Beautiful room! I would not do a whiteboard unless you're going to move the bins; I think it would be too uncomfortable to reach over them while teaching, and little ones would be way too tempted to climb up on them to reach the whiteboard. A couple of ideas off the top of my head: - A string or wire stretched across the space, to which you could clip artwork & schoolwork to show it off. My kids loved this when they were little - always an honor to have their work clipped to the wall. And I loved that it held lots and lots of papers and did minimal wall damage. A bit of clothesline & a few colorful clothespins and you're good to go. I think someone posted here that IKEA sells a wire contraption that serves the same purpose, if you'd rather go that route. - If you want something more "playroom" and less "school room" you could mount boardgames on the wall. Goodwill (or similar) is your friend for this. For very little $, you can pick up old games and just toss everything but the playing boards. They're colorful, nostalgic, and take up lots of wall space. - It's a little high, maybe, but rain gutter bookshelves (or, again, the IKEA version) are one of my favorites for big walls like this. - You could center a vinyl wall quote on the wall - something that has special meaning for your family or your homeschool - and surround it with favorite framed pictures of your children, or their artwork, or both. I hope you'll post again and show us what you decide. I love looking at people's school room pictures :). SBP

This might not be a popular opinion, but it sounds to me as though she's manipulating you... and very successfully. You're in tears, and she's watching TV? With the math still not done? No, no, no! With all due respect to the other posters (who are probably much nicer moms than I am) I don't think that this is the time for warm fuzzies and field trips unless that's your long-term vision for how you want her schooling to take place. This is the time to set the tone you want set for the rest of the year. There are ways you can do that without crying or yelling. You don't want to do schoolwork, honey? Well, in life, people who don't get a good education have to find some other way to earn their livings. Perhaps you'd like to try cleaning the house. Here's a list of chores that need to be done... It's amazing what a day of cleaning baseboards, raking leaves, scrubbing toilets, etc., can do to make school seem more appealing. I'm sorry. We won't be going to Scouts, or dance, or your friend's house, or (insert favorite activity) because your schoolwork isn't finished. No drama, no yelling. Just a simple fact. We can't go because the schoolwork isn't completed, and that's the most important thing. These are just examples of some things that have worked for my kids over the years. You know what matters most to her, so you'll know which buttons to push. Please don't be afraid to push them. Somewhere along the way, she'll get the idea that her education matters hugely to you, even if she doesn't always like it. It's become a bit of a joke at my house. One of my kids will say, with full tween drama, "I hate math! I don't want to do this!" I'll answer calmly, "Do I care?" They'll usually laugh at that and say, "No," and if they're feeling brave, they might add, "'cause you're mean." Darn right. But they know I really do care about the big picture, even if I don't care a whit whether they *want* to do their math that day. And that's why they laugh, and do their math, and then we have time for the fun stuff once it's done. Please don't throw in the towel yet. It sounds like you both had some warm fuzzy impressions of homeschooling, and so far it's not living up to your expectations. Maybe she thought it would be more "home" and less "school." Maybe you had visions of her eyes lighting up as she satisfied her insatiable thirst for knowledge. You can still have those moments, but unfortunately, you have to navigate many more prosaic moments to get there. Hang in there! SBP

I don't think your expectations are at all unreasonable. I do wonder what happened to the other hours in her day? You accounted for three of them, but that would leave four or five hours of school time around here, or longer if the schoolwork wasn't completed. I don't know your DD, but I do have dc in the same age range, and one is an ADD kid (medicated, though) who requires tight scheduling to stay on task. What I do is: 1) I provide a checklist of each day's schoolwork. I don't add to it if they get finished early, but I also don't reschedule things unless there's some really good reason (e.g., a doctor's appointment that takes out a chunk of our day). They are expected to complete what's on that list that day. If they can't do it during our regular school time (8:00-3:30) then they have "homework" but it better be in my inbox before they go to bed that night. 2) I provide a schedule that serves as a framework for their day - which subjects are done at which times - and this year, I've scheduled an hour of "study hall" in the afternoons. Study hall is for completing any of that day's assignments that didn't get completed during the regularly scheduled time, for reading assignments, for composition assignments, or for studying for upcoming tests. They can use it however it's most needed that day, but it allows me to stop them in the mornings and say, "It's time to move on to the next subject now. You'll have to finish your math at study hall." That way, subjects don't get skipped completely, and the math still gets finished. It's actually worked very well. 3) I don't give in if they ask to re-schedule something. I can already tell you that one of my little darlings is going to be begging to use some weekend time to finish this week's Lightning Lit reading assignment. She's had all week to do it and has procrastinated, so today she has five chapters to read plus comprehension questions. She's not going to want to do that on Friday afternoon, but that's tough. Part of life is learning to manage her time, and I'm not doing her any favors if I let her get away with procrastination. She has a fun trip scheduled tomorrow with some friends, and she simply won't be going on it unless her schoolwork has been finished. I predict it will be ;). I don't know if any of these suggestions will help you - they may be things you're already doing. I wish you luck in getting to the root of the problem. Best, SBP

