Out of curiosity, how can you tell how far your kids have progressed through a level and whether they're about to move up? None of the reports I can view seem to include that data. I can see their percentage correct on particular question types, but not whether they've completed that segment of the curriculum. Of course, right now it claims that none of my kids have done any Prodigy--ever, according to the tracker--when I've watched all three answer questions every work day for the entire school year, so it may just be that I've got a buggy variety.

I thought it did pretty decently with all three of my kids. It placed my youngest at the lowest level (perfect, since he's 4 and I've pretty much sidelined him so far...). DD was placed a level ahead of her actual textbook (about right, since she's competent but I'm going slowly to keep her stress down--and Prodigy increased her grade level about the same time she went to the next level textbook), and ODS was placed three levels ahead of his textbook and has maintained that gap (again, about right since I'm doing Beast to slow him down). From my experience, I wouldn't say that Prodigy fails to meet their need for challenge; ODS was in the placement testing phase forever, it seemed, before it finally assigned him a level. My kids actually relish the easy questions because they take less time to answer; when Prodigy has them work on a new problem type it can give them 20 or more of the same question type in a row, and when you're doing something long and complicated, it gets a bit tedious. That to say--if you do speed him up, he may have new complaints. :-)

Well, I have two kids using Fix-It and only bought a single student book for the first level. I figured since I used to teach 8th grade grammar, I shouldn't need the teacher book to figure out the answers. (Then again, there's always the chance that I'm missing something.) Rather than having the kids do the writing in the book, I copy the sentence onto each child's white board, they label the parts of speech and edits there, and then they copy it into their notebook. I like having them rewrite the sentence because I find it functions like standard copywork in helping to improve spelling and punctuation habits as well as the rhythms of different sentence structures. The kids never complain about having to do Fix-It because it's so quick and easy (and rather interesting, too, what with the story), and I've been pleased at the amount they are learning. It's a win in our house! (I just picked up a copy of level 2 during IEW's post-Christmas free shipping event!)

You can see if any of these meet your needs. - This test is for the Macmillan Readers. It's free and done on the computer. - The Phonics Page offers several free printable tests that you can administer yourself. - The National Right to Read Foundation has a free Reading Competency Test you can print and administer. - If you're willing to spend a little money to have a more detailed assessment, you can try the DORA (Diagnostic Online Reading Assessment). It's $25 for one test, but you can buy multiple tests to use at different times and save a few bucks on each.

Very cool! I'll let him check this out tomorrow! Thanks!

Whoa! That program is pretty pricey, but it looks AMAZING! (And considering that I was looking at some summer camps this week that were $500 for five half-days, that price is really quite reasonable.) He would absolutely be in heaven in a program like that one! Somehow I doubt we have anything that cool around here, but it's worth a try.

His instructor is doing some of what wintermom described above--pointing out chords on which a song is based, showing DS how you can play the chords along with the song or how you can improvise a song using the notes of a chord. The problem is that lessons are only 30 minutes, and the instructor is already taking us back 5 minutes early (we're the first lesson of the day--perk of being homeschoolers!) and giving us 5 extra minutes at the end. DS wants/needs to learn a new song every week (thrives on challenge and has almost never had trouble becoming proficient--not masterful, but decent--at a song in a week's time), so every week the teacher needs to have him play the previous week's song to check fingerings, dynamics, etc. and also introduce all the intricacies of a new song (only 2 pages, but still). I always feel bad emailing him about anything because I hate to be a bother, but perhaps that is the best course of action. We're in that awkward place where DS been pulled from his group class (about 3 mos after starting, so more than a year ago) but can't be put in with another group because his pace is apparently unusually fast. He loved the group lessons because he delighted in playing pieces in parts as an ensemble--but he chafed at the pace of the group class. All the ensembles offered by the studio (as well as the actual composition part of guitar camp) are for middle and high school students, so we have quite a ways to wait, and I'm not sure how to help him fill those missing pieces of his music passion--the composition and the ensemble aspect--in the mean time. At the same time, individual lessons are 150% of the cost of group lessons and funding that is a bit of a stretch, so it's not like we can add another large, ongoing expense. Off to email his instructor and check the link above. We're not in the Bay area, sadly (well, maybe not--I couldn't afford to live there!), but I'm always open to trying to find connections. Thanks, all!

