There are some fun ideas on this site: http://www.homeschooling-ideas.com/home-school-ideas.html

You could have them watch videos about how instruments are made (there are even some on Youtube) or the places in which they are made. You could watch documentaries or read books about various composers, bands, etc. You could watch live performances- concerts in the park, musical/plays and so on and submit a list of those. Some sites, such as makingmusicfun.net are free ways to learn more about different composers, instruments, etc (and can be followed up by listening to that person or instrument's music on Youtube) If they got far enough into their lessons, maybe they could GIVE lessons to younger children.

Ah, that stinks. Although, of course, a computer game is way more intensive (with regard to graphics, animation and so on) than math CD's would be, I'm sure!

No, it wouldn't bother me.

Hm. My first thought (although I don't go to church and wouldn't put my baby in a nursery to begin with; although I would allow my older toddler/preschooler to go play there if said child was comfortable with it and I was comfortable with the people running it) was that I would have no problems with preteens and teens helping out as long as they were supervised by adults. But then somebody commented on not wanting a pre-teen carrying their baby around and I thought yeah I wouldn't either! So although I wouldn't use that type of service for an infant anyway, if I WAS going to, I would NOT want some 11 or 12 year old walking around carrying my infant. No way! Helping to play with my toddler or preschooler though? Sure.

I'm just curious, what type of writing instruction did you guys hope to see that wasn't there? Honestly, I've never even really thought about it, I'm just going along with OM5 for our last week or two here, but I haven't noticed that it DIDN'T give an adequate amount of instruction. Yes, many of the writing assignments are creative (I actually like that the kids are given choices of creative ways in which to do their writing assignments). But they also get writing instruction each lesson in the form of grammar, vocabulary, spelling, etc., and often the goal is that they will use what they learned in that lesson when doing their writing assignments. So when the grammar assignment is about how to use direct quotations, for example, they may be asked to be sure to use direct quotation in that week's writing assignments (or you can tell them to do so). They are usually reminded to use proper capitalization, punctuation, to proof-read and so on. The English Manual in the back of the syllabus covers various things such as how to write proper paragraphs of various lengths, how to write outlines, business letters, and so on and so forth, so they/you can always refer to the relevant info prior to doing a writing assignment. One of the main things about Oak Meadow is how integrated everything is. Social Studies for instance consists of reading living books in conjunction with short lessons in the syllabus and then the writing assignments (English/Language Arts) are assigned based on the social studies material, and the grammar/vocabulary/spelling stems from those things or are used in those things, too... I really like the way it all ties in, all without being overly dry and textbookish.

Well, it's up to you how much hand-holding you want to give. My daughter and I did almost everything together still in fourth grade. Some assignments I might get her started on and then leave her to finish if I knew she could, others I had to sit there with her the whole time offering feedback or input or guidance or whatever. If you want to do that with his writing for a while, you certainly can. If there are aspects of OM you like and want to use but you feel like you need to switch or replace other things.... you're the boss, after all. :)

Amy, You can check out this link on my blog and see if it helps you any with seeing what OM4 was like... http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/126472.html

We meet weekly (and my daughter loves that about it, and they always seem to get good turnout). They do not do activities over the summer, but it would be nice if they did. Maybe not weekly over the summer since we're busier then, but even a once or twice a month thing just to have the option of keeping active would have been nice. I like your ideas!

I think she was kind of "aware" early on even without a formal talk; after all, I keep my products out at that time of month, shop for them when she's with me and so on, always answered any questions she might have and so on. But I think she was 9 when we "formally" went over it which came from reading "The Body Book For Girls" (American Girl Library) together. I didn't expect her to get her period for another couple of years (I was 11) but, still, I wanted to be matter of fact about it and I wanted her to DEFINITELY know about it before time just slipped away and she ended up getting her period with no clue as to what it was!

I'm with everyone else. That was a (strange) over-reaction on their part.

