I have a 14 year old son that constantly misspeaks, using wrong words. An example from yesterday, he kept saying gastric acid when he meant lactic acid. Now I know how easy it is to misspeak, but it is so much more often with him than anyone else in the family, including his fraternal twin, that I am concerned that he is beyond what is normal, and I want to do something to help him out. His writing also has a lack of attention to detail. He understands what he is supposed to do, but when I ask him to review his work for mistakes, he has a very hard time finding them. Math, it is a similar story. He generally understands the concepts, but his mistakes are most frequently from not focusing and and really paying attention. Do you all have any suggestions for some fun activities that we could do during summer break that would help my son learn better focus and attention to detail? Or any other suggestions for that matter. Thank you in advance.

My daughter is going to be 9th grade age in the fall. I have always held open the possibility of her going to high school, if that is what she wanted. I asked her today if it was something she was interested in. She said yes, but only because she wants friends her own age. Our home school group has not had any girls her age, and she is constantly hanging out with kids younger than her. I looked into private school tuition. I'm not interested in paying $10,000 a year for her to make friends. I'm not interested in sending her to public school. If friends is the only reason she wants to go to school, I think it would be financially prudent to find a different way to meet that desire. She plays sports, basketball and softball, but she has not developed the kind of hang-out friendship with any of those girls that she is looking for. She goes to Sunday school and it is the same. There have always been girls her age, but she just never developed the hang-out kind of friendship that she has developed with some of the younger girls at our home school group. There have been times when we have had new girls around her age show up to our home school group. but my daughter is shy and basically ignored them in favor of playing with kids she already knew. I talked to her about it. I talked to her about if she is going to find friends that are her own age, she is going to have to be friendly to kids that show up that are her age. What has happened on these occasions is that the new kids were shy too, because who doesn't feel shy in a new situation? They appeared uncomfortable, and then they never came back, and I am assuming it is because no one was reaching out to them. This group mostly meets at parks, and the kids entertain themselves, so there aren't any directed activities. What can I do to help her foster some friendships with girls her own age?

Will you tell me a little about how you are handling the second round? How does it compare to your first round?

We are finishing the 4th volume of Story of the World this year. My boys are going to be in 7th grade next year, and I want to decide on what we are going to use for History next year. I would like to start over with the Ancients again, and I am hoping to get some recommendations on what to use. The History of the Ancient World is recommended for 9th grade, so do you think that would make it inappropriate for 7th grade students? I'm considering going through the 4 volumes of Story of the World again, and doing more supplementary work this time. Are there other history books out there that I should consider?

I think summer break is more for me than for the kids. :) In past years, In the past, I have always done what I call "Monday Math" during the summer where they do a page of math to review concepts they had been learning every Monday. I could just use "Monday Math" to do an overview of the concepts introduced in those chapters. Thanks for the responses.

We are not going to be able to complete our entire 5th Grade math book by the time I planned for our summer break. We are using Rod & Staff. There were certain concepts that we needed to spend extra time on, so now we are not on schedule to complete it. If this kind of thing has happened to you, how did you handle? Did you put off summer break? Did you pick up where you left off the following school term? Did you move on to the next book without completing it? The things we will not get to are Multiplication and division of decimals, Geometry and Square Measures, & Graphs and Scale Drawings. Those things, from experience with my older child, are covered again in 6th & 7th grade. I'm tempted to just not do them, and move on to a new 6th grade math book next year and they can learn about them later. WWYD?

One of my twins really struggled to learn to read. I was fearful of pushing him too hard because I thought it had the potential to make him dislike reading. I didn't start required reading with him until he was in 4th grade. He is 5th grade age now, and reading is his favorite subject. In the past few months, he has taken up reading way more than I require, and I am one happy momma. Because of his struggles learning to read, I opted to read to him (and his siblings) nightly instead. That way he could enjoy great literature that he was incapable of reading yet. I think it also helped him develop vocabulary and reading comprehension.

Did you move on to the next stage instead? or did you find another writing program?

The praises are basically telling the student to write sentences about the author of a sayings virtues and positive attributes. Their example of an introduction was "It is right to admire one of the United States wisest presidents, George Washington." That is then followed by sentences praising him. My issue is that either the saying is true or false without regard to who said it. If the saying is true, then someone like Pol Pot or Mao Zedong could have said the same thing, and we wouldn't be writing praises of them.

Hi - I am new to the forums, and I am looking to see if anyone has experience with Classical Composition III, Chreia/Maxim Stage from Memoria Press? We used I & II from this series, and we liked those very well. We are just starting III, and I'm not sure I like it as well. I don't like the idea of the author praises without looking at the whole person. Certainly men like Washington, Jefferson, and so on had just as many faults as the rest of humanity. Of course they were extraordinary men, but that doesn't mean that things they have said should be automatically be praised. I take a bit of an issue at teaching my kid to write praises of a select group of sayings and authors when I don't think the child is mature or experienced enough to form an opinion as to whether or not the sayings are true. I see that in the next stage, they learn to argue for or against an idea, so I'm glad to see that and that is exactly what I would like to see my kids learn. This far, I haven't exactly agreed with the sayings in Stage III, and it has been very difficult to teach as a result. I feel obligated to have her look at the author as a whole person, faults and all. I felt the need to reframe the sayings to qualify them so we can work with it so that I don't feel like she is writing meaningless dribble. But then she is writing my opinions, not her own. I know it is just a writing exercise, but my gut says that there is something about writing opinions out that make those opinions real to the person, especially a not fully matured person. Maybe I'm overreacting. Or, maybe this stage isn't for us. I don't know, but I would love some feedback from anyone that has some experience with this book.