We tried Life of Fred when DD was in first grade, and it was not a good fit then. We are going through it now and she is having a lot of fun with it. We do Explode the Code online, which takes all the handwriting out of it. We got it from homeschoolbuyersco-op.org for about $35 per year.

Our daughter is almost 7 and has very little sense of beat. So, it is something I have tried to incorporate into our Music studies. We have been clapping to the beat and alternately to the rhythm of Hickory Dickory Dock for a month (about once a week). She's shown a little improvement. Below are some resources I've found on the topic that might be useful to you. http://www.letsplaykidsmusic.com/rhythm-and-beat/ https://musiconnx.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/developmental-progression-of-steady-beat/ http://musickit.com/resources/beat3.html

I struggle with this, too. Perhaps one of the first things you need to decide is your philosophy. There are a lot of threads through this forum with folks who are wringing their hands over a grammar curriculum for their first grader, and then there are those who don't bother with formal grammar until kids are in 5th or 6th grade, or even later. The folks in camp B say that kids brains aren't adequately wired to understand much of it until that point anyway, so why waste time with it until they are ready. On the other hand, one could make the case that there are a lot of academic subjects kids aren't fully capable of handling until that point, but we expose them to it anyway, even if they don't completely get it. I haven't fully figured out where I sit in this argument. Our daughter is the first child we are homeschooling and only into year two. I imagine that five years from now, I will have a more concrete opinion. :-)

I adored the Alfred Hitchcock collections when I was about 12. You should pre-read the stories before reading them to a seven year old. I remember one that was about a parent chopping up his 5 or 6 year old daughter. Probably not a good choice for before bedtime.

I can't help with the books or pastels, but one thing some families do is play a specific song for 4-5 minutes before morning time that lets everyone know what time it is, and it gives them time to finish up whatever it is they are doing at the moment. I heard that on one of the Your Morning Basket podcasts, I think. It's not an issue for us at the moment, but I keep it in mind for when it does.

On the offhand chance someone else is interested, I did some brainstorming and came up with a few ideas.... We can read the biography and do a narration (to get a little language arts in the day). Play Robot Turtles, a game that introduces basic programming Play Trionimoes or Yahtzee!, because dd likes them I found this nifty paper doll of Ada There are some printable math puzzles at math-salamanders.com Playdough to Plato has a rainbow addition snack game. If I am really lazy, I will use Froot Loops, which would be a real treat in this house. There's always tangrams. And for an afternoon matinée, we can watch Phantom Tollbooth. It's the only movie I can think of that has any math in it. I am not math-phobic, but coming from a set of parent-artists, it is not my thing. Personally, I hate math and logic puzzles, and riddles in general, but realize this is a thing I should try to avoid passing on to my children. This seems like a good excuse to explore math in a fun way. Also, it's nice to have a day off from the same-old, same-old.

Our dd is almost 7, and her middle name is Ada, in honor of the first computer programmer. I found this picture book biography of her at the library, but was wondering if anybody did other activities with their kids or had fun ideas for this day. All the STEM things for girls online seem to be directed towards middle school age.

Well Trained Mind is a great resource to learn about a classical curriculum. Most of the libraries in my area, at least, have a copy of some edition of it. We had a similar scenario to yours last year in terms of kids. My daughter really enjoyed SOTW Vol. 1 and the activities from the accompanying book, and I spread that over 3 days a week. We also really enjoyed Kids Art Works! by Sandi Henry. The projects in it are very manageable, produce nice results, and yet still look like kids made them. We didn't do it every single week, but a few times a month anyway.

An accurate assessment. You seem to have a good way of approaching it, I will have to see what I can do about trying it out. Of course, we also have the same sorts of issues when I try to start discussion about read alouds, too. Although, there has been two times this week when I asked her a question about something and she did not shut down. Maybe she is starting to grow out of it. :D

Welcome! I came into the Church two years ago. It is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. :) Lots of great resources have already been mentioned, so I won't repeat those, but if you want to approach it from a character development angle, there is PACE (Program for Achieving Character Education) which is designed for K-6. And there is also a free resource called Virtues in Practice, also designed for multiple grade levels. I have taught my daughter the basic prayers (the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Guardian Angel prayer) and the 3yo is starting to pick up on them. We start the school day with Children's Daily Prayer, which is a mini liturgy of the hours for kids and we read the saint of the day from Saints for Young Readers for Everyday. We also take the day off for our name days. The feast day for St. Francis is a big one at our house, which is coming up soon. We have a big Italian dinner and set the table with his statue in the center.

Huh. I was planning on introducing that this week. I hadn't connected it with this particular issue, but it sounds like a great idea. :001_smile:

This is true at our house about 90% of the time. My daughter hates to be questioned about anything if she doesn't have THE ANSWER. This can make BFSU a challenge at times. Perhaps part of it is because she is not yet 7 and will grow out of it, maybe? (I am hoping!)

