We are finishing up the CLE Math 100 series and I have been looking at the samples of the 200 series. It looks quite a bit different to me, am I wrong? It looks as if they are now teaching to the student and expecting the student to do more on their own. Is this right? What is with this pre-test; if you pass the pre-test you can skip some problems and if not you do the entire lesson? Is this throughout the entire 200 series? If I liked the 100 series, will I also like the 200 series?

Thanks for the replies. I will look into these and see how I want to cover it. I am currently reading Deconstructing Penguins, which is what made me start wondering about this.

Will this be covered in English or is this just something we have to make sure we are covering when we discuss literature? I understand the analysis of literature is done during discussing of literature but where do the students learn what each of these things mean?

Our son has been diagnosed with OCD and he displays many of the same things you describe. He had an issue with throwing things away, would hoard wrappers, boxes and other trash in his little desk, went through a period where he had to say goodnight three times and I had to answer goodnight back and then he would say I love you and I would have to say it back also...the whole thing had to be repeated in the right order three times before he felt he could go to sleep. He also shows a lack of social understanding and will say things that shouldn't be said (no filter), including things that make him sound very selfish and ungrateful. He will also touch or tap things a certain number of times repetitively and if someone accidentally brushes him as they walk by he feels he has to touch them back and if he walked into a room through one door, he would go out of his way to walk back out through the same door. There are many of these types of behaviors that a person with OCD might display and they may only do some of them and not others. We also suspect there is more going on with our ds, either ADD and/or possibly Asperger's, although he has a good imagination and likes to pretend, so maybe not, but I would bet he has ADD, which is actually very common for a child with OCD. We have him on a couple of supplements and he is doing much better right now but stress can make it worse and we just started school again so I am concerned that he may get worse again. From what I have read, OCD is something they will likely struggle with their entire lives so finding some help for them is critical. We ordered the book What to Do When Your Brain Gets Stuck: A Kid's Guide to Overcoming OCD (What-to-Do Guides for Kids) and I think it helped him more than just about anything, so far...that and a couple of supplements that he has been taking. That book really explains things so that kids can understand and relate and it really helped us understand it better also and be more understanding with him as he was trying to fight it.

We built our house about 2 years ago and, so far, it is working out really well for us. We have an open floor plan for the living room, kitchen and dining rooms. We have a huge island in the kitchen that can seat 5. There is a double door off of the kitchen/dining rooms to a family room / library / play room / future school room. This multipurpose room is currently a play room but it also has one huge wall of built in bookshelves so it also provides storage for much of our homeschool stuff. My sons are 7.5 YO and are half way through 2nd grade. During this phase of life, I have to work with them for pretty much everything and their written work really needs to be done when they are sitting at the counter/table. We do all of this type of work at our large island. We sit together on the living room couch to read and, when I work one-on-one with one of them, the other one will go into our master bedroom (just around the corner from the living room) and shut the door to read. I planned the multipurpose room to eventually be our schoolroom and I still believe we will use it like that a lot in the future. When the boys are older and no longer have as many toys, we will move a big sectional in that room and possible a table and use it also. I love that we have so many options. We actually use to do our written work at our kitchen table but it is very rustic wood and has cracks and uneven boards in it so it does not work well for writing. I hope to replace it sometime so we can also have that as an option for written work. The other option, when the boys are older, is their upstairs bedrooms. They each have a nice size bookcase in their room and, when they get older, we will make sure they have a decent desk there too. ETA: We have a large double-sided chalkboard on rollers that we can move around to where needed. I also have that lazy-susan-type book/file/everything holder thing that so many people here have gotten from Office Depot. Almost all of the things we need to use day-to-day fit in it so I just move it to the island in the morning and move it back when we are finished. The boys each have a drawer in one of those little plastic/metal drawer-tower things that hold all of their pencils, markers/colored pencils, c-rods, etc. so they just get their drawer when we start and put it back when we finish. Set-up and clean-up is very quick and easy.

Well, I wish you lived next door to us because my two 7.5 YO sons would love to play with your son. We have more boys in our neighborhood than girls but there is one little girl up the street that is around the same age and she is included without notice of girl VS boy when the boys are all playing together. I hope you can talk with the moms and they can influence their daughters to be nicer to your son. I feel for your son.

We started our second week today. Last week was a little hard on the boys but today went well. We'll see how tomorrow goes. We are continuing with the 2nd half of 2nd grade so it is the same stuff we were doing before our 2 month break.

I also agree with getting OPGTR and using just the parts that you know he doesn't know yet. We are using AAS for spelling and it does a great job of reinforcing what they already learned in OPGTR but OPGTR takes you much further, faster, which keeps him reading at the level at which he is capable. I have one who is a great reader like yours and really has always just seemed to get it very easily (he is currently half way through 2nd grade). OPGTR was great because we could go through it fairly quickly and keep him reading what he wanted to read (we finished OPGTR during the first half of his 1st grade year). He is also a pretty good speller but he has definitely needed AAS to become a better speller. But we are working through it much more slowly. We are half way through the second book but he is reading at a 6th or 7th grade level, at least (last time I tested him, he was at 6th but that has been a while and I was quite surprised at the words he could read when I had him read aloud from the Bible the other day). I don't think it is unusual for a child to be reading at a much higher level than his spelling level.

