I started Spelling Workout A with my last 2 at the beginning of 1st grade. Neither of them had much fluency in reading until 2nd grade but they quickly learnt the pattern of exercises in SWA and worked quite independently. I would even test them each week once they got passed the purely phonics lessons at the start. I definitely think it helped with reading and writing - I was told my ds7 would be very slow to read and write when he was loosely diagnosed with auditory processing disorder when he was 5. He has just turned 7 and is reading anything he wants to and writing his own science reports and narrations with only limited help. I think spelling challenges them but gives them a quantifiable task whereas learning to read is just an enormous progressive learning curve. With the occasional bit of prompting from me, I found spelling to be an opportunity for "success" for both of them.

I've been scanning the AG maps for Ancient History and covering the labels with text boxes with white lines around them so that it just looks like it's unlabelled. Then dd9 just uses the maps in the text to label the cities, rivers, regions etc. I figure I'm doing this once and saving them for the next 3 dcs. I'm pretty sure the Ancient History AG is the only one with such basic map work. The Modern History one required all the labelling to be done anyway. I think I'm going to play down map work this time anyway - she's spending a fair bit of time doing the narrations for her notebook. So far, there's been plenty of material on several of the topics. It's all fun. Jenny

Thank you so much, Linda - I didn't realise that.

My dd9 has just started doing them and at first I thought they were going to be too easy for her, but then I realised some of the things they were teaching. We're just doing the "Warm-up" one but I love the fact that she's having to learn not to read into things. So many times, her answers go way beyond the facts and we have to talk about what she's assuming rather than what is actually stated. I think the whole being able to understand what something or someone is saying without adding all your own assumptions is such a great skill - I'm sure I'm completely lacking it. My only concern, living in Australia, is how quickly she is going through one book, and how much it is going to cost us to keep ahead of her in books. I'm glad we've got more kids coming through to justify the expense - postage from America is so expensive for us. Sigh. Jenny

We had fun. We learned a lot. Science was always in the kitchen and everything we needed to make amazing scientific discoveries was usually in there readily available. We pretty well followed the WTM approach as well and it was great. Jenny

Hi, Our library system isn't strong on Physics books either. I picked up a few books second hand which have probably been just as good as anything I've gotten from the library. I've probably only done it a couple of times this year - sat down with another book with the kids and worked through it with them. On the whole, we've been flat-out just getting through the experiments in the book, and looking up the relevant double-page spread. We do science twice a week for an hour each, and I'd say our routine was pretty much 3 hours of experiments, including the write-ups, and then 1 hour of note-taking and diagrams to consolidate what we'd learned. So we only had one note-taking hour every 2 weeks. I found we needed a full hour to read, discuss, write notes and draw a diagram. This worked really well for us. I'm an ex-science highschool teacher and I learnt a lot this past year! HTH, Jenny

I've just spent the past year doing Physics Experiments with Kids and using the recommended Usborne reference books. I did it with my dd9 and dd6 and we all loved it. They learnt a lot - we have a great folder with scientific reports for the experiments and notes and diagrams from the reference books. We used some extra kits I'd picked up from garage sales - electrical, optics and magnet kits, but apart from that, we only needed the 2 books + lots of books out from the library. I thoroughly recommend it. Jenny

Hi, In Australia, we're just wrapping up the school year. I have just spent the year doing "Physics Experiments for Children" as recommended in TWTM with the Usborne Internet-linked Science Encyclopedia as our reference. I did it with my year 4 dc and my year 1 dc. We usually got through at least 2 experiments in a 1 hour session, and then I assigned the easier of the two experiments to my dc1 to write up the experiment report on, and got dc4 to do the harder one. For the first roughly half of the year, dc1 narrated the experiment report to me but now she writes her own to the best of her ability. They took notes and drew diagrams in their science notebooks and dc1 seemed to take most of it on board. We were just doing electrical circuits the other day and dc1 was right into it with dc4. I find my dcs tend to act like peers and only differ in level of comprehension and writing ability. This is easily catered for without having to separate the two or anything. I have a 4-year-old ds and he tends to join in too - I love HSing. I hope this helps. It's certainly not a resource list but we had a great year with physics. We had 2 electrical kits, a set of magnets, a "light optics" kit (very simple but effective) - all of which I picked up at garage sales and cheap shops, and some plastic tubing from our local hardware store for the earlier experiments in the book. We used some of the internet sites linked to the textbook and that was about it. Oh, and quite a few extra books from the library that were lots of fun to read and add in extra experiments. I felt like they learnt a lot without a great deal of effort on my part and basically we all had lots of fun. Cheers, Jenny

Do you know about these websites: http://www.first-school.ws/ This is great for extra activities for phonics - lots of cut and paste, craft and writing / sound recognition practice. I've taught 2 girls to read and am currently teaching ds4 without any sort of curriculum, but using Montessori sandpaper letters, the first schools website, Magic 100 Words (a kit borrowed from the uni library) and random sticker books etc. http://www.learningpage.com/free_pages/home.html This website - you have to become a member to access the "Theme worksheets" but membership is completely free. I've been a member for years. Under the themes, there is a whole heap of worksheets on Insects, and there are other themes there you might find useful as well. These are a great resource to get them starting to think. I hope these are some help. Jenny

