Anonymous wrote:My child is 10 and after 2 years, we are going back to private because the burden of after schooling and sports was too much for all of us. Nothing was getting done really well and everything was getting done halfway.

At home, we will still concentrate on Math as well as Geography but other areas will now be covered during the school day.

Private school tutition is going to be very hard on us as a family finacially but overall I think it will be a better fit for us.

Anonymous wrote:Tips from a mom who went from having a struggling student to a "top student". I still fell like my child could revert back quickly though. Math we do two hours every Saturday and child is assigned 2 hours of homework per week. We go to the library and child is required to read book at appropriate lexile level once every two weeks. Lexile level is 4 grades above current grade level. Child picks out other books that are of interest too. We are going to implement a writing program too this fall as writing isn't up to par.

Anonymous wrote:Just do the history as bedtime reading, thus accomplishing both required reading and supplemental history at the same time. No advice for science, we save it for the summers. Here's what we do:

Penmanship/writing, social studies, and logic are the major subjects I supplement during the school year. We also practice math facts and do daily reading as required by the girls’ school. Since reading and practicing math is required by the school I don’t consider that extra. Depending on the day, our supplemental subjects take my youngest 5-35 minutes and my oldest 15-45 minutes.

We do 5 minutes of penmanship (DD5.5) or 15 minutes of writing (DD7) every day. Every other day, we also do around 30 minutes of logic games and exercises (that they selected). On the days we don’t do logic, we use Story of the World, a non-fiction book about something historical/cultural, or a biography as our bedtime story. This covers the half hour of reading or being read to assigned by their school while simultaneously providing enrichment in Social Studies. Since it is to fulfill a school requirement as well I don’t consider it part of the time spent supplementing. Other days we read fiction and more typical bedtime stories.

Either doing math homework or practicing math facts for a few minutes a day is recommended by their school so we do that but no extra math. We would if they seemed to need it but so far they don’t.

Science and geography are saved for the summers -- we go to museums, go geocaching, do weekly country studies that involve me learning to make something new for dinner at least once or twice, mess around with science kits, or even just make explosions in the back yard with coke and mentos and then explore why things explode and what else we could safely blow up (chemistry, early-elementary style). These are things that at their age I want to just be natural, fun exploration and not a formal curriculum, so I save it for summer when we have more time to dig into a topic in depth.

The above is implemented in a really flexible way at our house; if we need to skip a few days or a week of the supplemental work for some reason, we will. The one standing exception to the above routine is that in the week following a birthday or the two week period following a holiday on which gifts were received, I suspend our “formal” writing practice and we do a “practical” writing program each day – thank you notes as copywork until all the notes have been written and mailed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mastermind sounds kind of like Battleships. We have fun with Battleships and Chess.

Those are all great games, we have and love all 3 although DD5 hasn't quite grasped chess yet. I'm not really sure mastermind is all that similar to Battleship, though. Battleship is a lot of guessing at first to find the ship while in mastermind you are supposed to use clues and small bits of information to reason through the solution. It's still guessing in a way but the guess is supposed to be supported by logic. In mastermind the point is for one player (or in my girls' case both of them together) to figure out a color pattern that the other player (me) has hidden beforehand. The color options are white, red, blue, and green. They start by guessing the pattern, and then they are told how many colors they have correct and how many are in the right order. They have a limited number of tries to guess the pattern.

For example, lets say the hidden color pattern is (Blue Green Red Red). Their first guess is Red White Blue Green. I tell them that they have 3 of the four colors correct, but none in the right order. So next they have to guess which is the wrong color and get rid of it. Maybe they guess green is wrong, because they know I don't like that color, and replace it with a blue. Their new guess is Red White Blue Blue. So I tell them they have 2 of the four colors correct now. Since 2 is one less than last time, they should realize that taking away green was wrong. They put back the green and take away the white. DD5.5 points out that red is one of my favorite colors so maybe I used that. They replace the white with red. Now their guess is Red Red Blue Green. I tell them they have all 4 colors right but the order all wrong. Now they spend several turns trying to figure out the order. If they get the right answer before they run out of space on the game board, they win the game.

It's loads of fun, but sometimes they get frustrated still so I will give them hints or ask leading questions to suggest how they might solve it if that happens. The junior version is easier and probably a safer bet to start out with at this age, actually, but they learned about the regular version from their grandfather and would not settle for the junior version after that.

Anonymous wrote:Just do the history as bedtime reading, thus accomplishing both required reading and supplemental history at the same time. No advice for science, we save it for the summers. Here's what we do:

Penmanship/writing, social studies, and logic are the major subjects I supplement during the school year. We also practice math facts and do daily reading as required by the girls’ school. Since reading and practicing math is required by the school I don’t consider that extra. Depending on the day, our supplemental subjects take my youngest 5-35 minutes and my oldest 15-45 minutes.

We do 5 minutes of penmanship (DD5.5) or 15 minutes of writing (DD7) every day. Every other day, we also do around 30 minutes of logic games and exercises (that they selected). On the days we don’t do logic, we use Story of the World, a non-fiction book about something historical/cultural, or a biography as our bedtime story. This covers the half hour of reading or being read to assigned by their school while simultaneously providing enrichment in Social Studies. Since it is to fulfill a school requirement as well I don’t consider it part of the time spent supplementing. Other days we read fiction and more typical bedtime stories.

Either doing math homework or practicing math facts for a few minutes a day is recommended by their school so we do that but no extra math. We would if they seemed to need it but so far they don’t.

Science and geography are saved for the summers -- we go to museums, go geocaching, do weekly country studies that involve me learning to make something new for dinner at least once or twice, mess around with science kits, or even just make explosions in the back yard with coke and mentos and then explore why things explode and what else we could safely blow up (chemistry, early-elementary style). These are things that at their age I want to just be natural, fun exploration and not a formal curriculum, so I save it for summer when we have more time to dig into a topic in depth.

The above is implemented in a really flexible way at our house; if we need to skip a few days or a week of the supplemental work for some reason, we will. The one standing exception to the above routine is that in the week following a birthday or the two week period following a holiday on which gifts were received, I suspend our “formal” writing practice and we do a “practical” writing program each day – thank you notes as copywork until all the notes have been written and mailed.