Great! Thank you!

See, I read things like that article and it rings so true with me. And then I freak out, LOL My second grader has an LD that prevents her from doing math well on paper, but over all it is her best subject and I can totally see this working for her. My 4th grader tho worries me. She just doesn't get math in general. Although she hasn't memorized most math facts, she 'gets' addition, but not subtraction at all, and sort of gets multiplication and division, but only as applies to everyday life. Worksheets cause a little bit of panic for her. Also worksheets are something you do just for the sake of doing them, ykwim? Aside from them being a way of learning math facts, they are pointless. She doesn't like doing things that have to real purpose. Does that make sense? We've tried manipulative based programs, not specifically MUS, and they didn't work for either DD. I'm having a hard time getting excited about MUS, and I'm not sure I can afford it right now. But like the author of that article, doing worksheets and such is going to kill any love of math they might have had so I'm looking to get a little more creative. It may just come down to me not freaking out about unschooling math :tongue_smilie: I know a family that unschools, but she's say math is the one thing they don't unschool, they use saxon. How ever she said they didn't do any formal math at all till middle school. Before that it was learning math naturally.

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this, but yes that is something like what I need. Thank you!

If anyone here unschools math, could you tell me how this works for you? How do you go about it, how do you know it's working? I ask because I'm looking a way to teach math that doesn't use worksheets-- so if anyone has suggestions in that reguard, unschooling or not, I'm all ears :D

I don't have to do this for a while yet, but I'm thinking ahead. Each year I have to send in a description of our curriculum to the attendance officer with our homeschool enrollment form. I'm trying to think of what to put this year. Both girls will be doing WTM; 1st and 4th in LA and Sci, they will do SOTW 1 and geography together. Math is still up in the air, and I wasn't able to invest in music or arts this year like I hoped. And we'll have latin and spanish for FL, and tennis for PE. Anyhow, we'll loosely be doing WTM, in a somewhat unschoolerish (is that a word? :D ) way to jazz things up a bit and see if we like it. And we'll also only do it as long as we like it, and that may change at anytime. I will try to cover all the major subjects no matter what we do. Any suggestions on how to word the description I send them?

Interesting.... I'd like to hear more about these

Ok Here's what I have so far for Meet Julie I think we should check out a book on San Francisco (yikes! I spelled that wrong earlier LOL), with lots of pictures... let them get an idea of what it looks like. We like doing things, so some activities: Craft: make a simple macrame bracelet Cooking: decorate cupcakes (Julie does this in the book) Play basketball, maybe go skating talk about some things from the book like: feminism or equal rights, comic strips and horoscopes, trolls and mood rings

I'm not sure I understand lapbooks. I looked at some of the things to print out, and I see things like a diamond shape that says Living in 1974, and a square with a picture of a gitl and a bunny. I know I'm supposed to cut them out and glue them in a folder, but I don't know why. LOL I was too young to remember any of the 70's, but I'm trying to think 1974 San Fransico.... pull out some of the fun funky facts about it and bring that into our lesson. Thinking out loud here (y;all help me brainstorm ;) ) Streetcars, hippies, funky clothes, fondue?, basketball, laterns... What else?

Oh, they would love tye die and pet rocks. LOL I've never done macrame, I'll have to look into that. Maybe I can enlist their grandmother's help. She never throws anything away, maybe she'll have some 70's related stuff hanging around.

to go with American Girl Julie books. Any suggestions?