I had a 3 year old like that, so I just taught her. I was teaching her brother using "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons," and she insisted she wanted reading lessons from the same book. No amount of trying to fake her out with storybooks or cuddle time was going to satisfy her. So, we started 100EL, hit a wall around lesson 20, started 100EL AGAIN, hit a wall around lesson 30, backed up a bit, and finally she took off reading and was reading the Pathway Readers and Abeka early readers by the time she was 4. So it took a little longer and required a bit more patience, but as long as she was using the same book her brother was, she was happy, and in hindsight I was incredibly glad she learned early. She is not gifted, btw, and is not even a particularly passionate reader these days though she's certainly a very capable one. I think she's too extroverted and social to find much pleasure in such a solitary activity as reading :). Good luck with your DD! SBP

I tried it for the same reason - so many friends raving about how it was the best thing they'd ever read. I couldn't for the life of me see what all the fuss was about. But then, books that glorify adultery pretty consistently leave me cold, so that aspect of it might have kept me from appreciating whatever other merits it has. SBP

Love it. Taught my two to read as preschoolers (DD was 3 & DS was 4) and then passed it on to my sister, who has used it to teach my nephews. So far, that one book has had all five kids reading by the age of 4, which works out to about $3 per child, I think :). We followed it up with SWR for more intensive phonics, but for a get-your-kid-reading book, I love 100EL and would use it again. SBP

The DIVE CD's are CD-Rom presentations of each Saxon math lesson. The kids hear the teacher's voice going through the material and see the various sample problems worked on the screen. In my house, the DIVE CD takes the place of me teaching the daily lesson. If your son continues burning through Saxon 7/6 with no difficulty, or if you're comfortable teaching math yourself and have the time to do it, you probably have no need at all for the DIVE CD's. This is the first year I've used it, and that's mostly because he'll be starting prealgebra, and I was such a poor algebra student that I don't think I have any business teaching it. Saxon now sells the "Saxon Teacher" CD, which is another way to go if you're looking for a video presentation of the lesson, and beginning with Algebra 1/2, I believe, there's a series of DVD's by Art Reed that seem to be well thought of. We might go that route next year. My son says he likes the DIVE CD's but wishes he could see the teacher's face :). Best, SBP

I should have added, in fairness to the program, that my DS did much better with it and, in fact, says it's his favorite of the three grammar programs we've used over the years. However, because my children are so close in age, it's convenient for me to keep them together and have them use the same curricula, and I think he's probably learning more from MCT. But GWG wasn't the disaster for him that it was for his sister, and I'm sure it's a solid option for many children. Best, SBP

LoF is definitely a supplement here. My kids are not mathy, and it takes about 70 billion practice problems to cement something in their heads. We use Saxon and supplement with Fred for fun/reinforcement. SBP

My DS is doing 8/7 with DIVE this year and it usually takes him around an hour and 15 minutes to do everything: facts practice, mental math ,DIVE lesson, lesson practice, & mixed practice. He's not allowed to skip any problems. I expect it will take him a bit longer once he's out of the review material. He's only on lesson 14 right now and hasn't hit much that's new. SBP

