If she has a solid understanding of the concept of addition/subtraction and merely needs to work on automaticity, I'd try some variety of dice game (like Math Dice) or Addition/Subtraction War for a fun approach to practicing the facts; for a more straightforward approach, you could use something like Rocket Math/Space Ship Math, which begins by seeing how quickly you can copy numbers--to test your processing/writing speed--and then introduces only a few facts at a time. In those programs you first solve the facts orally so you're hearing/speaking them, and then you aim to solve as many math facts on paper as you're physically able to (equivalent to the amount you could copy) within a minute. Once you can do one set of facts as quickly as you could if you were simply copying numbers, they add a few more. There are sets for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. My DD responds well to the former method of practice, while my DS loves timing himself on the latter. As for problem solving, you could look at some of the Singapore books or a Zaccaro book for some practice.

Someone mentioned this board to be before I officially decided to homeschool, but I took one look and was overwhelmed. I kept hearing TWTM mentioned, though, so I read the book...still didn't visit the forum. Then I noticed a trend: every homeschool-related topic I Googled (particularly about curriculum) kept leading me to loads of helpful threads here. I lurked for a long time before finally giving in and joining earlier this year.

When my kids started learning to read, I didn't want to shell out for a phonics program. I stumbled across Reading Reflex at my library, and I ended up using their sequence and some of their activities plus a smattering of Progressive Phonics readers (my kids thought the Alphabetti ones where they only read a few words per page were fun and silly, but they despised the actual leveled readers, which seemed less interesting and more stilted because they had to be made entirely of words the kids could read). Once they knew all the basic letter sounds, we played games like word bingo (with similar words like pin, pen, pet, net, ten, tan so they'd have to look carefully to cover the right one), did some word puzzles (write a word on an index card with a picture and cut each letter apart so kid has to sound it out and build word), and I'd tell stories and stop every sentence or two to make a word from blocks for them to sound out to continue the story. They also loved treasure hunts, where I'd leave simple clues like "on the desk" or "in a pan" for them to follow around the house and find their snack at the end. Not sure if that helps at all, but if you're looking for some fun for motivating him, perhaps one of the above ideas would appeal.

I'm doing MEP-R with my 3yo right now, whenever he's in the mood. We're only a few lessons in, and it's perfect for his stage--counting well to ten and able to describe objects (longer/shorter, more/less, color), but not recognizing numerals yet. Interactive and playful, yet with substance--and free! I own RS-A and will do that with him when he's ready. I went through it informally with my older two starting when they were 4 and 3, and it was perfect--but they really need to gain the number recognition in the first few lessons, and my current 3 isn't there yet, so while we camp on recognizing numerals 1-9, I'm using MEP to fill his occasional desire for "work".

I don't feel right unless I get dressed for the day--pajama days were always for when you were sick. That said, my wardrobe consists entirely of jeans and T-shirts (except for church clothes), I haven't worn makeup since early high school when it was a novelty, and we don't wear shoes in the house. It's so windy here and my hair frizzes so easily that a ponytail is a must except on church days (and then my hair gets pulled back almost as soon as we're home). I like the idea of being all spruced up, but then I would have to spend money on clothes. Clean and neat counts for something, right?

LOL--I've taken to keeping a bag of M&Ms in the fridge at all times. Glad to know I'm not alone. Now that we have some meds to help with the ADHD, my life is much more sane and we're no longer spending 2 hours on just math and spelling. But I still love having an M&Ms stash! After our read-aloud during snack, we spend 1-2 hours on work depending how involved our "special" subject is. (We do project-based history, science, Spanish, and art--one per day of our four work days.) Our core subjects (math, reading/spelling) are almost always done in 45 min or less.

School House Rock! My kids could sing the 3s song after the first time through. The songs keep going over and over in your head--and they're on YouTube!

