Homeschooling

Since the first of November, I have been homeschooling Carson.  While it may seem like the worst of all worlds to have one child taking up my time all day with school, and the other 3 taking up the evening with homework, it has been such a burden off my shoulders to have Carson home.  Because of the different issues with different kids, we simply could not fit everything into the evenings that we needed to, and have any kind of sanity.  

It's not that we are overbooked with extracurriculars; we actually have the fewest this year of any I can remember.  It was mainly the homework load, and the fact that none of the younger kids could work independently.  I left Carson in longer than I felt I should, gave him "lots" of chances, but I could see he just was not progressing.  I know school is great for social (for some :( ), but 7 hours of social, then try to cram learning into the evening was not working. 

I had concerns in every area, but my top two were research/composition, spelling and math.  I figured there was so point in pushing composition without the spelling, so I bought a spelling system called All About Spelling, or AAS.  I started right at Level 1--Carson has been in 3 schools, and I didn't want there to be any gaps when I was done.  We pushed it hard, (4-6 lessons a day, through Level 4) and are now in the middle of the Level 5 book.  I know a lot of people say dyslexics can't learn to spell well, but this has been, probably the first time since Leap Frog's DVD taught Carson the alphabet, that I have felt a huge jump in ability!! He has improved sooo much in spelling and handwriting.  We will finish Level 6 spelling by the end of the year, unless we have to start doing tons of review words, maybe even get into 7th.  Very exciting.

As far as composition goes, Carson is sooo talented in free-writing fiction.  He is amazing, with such imaginative stories.  Now, we can actually read the spelling!  He struggles with anything that is remotely academic.  No, not struggles, he is completely crappy at it, partly because of lack of effort.  I'm starting to assign him some essays from our great geography curriculum by Beautiful Feet.  Right now we are going through Paddle to the Sea, and learning about the Great Lakes System and the industries along the way.  I'm going to have him do an essay on copper, we'll see how it goes.

Now that we are down to one spelling lesson a day, we have more time for grammar.  I'm doing 3rd grade First Language Lessons by Susan Wise Bauer. Even though he is in 6th grade, I felt he needed the basics.  This program is so thorough and repetitive, it's great for him.  We're doing about 3-4 lessons in that a day, so we'll be done with it soon.  I can't decide what to do next for grammar.  My top 3 are FLL 4, Growing with Grammar or Rod and Staff.  Just don't know.  I need a program that I can do at least 2 Levels a year to get up to grade.  I don't want to skip, again because of the gaps.

We're also getting ready to get serious about the writing.  The system I'm going to start with is Sentence Combining by William Strong and Sentence Composing by Don Killgallon.  These use models from literature to teach how successful sentences sound, and then imitate them.  

Math is my #1 worry now, because he just can't seem to retain it.  He's been doing Saxon math at school, which is a spiral approach, constant review, and very thorough, but just not understanding.  I'm looking for something new.  I've considered Rod and Staff, Math Mammoth, Singapore (which I've used before, and WANT to love, but it just doesn't work for him), and now I'm looking at Professor B. Believe me, we have done the works when it comes to math: MUS, Miquon (LOVE the ideas behind Miquon, although my kids don't "get it"), Kumon, Target workbooks.  The thing I am most attracted to by Math Mammoth is that I can get units for the "gaps" without having to redo the entire 3rd grade.  Just the support from the company is amazing.  But, Professor B sounds intriguing.

I got Carson the most awesome history curriculum EVER, History of the Horse.  You read stories about horses (King of the Wind, Black Beauty, etc), draw horses, study breeds of horses.  He just hasn't got into it.  Well, he just wants to read the books, not do the follow-up.  Recently, I found out about lapbooking, and showed him how to do it.  He is so excited to make a lapbook for each book and put in all the facts on the different pockets.  Hopefully that will get him going.