I have a 7 year old son and a 4month old. So my son doesn't really have siblings to play with. Our small church does not have children his age. We only have one car and so the most I can get to our homeschool park day is twice a month. The neighborhood kids are all in ps and can't seem to play after school. They are resting or eating supper or involved in some after school program. I feel sort of frustrated and concerned.

I think your schedule is fine and I think you are doing enough. My son who is a second grader also does not tell his father much about what he learned that day! But it has improved over the year so I am sure it will keep on improving. I agree you can't look at what other people are doing to judge wether or not you are on the right track or not. I did that alot when I first started homeschooling and I just kept feeling like I am not doing this right and I ruining my children. Now after 8 years I am able to read about what other people do and just appreciate the differences and look at what things will work for us and what things won't. You have to look at what is best for your kids and your family. What sort of things do your kids like. My son doesn't really like alot of read alouds so I don't do that much. I have one book that I choose to read a chapter or so a day in the afternoon and we have a bedtime story. We do read library books as part of our history and science. However, he really enjoys maps and so with our curriculum I have added in some more geography. My son is not really into music but loves art so I emphasize that. I used to approach homeschooling by trying to give my children a variety of exposure to things but I quickly found out there are TOO MANY THINGS!! and it's near impossible. So now I have a basic curriculum that works for us and I add in the things they enjoy or are good at.

Here is a book that will give you reading game ideas. http://www.amazon.com/Games-Reading-Playful-Ways-Child/dp/0394721497/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3MY2ON9MO2WAJ&colid=2VHOCPC3FFMCN For a calendar I used something like this for our K year. I put ours up on a bulletin on the wall. You could probably make something with posterboard, paint or markers and just copy this. For each month just take some cardstock and cut to small squares and decorate for any holidays and special days. http://www.amazon.com/Year-Around-Calendar-Bulletin-Board/dp/B0007WXIVY I have not used a time curriculum. I just refer to the clock often whenever something comes up. Like at this time we are going to do this and I show him on the clock and explain. Time is something that I have to keep referring to over and over again until he get's it. My son is starting 2nd grade and he has a grounded understanding in the hour and half hour time and is really close to understanding telling time in five minute intervals. So, this is something we just teach in our home naturally. I do have a clock I have used on occasion called the Judy Clock. It works really well because as you move the minute hand it shows how the hour hand moves slowly as well. It's been helpful on occasion but I am not sure it's needed. http://www.amazon.com/OWN-LITTLE-JUDY-CLOCK-BOOK/dp/B001AZ7WX2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1251656175&sr=1-3

This is a fabulous idea. I love the way she writes in the Apologia books, I find it very inspiring and comforting how she gives God credit for all His creation. When my son sees the sky and water and animals I want him to directly SEE God's hand not just the facts. However, I have the same problem other people have shared in that my son just doesn't have the attention span. We have been doing library books and that works out great, but I really miss the spiritual edge that these books have. I always felt I had to read these Apologia books from start to finish and do one book at a time. I don't know why I thought that!! How many times have we told each other curriculum is to be a TOOL! I see now how I could have all the books and use sticky tabs to mark places in the books for us to read!! I could use it very much like a science encyclopedia set as well.

Have you looked at All About Spelling ? This could be used for all your children for phonics AND spelling. http://www.all-about-spelling.com/

It's my personal opinion that these concerns you have are FAR, FAR less of a problem than what you would have if you sent your kids to school. If you sent your kids to school you may gain some of these things but you would loose the reasons you want to homeschool which were Godly upbringing, family bonding and helping your son with learning difficulties. No situation is perfect, when you send your kids to ps you are just substituting one set of problems for another. You have to decide what is the most important thing for your kids and what set of problems are you willing to work through and deal with. There is no such thing as a problem free solution. I also think people idealize public school. It really boggles my mind! We live in a culture that if you don't have your kid wear a helmet on a bike or don't have them in two or three kinds of extra curricular activities than your a bad parent..but sending them to ps where the education is nothing more than just memorizing to pass a test, the social enviornment is very hard on most children, children do not enjoy reading books or learning and school is just a place to be with friends and education is secondary and they loose all sense of individualism is consideredb GOOD parenting! I am just amazed at how much people support ps. My husband has always told me that you don't need to search out ways to make life more difficult. The difficulty of life will always find you and sending kids to ps is creating more difficulty than what needs to be. As for your concerns there are many solutions but mostly you need to be okay with maybe things not being exactly how you want them and have faith that your kids will still be okay. The music and art are nice but if you can't afford lessons or if you don't have the time to run everyone around for that sort of thing than I think it's okay to not worry about it. The friends and clubs are also nice but if your kids are with other children once a week that's fine in my opinon. They have each other as well. When you are with kids and adults do they interact well? As for having fun...school is not always fun but because of homeschooling they have so much more time in their day to explore and do things they like. So even if you spend 2-4 hours a day doing school stuff and it's drudgery for them, they have so much time the rest of the day to do their own thing. Kids in the ps spend 6-7 hours in school PLUS homework!! No time for being a kid!