I love Getty-Dubay, though I think their first book is poorly arranged for instruction. (I actually just ranted about this on my blog! If you want the short version of how I changed it up, you can skip to the end. :001_smile:) It's a lovely enough font that I'm sticking with it for my third kid anyhow. (First two kids did it concurrently.)

When I had a toddler, I used my mornings for errands/field trips/fun activities and saved anything purposeful for his nap time. Now he doesn't nap. :glare: For the first part of this past year, he spent his time making epic messes with all those "special school-time toys" I had set aside. Now he's capable of using the tablet, which buys me enough time to get some direct instruction in. I also haul out the Letter Factory video some days in the name of educational distraction. :blush:

I used WorksheetWorks.com (currently free), which lets you type in whatever you want as well as allowing you to choose your font size, style (hollow, dashed, solid), which guidelines to include.

Only 15 fables in it, but I LOVE Brad Sneed's illustrations! I have another version with more fables (can't remember which right now...really memorable), but we definitely like this one better for the pictures. (I just wish it had a few more in there--like the actual story of the tortoise and the hare and not just a picture!)

If I were going to do one without the other, I'd probably do geography, at least for early el. How can you effectively learn about the world if you don't have a concept of the world? But I'm entwining the two. I started with a basic continents/oceans intro to geography before diving into activity-based history. (We read historical fiction and biographies, but the kids at this point aren't into the history encyclopedias; they LOVE anything hands-on, so I think of a project to go with a topic and as they work I discuss details of the project and relate it to history.) As we discuss different regions, I have them map them--important cities, geographical features--and we look at where they are on our world map. This fall I'm also going to use an idea I ran across somewhere online: one day a week I will hand out a map to study for 5 minutes; on the back will be a blank version. When the 5 min are up, we'll flip it over and see how much we can remember, doing this week after week until we have a decent grasp of that particular region/continent before moving on. (Maybe that's what PP was referring to.)

My least favorite books disappear. I've gotten rid of Guess How Much I Love You (glad I'm not the only one who thought the big hare was obnoxious with his one-up-manship), Love You Forever (starts out sweet, but gets creepy--why do people love this so much?), and The Giving Tree (a.k.a. The Selfish Kid and the Tree With No Boundaries). One that I haven't gotten rid of because it came from my MIL is Dig, Dig, Digging, which has cool cut-paper illustrations but kinda dopey rhythmic/poetic text that gets old really fast. All three of my kids have loved the book with a passion. I've been desperately trying to find Sniff, Snuff, Snap! (and a few others by Lynley Dodd) which we kept checking out from the library over and over before we moved. Apparently it's an Aussie thing (though how our Indiana library had all her books is beyond me); the library here doesn't have them and I miss them so much that I may just bite the bullet and pay shipping for a few of my favorites. Other than that, some of our favorites are Richard Scarry (love all the detail in the illustrations--the time it takes to look at them is the only drawback, especially at bedtime), Laura Ingalls Wilder (all my kids have loved the picture books of her life before moving to the chapter books), and Mike McClintock (Seuss-esque rhythm/rhyme with fun stories). Hmm... All three of those are throwbacks to my childhood. I guess they have withstood the test of time!

From what I've gathered, the dress-ups ARE the heart of the program (at least the "style" part)...but IMO, you can practice the dress-ups without forcing them into your writing. I was having some dress-up rebellion, so I switched to asking the kids to brainstorm ways in which they COULD use each of the dress-ups. Then when they wrote, they used only the dress-ups that felt right. It may have been cheating the method, but it was a way of practicing the style without making the writing too stilted. And the dress-ups did naturally work their way into the kids' writing once they had practiced them (naturally being key). I'll be interested to see what the good folks at IEW have to say.

Our kids' first read-alone books were Elephant and Piggie, too. We followed those with some Fly Guy and Huggly, some Clifford and Little Critter. My kids didn't love the Dick and Jane or Biscuit series, but some kids really enjoy them, and they definitely hit the spot with the repetition. Usborne makes some phonics readers that weren't horrible, so we sprinkled some of those in, as well.

