What a beautiful birthday moment for a father and son.

Thanks for this article. It's got me thinking!

Some thoughts in no particular order: Everyone needs a sense of purpose and of how much we are needed to keep up our house. The children need to know their work is important. Sleep, rest and exercise are good for us. T.V. is full of advertisements that selfishly promote a life of consumption of goods which we don't necessarily need. Entertainment is good, but it shouldn't be all life is about. Have the children made comments at any time about anything they feel is wrong in their community or world that needs fixing or improving? Help them to do something now to right the wrongs they see. They are old enough to make a difference in the world if they feel strongly about something. If you get a chance, check out David Albert's books, articles, lectures.

Do the workbooks show any purposely misspelled words that the child is supposed to correct? I'm looking for a fun spelling workbook, but I don't want any words misspelled. I think that leads to confusion. Thank you.

The Sonlight schedule seems to use another version of the Usborne encyclopedia. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it is the internet-linked version.

You may want to take a look at History Odyssey Ancients, Level One. The schedule has the Usborne book as the spine, with A Child's History of the World (SOTW is there too, but of course you could use it or not). See Pandia Press, if interested.

Are there very many old books, documents, journals still existing in these languages? Or are there a few "must-reads" for the classical student which makes the study of these languages so important? Thanks.

What have you used as a "roadmap" or plan for your own classical education? Did you simply learn along with the children or did you go a bit further? Thanks.

I've enjoyed these: (in addition to WTM) And the Skylark Sings With Me - Adventures in Homeschooling and Community-Based Education (David H. Albert) Dumbing Us Down - The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (John Taylor Gatto) Charlotte Mason Companion (Karen Andreola) A Thomas Jefferson Education (Oliver Van DeMille) Homeschooling for Excellence (Colfax) Maria Montessori's books

That's great Laura! Have fun in your new job.

Does anyone know if there are any free internet services? Anything we can use from home? (In the U.S.)

1 lb. Brussels sprouts 4 Tbsp. butter Juice of 1/2 lemon salt and pepper Trim and and wash sprouts; steam until just barely tender. Halve each sprout lengthwise. Melt butter in a saute pan, add sprouts, cook until heated through. Add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Stir them up and serve. Serves 4-6 Oh my, these are good. We make this recipe when we can get the sprouts still on the stalk. The kids like to pop them off the stalk to help out with the cooking.

My opinion is that a little curricula is better than too much! Especially during K through 3rd grade. It can get in the way of real learning and just turn a kid off. As you say, your daughter is probably capable of more academics, but would it really have been the best route? I'll bet she's been learning all sorts of more important things during this time than written grammar and such. Real life is much more educational. I think age seven or eight is the perfect time to start more written work. My kids seem to have picked up so much more from our reading of great books, field trips, real life experiences than from any curriculum we've tried! I think if you just start up where you have left off, you can't really go wrong. You'll figure out together what works best as you move forward.

Hi, In my opinion, going with Living Books C. would not so much be a repeat of ancients, but a focusing in on Ancient Egypt. SOTW covers ancient history of many peoples of the world, whereas Living Books focuses on one or two cultures per year. Take a look at the Living Books list for year 2, you'll see that it is all about Egypt. So it just depends on what you want to do with your study of history. I think Living Books, yr. 2 would go well with a study of SOTW 1.

I thought of another option for teaching reading that is free on-line at www.tanglewoodeducation.com. Look on the site for the Really Reading program. You can print it out and make a little booklet for your child. It's a pretty good program.

I like Phonics Pathways. One reason is that it is very similar to the method with which I was taught to read back in kindergarten, so I am comfortable with it. But also because I find it to be easy to use, no fuss, straight to the point, makes sense. My children seem to prefer this as well. I like that there are no picture clues for letters, sounds or words. The child must look at the letter or groups of letters and learn the sounds they stand for. There is no guessing due to picture clues. We also use Reading Pathways along with it. The pyramids are fun.

One day we were at the local library where a group of adult volunteer workers were sitting at a table cleaning the library books. I watched as one of the men spit into his cleaning rag and then used it to "clean" one of the book covers. After seeing that, I just couldn't check anything out for awhile. I got over it, sort of, but since then I have used alcohol to clean the book covers of the books I check out!

in Arizona - Grand Canyon, Walnut Canyon (near Flagstaff), Sunset Crater, Meteor Crater, Sedona, Havasupai, Lowell Observatory (Flagstaff) in California - Huntington Library and Gardens, Griffith Park Observatory, Los Angeles Zoo, tidepools at Corona del Mar or Laguna Beach, The Getty, local mountains (Big Bear Lake, Lake Arrowhead, Idyllwild), Legoland, Balboa Park in San Diego, NASA JPL - Pasadena area

Have you seen Rebecca Rupp's book, Home Learning Year by Year? This book shows the typical course of study for all subjects for all grades. It also has possible resources for each subject and grade. I always check this book towards the end of our school year to make sure we've pretty well covered everything.

Does anyone know ... is Academic Earth new? Will they be expanding?

Hi, The following fictional books are set in Europe. We have read three of them and liked them. Vendela in Venice The Wheel on the School Swallows and Amazons The Family Under the Bridge Red Sails to Capri

Thanks for the information!

I'm curious ... I hear the words "real" and "really" used in the same place in sentences so often that I wonder if they are both correct. (Although it doesn't seem so to me. But my learning of grammar was long ago.) Is it "really good" or "real good"? Is it "really fast" or "real fast"? Are they really both correct? Why or why not? Can someone help? Thanks!

We use this and we all like it. I find it to be a nice gentle beginning to studying English vocabulary and Latin (and it ties in nicely with the modern foreign language we study). I have both the flashcards and the books. Every week we study a new word either Latin or Greek. I let the kids choose the word. We set it out on the dining room table in a wooden card holder. I read the word to the kids; I tell them some of the English words which come from this root word and I also read the teaching notes to the kids if they would be of interest to them. It doesn't take but a few minutes and the kids seem to retain the information well. We have some fun discussions about words and language origins as well due to this program. It just gives us that much more background and it makes language interesting. I also use it for copywork sometimes which I plan to do more regularly. I am glad I bought English from the Roots Up and we have consistently used it for a couple of years.

What a great resource. Thanks!