For vonbon: My computer is in the shop and I can't figure out how to link to this pdf from my phone, but if you google "singapore math standards edition common core correlation" and go the the third results down you will see a pdf file where the Standards edition is correlated to the CC standards grade by grade. While it isn't the case in the early grades, by the time you get to 4th grade, a lot of the CC topics are covered a year or two ahead in the Singapore program. I hope that helps because at one point in time I needed a document to show what you were asking about, and this was the document I used.

I guess it depends what you're looking for. The US edition is the oldest Singapore math edition and it follows the math curriculum of Singapore most closely. The standards and the common core edition have the same content but the order of the topics were rearranged to fit with the ever changing US educational requirements. I use the Standards edition because my son started off in public school in California so it made sense to stick with the standards. I hear that the Home Instructor Guides for the Standards and CC editions are more user friendly, but I've never personally compared the three HIGs personally. In the US edition, 6th grade is essentially a review year, but that is not the case in the other two editions. If you are considering using Singapore's middle school math program, I would say get the CC edition because Dimensions Math follows CC. Though who knows if CC will be around by the time your kids are in 7th grade?

Look at ClipartETC .edu I think. They have a big selection of nice historical black and white line art that you might be able to use to make your own figures.

I think the HIG schedule is...odd. How we use Singapore is pretty much "ditto what TheAttachedMama said." The extra practice pages are there if you need them and I use the reviews as cumulative assessments, but I just assign every other problem to finish in a day. We have a lot of 4 day weeks because we use a charter school, and this year we fell a bit behind had to "do math" the first week and a half of summer. Next year I am going to plan out where we should be at the quarter and mid quarter marks so I can monitor my pacing a little better.

Moving Beyond the page is supposed to be for gifted students too.

My son is considered gifted in LA and he's doing very well with Writing and Rhetoric. We use Megawords for spelling (not scheduled but we do 2 pages per day and get through two books/year) and I'm debating if I'm going to start Analytical Grammar this year or next. He also reads independently 1-2 hours a day. We have not done well with Easy Grammar, Spelling Power, Vocabulary from Classical Roots, or the Core Skills Language Arts that our charter gives us. We also have note done well with the langauge arts program our public school used in 1st and 2nd grade (Houghton muffling, I think) or anything with too much busywork.

We have used Saxon and Life of Fred. Saxon was good in k-3, but once we hit 4th it was too much review and the introduction of new topics was too scattered. My son needed to stay on a topic for awhile before moving on. We are using Singapore and enjoy the hands on introduction to new topics and the mastery approach. It's just the right amour of work and challenge for us.

In addition to what has already been listed, my kids loved Brother Hugo and the Bear and a beautifully illustrated picture book of St George and the Dragon as Read Alouds.

You don't know until you try! I get up 90 minutes before my kids so I can have a little quiet time and then get a start to the day. It's amazing what you can get done when kids sleep! My kids get up not long after the sun rises so I adjusted my wake up time to between 5 and 5:30, but it's worth it. Even with a toddler (and previously with a baby), if I get up early and go to bed early, I do quality stuff in the morning. If I sleep in and stay up late, I end up watching tv or wasting time online ;)

I use a Canson XL mixed media spiral bound book (blue cover) for art projects and it holds up to ink, acrylics, and collage well. I imagine pastels would work well on it, too. I like that the projects stay together in one book. It doesn't hold up well to watercolors because the paper pills and warps with too much water so I purchased a separate pad of watercolor paper for watercolor projects.

Everything by Brandon Mull, the Fablehaven author. Frindle. The Mysterious Benedict Society. Gary Paulsen's books. At age 9, my son also liked Dr Doolittle, the Fudge Series, and Encyclopedia Brown.

I used a small spiral bound notebook, it was maybe 5x7, for my son's assignment book last year. It had a spot to fill in the date and I just drew lines to separate language arts from math and so on. It worked well because he also needed one page per day for assignments without the rest of the week's assignment clutter next to it. It was a simple system, but it was effective for us.

I have also been impressed by how effective the Reading Lesson is and my daughter loves it, too. The first few lessons are available online to try before you buy.

I would suggest checking them out at the library before you buy them, especially since you are using your own curriculum with its own scope and sequence already. I think the books are helpful, but not necessary. I check out "Books to Build On," also by Core Knowledge, all the time from our library. It has lists of children's books to go along with each topic in the CK sequence. The book selections for each topic are all really good.

The best program is the one your son is most willing to do. If that is Beast Academy, stick with it. My dysgraphic son rebelled against Saxon because of the overkill review, even when I stopped assigning him most of the review problems. Same reason, too much on the page. We switched to Singapore Standards edition and have stayed with it. The workbook just has a few problems per page and plenty of room to work out problems. We do fact practice with math video games on abc.ya or with various apps on my phone to cut back on paperwork.

We use a California charter school so we follow the local school district's schedule. We start the second week of August and finish the first week of June. We have a week off for Thanksgiving, Easter, and President's week and two weeks off for Christmas. In the summer we have swim lessons, VBS, and camping.

I have a package of PERMANENT glue sticks that I bought from Costco two years ago that work really well. I don't know if they still have them, but it is a Scotch Permanent Glue Stick and it has a red and white label.

Maybe you could try shorter stories that have a beginning and an end in one sitting instead of a chapter book that takes days to finish at a chapter a day. I'm thinking of collections like Aesop's Fables, fairy tales, and 50 Famous Stories Retold. You could also work through Caldecott winning picture books. Once they start enjoying shorter stories you can work up to chapter books. Ditto on the thinking putty suggestions. If you get it out only at story time, your kids will probably enjoy reading more.