I don't remember ever thinking it was "great", but I thought that Growing With Grammar was serviceable and efficient and a good fit for us. By the second year, however, I was realizing just how little my DD was learning/retaining. She could fill in the worksheets for that chapter and then just let everything she knew about nouns (or whatever) fall right out of her head. It caught up with her on the diagramming, though, and that became a nightmare. Looking back, I wish we'd either stuck with Shurley or, even better, discovered MCT earlier. We do much better looking at whole sentences rather than studying individual parts of speech in isolation. SBP

We're no longer in CC, but we were for five years, and I never made any attempt to correlate what we were studying at CC with what we were learning at home. I just added CC like it was it's own subject, 'Memory Work', and had my children spend 20 or so minutes a day reviewing. On the weekends, I would make them a CD of their memory work, repeating each thing 3-4 times and instructing them to repeat after me, say it with me, etc. (I started this in the early days when the CD's that CC puts out were either awful or nonexistent. Later, they remade the history songs so that they were kind of catchy, and I did use those, but I still just recorded my voice for most of the other subjects.) Once that was done, I added it to their daily schedule, and they would put on the headphones and listen to their memory work for that week. It was a great thing for them to do on their own, while I was working with the sibling, and sometimes I'd add in other memory work I wanted them to do, or poetry, which CC doesn't cover. For geography, we used Sheppard Software a lot. Hope you enjoy your CC experience :). SBP

Yup. We used Saxon 1 for Kindergarten (mostly because that was what the local classical school was doing, and I was a new homeschooler who wasn't ready to trust her own instincts) and it was just WAY too much math, too many worksheets, etc., for an ADHD 5 year old. I blamed Saxon (much easier than blaming myself) and swore I'd never use it again. We switched to RightStart and loved that, but then ran out of RightStart at about the 4th grade and did an absolutely useless year of BJU before I got over myself and switched to Saxon. I desperately wish, for my DD's sake, especially, that I had put her in Saxon 5/4 right after RightStart. It's one of my biggest regrets in 7 years of homeschooling.

I am having kittens over Rainbow so far. I love having all the stuff for the experiments on hand. I love that my kids can set up and clean up experiments on their own. I love that it's getting done, which, I'm ashamed to say, really makes it stand out among the other programs I've tried. I love that the lessons are short but full of information and fun for the kids to read. I even love that the first test kind of kicked their behinds, because this is a great subject for them to really work on study skills, outlining their reading, mastering the vocabulary, etc. It doesn't really fulfill your desire for a multi-topic science program, however. It covers Physics and Chemistry the first year and Biology the second. But if that sounds acceptable, I'd really suggest giving Rainbow a look. Worth every penny, IMO. SBP

We tried Chalk Dust Basic Math last year (6th grade), and I loved it. I really, really loved it. Mostly what I loved is that I wasn't actually teaching it, but I also loved how it really kicked my kid's tail and made him work HARD at math. He got a lot of C's, but sometimes an A or B, and when he got those A's and B's we let down the confetti and balloons and had a little party. So even though he was mostly getting C's, I felt like he was learning SO MUCH. But then we got a few chapters in, and while he continued to hold his own chapter-by-chapter, I realized when he took the cumulative review tests that he just wasn't retaining. That stuff he'd fought so hard for back in chapter 2, the stuff I thought he'd triumphed over... it was just erased from his brain like it had never been there. Maybe it was puberty, but I think it's also that he just needs more review than CD provides. If I were a better math teacher, I'm sure I could figure a way around that myself - supplementing, giving daily review problems... something. But his load with CD was so heavy that I just couldn't bear to add to it, and frankly, I'm not a great math teacher and wasn't sure I could craft a review schedule that would get the job done. So with great sadness (on my part, because I truly wanted to adopt Dana Moseley, knit him a sweater, and have him for Christmas dinner) I switched DS to Saxon 7/6 second semester last year. He sailed through it after doing Chalk Dust for a semester, and I worried that it was too easy, I'd copped out, etc., but it reinforced what he'd learned and provided the continuous review that he seems to need. He's doing Saxon 8/7 with DIVE this year and is sailing through that as well, even though we did no (NO!) math review over the summer. The stuff he learned in 7/6 seemed to stick in a way that the stuff he'd learned in Chalk Dust just didn't. I'm not saying that Saxon is necessarily the answer for you. I'm not even sure what I'm saying (haven't had enough coffee yet) except that in our case, the problem with CD wasn't that the problems were hard (which they were) or that the teaching was bad (which it definitely wasn't); it was its mastery approach when what my son needed was something more spiral/incremental. I've made my peace with that and plan to stick with Saxon (which is one of the programs I was never going to use, no sir, no way...) because it works for my kids. I don't have the same warm fuzzies over the DIVE CD that I had over the Chalk Dust lectures, but they're still pretty awesome and, as my son bluntly says, the disembodied DIVE CD guy is a "way better (math) teacher" than I am. Thanks for entertaining my pre-coffee rambling. Good luck to you :) SBP