Thanks again for all the feedback all! I'm pretty sure we're going to do it this way. I wanted to post for anyone who might be interested and let you know that I ended up emailing Oak Meadow directly about this, too. I explained my situation (my daughter's age/grade, her strengths and weaknesses, what I was considering doing and asked for their input on that and so on), and this was the reply I got: "Hello Nancy, Thank you for contacting Oak Meadow. I am so delighted to hear about how successful you have been using Oak Meadow materials to homeschool your daughter, and that you are planning to use our Kindergarten for your son! You have an interesting situation with your daughter's age and maturity level, and I think it is wonderful that you are carefully considering the benefits of allowing her to have an extra year to get more solid in her 6th grade skills before moving on to the more challenging work of 7th grade and beyond. It is an excellent way to customize your daughter's education. You sound very capable of supplementing the material so your daughter will remain challenged and never feel like there isn't enough to do. Also, taking two years to do the course will give you the time and space to let your daughter backtrack to gain more mastery when lesson assignments introduce concepts or skills that are based on previous knowledge. You will have the latitude to let her immerse herself in the learning and not feel rushed or overwhelmed. I hope this helps, Nancy, and please keep in mind that while you are using our materials, we are always happy to answer questions that arise. Best wishes, DeeDee"

Oak Meadow doesn't have a lot of 'busywork' to it. OM4 (and subsequent) does start to get bigger on writing assignments, but OM2 really shouldn't be overly time consuming. I would think that there would be SOME aspects of OM4 (not all!) that your son can do independently. So you might want to work with him on something you do together, then tell him "okay, now you can work on this and this independently and if you finish before I'm ready, you can have silent reading time" or whatever. Then, use that time to work with your 2nd grader... at those grade levels, you should be able to fit it in without a problem. And your son is only going to get more and more independent from here... there are still things I do with my OM5th grader but she's also getting a bit more independent with at least some aspects of it each year. That's how I plan to do OM6 and OMK in the fall- working with him while she's busy doing something independent and continuing to work with her on the things we do together.

Have you looked into Teaching Textbooks yet? My review of/experience with it: http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/124221.html

:hurray: I think that's really cool! I bet it can help him! I'll tell you what, math was always my weakest subject and I'm half thinking of doing some of the TT discs myself as we start to get into the higher grades lol. Maybe if I do them, math concepts will actually stick in my head and stay there for once lol. Thank goodness!!! :)

Congrats, that's very exciting! :) I pulled my daughter out of public school toward the end of third grade and haven't looked back. It's been great! We've also managed to go two plus years without ever using a strict daily schedule, and that's been just fine with me. The flexibility has been great.

I think you should just tell him he can only read X number of readers before bed and he can pick which ones he wants those to be and will have to save the others for the next day.

Optional. Music is a "required subject" here in PA but there are plenty of other ways to cover "music" as a subject other than actual lessons. If my child didn't want lessons, I certainly wouldn't waste my time transporting her, my money paying for it, stressing over trying to enforce practice time or any of that. Nope, not me! I'd rather do that stuff for things they ARE interested in.

Well, Oak Meadow (so far for 4th, 5th and 6th) always integrates English and Social Studies...They use a lot of living books and the literature will usually pertain to the material currently being covered in social studies, and then English writing assignments, vocabulary and so on all stem from that, and spelling in 5th comes from words spelled wrong in writing assignments, and the arts and crafts/handicrafts tie in to the social studies as well.

I do not give grades generally speaking (although our Teaching Textbooks math program does automatically grade all lessons and gives quizzes). I do not generally give tests either- we do a spelling quiz each week but there's probably only been one or two times in 34 weeks so far that my daughter ever got a word wrong on one- she's a good speller and enjoys those "quizzes." I see that OM5 does do a "final exam" for grammar skills that I'm supposed to give next week. But that's really about it. For the most part, I don't find grades or tests necessary.

I got Waldorf which isn't ridiculously far off the mark!