I am sure if you sell your $300 curriculum you will get enough to purchase the new one and probably have some left over. Don't feel bad about it, it's not like you are INTENTIONALLY trying to buy things you don't need. When it comes to curriculum you never really know how it will work until you have used it for a bit. It's just how it is. I have spent hundreds of dollars I am sure over my 8 years of homeschooling. My biggest problem comes in when I invest in a large, for the whole year, everything included curricula that will cost $300 or more! I have done this 4 times and that type of curricula never works for us! However, I usually can sell those and get back about 70 -80% of what I paid for it. I suppose the smaller things like for $20 or so can add up to. I don't feel guilty anymore and my husband has come to understand that this is just how it works. But, I do try and be careful with my purchases and try and sell as much as I can to make up the cost, but sometimes things just don't work and my husband and I have accepted that. For instance this year I wanted to switch to Right Start for math. It's expensive about $150. So I searched the house for things to sell to buy it. I have made some rules for myself over the years: One is I try to use what I have before buying something more. I see if there are things I can sell when purchasing a large order for something. For now I am staying away from the large expensive curriculum. We use Five in a Row and I can continue with their products until 6th grade and that's my plan. Their curriculum is inexpensive and flexible. I buy the majority of our curriculum at the begining of the new school year. Than I have a monthyly budget for purchasing extra things that come up and I really make myself stick to that monthly thing. We have thrift store that has been a great source for extra fun school things. They have had great games and science kits. We also have a used bookstore in town that I have been able to get lots of books to make a nice resource library at home. I go to the library each week or every couple weeks and that really adds to our schooling and at no cost. There are videos, books, even computer games available at the library.

I just thought of Learning Language Arts Through Literature. LLATL is how it is commonly referred to. It's by Ruth Beechick and emphasizes a more natural method to language arts

I think you are Right On!! I love FIAR and use it for our main curriculum. There is so much you can do with it if you feel you want to beef it up for your older son. I have a second grader with FIAR this year and I purchased Uncle Josh's Outline Maps. Everytime we come to a country or state I print out a map and we get our atlas out and we look at various surrounding places and bodies of water, rivers, landmarks ect... It's been great. www.homeschoolshare also has great things to add to FIAR and the FIAR website has great Fold N Learns which are lapbooks to go with some of the books. I also add alot of books from the library that pertain to the FIAR book of the week. FIAR just doesn't feel like the drudgery of school, it's very light but so amazingly meaty!

I use English for the Thoughtful Child. Right now I am using our own literature to do copywork, dictation and narration. I have my son copy a couple sentences on Monday, on Tuesday I make up a little worksheet on my Start Write program where I have the sentence typed up without the punctuation and he adds it in and we talk about some of the grammar of the sentence like compound words, syllables etc... Than Wednesday I dictate the sentence to him to see what he learned. This works good, but I have ordered Writing With Ease the teachers manual and from what I have gathered from other people I can use this book as a guide and still use our own reading material to do copywork, dictation and narration. I love the CM method but I don't feel confident and feel sort of lost doing it on my own. I do not feel confident in deciding when to progess to the next level....when to boost it up so to speak. My son has been copying a couple sentences for a few years now and I think it's time to move on to paragraphs but I just want a guide, something step by step. I THINK Writing With Ease will give me that from how it sounds and I can still use our own reading material. There is a workbook for Writing With Ease that has the literature selections for you and instructs you. For narration I try to do that a few times a day by just conversing about the books we are reading. So I think English for the Thoughtful Child and WWE will give me a good Charlotte Mason style but with the extra help I need. I know that I am very pleased with English for the Thoughtful Child. It is very gentle and informative. You can also look into Primary Language Lessons and Intermediate Language Lessons.

