How about ALEKS? They have a free trial so you can try it out at least and see how you like it.

I've spent the morning reading old posts about MPH and I have several questions: 1. How much hands on science is there? Actual experiments? We like lots of hands on science and experiments here. Would we need to add these? 2. I'm thinking of having my 3rd, 4th and 5th graders go through these together. Good idea? Bad idea? Why or why not? Our focus is language arts this year, getting those skills up to par, so I just want science covered and hopefully as a group to save time since we are spending extra time on LA. 3. If we do MPH as a group, what can I order just one of and what does everyone need their own copies of? If I add something for experiments, I'm thinking TOPS books or Science in A Nutshell kits. Anyone done these and have suggestions? Thanks in advance

No problem. ;) I don't mind sharing my thread. :lol:

Tina, I don't know whether to hug you or ask you to be quiet, :lol: You are making it very hard to say "it's too much money" :lol: 20 minutes a week I can do. It was the daily or every other day of watching the DVDs that made MUS such a drag for us. We also strongly suspect dyslexia in my 9yo. He's not diagnosed but I think it's very strong possibility which is one reason why I think we need to get back to Spalding based language arts. I'm also glad to hear that we can do without the additional student packs. Spending $200 per level I might gag a little but I can swallow it.... $300 - $400 per level was getting to the point of causing involuntary twitching. :lol: Time wise per day, I'm not worried. I'm willing to spend all day on to get them up to par if necessary. I was wondering more along the lines of what does a lesson look like? With SWR, I can do phonogram and rule review as a group in the morning and then work with them individually or in groups on spelling lists and other language arts areas. SWR, a day is basically Preliminaries (phonogram and rule review and sometimes rule page making), Spelling List, then Enrichments (games, grammar, word play). I can't find anywhere on the PR site that describes what a daily lesson looks like. Also what does the composition aspect look like? I know they write original sentences then paragraphs and so on but do you need some kind of writing program at some point or do they teach them to do essay writing, creative writing, letter writing, journal writing and other types of writing in either PR or LR? Thanks for all you help ;)

I write the thesis, then the body, then the opening and concluding paragraphs. I also agree with the poster who said it's much easier to write an opening that fits the essay than an essay that fits the opening. I do my mapping in my notes and outlining after I've developed the thesis.

Thanks for sharing your experience Deena. It's really helpful. I actually have 5 kids to teach; 11yo fifth grader, 9yo 4th grader, 8yo third grader, 3yo preschooler and an 19 month old mess maker. :lol: I do know how to teach SWR but one reason we fell off the tracks was that it lacks structure, as was mentioned in the other thread. But it is more economical than PRTR and I could just tell myself to suck it up. On the other hand, PRTR includes literature starting in Level 2, some latin and they can continue on into Latin Road....the cost is a bit stomach turning when you figure I have 5 kids to run through this but on the other hand I would be taking care of reading, writing, literature, spelling and Latin..... Can anyone share what a typical day looks like with PRTR, especially with several children on different levels? I think that might help me make a decision. ;) Oh, and would it be possible to start the older kids in the second level? Is there any circumstance where a learner with previous Spalding experience could start at a level other than level 1? Thanks again ETA: Also, do the dvds need to be watched before each lesson or just before new concepts are introduced? I guess what I'm really asking is how often do you need to use the DVDs? Daily? Weekly? As needed?

I was taught the Spalding method in school and started out homeschooling my oldest with WRTR and quickly switched to SWR as it seemed more homeschool friendly. My oldest got several years of Spalding based phonics before more babies and a military moves got the better of us. We went to a workbook approach for a while (everyone hated it) and went to AAS about a year and half ago (too painfully slow with the teaching). So right now, I'm just working on teaching them all the phonograms, 11yo knows most of them except some of the most advanced one and knows I'd say about half the rules, 9yo and 8yo know the first 26 and probably 10 - 15 beyond that and a handful of rules, starting from scratch with almost 4yo. I sold my SWR materials a couple of years ago so I'm just working with homemade materials and my Spalding background for now but I really want to buy a program in the spring when I have money for homeschool materials again. I was going to just re-purchase SWR since I could work with all my kids with one purchase but since I'm not very good at implementing the LA portion I was just going to have them continue their current effective but time consuming and boring LA programs (ILL for 8yo and 9yo, Saxon/Hake grammar for 11yo) But I've been looking at Phonics Road and I'm very interested. I would love to do the complete language arts program Spalding style and the Latin would be an added plus. :D However, we don't do well with DVD programs, MUS did not go well here. :lol: having to watch a DVD before each lesson might cause lessons not to happen here....would that prevent the lessons from going well here? Also I've read that older kids can go through the program at an accelerated pace.... how exactly does that work? Are the doing more than one lesson a week? How heavy of a work load does that make? How many words are they doing per week? The cost is another factor. To teach 4 kids, 3 of them at an accelerated pace, what exactly do I need to order? What can I pass on or reuse to keep cost down? Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me (and for reading my novel if you made it this far :lol:).