For our second grade daughter... All About Spelling Level 1 - I loved, loved, loved this after switching from Spelling Workout A. But somehow for the life of her, she cannot spell "shrunk" the first time around and so my enthusiasm is a little dampened. Practical Lessons in the Use of English - Short and sweet. We do this 2 or 3 times a week. I am more comfortable with this than R&S. WriteShop C - I just ordered this, so I am not sure. I tried doing the writing workshop thing according to Lucy Calkins, and while my child is writing, I really hate having to wing it day by day. I am hoping WriteShop will help. Joy of Handwriting Cursive - By far, my daughter's favorite subject this year. Math-U-See - It gets the job done, but we have never tried anything else. If it ain't broke..... Xtramath.org - Love! She has gotten much faster with her math facts since using this. She works on it about every other day. Story of the World Vol. 2 - Well done - my daughter likes it a lot and misses it on the days when we just read library books. Building Foundations for Scientific Understanding Vol 1 - Because I believe it does a fantastic job in living up to its title, I would continue to do it even if my kid didn't like it, even if there were much easier options for me as the teacher. Song School Latin 1 - We are just finishing up this volume and will go on to the next. Latin is her next favorite subject.

I am sorry I do not have any advice to offer you, but I empathize with you 100%. What you wrote is exactly how I feel, too.

My understanding is that all the sight word and other context skills work fairly well in the short run. Results with phonics do not necessarily look good on test scores in the early grades, but is better for children in the long run. It's all about the testing and looking good.

Thanks for sharing! There is some really useful stuff in the packet.

I confess it was a year or two ago that I looked at WRTR, so I probably have the specifics all wrong, but the feeling of being overwhelmed I remember quite clearly. :-) There's a blogger I follow who has totally bought into Spalding, but she makes it sound complicated, too. What you describe sounds do-able. Perhaps once my toddlers are closer to Kindergarten, I will revisit Spalding. Thank you for taking the time to explain it. Without that, I doubt I would have ever reconsidered it. It kind of makes me feel bad for my first homeschooled child because it seems like the youngest sibling is going to get a better education with a much more experienced teacher.

I've read that Spalding is the best out there, but dear Lord. I checked it out of the library and tried reading through it and you're supposed to spend 4-6 hours on language arts a day. And it really helps if you take the 6-week course on how to teach it. It looks like a tremendous amount of work to learn the whole thing, easy as it might be to implement once you have done so. I do not have that sort of fortitude.

Ditto. This was our experience as well. AAS is a curriculum I love, love, love! My daughter's retention of spelling has improved SO much.

I think for most things, you could just show the example by writing it out on the white board. They do "segmenting" sounds in the earlier lessons, so you might need to get creative in presenting that without tiles, maybe you could substitute buttons and write letters out on index cards if it seems like your child needs it, but for the bulk of the lessons, I think you can use just the teacher manual. The cards seem more like a convenience at this point, too. Although the text on the reproduced cards in the teacher's manual is a bit small. I can see where the cards might become more useful later on, but for Level 1 you can probably get away with skipping them; I don't really use them much right now, though I did more so at the beginning. However, I am just finishing up level 1, and have not experienced level 2 yet. At any rate, I think it's a reasonably priced curriculum, with or without the tiles, and my daughter's spelling has greatly improved. She is retaining much more than she did with a previous spelling curriculum.

When my daughter was in 1st grade, she was a great reader and poor speller. We ended up with All About Spelling, which does have manipulative tiles, but at this point (she's in 2nd grade and we are finishing up the first book) we hardly use the tiles. I will use the tiles to introduce a concept, but for all the follow up, we just do the lessons on the white board with a marker. The book is totally open up and go. I think you could use it without the tiles. And since it is a non-consumable, it will work for ore than one kid.

Bingo! You never know what a bureaucrat will pay attention to. I've heard of one district in our area that will give homeschoolers a hard time about bicycle safety. :blink:

Ah, the joys of legalism! There are lots of creative ways to fulfill state curriculum requirements. Our state says American history must be covered in grades 1-6. Of course, the way it is written, it is unclear whether that means each year, or at some point during that time period. Since we do SOTW, I cover American history through the study of a few American folk songs so the school distract can't say we didn't do anything for that requirement.

My daughter got tired of Seton, so I switched things up with Drawing for Better Block Letters. I don't know that I would use it all by itself, but once kids know how to make the letters, it provides good practice. Each lesson starts with copying a drawing or a little coloring before practicing letters and combinations of letters. My daughter really enjoyed it.

Casting the Gods Adrift:A Tale of Ancient Egypt by Geraldine McCaughrean