I'm of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mindset. If you really like Montessori and its ideals, and know it works well- why not just stick with it? I would! :)

Guilty? Not at all. But I do always feel slightly awkward around gift-giving occasions. Like, "Happy birthday, look what I bought you with the money you earned!"

I just took a peek... I love it!

I'll put in another vote for both a geoboard and rubberbands (we made our own homemade geoboard- well, my husband did. I just showed him a pattern and asked him to lol), and for pattern blocks. My 4 year old enjoys both of those things. P.S. You can google "how to make your own geoboard" and find a few different ones that are pretty easy to make.

We just finished Oak Meadow's 4th Grade curriculum, and they had some fun, creative ideas for spelling review. Some of them were: Draw a "map" of a small town. Name the streets and buildings after spelling words. Make a "windsock"- just decorate a paper plate, attach crepe papers streamers to it, and write a spelling word on each streamer. Write the spelling words on the sidewalk with chalk, on someone's back with your finger, in the dirt with a stick, in a tray of salt with your finger. Toss a ball back and forth taking turns chanting the letters in each spelling word. Sometimes we'd also write each word out and she'd make a big "bubble letter" for the first letter of the word, and then she'd use colored pencils to make different designs and colors in that letter. Make up a short story or a poem using all of the spelling words. Play a memory game with the spelling words- use index cards and make pairs of word cards. Flip them over trying to find matches. Here's a website I came across that lists a bunch of other fun ways, including some interactive sites where you can play spelling games or animate your spelling words and things like that: http://www.sd5.k12.mt.us/elrod/multiage/spelling.html

By the way, I just googled "first grade spelling words" to see if I could find a list of common ones and to see what might be on that list. The lists were things like: an can man ran ten pen hen in pin pond fun run at sat cat that pot got put gut mug dug The "bonus" words were stuff like: land spin flat trot ...then again I looked at the first five lists. There were like 30 lists for 1st grade spelling and apparently they got harder as they go, because I peeked at list 30, which I guess would be for the end of the year, and it had words like: stem stamp nest street stand grass

It wasn't scary for me when I got my first one. It was very exciting! I remember sitting down to pee, noticing it, getting totally excited and going out to tell my mother, who was on the phone. I expected and wanted her to get right off the phone, exclaim over how grown up I was, and take me out immediately to buy the necessary feminine hygiene products, but instead she sort of shooed me away, telling me to put some toilet paper in my underwear for now, and she stayed on the phone. I was crushed. I've never fully forgiven her haha.

I got mine at 11. I think I got it in May or June, pretty much right after my 11th birthday, and then didn't get it again the rest of the summer, and then I think it started up again in the fall, so it's sort of come and go for a while there at first, I think. They say the "average" age for a first period is about 12 but it's pretty common from 10-14. My daughter has known all about it from age 8 on so she'll be prepared when her time comes (she's 9.9 now). Sometimes you never know if it's going to happen earlier than expected! But yep that's exactly what it sounds like.

Not sure about specific books and such, but perhaps you could do some or all of the following: Read Native American myths and legends to them. Let them see how the Indians were storytellers and what some of their stories were. For OM4 this past year, we read a bunch of those in "World Myths And Legends, Native American." It covered several different tribes and would give a little excerpt about that particular tribe before the story began. Look up online pictures of Indian crafts and artifacts. Let them try their own hand at beading or pottery or making a headdress or whatever. For OM4 this year we did some of that when we researched the Indians that had been native to our area, and also made wigwams out of clay and created a little village. Do you have an Indian museum or some sort of heritage place in your area? If so, go visit it. Ask them if/when there are festivals and pow-wows and celebrations going on that maybe you can go visit. Near us, they do that a few times a year. We can go see traditional dancing and drumming and teepees and crafts and whatnot. Our library also had someone come in and do an American Indian presentation, which featured crafts, artifacts, drumming, story telling, chanting and a bit of talk about the history. Oh and there's this book I got for my kids after my husband's uncle told us that they had some Blackfoot in them- it's called "Blackfood Children and Elders Talk Together" and I see that there are actually all different tribes in this series...Seminole, Lakota Sioux, Crow, Zuni, etc. They're relatively simple books. As for learning more about specific tribes, I think maybe you should start by finding out which ones were native to YOUR state/area, and try learning about them.

