Redoing School...again?

As I've posted before, this has been a year of change for us. Anyone who knows me knows this isn't easy! But I'm a reasonable person (most of the time) and I know that when things aren't working out you have to change them! So we have done ALOT of experimenting this year to see what works for us now.

First, we've left the Tuesday co-op. Not completely as Kristen still has one more semester, but the younger kids and I will not be going back this semester. Kristen is old enough to do the volunteer part herself and believe me when I say she is more than willing to take on this responsibility! :) Little Miss Independent she is! I'm feeling a little guilty this morning watching her drive away, I'm used to being VERY involved, but she's a talker so I'm sure I'll hear all about it every week :) And I'll still go on the days they have senior meetings to help plan the graduation. (Can you believe she's graduating?!? I'll be saying that alot this spring ;))

Another resent change is our math. We used Math-U-See last year and I really liked it so when it came time to buy books for this year, ,that one was a given. However, I'm finding I don't really like it anymore. The explanations are getting weird and the work doesn't seem to flow as easily as it did. Todd watched the video with Brandon a couple of weeks ago and was also questioning the teaching methods. So it looks like we're back using Primary Math with Brandon anyway. I love Primary Math! There aren't tons of redundant problems, just enough to practice a concept so the work is quick and if we need more practice I come up with my own problems! Now I just have to figure out what to do with Nicholas. I found this at Holcombs:


Our Montessori teacher at co-op uses a similar one and I love it! One side is blank and the other has the numbers on it, great for younger kids too. And the numbers are magnetic. I'm sure Megan will work on it soon :) Nicholas has done it twice and already I see a big improvement in number recognition and he's been noticing the patterns of numbers! It can also be used for graphing as it's a wipe-off board too. I'm sure that will come in handy! We may stick with Math-U-See for him as it's mostly adding, but I think I'll put a major spin on it (for example no confusing video!).