Ok, that's great! I guess then that is exactly what we are learning to do via WWE2. So we'll get there eventually. Thanks!

My sons are half way through 2nd grade and I know I need to be moving towards transitioning them from me writing their narrations to them writing them. I believe this is in the WTM book, that the parent starts out writing narrations(from SOTW and other books) for the child in 1st and 2nd grades and, sometime in 2nd grade, they should start moving towards writing them on their own. If you have already done this, how did you make this transition?

I have yet to meet any who are classical homeschoolers and many have not even heard of TWTM, which always surprises me. My good friend uses Abeka and she knows a lot of others who use it also.

We watch very little TV at our house but, there was a time when we starting watching America's Funniest Home Videos once a week as a family thing. It didn't take very long for us all to notice that one of the main themes is accidental hits to boys' privates. My two are 7 YO and they started doing that to each other during their rough housing. Of course, dh and I both talked to them and put a stop to it. I think between watching TV and just learning something from a neighbor child or cousin or something, a boy child could easily learn about this. I can remember several times when the boys were even much younger (3, 4 & 5) when they were horsing around with dh and accidentally hit him in the privates. So they learned about it even earlier but did not see it in a 'funny' way until they saw it on TV and heard everyone laughing about it. OP, I would not let my sons be around that boy again without strict supervision. I'm sorry your little guy had to go through that. My two 7 YO sons love to play with the almost 4 YO next door. Their mom is always telling me how they are so good with her son. I do think you have to keep an eye out though, when olders are playing with youngers with a big age gap. Kids can do stupid things, especially if they have not been taught otherwise.

Thanks for the responses. My sons are finishing up level 4 here but I don't know if they are the Red Cross levels or not. I would guess they probably are though. At our swim school, they are allowed to join the swim team after they finish level 4. The swim school has their own swim teams also. I'll have to find out what they recommend. I can't imagine continuing to pay for lessons and also paying for swim team for two kids. That might get expensive quickly.

My sons are in swim lessons and will be allowed to join swim team when they finish their current level, which I think will be fairly soon. When kids join the swim team, do they still need lessons also or do they get enough instruction during team practice?

Hi might be interested in trying some kind of computer programming as a hobby or project type of thing, especially if he likes video games. Just a thought, although I realize it is additional 'screen' time. It does take logic and make you do a lot of thinking along the way though.

I have tried so many different science programs and I am still hit or miss with getting them done. We are using Elemental Science right now and I like it but I don't get to it as often as I would like to. While we have been off this summer, I have been getting tons of real books about animals and various science dvd's from the library and my sons have been really loving them. We start school again on Monday. If I find myself slipping again, I will start getting lots of science books from the library again. At least they are getting something this way and they enjoy reading them.

We went through that too. We adopted our two sons when they were 14 months and 15.5 months old. They had to be properly dressed for the cold (including a hat) before we were allowed to take them out of the baby home. If you sat down on steps outside, the old ladies would yell at you in Russian too.

We grew up (in Oklahoma) saying divan and, to us, it meant couch or sofa. ETA: We also said icebox for fridge.

Praying for you. I have been hospitalized twice with it, three days each time. It is definitely no fun. Try to really take it easy and get lots of rest, drink lots of fluids and do all you can to help your body heal quickly.

We have KF but have not used it much. We get tons of library books and use the Activity Guide though.

I think it depends on you and your kids. My two sons who are 7.5 year olds would totally crash about half way through that kind of day and I would too really. But they like lots of play time and I need some down time so that's just us. I had thought about trying to schedule swimming lessons, violin and piano lessons all on one day this year. I may still do it but I know that will be pushing it for us. The only saving grace would be that each son would have down time while the other one did his music lesson. I am still undecided. Good luck with your decision. I hope it works out well for you.

I would reevaluate my approach and see if I could tweak it a bit to make it more fun and to make her feel more successful. I started teaching my two sons just before they turned 5. They both wanted to read and I knew from working with them that they could both put the c-a-t sound together to make the word cat so I knew they were basically ready. They wanted to be able to read but they were not too keen on actually spending the small amount of daily time it took to actually learn to read. They really bulked at the OPGTR book. Even though we were only doing one lesson at a time (and sometimes half a lesson), the book itself and the amount of words on the page really intimidated them. I started writing the words and sentences that they would read on index cards. Sometimes I would add some for me with teacher's notes if I thought I would need the reminders. So when we sat down to do a reading lesson, there was no big book anymore, just a small stack of index cards. If they could sound out the word, they would get to keep the card, even with my help so basically I ensured they always got the card so they felt very successful. They would each count their cards when we were finished with the lesson. When we started reading beginning readers, I would take turns with them. I would read a sentence and then one of them would read a sentence. Eventually I would read a page and one of them would read a page. I can also remember teaching them skip counting by putting numbers (on index cards) on the floor and they had to jump from one to the next and say the number as they jumped. I don't know if any of these ideas will help your daughter but maybe it will give you some ideas of how to switch things up a bit to make it more fun for her and less intimidating. For me, it was totally worth it to teach my sons to read at an early age, even though it probably took a bit more creativity and effort on my part. Overall, it has made 1st and 2nd grade much easier and they really enjoy being able to read to themselves.

I got a big LOL out of this one. Yep, same here at our house.

Yep, I agree with this.

I have one like this also. It is getting better as he approaches 8 (November b-day) so I think he will get there soon.