FIAR is different, it is more like a curriculum. For each book you get several lessons for each subject of Social Studies, Language Arts, Art, Math and Science. You can do some or all of the lessons. You can do one subject category each day of the week. Like do Social Studies on Monday and Language Arts on Tuesday or you can mix it up. It's very flexible. It looks like a light curriculum but I use it as our main curriculum for my 2nd grader and I find it to be very good. I add in Math and English for the Thoughtful Child and Writing with Ease. Because I use it as my main and don't supplement alot to it, we spend about 60 minutes or so on it a day. Sometimes breaking that 60 minutes up. I like to do all or about 80% of the lessons given. I really try to soak up as much as I can of the curriculum because I love the variety of information it teaches and I love that we start a whole new book each week. It keeps school so fresh and new!

My Writing With Ease is in the mail. I just ordered the manual because I am hoping to be able to use the literature we are currently reading for the assignments. Is this realistic? Way too much work? Anyone use WWE with out the workbooks to let me know how they do it?

I have had Drawing with Children in my closet for a couple years!!:D I really, really want to use it but it's so hard to fit it into our day and for me to do all the planning. Draw Write Now are great books and will be easy for you to use and the kids will probably like them. I use them just to give to my son on his own time. But, if you want your children to learn some techniques about drawing and even painting and coloring that I recommend I Can Do All Things from the How Great Thou Art website. They have a DVD curriculum. You will need a book and set of paint cards for each of your kids because that is where they work from. So it can be a bit pricey. But it should last a few years. I set my son up on a tv tray with his book and pencils or colors or whatever media we are using. We push play for the lesson and the guy instructs on the lesson and than my son does the lesson in the workbook. I still observe and maybe give a comment or something but I feel so relieved because I don't have to come up with a lesson and do it myself and try to explain it to him. I may repeat what the instructor said on the DVD. It does not require alot of supplies, you can either buy their kit or get them yourself. I am really glad we have this. http://www.howgreatthouart.com/ProductPage1.asp?CategoryID=9

We will be teaching our son Greek. We are Eastern Orthodox Christians and feel this will be a benefit to him. We will also try and do Spanish as well. We live in California and there are lots of spanish speaking people here and I think it would be useful.

I love, love, love Five In A Row. I use it as my main curriculum. I add math and Phonics Pathways for teaching to read and spelling, Writing Made Easy and English for the Thoughtful Child. Basically, I add in Math and the more constructive or mechanical parts of language arts. I spend about 30 minutes a day doing language arts, 30 minutes with math and about 60 minutes with FIAR. I plan 3 books (3 weeks) at a time. I jot down in my planner all the lessons for the book I want to do. I don't do LA on Monday and Science on Tuesday. I just do as many lessons as we can for that day. I try to do a few quick ones (some lessons are observing or discussing) along with some longer lessons. So some days we may do an art lesson along with a science and language arts lesson. I will sometimes go to the library and get books to go along with our studies. For instance non fiction books that pertain to some of the science or social studies. I like to refer to our map and atlas often when a country or state comes up in the study. I have a timeline that we put things on as it comes up in our study. Homeschoolshare website has great printouts and laptops for free that go with each FIAR book title. I am planning on using FIAR up until 5th or 6th grade. They have Beyond Five In A Row for the olders. Also, FIAR volume 4 is really great for 7-9 year olds. You spend 2 weeks on a book instead of the one with the volumes 1-3. It is suppose to be a sort of "lead in" to the Beyond FIAR. I just love this way of schooling. It is so flexible and creative!! It really isn't that much extra work. Yes, it would be more work than if you had Sonlight and just opened up and did what was on the schedule. However, I have tried Sonlight twice and I just need more flexibility with choosing reading material and activities. I also love that FIAR has such a variety of subjects. I feel like it fits in with the Well Trained Mind approach fairly well. I remember in the book it was mentioned that at these younger early elementary levels you just want to give them lots of information and read about a variety of things and that is exactly FIAR. You can use this curriculum as a supplement or as your main.

I use the one from Rainbow Resource. I really love it!! http://www.rainbowresource.com/product/Unit+Study+Daily+Lesson+Planner/029492/1250903120-591816

Do you use these two together or do they overlap each other? Is it too much to use together? It seems like alot.