I gave tutoring a decent amount of prep, but like PPs said, it varied. I was tutoring 1-2nd graders so reading levels varied, as did attention spans. I think the hardest part was trying to vary the way we did things and yet remain consistent in how we did them at the same time. I spent time inventing games for the kids to play and came up with some good ones. The parents were very pleased with the job I did. The year that I tutored, CC was not "fun" for me at all. I was utterly exhausted at the end and really missed out on the fellowship with other moms, but YMMV. There are some tutors who love tutoring and would not want to be in the helper / observer role. I am not one who typically gravitates toward children's ministry or activities with groups of children, as these things drain me completely. I was doing it because I wanted to be sure my son had a good tutor. I only tutored one year as a result. That is not to say I regret it or did not enjoy it because there were times that I did, but for us, CC was meant to be a fun time and an opportunity to get to fellowship with other families. The years that I did not tutor were much more that way for us.

Hits: TOG, again. :-) WWE, again MUS again Apologia Anatomy and Physiology Phonetic Zoo Caesar's English I can't believe it, but we did not really have any misses this year.

Writing With Ease Story of the World Tapestry of Grace

I posted this on a different thread not long ago, and I will repost it here. I read posts on here all the time about how people aren't sure if WWE really is enough, their kid hates it, etc. I, on the other hand, am SWB's poster child for WWE / WWS. Both of my children adore WWE, have never complained about having to do it, ask to do it first, LOVE the passages that are covered, and have even begged me to buy / borrow the books they came from so they could read the whole thing. WWE is what launched my ds's love of reading. We have never supplemented, and he did WWE 1, 2 and 3 and then this year (he is 11) he began WWS. At first we were covering one week's lesson over two, but now he is fully capable of doing an entire week's lesson in one week. He has become an extremely articulate writer, and wrote his first essay a few weeks ago. We took our time with it, but he enjoyed the process and turned out an excellent final product. I am not sure why it has worked so well for my kids except that it just works. I think the attitude of the parent has so much to do with it. If you keep it light, don't worry too much about following the dictations to the absolute letter (I have to break them up sometimes for my daughter), keep the discussions fun, and then praise their efforts, their handwriting, their thought process, then I really think it can be successful.

I am using it over three years. I will admit, though, that we are taking longer than 10 weeks to get through it because I really don't want him spending more than about 30 minutes a day doing grammar. He gets very crabby and frustrated if he has to do that, so I let him parse one day and diagram the next. Who cares, though, if it takes more than 10 weeks? It doesn't bother me, as long as he is learning it, and he is.

I sit right beside my dd and do the problems with her. I help her to see what she needs to see if she is not quite getting it. I look at the answers ahead of time so I know where BA is heading. We have a lot of fun with it and sometimes Mom even gets it "wrong" and that's okay. I'm using it to drive home the idea that math can be totally fun and not intimidating and if we don't get 100% every time, it's not the end of the world. I wish I had had this when my ds was this age.

Mine is a year-in-review--a BIG weekly report. We finished up our academic cycle this week and will star our new one over the summer. Happy summer, everyone!

That is so exciting, and I'm happy you've found something that works for your boy! I think you've really touched on something here...a lot of it is in the coaching! Coaches these days are so trained to boost self-esteem in kids that I think they lose that "drill-sargent" type of approach. It can be done gently, as you have mentioned. For my kids we have found CrossFit Kids to be a wonderful fit. The coach is a woman, but she is an ideal coach for both boys and girls, IMO. She never raises her voice, but she manages to keep the kids under perfect control. She is like the Pied Piper of fitness. It's interesting, because in the gym when the adult classes are going on, the music is so loud you cannot hear anyone speak at all, but somehow she directs the class, gives instructions, demonstrates difficult moves, and runs a workout, and all the kids know what they should do. When they are finished they are sweating, tired, and feel like they have just accomplished something great (and they have). Then they all want to gather around her and listen to what she has to say after the class. They adore her, and look forward to going back every time. It is hard. work. but they rise to it. It is all about the air of authority that kids perceive, I think. They are excellent judges of character, and they really want to please. If they are led well, they will usually do well.

let the boy read. throw your box away. that is all.

I think that in general, as a society, we have become very tolerant of shabbily constructed prose, and this would lead to the thinking that outlining and planning is obsolete. I do not think MCT's comment means that outlining is obsolete, as a pp pointed out, but that there are new-fangled tools to assist in the process. I think that children and beginning writers simply cannot know how to organize their thoughts, but the need to be taught. That said, I do not believe that the classic roman-numeral outline is the only way to organize and prepare one's composition, but skills do need to be utilized that will help a student learn to organize, classify, and prioritize what should be included in a composition.

