We absolutely love the workbox system. It is not only for younger children. My 12yo has been an independent learner for several years now. I am very organized and love structure (previous accountant-lol). My 12yo ds, on the other hand, leans towards my dh's artistic temperment. Before finding the workbox love, I would write up a schedule and lesson plan for him with all the assignments for the week. He'd check off the assignments in the planner, but it was always a struggle for him to actually get done with everything. Now he finishes all his work, plus does extra stuff that I toss in there. It is so much easier for both of us. He loves being able to see the work decrease, we've added lots more fun stuff we never had time to do before, and I like it how it forces me to stay on top of everything. After the first day he was hooked. One day I didn't put anything in his boxes, he was pretty upset that we were taking the day off. The work is exactly the same as before, but for some reason seeing it decrease, having all the supplies to do each assignment on hand, and getting to do those fun things has him super-motivated. My friend has a 14yo ds, 11yo ds, and 2yo dd and they love their workboxes too. She's the one that got me hooked because I thought it was ridiculous before too.

For Apologia, it seems like most the information is based on commonly accepted scientific facts. There are a few statements tossed in that use the scientific information to support certain biblical beliefs, however we just crossed those statements out.

I have no fear of owning my books and taking black markers to them. lol Most of the highly religious stuff is in the first and last chapters. I marked out entire paragraphs in a few chapters, some pages just had a sentence here and there, and sometimes just crossing out a word and replacing it with another made it acceptable for us. Even though it sounds like a lot of editing, the majority of the pages had no need for editing. It made it easier to read to just bypass all the religious stuff. The rest of the content was pretty good.

Oh and I found this: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11193

Hi again Corbie. We did Prima Latina and Latin Christiana before dh decided it was too religious. He didn't like the idea of all the Catholic prayers ds was memorizing. What didn't you like about Prima Latina that you don't want to continue with that route? I think the sequence goes straight through to Henle, so it is a good program... But I understand the need for change. lol Anyway, I have no experience with LL, however we did look into Latin for Children. If you're dc enjoy activity type books, then the activity guides are a lot of fun and help reinforce the lesson. The biggest problem with the program is that there were so many editing errors and addendums. So be sure to get the most recent edition if you go that route. Seriously. Their website has lesson samples and gives a good idea of what to expect. I personally thought it was too wordy and messy looking, especially after experience with Latina Christiana. The chants in LfC were different in that the lesson was to memorize all four verb tenses per each verb introduced. And there was a lot of vocabulary to memorize for each lesson. On another note, I do have a TM of Latina Christiana and the LfC Student book and activity guide for sale. If you were interested in looking at them to compare, I could send them cheap.... no pressure. ;)

We actually didn't do Botany because ds didn't want to study flowers for an entire year. lol Astronomy was good, however we went through it pretty quickly. I think it only took us a few months. He doesn't like doing experiements, so it goes faster for us. The Zoology series seems like it has more variety. Flying Creatures covers birds, bats, flyng reptiles, and insects. We skipped around in that book, studying migration when birds were migrating and insects in the summer. Swimming Creatures we haven't done, however I have the book and the TOC has: whales, seals and sea cows, aquatic herps (turtles, snakes, frogs, salamanders), primeval reptiles (have no idea what that is), fish, sharks and rays, crutaceans, mollusks, cephalopods, echinoderms, and cindarians. Switching between the series sounds like a really good idea. I liked the series because of the language and pictures. We did try other curricula, however I can't remember which ones off the top of my head.

Apologia's elementary science (Astronomy, Botany, Zoology) is pretty good and you could use it for both children. I'm not sure if you're looking for a secular curriculum or not, but we edited Apologia for secular use. The activities go along with the lesson pretty well. We actually skipped over a few of the experiments because ds didn't want to do them, but he still understood the content w/o it. As for Pandia, I have no experience. We used Rainbow Science for only a few chapters and ds thought that the experiments were kind of lame.... but that might be his age now. Edit: Apologia General Science for middle school has the experiments on CD so they can watch it if they don't want to do it, which is a plus for us.

The timing of this thread is awesome for me because I was just debating on if grammar was even necessary. Thank you for being so honest and sharing your experience.

Thank you for all the replies. I'm also in the never-studied-grammar boat but still managed to ace my college entrance exams. My English scores were in the top 10%. Elizabeth, your post was incredibly helpful and I really appreciate the time you took to offer so many resources. I'll look into them. Collen in NS, thank you most especially for helping me rethink my position with your comment: I guess I should probably asses what I think is important for ds and how learning grammar fits into that. He already expresses himself well and did study Latin in 2nd and 3rd grade. This is such a fantastic group! Thanks again for all the replies. At this point we'll probably go with Analytical Grammar or Winston Grammar... maybe or maybe something else.

It really depends on what you want to do with it. The TM has a lot of great information, including how to use the program, however the student worksheets can be used without the TM just fine. I'm trying to find my DITHOR and I'll look through it, but from what I remember we didn't use the TM at all.

