to get through the curriculum in a timely manner. Ultimately, do whatever works for you and don't be afraid to try things.

We do Bible, literature and poetry read-alouds, then we do our three R's, then we go back to read alouds and do SOTW, science, art, music, whatever else. So we have sit and listen, then get up and do things, then back to sit and listen. Free reads get read at bedtime. I have a hard time doing read-alouds that aren't somehow worked into the structure of our day - the just don't get done otherwise.

We schedule school during naptime as much as possible. That doesn't always work out, but I would say it is my main strategy.

We do scripture memorization after our daily Bible stories/readings. Then we do poetry memorization after our daily poetry readings. For scripture memorization, I'm just going through and having ds memorize key passages we all learned when I was a kid. For poetry, I just have him memorize poems we've studied and enjoyed. We read one new poem a day and then re-read the poems we introduced the past four days, so he hears each poem five times. We spend five minutes reading poems and five minutes on memorization every day - short and simple. I like Pudewa's list and have referred to it more than once for ideas, but I don't have the book or anything.

We love artistic pursuits. I am not an artsy person and the books have been well worth every penny I have spent on them. Neither my husband nor I enjoyed art in school, but my boys love it. You don't have to start at the beginning - you can pick up with any book you want. The books go through the various media and are grouped at various levels. So you could do the grades 4-6 books in reverse order if you wanted and be just fine. Just start somewhere in the appropriate group of books.

In my experience Yesterday's Classics has the nicest copies but isn't always the least expensive. We have the Blue Fairy book from Dover and it's fine. I think later on with things like Heidi which book you get matters because of the translation and such. But for year one, it's pretty straightforward.

I spread them out as long as I can over the time the library allows, rather than reading them in a weekend or something. I do get benefit from the longer reading time, but I also have to think in terms of what is practical. I've been reading selections from year 11 for myself. Some real gems in there.

I've been reading through many of the AO year 11 selections myself and they are quite good. You can follow the CM method and narrate, or you can make up your own questions and do whatever you want. Those books are not just CM books. CM uses a lot of primary material rather than textbooks, but a good history text fills out the background for the books studied. Again, I highly recommend the selections. I went all the way through college with a liberal arts degree but missed out on some really good books now that I've been going through their list. I say, go for it!

If the US went metric, all the cookbooks would have to be revised to metric. All the farmland would have to be re-surveyed and roads rebuilt based on the km rather than the mile. A section is one square miles = 640 acres. You farm a quarter section or 1/8 section. The roads are a grid going between all of the sections, so from one intersection to the next is one mile. They tried teaching metric only when I was in school, but it didn't work in converting the US over to metric. All you got was a bunch of adults who don't know the US system like they should. Science in the US may be metric, but construction, farming, cooking, all sorts of things aren't. And changing all of that over is not something that can be done by waving a magic wand. So teach those kids the US system - they'll thank you for it someday.

We just do our regular thing. School is divided up into four quarters for us, each with 40 days (field trips fill in the rest). We do four days of school per week, taking one week off per month. Sometimes that week is all at once if we're going somewhere, sometimes it's scattered throughout the month. We do switch to afternoon school since the nice time of day to play outside is in the morning. We also go to special events at the library, which is outside our normal routine. We continue going to parks on a regular basis (nature study) which we start back as soon as it gets warm. I like having the flexibility during the school year and not having to entertain bored kids during the summer.

:iagree:

Just one. I think at that level each book focuses on one or two media. So it's just a rotation through the various media. They certainly can work together.

We do short lessons, 5-15 minutes. Math is longer, but we do three different things, so short lessons if you count each section independently. We do each subject every day. We have a routine and we just clip right through it. We also school year-round with a 4 day school week and one week off each month. We do have four subjects that alternate - artist study, composer study, nature study and art - but they all have the same slot and we just do them on a rotating basis. But we do science every day, history every day, math every day, etc.

We have used both. I originally went with Singapore because it makes you think and not just memorize facts. I would say Math Mammoth does equally well if not better. She goes through concepts forwards, backwards and inside out. They have to really understand things in order to do the problems. I am very pleased with the program. Highly recommended.

We ditched Right Start B and started Math Mammoth. Best decision I ever made. We really like it, and it teaches the concepts forwards, backwards and inside out without being overly repetitive or skimming over things. If you're thinking of taking the leap, just do it.