Unfortunately, TOG is not inexpensive. I cannot speak to the other programs.

I really appreciate Analytical Grammar. It is a thorough examination of the whole body of grammar that there is to learn, and covers it in three seasons, none of which takes an entire school year to complete, unless you stretch it out. It is not easy, but it is thorough. We use this, phonetic zoo for spelling, MCT Caesar's English, and WWS. I am very pleased with the progress that my ds 11 has made this year in his language study. PZ is in-and-out, ten minutes a day and I don't touch it. CE is able to be covered in 2 days per week, and WWS you know.

Well, in that case--write all the book reports you want! I will admit that I did not read the second half of your post as closely as I should have. Sorry! :leaving:

Both of my kids nursed until they were old enough to talk. One was 2.5 and the other 3.5 years old when they weaned. It used to drive me crazy when people would suggest that mothers only nurse their children past a year because they couldn't let go. It is stupid reasoning. Of course they wean, of course you don't want to nurse forever...stupid. I say that because I think we have a tendency to be pressured by the world to send our children off to be artificially socialized at a point that is most likely (in the social grand scheme of things) too early. I have seen only good in my children for having them stay at home. When I watch their behavior, their intellect, their overall sense of security, I believe I am doing something that is very good for them. This is not to say that they would not be well-behaved, smart or secure if the went to school, since everything is going well, what could be wrong with it? I really believe that when they have a need to be more independent and peer-focused, they will express those needs in a variety of ways. I have never seen homeschooled kids stay at home past the point of what is healthy and live with their parents until their 30s because they were homeschooled, any more than I have seen a kid not go to college because they hadn't weaned yet. Homeschooling is not about me alone, but I believe that God uses it to work on my character and spiritual walk more than any other thing I have ever done. To be faced with this daunting task day and day out, to be tested to the limits of my patience, fears, anger management, loving service, self-sacrifice, diligence and perseverance is something that I know God is using to refine me and to lovingly parent me as I parent my own children that he has entrusted to me. You know this is not for the faint of heart. In this regard, it is way more about the mom. Setting the spiritual example for my kids is about my relationship with God and my husband first, then about them. They will follow if they are well-shepherded. Unless you can see damage to your children that has occurred as a direct result of your keeping them at home, then why are you worried?

Two points I would like to add to the discussion and they are 1. the importance of vision, and 2. a comment about box curriculum and judging... On vision, the first reaction I had to the quote that was posted by Hunter was that it is so important to take the time to formulate your own vision, both long-term and short-term, and Hunter hit it on the head when she talked about figuring out what you are like. Several years ago my husband and I actually wrote a vision statement for our family and education and I go back and re-read it a couple of times a year. I have also written short and long-term goals with the intention of revisiting and revising them. I do and I have. The bottom line is that you need to figure out not only what you are like and who you are and what works for you as a teacher, but also when you send your kids off into the world, will you have done what you knew to be necessary to shape then into the people that both they and you desired them to be. I do not say that we can force our kids to be what we want them to be, but what I mean is to help them become the best "them" that they can be. On boxed curriculum, I think it a question of style, not on ability or quality. Boxed curricula are written to guide a parent who would otherwise not have a clue where to start or how to proceed or who has a tone of kids and just needs an open-and-go lesson plan, or who loves a roadmap and wants to know when to stop, or they work outside the home, or any number of reasons...There are great ones out there. There are the other parents, like myself, who cannot follow another person's set of guidelines without feeling like the walls are closing in. The thought actually makes me feel panicky, so for us it just would not be a fit. I have to piece it together myself or it will not get done. No judgement--just different.

If you choose to live outside of DC proper, I would choose the VA rather than the MD side as homeschool laws are (to my understanding) much easier in VA, but you already know VA's laws. :-)

