Thank you Julie :) The only reason I started doing "grades" was so that he could see how all his silly mistakes added up. I was hoping the C would encourage him to do better, but he doesn't care. One suggestion I got on another board that I'm going to try and implement is to only assign half the pro...

I have one child who is not doing well in math, not because he doesn't understand it, but because he makes a lot of careless mistakes. He'll add numbers in his head and loose the tens that needs to be carried, or in story problems will only do half the work and will write that down as the answer. I ...

Thank you Lucy :) That was my biggest concern, doing Algebra before he's ready. Also, thank you to whoever (sorry, I took care of a screaming baby between when I read and now ;) ) mentioned being able to ease into Saxon if we start in 6th grade. My 9th grader is in Saxon 8/7 (thank you public school...

Thanks :) I debated about even giving her the placement test, but last year, my son actually skipped two whole levels with his placement test b/c his spelling had improved so much just from reading. I think we're just going to continue on with Lvl H and not do G again. Most the words she struggles w...

I've been letting them draw while I read. I read somewhere that doodlers remember more, but it seems to distract them. Maybe coloring sheets of the topic could work. I've also thought about having them take notes, but I'm afraid I would get constant interruptions of "how do you spell that?" or "wait...

We're using the notebook for General Science and it has really helped my dsd organize everythign and know what is important and what isn't. She's not science inclined though so she's still struggling. I may need to look into that lapbook...

We have an old metal kitchen pantry thing that I keep this year's school stuff on. All my books and teacher's manuals go on one side and all the kids' stuff goes on the other. We all have an upright magazine/folder holder to put more floppy things, like single subject notebooks, singapore books, etc...

When I had all littles, I dont' think we finished the first couple years for the same reason. In fact, I dont' think anyone has actually finished 1st grade, or K, now that I think about it. Did we even finish the last two weeks of Adv or ECC? I'm thinking no. Oh well, I guess it happens. I dont thin...

You know, I always thought I was pretty good at math, until this year. There were several problems in 5A that took me a while to figure out how to do them. I eventually figured them all out, but I am not looking forward to what's coming up!

I have so many doing school now, I don't even do all of K and 1st, just the phonics, math, reading portion. My K and 1st graders do Bible, History and Science with everybody else, just at a much easier level. This year I'm doing CtoG and my K will draw a picture instead of making a full note-book pa...

I do it different than most it seems. I have 3 sets of sheets, so at the beginning of the year, I lay out all three sets, grab the first one off the top of each, repeat, then hole punch the six sheets I have in my hand and put in a binder. Then I do it again, and again, and again. I put the first 9 ...

I usually have my kids do book basket first thing after breakfast chores. They do book basket for 15-20 minutes and then they do free reading. Sometimes they choose to continue reading their book basket book. I spend that time "doing school" with my preschooler and getting ready to start the school ...

Yup, give it a break for a while. I had my ds blending sounds at 4 years old and then he suddenly refused to do anything with letters. Since he was so young I was able to take a looong break and when we started MFW a little after he turned 5 he was much more excited. I think we've been at it for abo...

OK. I know it's just day 1 of K but..... I am feeling very much that I have failed him in some ways. He doesn't know his birthday, address, phone, etc. Oops, I just realized my 6yo doesn't know any of that stuff either. A few months ago I realized that he didn't know his middle name and had to thin...

Thanks Crystal! I understand what you're saying, probably because it's pretty much how I was thinking of things, but wasn't sure if that was the way it was supposed to be. I just needed someone to tell me, lol. The good thing is that we're already pretty far along. DS can already count by 2s, 5s and...

I was going to stick with the basic package and add the Ant Hill, the Butterfly project, and the Dino book from the Deluxe package. But taking a look at those cuisenaire rods, I'm wondering if that really is helpful in studying math, problem solving, etc. At first, I just look, and foresee a mess, ...

Color sight words are introduced in Lesson 26. But otherwise, it's just "the" and "a" as far as I can tell, which is fine by me b/c ds keeps trying to sound out "the"!

We don't use an encyclopedia. In fact, we very rarely have any books either about the subject unless they're on the bookself. I usually just give ds a brief thought or two about the subject and move on. Even with pics his eyes glaze over quickly when we get to the science portion. I'm not worried th...

I print calendars from calendarsthatwork.com On days we do school we talk about wha day it is, color in the square or draw a shape, depending on the pattern, ds says the days of the week and the months. He already understands yesterday, today and tomorrow, so we don't do that. Then we do the 100 cha...

Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 7:31 pm If you really want some encycyclopedias, try your local freecycle. Mine is pretty small and you're lucky to find anything you actually need, but when I requested encycs I got 4 different ppl who had sets to offer. I had my pick! Sure they're a bit older, but a lot o...

I recall reading a post from David about copyrights. https://board.mfwbooks.com/viewtopic.php?t=959 He recommended using different color pens for different students/different years. I'm still in deciding mode on how we'll keep records. It's on of those things I need to actually start doing before I ...

So if you already own Adv you don't have to buy anything extra for a 2nd-3rd grader, right?

(not like I'll need to know for a looooong time, but it's nice to know I'll be getting full use out of my Adv stuff past the oldest)