All the PP are pretty right on. Whatever you want. It is awesome you are homeschooling. Since your kiddos are 1st and 2nd, I'd highly suggest The Story of the World: Ancients and the activity guide. The books would be a lot of fun for all three of you. The activity guide not only has fun things to do, but also has a great resources list if you find you want to read more about a specific thing.

I guess it depends on how comfortable you are with the vocabulary and how much time you have to check the answers. ds did Wordly Wise Pink... I think that was 5th grade, without the TM and I had no problem. After he finished, I just read over his answers and we corrected the ones he got wrong. It really only took a few minutes to go over it all. Generally I scheduled 2x week, two lessons at a time and the last lesson was optional. HTH!

We haven't really done any grammar at all and my ds is 12yo going into 7th grade. He is an avid reader and hates writing. I slacked for years and didn't do penmanship because he disliked it so much. Next thing I know, he is going into middle school and still doesn't want to physically use a pen or pencil. :toetap05: I've started IEW with him and he seems to like that alright but still detests using pens and pencils. (A friend also recently suggested teaching him to type. duh on my part) Anyway, his understanding of high quality literature is great, so I think that once he can overcome the "hate to hold a pencil" he might be okay with writing. So my question is, is grammar really necessary? :001_unsure: Wouldn't reading good literature be better than a curriculum for grammar? Or should I consider having him use Analytical Grammar or something like that this year? Any other ideas or suggestions?

Here is where I bought mine. I bought "prehistory to modern" http://www.rainbowresource.com/prodlist.php?sid=1246387705-1307619&subject=14&category=3369 The sticker pack is included in both sets, so you don't need one, unless you just want the stickers w/o a timeline.

Thank you for the replies. I like Sonlight, so I'll probably just stick with it. I have a friend who uses TOG and loves it, however I'm not really sure what her religious position is and would rather not know. I think I'm going to try and figure out how to do History Odyssey with Sonlight 6. Don't know what I'm thinking, but I'm sure it is going to be fun. lol Yonit, I love your blog. It is wonderful to meet another Jewish homeschool family. I'll be a regular visitor. Thanks v' Shalom.

Yep. Those links are it. RR is cheaper though. For a long time I resisted it because of the pics on the bottom, but this year was too lazy to care. And honestly after seeing it, I like the pics. It kind of makes the time line more "professional" lol It is beautiful. Yes, you can add whatever you want to it since it is light card stock. I am just so impressed with the sticker pack and the colors on the timeline. Maybe because we've always had made-at-home boring white paper.

I must add that we did do a new timeline each year, just focusing on the period we were studying since it gets pretty chaotic after awhile. He has his Book of Wonders that ties it all together that he makes entries in every now and then.

When my son was around that age, we used yarn & 3x5 cards. I know that sounds a bit strange, but I didn't want to deal with so much paper, however wanted him to visually see the length of time. Since we were only studying one time period, I took a long piece of yarn and just divided the centuries by tying knots in the yarn and dangled a small piece of paper with the year (probably 1x1) from it. After each event he learned, he illustrated it on the 3x5 card and I wrote on the back. Then he would punch a hole at the top of the card, and attach it to the appropriate place with a piece of yarn onto the long "timeline" yarn. If more than one thing happened, he would tape the card, right below each other. It worked great, especially because we could put it away and pull it out. I hope that makes sense. Happy Homeschooling!

Thanks for the review link.... It was actually your siggy line on another post that got me curious about Megawords.

I think we just need to remember that we all have different parenting styles and there isn't another mother out there that will parent the same way. If her new LO is still tiny, she might be feeling tons of guilt with the adjustment, along with hormones trying to re-balance themselves. Right now the best thing is probably giving lots of hugs to your friend and offering super extra attention to her toddler. ((hugs)) to you to for being such a good, concerned friend. And I agree about staying away from the Pearls. Hitting a child is always wrong. Always. Never, ever, ever, ever hit a child.

I'm curious too. I have a 12yo who is a so-so speller and not sure what level to start him off at. Is the 1st book really for 4th grade?

Oh mmmmmmyyyyyy! I have always made my own time lines and used the Homeschool In the Woods CD and printed out & colored the figures but this year was too busy and lazy to do that so I bought Pandia's Classical Homes Education timeline from RR. I received it today and it is gorgeous! The different colors break out the different segments of history. The few pictures highlight what the time period was about. And the sticker pack...the sticker pack is phenomenal! The pictures are soooooo good and actually protray recognizable photos. I am more excited about this timeline than anything else in our upcoming school year. lol Just had to rave!

1984 Volvo 240 GL around 275,000 and still going strong with no issues. :D Before that, I had a 72 Mercedes with over 500,000 miles. Don't know how many exactly because the speedometer quit working and then the transmission finally died.

That bad, huh? Did you find anything good for Logic? Are you using something now? I'm always looking, but haven't found much for the logic level yet.

http://www.knowledgeboxcentral.com/ sells some. We are about to start one for my 12yo ds for the first time ever. I'm hoping it will help him retain all the facts in middle school science.