I read posts on here all the time about how people aren't sure if WWE really is enough, their kid hates it, etc. I, on the other hand, am SWB's poster child for WWE / WWS. Both of my children adore WWE, have never complained about having to do it, ask to do it first, LOVE the passages that are covered, and have even begged me to buy / borrow the books they came from so they could read the whole thing. WWE is what launched my ds's love of reading. We have never supplemented, and he did WWE 1, 2 and 3 and then this year (he is 11) he began WWS. At first we were covering one week's lesson over two, but now he is fully capable of doing an entire week's lesson in one week. He has become an extremely articulate writer, and wrote his first essay a few weeks ago. We took our time with it, but he enjoyed the process and turned out an excellent final product. I highly, highly recommend listening to SWB's lectures on how to teach writing and if it makes sense, follow your gut. I will make this disclaimer--I was an English teacher and writing teacher in my former life. No methodology for teaching writing has ever made as much sense to me as SWB's, and I bought her system, hook line and sinker. If it is a bust I'm going down with the ship. Let's throw in a few more cliches just to drive home my point. :001_smile: I am not sure why it has worked so well for my kids except that it just works. I think the attitude of the parent has so much to do with it. If you keep it light, don't worry too much about following the dictations to the absolute letter (I have to break them up sometimes for my daughter), keep the discussions fun, and then praise their efforts, their handwriting, their thought process, then I really think it can be successful.

There are so many other ways to do book reports than writing. Have her narrate to you what the story is about. Have her write about other things, or ask her what her favorite part of the book was and have her copy a sentence or two from that part. IMHO, there is no reason to attack the love of reading by having a child have to do something so difficult as write about it when they can hardly write to begin with. It is a very school-induced notion that we had to do book reports to prove that we had read something. I think there are many better ways to get a kid to interact with what they have read.

This will be the first time I attempt to school year round. We will continue with math, spelling, reading and writing, and I hope to cover geography over the summer. We go to the beach for a week at the beginning of the summer, and then will take the month of June off to work on projects around the house, but will come back to school at the end of June. I would like to try the 6 on one off schedule.

I agree that this is an excellent first attempt! I also agree that you should write like you are talking over the fence. I think the problems with this essay might be helped with a clearer intro and thesis statement. If he knows how to write a paragraph, the concept of topic sentences and staying on point can be expanded to explain thesis statements and introductions. I developed an illustration with my writing students that I still use with my kids. It may seem overly simplistic, but it works. I use the illustration of an umbrella. I draw a big umbrella and write topic sentence or thesis statement (depending on whether we are discussing paragraphs or essays) on the umbrella portion. On the handle I write "conclusion" Then I write points II. III. IV., etc. under the umbrella. I point out that if anything is off-topic, irrelevant, or uninteresting, it is poking out from the side and is going to get "wet" and we want our subject to stay "dry" so the reader can concentrate. A wet reader is uncomfortable and wants to get away from the water (i.e. they lose interest). They need a good conclusion to give them something to "hold on to / remember" when they are done reading. When my writer has completed his / her first draft, I read it aloud to him / her as if he / she had never heard it before. Then I ask questions: What was it about? Can you tell me one sentence that tells me what it was about? Did you hear anything that didn't seem like a good fit with the topic? How did you feel at the end of it? How could it be changed to be better? Was there any part that was standing out in the rain? I think the key is to get them to evaluate their own writing based on an understanding of what should / should not be there. After the first go-around, we go back and evaluate the language, the flow, and the punctuation. I have the writer read the paper aloud to me and ask them if it was easy to read based on the punctuation--did it make sense? Were there too many pauses? Not enough? Were the sentences too long and wordy? How about this or that word / phrase, is there a more creative way to say that? Let's think of one... Maybe this will help you as you guide him further with his essays.

My 6th grader does PZ list B and does very well. I would probably use list A with your son just because the words are challenging enough and the point is to help them to memorize and internalize the chants that go along with the spelling rules. It is a completely independent process. The only involvement I have with my ds11 and spelling is to say, "did you do your spelling?" and "how many times did it take you to pass?" (typically the answer is 2 or three). I wonder if a 2nd grader is mature enough--You might need to supervise him a bit more in the process. I also do AAS with my dd7 and she doesn't love it, but when I skip the spelling with the tiles part, she likes it much better. She would much rather just write the words in her book and leave it at that. We've been doing fine with that.

My daughter always enjoys the activity pages and I am glad to see that they will have them in all the levels. I do think that a certain amount of real-life application was missing from MUS, but it works for us. Now that my DS is in the pre-A level he does the honors page of each lesson and he is challenged by them!

We have used MUS from Primer all the way now into Pre-A. I was concerned that the Pre-A would not be tough enough for my son, but with the honors section in each chapter it is fine. We have also supplemented with Life of Fred, AoPs, and Khan at various times, but overall, we have been very happy with MUS. My ds does not need to use the blocks most of the time, my dd is helped by using them, but overall, Mr. Demme's demonstration with them is enough for him.

Mine is up. I haven't played in a while.

This is very good info. Thanks for the very well-thought-out posts. I have a rising (articulate, literary, artistic) 3rd grader and I am considering this for her next year. I may even wait a year...but even so, this was very helpful.