We've just moved cross-country and it's driving me nuts that I can't ID all the flora and fauna, so we've been making our own field guide. (We own some, but I thought it would be nice to collect info on the things we see most often and learn a lot about them.) When we're out and about, I snap pictures of any birds or plants we don't recognize; when we get home, we make a page for each on the computer, researching to find out what we've photographed and what characteristics make it unique. We also note when and where we saw it. Since this is computerized thus far, we sometimes return and add notes such as when we DON'T see certain flowers/birds anymore. This is a little like the Boy Scout Field Guide, but more in-depth. The kids have really enjoyed helping me to ID everything and reading up to glean important facts. It's also been interesting to find conflicting reports from different sources and trying to find still more articles to see which seems to be the most-agreed-upon data.

:bigear: I'd love to hear anyone's response on this one. My oldest two are 14 mos apart, and DD (the younger of the two) thinks she has to be as good or better than DS at everything. I've tried focusing on the different ways that each of them learns (really fascinating to hear each kid talk out their process on the same math problem) and the different things they enjoy... I had to turn all the RS card games into solitaire versions because the tension was so high any time we tried to play a non-solitaire game that no learning could possibly happen. I don't know if yours are the same, but mine also always want to do whatever the other is doing. DS has always been passionate about music and has begged for a guitar since age 3; he finally got one, and his sister thinks she needs one, too. DD is a phenom at anything physical, so she's rocked soccer and gymnastics--but DS wants to do those as well, even though he's clearly not really in love with them (nor is he very good). I don't want to keep them from trying and working at something that's not a native strength, but I'd also like them to develop their own identity without always obsessing about what their sibling is doing. Okay, sympathizing over. Now someone needs to have a solution! :toetap05: :P

I've used second edition A-C. I thought A jumped around quite a bit, and my kids didn't like doing two brief activities on fourteen different topics for each lesson, so I ended up grouping activities differently--doing three lessons worth of patterning activities in one lesson, for example, and three lessons worth of number card games another time, etc. It was a good foundation, but I didn't really use it as-written, and we did it completely informally. I LOVED B. Absolutely loved it. I thought that the content was strong, the pacing was perfect, the concept-building was amazing... It was simply awesome. Both kids who have gone through it so far have developed great math skills. I'm currently a few lessons from the end of C with one child, having bailed midway through with the other. The child who's almost done with C has flown through the book, since at least a third of it was review. The geometry section was cool, but it struck me as a little finicky and intense (maybe just because I was doing it with a 6yo?). I still think C did a good job, but the pacing wasn't as good and I felt like there was too much review. I'm moving the child who's finishing C into Beast Academy next; my second child is currently backing up and moving to Singapore 2A because she somehow decided she's not good at math and shuts down--I think simply because her brother is faster at computing. I'm still thrilled that I have the materials; I'll do A informally again with my third kid--though probably for pre-K--and likely do B as kindy work. I'll have to see how he responds to C; if I do C with him, we'll probably skip a lot again.

For a humorous look at why punctuation is important, make sure you read through Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The kids' version is very silly, and it helps kids understand how vital a comma can be making meaning. It doesn't hurt to have a silly reference to make your kid laugh when you point out that they are blowing through punctuation, and the book can also provide a very clear "why" behind your instruction, which never hurts.

I, too, chose more complicated books to read to them and left the simpler ones for them to read by themselves. I think all of these have been mentioned, but I thought I'd give them another vote and pitch in my two cents on each. My Father's Dragon was a lot of fun, but they never would have picked it up on their own because of the small font size. (I also read Elmer and the Dragon, which they liked but I didn't think was quite as well written. I tried to convince them to read it on their own, but the crowded text was a no-go.) Little House in the Big Woods was easy for them to relate to because Laura was about their age, but the book is long for a kid to read (though DS loved it so much that he plowed through it on his own after I read it aloud). I actually read the first several books of the series to them, but by Silver Lake Laura is really too old for them to relate to her perspective (though they still loved the book). Charlotte's Web and Trumpet of the Swan were big hits at our house. Winnie the Pooh is hilarious, and his humor is perfect for about five or six, but the language is really quite difficult, so it's a much better read-aloud at this age.