We've just started LL7, so I can't claim that it's made my dc literary geniuses yet. Yes, some of the workbook pages are busy-workish, but they do cover ground that I just haven't over the years - or at least haven't covered explicitly. And my children love the occasional word search or crossword puzzle, so they'd be mad if we left those out :). I was very tempted by Teaching the Classics, but honestly, after watching most of the DVD at a workshop, I still wasn't sure what to DO to use it to teach. I really like things that are completely laid out for me these days, even if a little busy work is thrown into the mix. We've read some of the books as well, but I'm actually thinking that's a good thing. We did Alice in Wonderland and Tom Sawyer, to name two, as read-alouds, and now it's time for them to read the books themselves and at the same time begin to see literary elements in them that they probably didn't notice when we read these books several years ago. And of course, since we've already read them before, they don't seem at all intimidating. (My children started Tom Sawyer today, and their favorite thing was picking out all the words we'd covered in Caesar's English I last year - it was like a game to them.) Anyway, LL7 isn't something I'm jumping up and down about yet, but I don't regret buying it either and plan to move ahead with it using the schedule that was recommended in the teacher's guide. SBP

I hear you. I knew my DD should be doing math every day this summer, but... it just didn't get done. Starting back hasn't been as bad as it could have been, but I have guilt because I know it would have been better if I'd stayed on my game. But as you say, moms get tired too, need a break, etc. Think I might look at something on the computer next summer. ALEKS or maybe even TT, which is a crazy amount of $ to spend on a summer supplement, but I wouldn't have to teach it, which means it might get done and I'd still get the time to recharge. Anyway, I'm rambling, but I just wanted you to know you're not alone. Hope things get better soon :). SBP

We do the things I bolded as well, and have since my DS was a first grader. The schedule, especially, is SO important to him. He needs to SEE what he has to do each day, where his breaks are, etc. I'm a mean mom/homeschooler, so whenever my DS allowed his desire to play with certain toys to distract him from his schooling to the point of arguing with me about it, we got into the car that minute and took the distracting toy to Goodwill. Yes, I know Legos are expensive, the other kids play with them too, etc., but your time and sanity are valuable as well, and with my kid, at least, this was not a lesson that needed frequent repetition. I think we've done it twice in 7 years, and now, at 12, if my DS is allowing a toy (or video game, more likely) to distract him from his schoolwork, it's his deepest, darkest secret! He knows that absolutely nothing good will come of mentioning it during school time :). Hope things improve with your little guy, and I predict that if you stay consistent, they will. It's early days yet, and you're still figuring this new relationship out. Hang in there :) SBP

Not in the slightest. It's just one of many ways people find to articulate the difference between homeschooling and not homeschooling. Generally, you can tell if someone is using the words as an insult, and very seldom have I felt that was the case. It seems a bit silly to go around in a huff over semantics, when I know that what we're doing is perfectly "real". SBP