My mother, to this day, still uses flashcards when she wants to learn things. Flashcards aren't necessarily a drudgery. I was drilled with flashcards as a kid, but only enough to prove that I already knew my facts, and they weren't a drudgery at all. I tried the matching game with my son from RS to try and learn the math facts, or the one where you have cards in your hand and you draw a card and try to find pairs for a certain sum. Complete disasters, both of them. With the memory game, it wasn't like normal memory where you just remember where the other star is when you turn over a star; no, you have to remember which number goes with the number you just drew AND where that number might be. It only complicates a game that is already as dry as sawdust. The other game where you made pairs was about the same speed. If I had to play games like that in order to learn new things, I would not like whatever it was that I was supposed to be learning. I much prefer learning the facts first before I try applying them. Applying them in situations before I know them just makes me want to pull my hair out. It only serves to frustrate me and make me hate what I'm doing. If that's how those games were introduced to me, I would not like them at all. It's one thing to play Memory or Old Maid, it's another to have to play them every day to learn your math facts. I'd much rather put five minutes into a few flashcards and then go do something I want to do. BTW, I like playing games, and I can add up numbers in my head faster than my friends can punch them into their calculators. Games may work well for some, but they're not for everybody. There is nothing wrong with taking a more cut and dried approach to getting the job done.

We do flashcards. We practice concepts a lot with the abacus so my son can see how the numbers fit together. I've tried all sorts of manipulatives, but the abacus seems to work best for us. I'm a big believer in KNOWING the facts. Your basic addition/subtraction/multiplication/division facts are the alphabet of math. If you don't know a word in a sentence, you don't grasp the meaning of the sentence. I think a lot of kids struggle with math because they're still figuring out what 2+2 is rather than seeing the concept which is being taught. I really think the memorization vs concepts thing is a question of the chicken and the egg. I never did regrouping in order to learn 9+8=17. I knew that +9 was 10 more minus one, so I could start with 35 and count by nines easily. I didn't have to sit around and regroup in order to do that. Same with eights - two less than ten more. Sevens are two more than five more, and if you know you're fives, that's easy. Understanding regrouping is important, just like learning to tell time. But it is not the central hinge upon which the entire world of math turns, which people seem to make it out to be every time this debate comes up. It's a great tool, but there is more than one way to get the job done. For us, learning the addition facts was the hardest. Learning them up to 10 took six months during first grade. We're talking less than 5 minutes a day. I started with sums up to 5, then added six, then seven, etc. as he learned them. He could always use the abacus if he wanted. Now we're doing the corresponding facts in subtraction, and they're quite easy. When we come across problems like 9+6 in math, he just knows them even though we didn't learn beyond sums of ten. For multiplication, we've been learning how to count by 2's, 3's, etc. Again, I have him learn with the abacus. He counts by 3's up to 30. Crossing over the tens is a great way to learn how each number is divided because some are on one row and some are on the next. But when it comes time to learn his multiplication and division facts, they way will be paved. I don't have the time or the patience to sit on the floor and play math games for hours at a time. Some people enjoy that - more power to them. Our five minutes a day over the course of the year has proved very fruitful. My goal ultimate objective is for him to know all of his facts up through 9+9/9x9 and be able to do them in less than 3 minutes, which was what I was required to do. By the end of 2nd grade, we'll have addition and subtraction down within that time frame. During third and fourth grade, we'll do multiplication and division.

For second grade I would recommend doing AO year 1. Also, join the yahoo groups - there is a wealth of information there. We started AO year 1 in January (ds will be 7 in July) and we certainly could have waited until now to do it. We are enjoying it, but it is very challenging, and they really recommend staring year 1 at age 7. The years aren't necessarily written to correlate with grades. We love AO and plan to do it through high school.

If you want to slow down a little, I would consider adding more literature to your curriculum. Shorten your lessons in other things and add literature, poetry and other stories and such. There are good lists at Ambleside online, Simply Charlotte Mason, Veritas Press and others. We've found lots of good reading or we would be flying through the academics too.

We do 4-day weeks with one week taken off each month. I schedule for 40 days per quarter, which is 160 days per year. We cover all of our curriculum in that amount of time and do enough field trips to easily cover the remaining "school" days. Right now we take our "week" off each month here and there. I have little kids and we need the structure of school. They ask for it if we don't do it. I can take one or two days off per week (our usual day and one other), but if I start doing more than that, they start asking questions. I do plan ahead a little if I know a family vacation or something like VBS is coming up where I will have a block of days off. Today we just finished day 23 of our spring quarter (April - June) so we're right on track. We go to the library every Wednesday for storytime so that is also our errand day. So we school M, T, Th and F. In May, August and December, the library does not do storytime so we're a bit more freestyle. We also school in the afternoons when it's hot in the summer but nice in the mornings. My kids are still young enough to live in the moment and thrive on routine so this works for us.

We switched from Singapore to MM have haven't looked back. I continue to be impressed by how well MM teaches the concepts behind the facts and really makes sure they understand. I say, go for it!

We got a head start last year and not once did I regret it. If they're excited, go for it. And don't wait for July 1 either. Get the books out and start having fun. We do 40 4-day weeks for our school year. We take one week off every month, some times a whole week at a time, sometimes a day here and there. As for curriculum, when we finish the old, we start the new. I figure out the pace we need to work through it, but at times we go faster and other times we slow down. It's nice that way.