Lorax, Thanks for your feedback! I did ALL MLB's for 4th grade and I was trying to figure out what I should do now for 5th because it doesn't seem to tell you in the syllabus, and I was undecided. I like the idea of kind of combining and doing some in binders and some with more of a MLB feel. I'll have to think on it some more now! :) Osmosis Mom, I actually got this fantastic deal on a used curriculum that gave me all of OMK through OM8 all in one shot! Mine are older versions, too, so my OM5 is the same as yours- the 1998 edition. I couldn't tell you the exact specifics of the differences between what we have and the most recent version. But I can tell you that I had called OM right before purchasing and felt them out about whether there were significant changes in curriculum between then and now, and the impression I got from their response was that there weren't. I did OM4 last year using this older version and I loved it. I didn't feel like it was really outdated or that I was missing out on anything. It's a great curriculum, even used. And the price was way too good to pass up. I have no regrets! I've also looked through pretty much all of my used OMK and OM5 as we're moving on to those with my son and daughter this fall, and I'm totally happy with those, too. As for crafts and handiwork, that kind of thing is integrated into the US History/English Syllabus. So we're just following along with that! They're going to have you doing things like making your own compass, making a sailboat (as you read about Columbus and other explorers), when you read about Jamestown it's going to give you a choice of projects such as making a diorama, making a paper Pocahontas mask or puppet and so on. It'll give you occasional recipes, such as for "hard tack" and "Johnny Cakes," and it will give you "extra credit projects" which are optional for things such as making a flour and salt map and will include a recipe for flour and salt dough, or pressing leaves and flowers for a little booklet pertaining to home/folk remedies. Other crafts and handiwork projects include cross stitch, clay bowls or cups, paper making, candle making, making your own ink, making a bead loom, bead weaving, herbal scents (making a naturally scented pillow), and so on. So I'm not planning on anything extra outside of the curriculum, but of course we do have plenty of standard arts and crafts supplies wherein my daughter can do her own thing in her free time, and we usually do some sort of art camp over the summer, and she does some craft type projects in Girl Scouts, etc.

Cool! My 9 year old and I read that one aloud together not that long ago, too. After we finished the book, we watched the original movie together. And then she tried goat's milk. Which she did not like :D

Hey, Christy! So you're still just using blank, unlined white paper though, as opposed to lined notebook paper at this point? Like for writing assignments and everything?

Get a different evaluator next year! :)

We love read alouds. It's a nice, relaxing way for us to just spend time together, sharing a good story, and discussing it as we go, and afterward. It opens the door for conversation, companionship and memories. I also think that it helps them become more fluent readers themselves, if they can hear, even as they get older, how adults use inflection and rhythm and so on when they read aloud. Not to mention, it'll broaden my daughter's horizons a bit- she might not select such a variety of books on her own. Whereas the ones we read together, I might suggest myself, and when I start reading it to her, she'll get into a story she might not have otherwise read on her own.

Thanks, Cindie! I can't tell for sure from her blog whether she is doing everything with MLB's or not! Maybe she'll chime in here! I think I'm leaning toward switching over to regular binders at this point, though.

My daughter finished a series not that long ago that she really loved, in part because the main character is homeschooled :) It's called the "Monster Of The Month Club" series. Maybe you could check that out! There's another series featuring homeschooled characters, too, called "Wright On Time"- I think there are only 2 or 3 books out so far- we have the first two but haven't yet read them ourselves. My daughter has also enjoyed Encyclopedia Brown, Pippi Longstocking, Magic Treehouse, Avalon, A-Z Mysteries, and loves to pick out books of myths, legends or fables from various countries/ethnic groups and read those. Fairy tales, too. Oh, and "choose your own adventure" books. I tend to let her pick out whatever she wants at the library for her independent reading. If there's a book I'm going to "assign," we read it together. Sometimes taking turns reading aloud, sometimes me just reading to her, sometimes her reading to me, etc. I kind of let her choose which way she wants to do it rather than forcing the issue at this stage. Fortunately, though, she likes to read in general.