I was finding Prima Latina incredibly dry and dd7/8 wasn't retaining much, until I made it a group lesson with her younger siblings and we played charades with the vocabulary (I made pictures for them all so ds3/4 could do it too) and learned the prayers etc together. For some reason, as soon as Latin became something we all looked forward to - they love charades - retention went right up and she's doing amazingly well now. We are doing Latina Christiana 1 and she's doing great. Jenny

Hi, Nukeswife - I did suspect as much about the non-smooth finish. I am especially sure that, even if others could do a great job, mine would be a disappointment. I managed to persuade dh to come along to a big stationers chain over here selling whiteboards today and he suggested that we should be trying a second hand office furniture shop which had just moved in down the road. Sure enough, we got a 1200 by 900 magnetic whiteboard for $60 and a cork board the same size for the same price - and because it was dh's idea, he handed over the money without any raised eyebrows. Amazingly, she could also get me in a blackboard of the same size - I teach in a converted garage which is somewhat elongated with painted brick walls and has an interesting assortment of cupboards and bookshelves lining the walls - and I can suddenly see my cluttered walls becoming beautifully organised with a line up of whiteboard, blackboard and corkboard. However, Chris - knowing another ex-teacher out there can do without a blackboard, I've decided to give the whiteboard a go by itself and invest in the blackboard later if we need it. Thanks for all your input that has clarified my thinking - it's a happy day for me to be able to kiss the delapidated board stand goodbye. Jenny

I think the narrations for history are such a great way to build their literacy skills. Doing things the TWTM way, they don't do that much writing outside of narrations, so I've really focussed on the "interest" level of her narrations - a year or so ago, my eldest dd got all excited to think that she was writing this for someone who didn't know anything about history so that they could learn about it too. Hence, I've definitely focussed on the way she starts her sentences - not being repetitive, good use of paragraphs, flowing grammatically etc. At one point last year though, I got so frustrated with her own lack of effort in improving her writing, that I gave her a "criteria sheet" with divisions into presentation, content and grammar/sentence structure etc. I gave her a mark out of 20 based on a certain number of marks for each criteria. It really worked and she tried to better her marks each week. I know that sounds very teacher-ish, but it saved me getting worked up about it and I really saw a big improvement. She always did very well in the "content" area but had to work on her neatness (messy erasing and words running over ends of the lines etc) and also her paragraphs, sentence beginnings and consistent tense use. HTH, Jenny

Hi, I can't believe you can just paint something and it's magnetic - I love the idea of a whole wall like that. My blackboard is my magnetic board, and whenever I want to use chalk, I have to move all the magnetic pieces to the side. I have all the bits for the day, date, season, weather etc in Japanese across the top of the board and the kids move those around accordingly. Only using a stand-up board, there just isn't that much space. We had people house-sitting for us in Fiji and they managed to use the wrong sort of pens on the whiteboard and crayons on the blackboard and I've just been working around the problems ever since. After reading the threads on this board, I've decided that I'm not going to "make-do" any longer. Wendy, we homeschool in our converted garage and the walls are brick and very textured - sadly. I think I'll be buying boards and painting them if I can work it all out. I'm yet to see if all the things you guys are talking about it are actually purchasable in Australia. Thank you so much for your suggestions and ideas. In Australia, it's time to start thinking about our new school year - I gather you guys are long past that now - but I'm getting all excited about some big improvements to our room for next year. We finish up in mid-December and start again towards the end of January. Chris, what do you mean by putting a piece of molding at the bottom for chalk? That does seem like something you'd need, but how do you do it? Also, I think I like using both a blackboard and a whiteboard - whiteboards are great for lots of neat writing and diagrams, but blackboards are great for brainstorming and rubbing off quickly and writing over. You can also do nicer looking pictures on blackboards too. I'm an ex-teacher and I'm rather attached to both. Thank you again, Jenny

Hi, I found the thread about the whiteboards very helpful but I use a black board all the time as well. For the last 4 years, I've just used a blackboard/whiteboard/magnetic board combo on a stand but I'm over it. I can never leave any work on the boards because the younger ones get to it. How would you go about making a blackboard for a wall? I've heard there is blackboard paint or something, but is it as easy as that? What works best to paint on? Any secrets for cleaning boards that have got crayonned? Thank you very much for your help, Jenny

Hi, My eldest dd had just turned 5 and she was officially considered "grade 1" in Australia, and she was reading and writing quite happily, so we started SOTW1. I admit to having been in a bit of a rush to get started on this wonderful curriculum with my eldest, but she loved it. We have continued on finishing each SOTW within the year and are almost finished SOTW4 - our school year ends in December. I've even added in a couple of extra weeks of Australian history every year. We don't have long breaks off school so don't struggle to get through 42 chapters a year. My eldest dd turns 9 tomorrow. Dd6 joined us this year - tougher for her to have to start on SOTW4 but she has done a great job of keeping up with it, doing narrations with me and mapwork, while dd8 has done outlining and the mapwork with her. All I can say is, I held off a bit longer with dd6 (she was 5 3/4 when she started) thinking that her comprehension level would be better than my eldest's because she was older, but I haven't noticed any real difference. I think the whole thing really trains them to think and think well! - whatever age you start, obviously within reason. dd8 has loved history the entire way through and her literacy skills have been really well developed, I think. Actually, I'm definitely not starting history with ds4 when he's 5 at the beginning of next year. Though I didn't notice the difference with the girls, I think I prefer to start with them when they're older now. It's a little bit easier if they're a bit older, when you are juggling a few kids. Hopefully, this is just another perspective. Jenny