DS8 has been passionate about the guitar since well before we finally got him lessons. Ever since he started lessons (age 6.5), he's tried to write his own music. He realizes, though, that he's missing information about what makes a good song. Last summer we enrolled DS in a week-long guitar camp (run by the teachers from the studio where he takes lessons) which promised ensemble work, recording sessions, improvisation, and composition. Unfortunately, we were told that he was put in a group with age peers because they were afraid he would be out of place with ability peers. (He has progressed very quickly.) His group spent most of their time working on a very simple ensemble song, and each kid was given the chance to record a song of their choice. The group above his did a little more: they were given several possible parts and were told to work together to arrange a song using those different parts. He might have enjoyed that, but I'm still not sure that would be what he's looking for. He was lamenting again today that he wishes he could learn about composing music, so I promised that I'd try to find either a) resources/camps that would help him or b) information on how old he'd be before he could access appropriate resources. So far the only local option for his age is something like $400 for a one-week, half-day camp--and that's beyond our means. Otherwise he has to wait until college. Does anyone know of any resources on composition that would be accessible to a bright 8yo? I'm not a music person and neither is DH, so we're clueless.

If it helps, my youngest will be 5 in February. Right now, he does about 5ish minutes of handwriting each day. That's the only thing I require of him--and I only require that because he wanted some official "work" to be like the big kids. (For the others, I started handwriting at 5 and added a few minutes more of something every couple months.) Other than that, he listens to me read aloud, joins in occasional other projects/subjects as they interest him (mostly if I have a video or project!), helps to bake, builds things from Legos, rides his bike, plays computer and board games (all educational in some way), imagines with or without his siblings, does dot-to-dots, runs around the yard... And yet, he has managed to learn to read and has a solid foundation in math simply from playing and asking questions. Kids' brains are wired to learn. If you follow his lead and offer activities he will enjoy that might also help build skills (letter bingo, math games, playing with science materials like magnets and ramps)--even letting him choose which activities he'd like to do that day, perhaps you could ease his stress while still accomplishing educational goals? I'm not sure which schools you are comparing yourself to, since schools around where I live do very little sit-down work for 4-year-olds. (Half-day pre-k is 2.5 hours, which includes a story, some singing, a snack, and free play. Full day pre-k includes lunch and a nap and lots of crafts and movement and very little seatwork.) If you add up the amount of time B&M schools spend passing out paper, waiting for everyone to get out the correct book, giving everyone plenty of time to finish work, lining up, letting everyone take a bathroom break, getting to and from the lunchroom or playground, and what-have-you, you'd probably find that most schoolchildren spend a lot less time actually working than what you'd think.

The recent post on VT reminded me that I was intending to write a post, myself. Several months ago I posted on here for advice regarding my youngest, who had begun sounding out words more than a year earlier but had not made any progress. A few of you recommended taking him for a vision check with a COVD-certified optometrist. The long and short of the story is that we found out that he needed therapy, but it would be too much for us to afford--and we were not willing to put it on credit, as the doc suggested. (You can read the long version of this story on my blog, if you're really curious.) A friend of mine happened to have a binder full of vision therapy exercises given to her during her tenure as an OT. We've been doing the exercises at home 3-4 days a week for about 10 weeks, and YDS has gone from sounding out single words to reading Biscuit and Dr. Seuss books on his own. I know correlation does not necessarily equal causation, but for those parents who might be feeling stressed and panicky because their child needs vision therapy and they can't afford it, I thought I'd share what we did. The materials I was given were all simple print-outs with occasional hand sketches for illustrations; nowhere in the binder is any copyright information, and some of the pages are clearly labeled as take-home papers. That said, I still don't want to infringe on potential copyright, so I summarized the instructions for a dozen activities (some with multiple variations--bonus!) on my blog. If you are looking for some vision therapy materials to try at home, feel free to use these as a resource. Hopefully they will ease someone else's stress as they eased mine! **Side note: If it's of interest, the COVD doc also mentioned various primitive reflexes that weren't integrated, so in addition to the vision work (a couple exercises a day), we've been doing exercises to integrate primitive reflexes. So far we've done several weeks each of Starfish (moro) and Superman/Meatball (tonic labyrinthine), which we found instructions for on YouTube. I'm swinging for the fences by trying to cover everything I can!

We did vision testing and discovered YDS needed therapy...but then the doc gave us a price tag more than $2000 above the original quote, which we then couldn't afford. BUT a friend of mine happened to have a whole binder of vision therapy exercises that were given to her when she was an OT at a special needs school in a poor part of South Africa. I started doing the exercises with YDS in September. At the time, he was only able to sound out individual words--which he had been able to do for over a year--but was not able to recognize words he had seen before and was frustrated by trying to read more than one word (or trying to read anything at all that was in a book, rather than built with large magnets). About six weeks in, exactly as my OT friend predicted, he suddenly took off. He began asking to read parts of his bedtime stories; now he is reading Biscuit books independently. This morning I found him reading Green Eggs and Ham in his room when I came to get him up! I just blogged about our activities (and the history) not long ago. Link in my sig, if you're curious.