Yes! Limiting our comprehension questions/exercises to fictional tales or to "reading time" limits our children's growth, as well. We read all the time--directions to a new friend's home, recipes, picture books, articles online, encyclopedia entries, etc--and all of these need to be comprehended to be useful. For the most part, comprehension simply comes with exposure and practice. Initially you do a lot of reading to your child and questioning/discussing. As your child gets older, they will transition to reading aloud to you and ultimately reading on their own to learn, and you can continue to follow up by discussing what they've read, helping them to apply it, making connections. (Not EVERYTHING needs to be followed-up-on--you don't want to drive your kid nuts with 50 questions about their free reading every night--but you do want to continue to foster a rich thought life during reading. Reading is often more fun, anyway, when we can discuss it later with someone else who's read it, comparing favorite parts, sharing conclusions, and the like.) If you'd like to throw in a few reading comprehension exercises just for good measure, you can find a decent number of freebies online from various sources if you simply google "reading comprehension __ grade". If need be, you can add "free" or "worksheet" to your search terms to refine your results.

I'm like your mom--I've frequently picked up a book and realized midway through that I've already read it. I disagree that it's a comprehension issue, though. My not remembering every book I've read does not mean that I didn't understand them when I read them; it's simply that I did not remember them. (I took to keeping a list of book reviews for a while--then I discovered Goodreads.) DS is like me in that aspect, while DD has informed me before which chapter of which book in a series contained the information to which I referred. Our brains just work differently. I think the one aspect of reading comprehension books that might be useful is if you will be needing to do standardized testing. Basically, a comprehension workbook will teach your child how to read a passage and answer certain types of questions about it. This does not guarantee deep comprehension of the passage, it simply means that a child can find answers in the text. I think of this as being a separate, test-related skill that is not the same as comprehension. I will occasionally (a couple times a year) print off one of those comprehension passages with questions simply to see how my kids do on it and to make sure they aren't completely at a loss if at some point they attend school or face some test. Otherwise we read together, discuss what we read, ask questions about what we didn't understand, make connections to our lives and to other books, point out details we find interesting... THAT is comprehension.

After some trial and error, I've discovered that we do best if we don't start right away. The kids wake up around 7:30 and play quietly in their rooms until I come for them around 8. (I need some boot-up time in the morning.) We all head to the kitchen and have breakfast, then they clear their dishes and get dressed/brush teeth. After that they are free to play until 10 while I do a bit of cleaning and prepping for our work. For whatever reason, that seems to be the perfect amount of time. If we're up earlier, then we all feel ready to start earlier. If we're up later, it just doesn't feel right to start until we've had about 2 hours up and about. At 10, we gather around the kitchen table with a snack and some quiet activity (cars to drive, coloring, etc.). I read aloud for about half an hour while the kids munch and play and listen. Then we move into our together-subjects, and we end with independent work.

Since a lit program is really just good literature with thoughtful questions, I figured I might as well save the money and do it on my own. I'm currently following your second option, reading good books together for enjoyment and discussion and letting free reading be free.

My problem is that I have no idea if I found spelling to be a completely useless subject because I was naturally brilliant at it or because I was reading well ahead of grade level and had soaked things up that way. I doubt I'll be studying spelling with them through middle school like I did as a kid, but there are enough foundational words they misspell (like "would") that I figure we'd best be systematic for a while at least. Maybe I'll have to try to remember to pester you in another few months and see how R&S3 is going for you. I'm not relishing the thought of doing AAS3--mostly because I've decided I ought to really separate them, which will mean additional one-on-one time. I'll do it since I already bought it (juuuust before I decided I ought to separate them for instruction), but I'm going to be looking for other options for the future.