If so, would you mind sharing with me whether you used "Main Lesson Books" still, or was that the point at which you switched to regular binders/lined notebook paper or whatever....? Thanks!

I just wanted to read, and write stories. That was all. I'd have happily been left alone to do nothing but that :)

Well, my fourth grader and I averaged maybe 3 hours a day this past school year. Sometimes it was a little less. If we were doing a hands on project of some sort, it might have been a drop more. I do not foresee fifth grade taking much more. I wouldn't spend more than 4 hours a day on it, and I expect that most days it'll be a bit less than that.

:iagree::iagree::iagree: We are using the Oak Meadow curriculum which is 36 weeks worth of lesson plans, so if I needed "proof" that I was completing the 180 days PA requires (well, it's that OR X number of hours), there it is- but with that said, I never stress over "counting" days or hours. We do our subjects- but we also do tons of other things that are educational. Every day. She might be playing educational games, reading on her own, going on field trips, listening to bedtime stories, doing arts and crafts, going to Girl Scouts or a camp program or a library program or a tour of a local place or riding her bike or whatever the case may be- it's all educational and you can bet it's covering some "subject" or other the schools want you to cover- just because it might be done in a hands-on or out-of-the-house type of way rather than a sit at your desk and open a textbook kind of way doesn't mean it can't be considered "school!"

Not this school year that just passed, but toward the end of the one before, my mother found me a used book called: "Teaching Poetry Yes You Can!" by Jacqueline Sweeney. After reading through it (I found it very helpful!), I was inspired to start a summer Poetry Workshop. My daughter (then 8) and I contacted just a few other kids in the 8-10 year old age range, from our homeschool group and neighborhood, and put together a small group of six kids who would come over Thursday evenings in the summer for an hour and a half or so each week. We'd talk about different aspects of poetry each week, I'd read them examples of poems written by other kids and famous poets (which you get right in this book I mentioned), and then I'd get them to write their own poems. Usually individually, sometimes cooperatively. Afterward, whoever wanted to could share their poems, reading them aloud to the rest of the group. Then they'd have a snack (moms alternated providing them) and they'd play for a little while before everyone went home. Their notebooks stayed here and each week after they'd gone, I'd type their poems into a Word document. At the last gathering, we had a pizza and ice cream party, and I gave each kid a finished booklet of all of their poems. I think we did our workshops for like 10 weeks. Not sure if you are looking to do something like that, but it was a lot of fun. In fact, not that long ago, one of the girls who attended (who goes to Girl Scouts with my daughter) asked me "Are we gonna do poetry again this summer?" I said I didn't know if we'd do poetry but maybe we'd do short stories or something! On the other hand- if you mean just reading poetry in general, well, then, all you need are weekly trips to the library where you can take out different books of poetry each week and read them to each other :)

I don't start til after Labor Day. I'm enjoying the summer.

Just for the heck of it, you might want to take a peek at a book called "Better Late Than Early," just to balance out your thinking a bit.

We just finished using the Oak Meadow curriculum for 4th Grade, and we really love it. It's not dry or textbookish, it doesn't focus on worksheets or tests. It's very hands-on and creative. I'm very much looking forward to moving on to Oak Meadow 5 with my daughter in the fall, and starting Oak Meadow K with my son. http://www.oakmeadow.com/ ETA: We'll also be using Teaching Textbooks for math from 5th grade on for my daughter.

Yep, this. I post pics of my kids on my livejournal site all the time. But I don't mention the town I live in, or my address, or my phone number, or my last name etc. I take my kids out in public in front of strangers all the time. If something were going to happen it'd be more likely to come from someone we come across in public than someone who sees a picture of my kids by chancing upon my homeschooling blog.