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[rebbyribs]

We're having a patch of blah, grey weather here (highs in the low 60s, cloudy until about 1 pm and then again after 4 or 5pm), and I'm having a hard time coping with the lack of sunshine during "summer". So I've been a bit down lately and having a hard time getting going in the mornings

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[rebbyribs]

Well, we weren't happy with the math curriculum that Iris's school was using last year - the work really focused on drawing out your strategy to solve one problem, and Iris was getting caught up in representing a strategy in a way that her teacher would accept rather than just solving the problems. So we looked into other math approaches and started using Singapore Math at home about halfway through last school year.
A couple of months later, her teacher mentioned to me that we really needed to be practicing Iris's sight words with her at home because she didn't know them. This came as a total shock to me because we'd been practicing them faithfully, and she was usually getting most of them right. I asked Iris about it, and she explained that with the flash cards, she knew the answer was always going to be one of her sight words and so it was easy to guess which one, whereas in a book she didn't have any idea what word it could be. Oh. So we stopped doing sight words altogether and just started going through easy reader books together a few evenings per week. (While she was in school, we'd usually do 1 math lesson or 1 short book per day.) I looked into phonics programs and chose one that was recommended for dyslexia (not sure if she is dyslexic, but some of my relatives are and it's thought to be heritable), and we started that this summer. Knowing that I have actually stuck with 1.5 - 2 hours of reading, math, and journal for her over the summer, and that she has made reasonable progress makes me think that this is an okay approach for next year. Iris also has a very late birthday (4 days before the school cutoff here), so I don't feel like it would be terrible if we do this for a while and then she later goes on to another school one grade level below where she might otherwise have been.
We're going to a homeschool park day on Monday, so hopefully we'll get to meet some other local families who are doing this.

[anemone]

Are you doing it through the charter school that gives you money to spend on classes and stuff?