Completely different from what others have mentioned, but I'm loving IEW's Fix-It program. It requires a couple minute intro each week and then takes only a few minutes of your kid's time (10ish) for four days. Kids work on one sentence a day, gradually labeling more parts of speech as they progress through the program before looking up one word in the dictionary and then copying the sentence, editing as needed. Thus, it covers your "GUM" topics as well as vocabulary, all via copywork. When we did NaNoWriMo this year, I was surprised at how much the kids had internalized from that copywork; their sentences were pretty varied, their spelling quite improved, and their punctuation was pretty accurate. For what little effort and time it takes, this program is great--and no one objects to doing it!

I've used and enjoyed both MCT's Grammar Island and IEW's Fix-It. MCT is a lot of snuggling on the couch and reading and discussing together; you could do the sentence labeling as an assignment or together. With this program, you have to be comfortable determining your own pace/schedule. Fix-It requires a brief introduction once a week and then has kids practice grammar and editing through a sentence of labeling/copywork each day (four days a week). The kids enjoy it because the sentences tell a story. I actually like both programs a lot, though the feel and application is totally different. Right now I'm enjoying the independence of Fix-It, since I'm busy trying to get my little guy worked into our rotation, but I plan to do a round of MCT again when we're done. Fix-It is fast and easy and not too challenging, but if you're looking for completely do-together-orally, then MCT is probably more what you're looking for--though much of what I loved there came from all the components working together, and I'm not sure you'd need all of it if you're looking for light. Well, that was clear as mud. Hope something in there was somehow helpful.

I agree that the Septimus Heap series is in the same vein as HP. Magical kids on adventures and quests... (DH thinks it's actually better than HP; I can't go that far, though I do find it enjoyable.)

In version 2, Right Start B includes a review of the A material at the start, so it shouldn't be a problem to start with B.

If retention wasn't an issue in 3A, I'd argue that either a) it's just this particular concept/set of concepts or b) he's growing (unless the problem persists, and it turns out that 3A was the anomaly). My oldest is very mathy, but when he's hit a growth spurt, all bets are off--he comes off as the biggest airhead ever. (Not to say your kid is an airhead, just to say that sometimes there's something going on in their body's background that affects retention/comprehension/processing.) My kids play Prodigy for 20 minutes or so every day; I like that it provides some review of things we're not currently working on in Beast, and they're eager to play.

The Stack the Countries app is a treasure trove of information. You can start with just one continent and control what it asks, but my oldest learned country shapes, flags, official languages, capital cities, major landmarks, and locations by playing the game. He just did it for fun about a year ago, but I could easily see using it as part of a formal study. To beef it up, I'd probably just pick a continent at a time, alternate playing the game and reading books about and from countries on that continent; when I wanted to wrap up, we'd spend a week or two baking, doing crafts, finding related outings, etc. for a grand finale before moving to a new continent. (It was super exciting for him at the end to turn on the "whole world" portion and see how well he could do when he was being asked facts about the whole kit and kaboodle!) FWIW, we get tired of doing the same thing for too long, which is why I switch up our subjects every six weeks. (Six weeks seems to be the magic number for us; five always seems too short, and seven is just a hair too long.) So if you spend four weeks doing the standard read-and-game-about-one-continent routine and then take two weeks to do puzzles, flashcards, art projects, baking, etc, I think it would be a good balance: just enough variety to keep it fun without being overwhelming from the planning side.

If you're looking for a very easy "something more," I think the thing that motivated my kids most of all was reading things I had written. On most days, I would write them each a little note and leave it somewhere around the house--by their seat at the table, on their desk, on the bathroom mirror. It could be a joke, or something I wanted to compliment them for, or a reminder, or a surprise. I also have a calendar posted at kid-level, which I keep updated with their activities. Everyone gets excited to see new field trips or playdates appear. Another fun thing we occasionally do is pretend we're running a restaurant; I write out menu options and the kids place their orders either orally or in writing. Probably the highlight of my kids' learning-to-read lives, though, was the treasure hunts I made. I'd only do one a week or so. I'd start by hiding their snack somewhere in the house, and then I'd write a note with a clue ("Look by the pots and pans."); that note would be hidden, and a note would be written to reveal its location ("There's something under your pillow!"). Once you have several notes leading to each other and--at last--to the snack, you give them the first note and off they go finding each note in turn until they discover their treasure. (This is an ideal activity for yucky weather, especially if you make sure to make your kid run from one end of the house to the other repeatedly as they follow the trail of notes.) Writing a lot of things for your kids to read tends to have the effect of inspiring them to write--at least in our house. I still find notes on my pillow, pictures with elaborate captions posted on the fridge, half-finished stories on the table, to-do lists on bedroom floors, etc. And of course these are all brilliant for development of language skills, as well as being fun.

