Same boat here, too! I am looking at Writing Tales and IEW. I really want IEW but the price is out or our budget, unfortunately. WT looks like something mine would enjoy, though! Edited to add, mine doesn't necessarily whine when it's writing time, but he is getting increasingly lazier with his writing and responses, and half the time zones out while I'm reading the initial story chunk!

I'm considering TT for next year--I'll have a fourth grader. He is currently about 1/3 of the way through BA 3D. He did well on the level 5 placement test, so today we tried level 6. He technically passed it, but there were a couple of skills he hasn't covered at all that he skipped entirely. (Mostly working with decimals.) Would you start on level 6? Will all skills on the placement test be introduced/reviewed in that level? Or should we start on 5? I'm confused about how these work. I'd hate to pay for 5 and have him move through it really quickly, but if there's stuff in 5 they won't cover in 6, should we probably start there?

I'm definitely coming back to read through this. I can't believe it's time to start planning for fourth...but I totally have been! Math...I think we are moving away from BA, although the 3D book arrived last week and he sat and read the guide in one go. :/ He loves the guide and some of the problems, but others...bleh. I'm looking at MIF and MM, mostly...and I'll probably have to get BA 'for fun' and extra practice, just because he likes it. Which means probably MM, because cost is an issue. I imagine we'll continue with WWE 3...I started him on 2 this year because he was new to dictation. I don't know if we are doing it wrong or if he's just not into it, but we are still struggling with dictation. I usually have to read the sentence like five or six times. -_- Oops, for grammar--we are using FLL 3 currently. It honestly is kind of a slog-through some days, the diagramming and such. But he does fine at it. We have SOTW2 (SO EXCITED for this) and we'll do earth science/geology/space study for science (also YAY). This summer I want to do units on geography, women in history, and he wants to learn to type! We haven't been doing spelling, because I need a program. I did some company's placement test and he placed past their middle school curriculum, so idk what to do. He does swim and homeschool gym, and we'll probably continue an art class we found this year. He also takes piano.

I have a rising Ker--I have 100 Easy Lessons, HWOT (the red/orange K book), and probably Miquon eventually? That's about all I have planned for him. He sits in for his brothers' history/science lessons as desired.

We took a year off for my third grader. I forget what curriculum now, but we did a placement test and he placed past the middle school level, so I felt okay getting rid of R&S 3 for the moment. :P We haven't added it back in because we have just been busy adjusting to HSing with four kids (our first year).

Thank you for chiming in with that--I found the teacher manual on Amazon for $35 or so which was MUCH better than the $116 at RR. Maybe I will try text and workbooks and if I think I'll need more help, go for the TM! I'm not terrible at math, but I'm not...a good math teacher, lol. ::shuffle::

Oh and MEP I looked at months ago when first looking into curriculums, free IS very attractive. :P Maybe this summer I will use it to review 3rd grade and keep things fresh.

That's great to hear--we just picked up our first go at meds today. Anxious but also so ready for some help in that department. :) Looking at MM again--MIF is super expensive for us right now, although I had some luck searching used. Will it be too different in technique and such? For both if us to get used to?

Thank you everyone--I got swamped and just now looked at this. I am afraid not much is 'sticking' for mine, either...some of the stranger problems are such a distraction for him. We are dealing with untreated ADHD, which may contribute...but still. Frustrating. I'm going to search old posts for all of these!! Thanks again. :)

I think we need to move away from BA next year. I've already bought 3D, so we'll finish out the year. It feels too...abstract? at times. I don't know how to explain it. My son is good with numbers, solves stuff in his head I'd need a calculator for, and loves logic puzzles and such...but isn't as into the difficult puzzle-type problem solving as I thought. We both wind up confused and annoyed a lot. I think I would prefer more of a teaching script. I always thought I'd like Saxon, but I don't really remember why (has been years since I looked into it). :P I've also considered Math Mammoth (I bought some third grade thing to supplement but it doesn't seem complete). What might we like? I feel so overwhelmed all over again!

We are only doing WWE now, two days a week. Then the third day he'll do some free writing/drawing or I will sometimes dictate a few short sentences and he write them (with invented spelling), or he will dictate a short note to his great-grandma and then copy what I wrote. ETA: We haven't even started spelling...and he did a whole HWOT handwriting book before, over the summer/fall, along with the copywork.