Thanks for all the info! I'll pass all that on to her

I'll have to talk to her and get more info. I know they are gluten free and the kids have sensory issues. Thanks

You could use anykind of milk substitute. I made a cool whip like icing once from coconut milk. I put the can of full fat coconut milk in the fridge over night. In the morning I whipped it up and them blended a little powdered sugar into it till it was the right consistancy. Really good mild coconut flavor, and not too sweet.

would be good for autistic children? I'm helping a friend get some links together, but am not sure what type of material she would need. Kids are K and 1st Thanks

We've never done R&S, so I can't help you there. I bought WT1 for my dd that will be going into 4th. She has never had a formal writing or grammar curric before, so that is why I chose level 1. But even tho we've never really done grammar, she know nouns, pronouns, verbs, advjectives, subject, predicate, and basic punctuation. She might not know what to do with a simi colon if you gave her one, but she does have some understanding of punctuation. After getting it and looking it over, I really wish I had gotten level 2, level one looks a little too easy for her. But it looks like a fun intro to writing for her, there are a few things in there she hasn't had, and I can use it with her brother and sister when the time comes so we'll keep it for now. The grammer that you get with it is going to be incidental grammar, what you use when you are writing. I think whether or not you want to add more depends on how you feel about the way you learn grammar and your approach to schooling. For us I think that along with latin and spelling is enough.

Hey, you know, an activity bag swap might be fun! (are swaps allowed on here?) You could do something like, 6 bags in a unit, and you could sign up for as many units as you wanted to do. Then everyone send there to one person who redistributes them to the participants. YK, if someone (not me :D ) wanted to organize that.

If you google something like preschool ziplock bag activities you'll get lots of hits. Here'sone I found http://www.redshift.com/~bonajo/preschool_activities.htm

Thanks!

This is something I've wanted to try, but we've never really had to money to do it. I saw it on the homeschool buyers co-op this morning and thought I might take advantage of it, but I've never bought anything thru them and I'm not sure how it works. The special price is just for one month right? Then after that it's regular price? And can I sigh up two children at that price, or will one be at $4.99 and the other at $14.95?

You might also consider anemia. Is she getting plenty of greens and fruit? (I ask because some people are the 'fruit and veg eating' type vegetarians, and some are the 'just don't eat meat' type vegetarians) Another thing to consider is if she is eating very lean (fruit and veggies don't have much fat) she may need to increase her fat intake to regulate her blood sugar. Add something like more nuts and avocados to her diet.

Yes, we have that rule here. And anytime a child doens't want to do the school work given them, I assign chores for them to do. This works well for dd2, but for dd1 doing chores is a way out of doing school work. I told her she had to get her worksheet done before she came to lunch. She finally got hungry enough she came out and worked on it with some help.

Her sister has a learning disability, but math is actually her strong point. But I have never considered that DD might have an LD. What would I look for here? We're not unschoolers in the strictest sense of the word, but we are very loose. I expect the 3R's to be covered, and we coverall the other major subjects. But they're allowed to choose their own topics within each subject (beyond the 3R's), and how they want to go about learning it, then we do something more school like for math and writing. This works great for the most part, especially with this dd. She's a self motivated learner, eats books up. It's just during math that we have a power struggle.

Usually we do have that rule. They have certain things they have to do everyday and there is no playing, or TV, or computer, or friends till those things are done. Today was a day a friend needed help, otherwise there wouldn't have been anyone over to play at this time of day.

Yes, math is the only area she is behind in. I would say she's probably ahead in other areas. She reads long chapter books, comprehends them, loves history and science. It's jsut math.

NO it's only part of the problem. The first two years we homeschool, the math programs we chose were really bad picks for us. They were things I looked at and thought, oh that looks fun/interesting/different/whatever. Then we'd try them and it just didn't work for her. THey worked great for her younger sister, who is at grade level in math, it just didn't work for her style of learning I guess. Now I have some very straight forward math worksheets without all the frilly stuff that might actually work for her. The addition part of it went very smoothly. BUt now we are at subtraction, which takes a little more work. Part of it is that she did have a bad experience with math, and part of it is that it is more work, and she doesn't want to put the extra effort into it. I can see that happening not only with math, but other some other things. It's (hopefully) a phase she's going thru. And we've talked about how if there's things she wants, goals that she hopes to achieve she will have to work for them, even when it seems hard. I did a poor job of explaing things earlier. I was feeling very frustrated, especially with an extra child here.