Most of my friends either a) get it because they homeschool too, or b) are at work/busy as well, so they wouldn't call. A couple of times I've had friends call me the night before to ask if I could do them a favor during school time the next day, and generally I try to accommodate those requests. It doesn't happen often, and like some others have said, I want my kids to see that helping people when you can is a good thing to do. If I had a friend who consistently interrupted our school time, I would have to draw some lines, but that's never happened. I keep my phone set to vibrate (we don't have a land-line anymore, so it's just the one phone in my pocket) and answer if it's DH, but he generally calls during our lunch break and texts if he thinks we'd be in the middle of something. As for the people doing door-to-door sales who love to prey on the SAHM...I put up this cute little No Solicitors sign and thought that would take care of the problem, which it has, mostly. There are still, however, those few brave souls who believe deeply that those signs apply to everyone else but them and ring my doorbell anyway. I take that as license to (verbally, of course) flay the skin right off their sorry bones. It actually happened just this last week. A young man selling reference books rang my doorbell in spite of the sign. I tried to just ignore him, but he knew we were home and just stood there... and stood there... and stood there, while the dog who schools with us (points to icon) was going BANANAS, running from one window to the other, barking the house down with her big, booming Labrador bark. Finally, I was just livid and snatched open the door, grabbing the dog's collar just in time to keep her from launching herself at him. He turned rather pale and jumped back a bit, making some little joke about how I had an attack dog. I answered, with a perfectly straight face, that we had trained her only to attack people who ignored our "no solicitors" sign and interrupted us while we were homeschooling. You'd think that would have given him the message, but all he heard was "homeschooling" and his eyes lit up. He apologized for "not seeing my sign" (which is one inch from the doorbell) and then tried to go into his spiel about his reference books, which would revolutionize my children's education, blah, blah, blah. I interrupted him before he got going, and told him that under no circumstances would I do business with someone discourteous enough to ignore my sign, blatantly lie about it, AND continue interrupting my children's education once he knew that was what he was doing, and if he wanted to keep talking about it, I'd let the dog out and he could talk to her. She wouldn't really hurt him, of course - more like sniff him and then run off to chase the nearest squirrel - but he didn't seem to want to take the chance, so he took himself off in a huff at that point. I then got to go calm the dog (who was still barking) and redirect the ADD kid, who had long since forgotten what subject he was even on. A day in the life... SBP

:iagree: At least at this point (2nd week of school) I'd say that a bright 7th grader who loves science could complete the 2 years of Rainbow Science in 1 year, if an accelerated schedule would appeal to you. Otherwise, Rainbow is structured so that you cover physics and chemistry the first year and biology the second. It's early days yet, but we're really, really pleased with Rainbow so far. Good luck to you :). SBP

My DS had a similar problem and I got several wonderfully helpful responses here. Probably the one that helped him the most was the suggestion to have him read his papers starting with the last sentence first, and work backwards from there. When he does that, he can hear the sentence errors so much better. He's still not a perfect writer, but he has come a long way in the last year or so. Hang in there! SBP

That's about what we're doing, except that you're doing way more in the way of languages! We're just doing Latin this year. The only thing that might be missing is logic, but it seems like a pretty full schedule without it, frankly. Good luck to you :) SBP

I have an son with ADD, and some things I've learned over the years that have helped with him are putting him in his own room to do his seatwork, having a rigid schedule every day and sticking to it, minimizing outside distractions (phones turned OFF during school, 'no solicitors' sign on the door, etc.), giving him cards for chores in the morning (MOTH system, basically), and giving him an assignment list every day. Basically, I have to impose order from without, because he can't do it from within. He needs lists and schedules to function effectively, and maybe he always will. He needs to know how long his day is going to be and what it's going to consist of, or else his brain will spend half its time wondering when his next break is, how long something is going to take, etc. He needs to be ALONE for any sustained seatwork. His sister can't be anywhere near him, and he can't be in the kitchen, or in any room where I'm likely to be puttering around and working. He usually does his work in our schoolroom (which is in our "formal" living room area) and that keeps him far enough from household distractions while still being close enough for me to help him if he needs it. And yes, even though he's now 12 and as tall as I am (!!) when we're doing read-alouds, or even during teaching time, I still let him wiggle, wallow on the ground, hang upside down off the couch, fiddle with small toys and gadgets... whatever. So long as his brain is engaged - and I've found that it usually is - I try to ignore whatever gymnastics his body is doing. I also encourage him to get some physical exercise during lunch break. Now that we're doing middle school, we really don't have time for exercise breaks after every subject, but when he was younger, I'd send him out to jump on the trampoline for ten minutes or so every hour, and that helped. Good luck to you :) SBP

I'm not really wishing for more stuff right now, but I would love to have a Latin tutor for both ds and me.