We are pretty new HSers. I'm not sure our writing program is working out well for my first grader. For the first 5 or 6 months I pulled a copywork sentence or two from our history readings 3x a week. I started using WWE1 about a month ago because it seemed like he was ready. It's just okay. He usually can't answer a few of the comprehension questions, and the copywork portion is SO SLOW. He has never been speedy, but for some reason he crawls through this activity. It can take him ten minutes to get out two words. He piddles around, stares out the window, retraces his letters over and over ("armoring" them, he says), etc. I have to redirect him for every letter some words. o.O I'm not sure if he's just bored by the subject matter, or somehow not ready? He was writing sentences of a similar length before. Just a phase? Too hard? Was what we were doing before sufficient for a 6.5yo? It felt like it wasn't much, but I'm not sure how much longer we can drag this out...I try to not make him work more than 20 minutes on something (and it is HARD to get a quiet 20 minutes for this!) and sometimes he can't even finish a short sentence in that time. :P

The MM pages I printed were double digit divided by single digit, so those went fine. BA was having him write out 10 + 6 times or whatever, as the quotient. And there's no space to write in the book, which is partly why he does it in his head--he really opposes to writing on a separate piece of paper, for some reason?! I will just keep hassling him. We had a random algebra lesson this past weekend (it came up in a logic puzzles book) and we tried to tie that into why we insist he at least sometimes show his work in math...because some day he will really need to!

Eek. This has been a continual problem with my 3rd grader (BA 3C now). He just does it all in his head. If I insist he show his work he scratches a couple of things down, but ultimately does the calculations in his head. This is proving to be a real problem in the long division section, because the problems will only get trickier and he needs to know the process they are mapping out! I can't even figure out how he's solving some of them in his head. We have MM 3 too, I think (I bought some big printable pack but haven't explored it too much), so I'm going to pull that out tomorrow, but ugh. Anyone else have this problem? He does need to show his work, right?! For the future/harder problems/algebra? ETA: And MM shows a different way than BA, so now I'm not sure which to show him. Does it ultimately not matter, as long as he can solve it?

Changes for the 3rd grader...I want to add either typing, or logic. He LOVES logic puzzles and such, but I have no idea what kind of program to try. Maybe he is young for keyboarding? For the 1st grader, I am thinking of starting spelling. He started WWE 1 this past week and liked it a lot, felt very important with his new program. Also, I am a science FAILURE, so we really need to get our act together and do...anything. ::shuffle::

Looking more closely, the key troublesome areas were the "squares that end in 5" section, and the distributive property. He felt he understood it while reading about it, but couldn't transfer that to working problems on his own/easily forgot after 'getting it.' We are just slowing down and doing a week of review. I think adding a day of review every week is a great idea. Usually we just read a section, then he does the workbook pages. My husband also suggested having him be sure to tell me what the instructions in the workbook say, and how he plans to solve the problems, so we can both (my son and I) make sure he really understands what's expected of him for that page. He has no diagnosis but we've suspected ADD for some time, and a lot of these issues crop up in the way he skims/speeds through things. ETA: Oh, and the 'squaring up' section. I'm going to write up some practice problems for those.

3A went so well I was not expecting this--it's just with the multiplication stuff, for some reason. :/ Hmm. Back to the drawing board, I guess!

Sigh. I'm feeling frustrated. We're in 3B. Sometimes it's like, by the time it 'clicks' he has two more practice problems and we're on to the next thing. :/ And if I cycle back to something we did a couple of weeks ago, he doesn't remember how to do it. I bought the Math Mammoth grade 3 printables pack for extra practice and gave him a worksheet on the distributive property (which we have done in BA already), showed him the example and talked him through it, he 'got it'...and then got everything wrong. GAH. He needs to slow down and pay more attention, but has a tendency to rush and assume he knows what he's doing...and then gets all moody and defeatist when he's missed a bunch and has to redo them. This was not a problem in 3A for whatever reason...I guess we are in a rough phase. Does this mean BA is not working for us? I can't tell if he just needs more worksheets/practice problems, or if it's all just a comprehension/attention issue. We can't keep moving forward when stuff isn't mastered, but why isn't it being mastered? Should we try something else? He really likes BA but something is not right.

Not usually. I'm pretty meh on science in general--at least for the kids, I have a hard time planning and making it fun. If we're covering science in a given week, we usually do every-other-day, science or history. And then it's like...read a two-page spread about bones/skeleton, in two or three books, maybe Google x-ray pictures and things...but that's it. Science is our worst subject, lol...it doesn't feel like we're doing enough, but I also can't get more into it. History is usually pretty packed with books and small activities or crafts or videos.

We are only a couple of months in but the activities are crazy simple. I've flipped ahead in the workbook but not the teacher manual, I just assumed it'd go over teaching the new terms and things? Need to check that out tonight!

Okay, I found an IEW/Phonetic Zoo? one and he missed five. That's helpful!

I didn't look for a R&S placement test, so I will hunt for it!

I got Rod & Staff so he could work mostly on his own, but it's way easy. I flipped ahead some and it's still just effortless--busywork at this point. Should I get a higher grade? A more challenging program? Do some kids just...learn to spell well on their own, by reading and being corrected while writing? He's in 3rd, last tested at an 8th grade level for reading so I'm not too worried about getting a higher program, I'm just not sure what's advised. Thanks!!

That is definitely not the way I remember learning so it will take some getting used to!! I feel like we need to slow down and go backward a bit now, blah. I don't like being confused by first grade math...not a confidence boost, at all. ;)

I would say 4-2 is 2 + 2 is 4. Right? If that's not right I need something other than Miquon, lol.