I did use OM4 math, but it is an older edition from like 1998, so I can't swear if it's the same as it is now, and I have no idea how it would compare to the math you've been using. In my older edition, OM didn't used to have its own math curriculum from 5th grade on though and recommended Saxon instead. Knowing I didn't want to use that, I did some research and decided on Teaching Textbooks. That has gone so well for us (including pretty decent improvements in standardized test scores from one year to the next) that I plan to just continue with that. So basically we use Oak Meadow for every subject BUT math and plan to continue on that way.

It's kind of hard to explain my thoughts. My daughter is not behind on her curriculum per se so it's not like I have to hold her back academically. (She's doing well with math this year, she's a good reader, a natural speller, does fine with vocab and grammar type assignments independently and so on). On the other hand there are some aspects of her curriculum (especially independent research/writing which she needs a good bit of handholding and prompting with as of now- which is also the case when it comes to organizational skills) that I think she WOULD do better with if she were that year older, wiser and more mature (and those types of assignments will play an even bigger part next year in OM6). I don't want to just call her a ___ grader working at the grade level of the next level up, because once we get to high school, there will be nowhere left to go. Once she's doing 12th grade work, she's doing 12th grade work- even if I'm "calling her" an 11th grader- where does that leave us the following year when I want her to be a 12th grader for real? I'm afraid it'll leave her going "are you kidding me? I already finished 12th grade work, I'm done" and me right where I'm trying to avoid being- with a 16 year old going into 12th grade. So that doesn't really help me. I don't want to do a different curriculum from the one we're doing, because we really like this curriculum. (So I don't want to do OM6 for 6th grade and then figure out an entirely different curriculum for a transition year or whatever). I don't want to have her REPEAT a grade doing the same thing (two years of repeating the same curriculum in its entirety)- I just want to stretch the 6th grade curriculum out so that it covers a two year period rather than a one year period. Of course, I don't want that two year period to crawl along at a snail's pace not being at all challenging- but I don't think that will be the case anyway as I've heard OM6 is meatier than OM5, more writing etc., which she can take more time with- trying to do those writing assignments independently, learning to do the research better at the computer a bit more on her own, and supplementing with other things here and there to round out both years (such as Meet The Masters for art, continued judo classes, beginning guitar lessons, moving on to Story Grammar For Elementary School. Perhaps continuing with SOTW1 over the school year as OM6 deals with Ancient Times anyway- in the past we've only done SOTW1 over the summer here and there for fun because we haven't had time for it on top of our regular curriculum). I don't think the second year of OM6 will be too "babyish" for her- like I said, if she'd been born just one day later, that's where she would have been at that time anyway, and I think that it will be a suitable curriculum for her even then. I do think I can come up with enough to keep her challenged and supplement just enough that it doesn't seem like we're doing hardly anything for two years of sixth and then seventh comes as a rude shock. I'll supplement with other things as I feel I need to. My ultimate hope is that she will be better equipped for the types of assignments she'll be expected to do more and more independently as she moves further into the middle and high school years (and perhaps take more out of/away from those reading and writing assignments coming at them from being a year older), AND that once she graduates, she'll be mentally and emotionally prepared for whatever lies ahead for her future if she's going into that at 18 rather than 17, whatever it may be.

Gayle, those are very good scores! Even more so as you mention them not being mathy! Our kids who are not mathy and who are using a program many people worry isn't good enough are managing to pull good test scores right up there with kids using various other programs- and having fun and not struggling while using it. All while building confidence. TT is worth its weight in gold as far as I am concerned!

Honestly, I would try not to stress over it. When he uses it, tell him what a good job he did, when he doesn't, or doesn't want to, just accept it matter-of-factly, and just wait it out a little bit longer. He'll get there when he's ready. I wouldn't turn it into a battle or source of stress for you or him or anything like that (not saying you are). I sort of took that laid back approach with my son and he let me know when he was ready. Just when I was thinking he was going to turn four without being fully potty trained, he got up and put on a pair of underwear on his own one day and proceeded to use the potty whenever he needed to. I continued putting pullups on him at nighttime only, and just a couple of weeks ago (at age 5 1/2) he took it back off one night and informed me he wanted to sleep in his underwear. Which he's been doing with no problem in the couple of weeks since.