Singapore has the fun aspect, with cartoony pictures and puzzles to solve. I love RightStart B. If you're getting RightStart anyway for your son, I'd consider either a) using it for your daughter but sticking mostly with the game-based learning--not that there are all that many worksheets or b) using the RightStart materials to introduce Singapore's concepts and the games to reinforce. IMHO, the idea behind both of them is the same (very hands-on, incremental), but Singapore went the cute/colorful route while RightStart went the stark/clutter-free route. You could also look at MEP. It's very hands-on, and it's free. It's not colorful, but it is full of pictures and fairly visually appealing.

I keep seeing these video ads for JAM.com in my Facebook feed (Alas! they have sucked me in!), and the engineering class looks super fun...but I can't find any user reviews of it, and I hesitate to spend $100 on something no one seems to have tried before. I hate to end up with a bunch of tutorials of things that never work remotely like they're supposed to or can't actually be done by kids. Have any of you tried anything they offer?

I've found that most apps are made for iPad first, and Android (maybe) later. It's frustrating that so many things I hear about that would be really fun and useful aren't accessible to us because we have all Android devices. Apple also has an approval procedure in place, so all Apple apps have to meet certain quality standards. Anyone and everyone can (and does) produce Android apps, so there's a lot of junk to wade through when looking for something good.

We're going next July! I don't have any specific resources, but we kept having Yellowstone mentioned in our study of plate tectonics/volcanoes, which was pretty cool for my kids.

I've done quite a bit of googling this topic with nothing jumping out at me, so I'm hoping that the Hive can help. I've got two kids for whom I need ideas. ODS is 7. The first books he liked well enough to re-read were Jessica Day George's Tuesdays at the Castle series, which he read this spring. Currently he's on the Septimus Heap series, which will at least keep him busy for a while (though I need to finish reading the series to make sure the last ones are doable). He could probably handle the content of Harry Potter--at least DH thinks so, but I'd rather wait both because I found parts of them frightening (and he's a lot like me) and because I loved those so well that I want to make sure he doesn't mentally check them off his list until he's old enough to really appreciate them. He also likes adventure/survival books to some extent (liked My Side of the Mountain but didn't want to read the sequel because the sister was in it; liked the first Boxcar Children but said the others were not as exciting). Mostly, though, he wants castles and wizards. I need something that he doesn't see as too short/easy but isn't quite the coming-of-age genre yet because he just can't relate to that, and also something that's going to be clean (language, themes). DH said maybe Sword of Shannara; if anyone has thoughts on that I'd be delighted not to have to re-read yet another book to judge appropriateness. DD is 6. Currently she's absolutely obsessed with the Rainbow Magic fairy books, but she's read so many (around 90!) that she's got to be close to running out. She tends to be my series gal, since she read every Magic Tree House she could get her hands on, all the A to Z and Calendar Mysteries, a good several dozen Boxcar Children, all the Magic Tree House again, and now the Rainbow Magic. Animal-themed books are a no-go--not even the RM ones. She's also very particular about appearance. She won't touch the Disney fairy chapter books because she doesn't like the art style. She likes large font, quick reads (preferably easy to finish in a couple hours--she's done with RM in under an hour), magic and occasional pictures are a plus. So while she liked the Ramona books, she'd have me read her a chapter or two a night and then she'd plod through a chapter--but she preferred hearing those read aloud to doing the reading on her own. Other than Ramona, anything with small print or all text or anything longer than a two- or three-night read she gave up on. And if nothing appeals to her, she'll go for weeks without reading much of anything--and then suddenly she's carrying books everywhere with her again. I want to avoid sassy, obnoxious characters and relationship themes that are beyond her, but I'd like to come up with a next series to avoid the doldrums. I've got American Girl as a possibility, but I'm not sure that the art style will grab her. (How do you get a kid past judging books by their cover!? And the "start reading it and she'll want to finish" doesn't work here--if I start reading something, the kids automatically categorize the entire series as read-aloud and won't touch it.) Sorry so long; brevity has never been my forte. TIA for any suggestions you might have!

Oh, all right. I think you'll have me--times two. ODS was recently awarded 3 months free membership for answering 10,000 questions on Prodigy (!), and it's re-inspired his sister. If I can do it for only $12 apiece, I might bite the bullet and get them both a year's membership. (ETA--Applied to join you on FB.)

I wasn't even trying to fit in all of CM's elements--I aspired to include them all, but I knew it wouldn't happen. Even the things that I tried to include daily or weekly, though, seemed to require a lot of planning and a lot of rushing from thing to thing. I ended up doing something similar to PP. Our daily work includes math and language arts (though some LA resources are daily and others I use for a week at a time, rotating through them). Then we choose two subjects on which to focus for roughly six weeks. (Though I'm becoming looser on the timing, realizing that some topics just take longer than others.) We are able to then spend more time on each subject per day, while still cycling through a wide variety of subjects each year.