Science Excursion! That was it! Thank You Thank You! :D

I remember a science program mentioned here but I can't remember the name or find the website (thought I had bookmarked it :glare: ) It was a curriculum-in-a-box with all the needed materials for experiments for middle school/jr high. They had Chemistry and Physics but I can't remember if they had Earth Science or Biology. I believe it was secular or mostly secular. The website was green and yellow/orange.:lol: Does this ring any bells for anyone? :confused:

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We use it and love it. Pros It can be adapted to any learner It goes at the child's pace instead of making the child conform to what is expected for any given grade level You can move laterally when a child becomes stuck on a topic and can't seem to master it instead of being stuck on Lesson number 52 until they get it because you can't move on until they do. Review is customized It's a one time purchase that can be used with any number of children from pre-k through about 6th grade Cons It's expensive to start out with (but when you look at the cost per year and per child if you have more than one child it is cheaper than purchasing a new math book every year) You are planning your scope and sequence and your lessons which some people would not be comfortable with No daily lesson plans which would be unimaginable to some people You must create the daily review sheets and while there are plenty of helps for this it can be tiresome It's not difficult to use but there is not nearly as much hand holding as with a traditional math curriculum and you need to be comfortable with charting your own course. There is no particular type of instructions, there are suggestions for how to teach each topic but you are free to do what you want so it could be adapted to any type of learner

As someone who has done international moves with small children twice (5, 3 and 2 when we moved overseas and 9, 7, 6 and 17 months when we moved back stateside) I think it's perfectly ok to just concentrate in the 3 R's while your life is all topsy turvy for a while. There are so many little details involved with such a big move, keep everything including the children's schooling as simple as possible for your sanity. ;) And no I do not think you are doing your dd a disservice. She will be that much more mature when you do pick full speed again and she will be able to catch on very quickly. ;)

Have you ruled out vision problems? My 9yo is is horrible at copying still. We took him in for his eye exam this week and found out he needs glasses. I would check his vision if you have not already done so recently.

My dd is 3 years old, almost 3.5yo, and she's been playing with Starfall for the past year or so. Not to mention watching the Leapfrog videos, playing various letter and word games we had around the house, trying to read memorizing books sounding out words....so I decided to let her go ahead and start Headsprout. She's doing very well with it. I do have her do each lesson twice though because she seems to need the extra practice and doesn't mind playing the same lesson over again. She just got her first reader and set of cards today so we will be adding those to her reading games we play during her "school time".

My 3yo is my 3rd child to start Headsprout. We like the program overall, a bit expensive but you are able to spread it out with monthly payments. Their customer service has been excellent anytime I've called with a problem they have resolved it quickly. My now-9yo didn't particularly like the program. My now-8yo loved it. My 3yo loves it so far but I don't force her to do a lesson daily or finish a lesson. If she stops in the middle of a lesson, it will pick where she left off next time. I do however have her repeat lessons for extra practice due to her age. I didn't make my older ones repeat a lesson unless they went quite a few days without doing a lesson or they didn't seem to really understand the concept presented by they didn't start Headsprout until they were 5 or 6yo. Some of the games are repeative, annoyingly repeative even to the child. It really helped my now-8yo take off in reading. My 3yo is doing fairly well with it too. She can read many words and she enjoys playing Headsprout. She plays Starfall as well. She was doing Starfall before I signed her up for Headsprout. She enjoys the word games and mini-movies on Starfall very much and has learned a lot from them. I will very likely sign up my youngest, who is a toddler right now, for Headprout when he seems ready for more formal reading instruction. I regret my oldest was too old for Headprout when I discovered it, I think it would have really helped him so much as a struggling reader.

We've named our homeschool each time we've moved whether we were required to or not. So far we've had Palmetto Classical Academy, Chatan Academy (named after one of the villages we were near in Japan.The nearest one was actually Kitanakagusuku but that almost looks made up doesn't it? :lol: ) Then we were Whispering Pines School and now we are Cottonwood Academy. All the names were taken from something significant in our area; palmetto in SC, the name of the village in Japan, the abundance of pine trees in our back yard in NC (required to name our school) and the cottonwoods in our area of Kansas now where we are also required to name our school. We dropped "Classical" from our name when we became more eclectic than classical. We used school and academy based on what ever sounded best at the time. Just a personal preference more than anything. I've seen preschools called academies so I take the same liberty with words. ;)

I went to K-8 elementary schools all the way through 8th grade, never went to middle school or Jr High. ;) I always just assumed it had to do with the number of students in the district (would the school be too large if 9 grade levels attended one school?) and how the district decided to break things up (There would be over 3000 students if they all attended one school so they break it up in to elementary and middle schools).