I have A Simple Plan and I really like it. It's sturdy enough that it doesn't slouch over when I put it upright on a bookshelf, it has plenty of room to plan out the year and then to plan week by week, and the paper is nicer quality than printer paper. The only thing I wish it had was a grade log, but I have yet to see a homeschool planner with a good grade log. I just print up my own grade book and put it in the back pocket. I have made my own planner in the past but I don't like using a binder. I prefer bound notebooks across the board. I also don't love the quality of the office store's binding.

Our library system has different early literacy resources for parents to check out including videos, games, flashcards, and boxes of the small phonics readers. A lot are at our central library and we just have to request them with our librarian. You might be able to borrow something at your library to get you through this phase. My oldest son did really well any phonics books that had about eight pages and a few words per page, like the BOB books, because they were small and manageable. Books like OPGTR and Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons were more threatening because he felt like they would never be over so he also really resisted them. Maybe you could just copy the page you are working on and just use the one sheet of paper. Maybe he'd do better if he just saw just one page with a beginning and end and not the big, thick OPGTR book. My daughter is 5 and she doesn't like Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons but she does like The Reading Lesson, even though it is big, because it is cute, she can color the pictures when she's done, and the parents section is separated from the children's section so she feels like it is written to her. I haven't tried OPGTR with her so I can't compare that one.

A few things that have helped me keep realistic expectations for my kids (and myself) on learning foreign languages: One of my college Spanish instructors told us that we needed 250-500 authentic exposures to a word in a foreign language to be fluent in that word. I don't know where he quoted the number from, but he was knowledgeable about how people learned second languages. His point for us was to spend time every day listening to Spanish radio, reading a Spanish newspaper, or watching a telenovela. Mastering our Spanish textbooks alone would not make us fluent. We had to search out practice opportunities daily. We also have a dual immersion elementary program in our area, and from what I hear from parents it takes a long time for the second language to start clicking. Full immersion works, but the results don't come until later.

Some other Spanish ideas you could do on your time are: you could let your kids watch the Salsa! Spanish videos that stream on Georgia Public Broadcasting. Your kids' age range is perfect. I know my kids love them. They will learn a few Spanish words and phrases, but they will get a lot of practice listening to Spanish. When my son was 7, he couldn't express himself in Spanish, but he could understand a lot and would translate the whole show into English for his sister who wasn't even 2. You can also print up the transcripts from each show to glean ideas for you kids' Spanish sessions. You could also look at a kids program like Song School Spanish to help them build their vocabulary. You could also find a CD of Spanish Kids Songs that your kids could learn and your tutor could help your kids with the meanings of the words. It would probably be helpful to your tutor if you just wrote out a simple list what you wanted her to work with your kids on. Then she wouldn't feel like she would have to be making stuff up on the fly. For example: Day 1: Say Hello, Goodbye, Please, Thank You, and You're Welcome in Spanish, Practice Counting to 5, Get out the dress up clothes and let kids dress up as different characters and greet each other in Spanish, Read a Spanish Picture Book Day 2: Review Hello, Goodbye, Please, Thank You, and You're Welcome, Practice Counting to 10, Teach Colors, Go on a Color Scavenger Hunt, Read a Spanish Picture Book Day 3: Review Greetings and Colors, Practice Counting to 10, Teach Mother, Father, Sister, and Brother, Let kids draw a picture of their family and ask them who each person is, Read a Spanish Picture Book Just a few ideas for your kids and tutor: Teach the phrase "Como se dice _______ en Espanol?" to your kids so they can ask to say whatever they want Play Go Fish in Spanish Play I Spy With my Little Eye in Spanish to practice colors and shape words Teach some useful phrases that the kids could use to practice their vocabulary like "Cuál es tu color favorito?" or comida favorito, etc... A few commands to play Simon says: sit down, stand up, jump, clap, dance Ask your tutor if she knows any Spanish kids songs to teach your children

I use Megawords with my son who is a natural speller and doesn't need or like regular spelling practice. Each unit has a list of over 50 words, but instead of working with each word, my son works with spelling rules and patterns over a couple of weeks. The final test is a reading passage that includes 10 of the words and a spelling test that includes 10 other words. It takes 90% correct to move onto the next level. I think it's geared toward upper elementary and middle school.

Have you looked at the Feingold Diet? The Feingold diet rules out food sensitivities as the root of behavior issues. It is hard to make the transition at first, but I put my family on it and found out a few years ago that my son wasn't ADHD, he was extremely sensitive to ingesting anything made out of petroleum (artificial food dyes and most preservatives). I started reading labels and shopping at Trader Joe's and Costco exclusively and found I could get everything he could safely eat, right down to lollipops and mac n cheese. It's a little pricey to get the start up materials for Feingold, but if you can avoid extra meds, the cost is totally worth it. After keeping dyes and preservatives out of my son's diet for a few years, it has finally gotten easier, but accidents happen. At VBS, my son ate a rice krispy treat, not realizing they were made with marshmallows (Blue dye 1) and it was a ROUGH couple of days following the Rice Krispy Treat Incident. Oh well. (and if anyone reads this and thinks it was the sugar, let me tell you that the same thing happens with Doritos. Besides, sugar burns off in a couple of hours. It takes DAYS to process food dye.) PS Did you know that in the European Union, foods with artificial dyes and preservatives like BHT and TBHQ are required to have warning labels on the front of the package warning that the product contains ingredients that cause Attention deficit and behavior problems? The bill to have a similar warning on US packages was heavily fought by lobbyists. Eventually the bill was shot down even though there was sufficient scientific evidence that there was a link between petroleum based food products and behavior. We just weren't meant to eat gas.

San Luis Obispo, California.