Thursday, September 12, 2013

Off and Running!

We have now been back to school for just shy of 4 weeks. Each day has not been without it's struggles, but I'm very proud of the consistency we are displaying! At this rate, this may turn out to be one of our best school years yet.

I have to give a shout out to Mark Berg who runs the new math practice site that I've found for the kids. It is called Math Facts Pro and is only $5 per year for 5 students! Yes, you read that correctly. That's $1 per student. It is geared to teachers who have a class full of students but works great for homeschool moms. 

In fact, after some e-mail communication with Mark yesterday, he shared with me that his wife homeschools their children. Makes perfect sense! It seems that homeschoolers are the ones who usually have the ingenuity to invent such programs and then make it affordable for all.

Besides being affordable, I like the fact that this program, while going over the most basic of math facts, does not make my kids feel like they are being treated like babies.


I feel like I have FINALLY found a way to remediate my children's lack of math skills without having to hire a tutor or spend hours with each child going over flash cards!

We were using another online math facts practice program that was free. However I became frustrated with it after two weeks of the site being down. I decided that it was time to scrap that one and find something else. I'm so glad that I did because now we get to support another wonderful homeschool family while using a program that more perfectly suits our needs!

We are still using Time4Learning for Fashionista and RoboBoy. They are using it for Language Arts, Language Arts Extensions and Social Studies. RoboBoy still needs my assistance when he "does school" on the computer. He has a hard time focusing when there is a lot of text to be read. So I set aside time to sit and help him through it. We are both learning a lot. LOL

How is your school year starting out? How long have you been back? Have you realized that you need to make any changes in curriculum?