I see, I've always considered 5/6th to be middle school and 7/8th to be junior high. :001_smile:

Isn't he in middle school? He's 11yo but in 5th grade, he repeated 3rd grade. He's has a summer birthday so instead of being on the young end of 5th grade (just turned 10yo) he's on the older end (just turned 11yo). I never expected any original writing from him before now (but he did do some on his own and they were better than what he's producing in the journal) so I guess he does need to learn a bit but he does have an example journal entry to follow in the directions.....maybe I should point out some things in the example to him that I would like to see in his entries???

My 5th grader just started Saxon Grammar and Writing. I love the program; he's not thrilled but he doesn't hate it either so I guess it's a good thing. ;) Anyways, I'm wondering what to do about his journal entries. One told him to write about his state or city, he wrote about fishing at a nearby lake but had no mention of the city or state he lives in. Then it told him to tell about a time when he helped someone and he wrote 3 separate, unrelated sentences about things he did to help someone. I've tried to explain to him that he didn't exactly follow the directions but it seems to be falling on deaf ears. :glare: Also he writes 3 sentences, period. I've told him that the directions say "at least 3" meaning that 3 is the minimum but he can write more if he needs or wants to but he insists that he only has to write 3 and leaves off where ever he is, even if he leaves the reader hanging, when he finishes the third sentence. The directions say that journals are not to be graded or even read by the teacher but he's reading them to me when he is finished and I try to be very careful and constructive when I make comments on his journal entries because he is my very reluctant writer and he does the journal assignments with no complaints.....Should I just leave the journal entries alone until we get further into this and he's done a couple of the writing lessons? Not sure how to proceed from here.:confused:

I will probably have vegetables thrown at me for this, but yes, I do think that "Pa owned a pig" is too much for some 6yos. There is a possibility that she is trying to manipulate you but there is also a possibility that she really does struggle with written work. Is she a manipulative child in general? Does she throw the same kind of fits when asked to do other things she doesn't like to do such as cleaning her room or other chores? If not, then I would consider the possibility of reducing the amount of writing she does. You can write for her or use stickers or stamps for math. Use a moveable alphabet for spelling. For copywork, I'd drop it for a while since she sounds burned out. Then reintroduce it s-l-o-w-l-y, start with her name (provided her name isn't crazy long, like more than 8 letters each name. ;) ) Then 3 word sentences. Then when she can do that easily. Go to 4 words, the 5... Now if she always throws these fits when she doesn't want to do something, I'd look at that as a behavior problem and correct it accordingly. Of my oldest 3 kids, only one could have copied that sentence at the beginning of first grade but she loves workbooks and writing. ;)

:iagree: I've been trying to come up with just the right response but this is pretty much exactly what I was wanting to say. :001_smile:

I teach formal etiquette. They may never use it but in the case that they are ever invited to a formal tea or asked to dine with foreign dignitaries or just need to leave a good impression with people in high places for what ever reason, I want them to be confident rather than terrified. Exceptionally good etiquette is noticed just as much as exceptionally bad etiquette. ;) I think of it this way, they may never diagram a sentence or use advanced algebra ever again after they finish school but I still consider it worth teaching because it opens doors in their future even if they never need those doors. Of course you can always learn these things when they are needed and so it is with formal etiquette as well but I don't see any reason to not teach it now so they are at least familiar with it. ;) Just my 2 cents FWIW.

Oh thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! Why didn't I know about Charlie's Playhouse before? :lol: Adding the timeline and cards to my list of curriculum to buy. ;) We have The Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedia but I just got it and haven't had time to thumb through it yet. We also have all the SOTWs and many of the other book mentioned. Jplain, I would love that list when you get back from your trip. ;) And I'm sure we'll be using some of the prehistory curriculum you linked as well. Thank you for sharing that. My son is 9yo (my second oldest) and has never used the WTM approach (my oldest has in the past, we deviated a bit and now my oldest is doing a WTM light as it were this year) but, with my 9yo, we are using this year as a primer year to go full force with WTM next year. He loves prehistory, archaeology, palentology, biology and anything related to those things so I thought it would be fun while we bring his skill areas up to par to have a fun year studying those things and start our actual history cycle next year. Thank you again for all the suggestions. You are life savers. ;)

I need a secular resource for teaching about dinosaurs, early man, the Ice Age, archaeology of these times periods and all that is related to these things. Does such a thing exist? I've been searching and searching for a couple of weeks now with nothing to show for it. Oh and it needs to be on an upper elementary school level. Lower middle school would be fine too.