You may find something of interest here: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnonfiction.html Or the list may spark something of interest to research more to find an appropriate book? What are her interests? What areas in history does she like?

How many weeks are you dedicating to this approach? This way sounds like a lot of fun too.....and hits on three things at once - science, culture (social studies) and geography!

DH and I were talking last night and I was sharing with him the things I've hammered out for HS next year and what I'm still a bit "stuck" on - namely how to integrate geography into things so it makes sense. I know there is a good deal of mapping with SOTW, but I'd like it to be a bit more than that....how to explain? "More" in the sense that DS is getting a firm grasp on how vast the world is and how different various areas are.....basically more than just maps. So, then DH comes up with an idea that sounds like it may fit DS's learning style well, but I'm wondering if it's "too much" more....LOL The idea? When he was looking at the science units, he said that perhaps instead of learning about mammals in isolation of birds and such, maybe we could start with each type of animal, then move to habitats and work on units based on habitats and include the various animals found in each habitat and segway that into where such habitats are found in the world, so that would be how we get geography into the mix in a way that it's not necessarily its own stand-alone subject, but part of the science units.....like maps are part of the history units. Then he went "big idea" - thinks it might be fun (and he'd help with this throughout the year) to slowly create a relief map of the world on a large table - it would take the year to do - with DS and I (and he) adding to it throughout the year as we continue along with each habitat.....that, for instance, when we're doing savannah/grasslands, we fill in the areas in the world on the map, set up a diorama in a large one with animals and stuff, so it becomes an ongoing project that continues to provide what's been learned throughout the year still there. Almost like when someone creates a model train set on a large train table type thing. I like the idea, but worry it may become a huge time issue.....then again, DS does like making things like this already, so it may be a good way to engage him and keep it fun. Space isn't an issue - we have the room to do this. Has anyone done something like this? What do you think?

Now that I have almost everything I need for the next year (and beyond for some subjects), my dining room table is totally overwhelmed with piles of books, books, books - by grade and subject - and I have figure out how to manage this! I know I'll put the higher grade books away and take them out when they're needed, but I'm wondering how to you all manage the sheer volume of texts/spines, supplements, activity books, etc. plus the notebooks and such created by your kids? Is it easier on shelves, in a rolling drawer cart, or something else? How do you organize subjects? Do you break language arts into smaller piles/drawers - say one for spelling, one for writing, one for phonics, etc., or all in one?

I'm new to this, and that may be why I'm spending as much as I have so far in the last month or so.....probably almost $2,000 - but that includes a lot of stuff for beyond this year. Story of the World - all four sets (book, activity book and test book) + CD's Saxon Math - 1, 2, and 3 RealScience4Kids - Bundle bio, chem and physics Earth Science and Solar System for next year Assorted encyclopedia books for next four years That and I've been buying books since DS was born and will probably continue with that for a long time - kid's got quite a library already!

After reading about homeschooling styles, I stumbled on WTM (book) and read it - click! - that's what I was looking for....when I started searching online for more information and such, I found the forums, last summer (2009), lurked for a while, then joined. But I wasn't really an active poster until recently - for the last year I've been fairly "informal" with how I'm doing things with DS - no real structure, but some thing consistently (math and phonics), but now I'm working to get everything together to "formally" start first grade with DS next month (we'll HS year-round).

I just signed DS up for piano over the summer through the University program here - grad student teaching, private lessons, eight weeks, 45-minutes per session = $164....cost per lesson $18

I grew up on a lake - learned to swim very early and had very strict rules about near or in the lake, basically zero tolerance from my parents until I was older. DH and I bought our house when DS was just 2, it sits lakefront on a 21-acre lake and first summer we were here, swimming lessons and establishing the ground rules about boundaries he could and could not cross on the property without an adult. We've continued him, year-round, in swimming lessons or swimming with us and he's an exceptionally strong swimmer at 5 (he can swim a mile in the pool and can dive to 12-feet), but the rules remain for him regarding our lake....and so far, he's not challenged the rules about the lake - which we don't swim in, but we do have a canoe and jon-boat, so he does fish with DH and knows he can only go to the dock or lakeside with an adult, never, never, never on his own!

:iagree: For me, I had in mind something like WTM before actually finding and reading WTM - but wasn't sure how to pull it all together.....finding this forum and reading WTM reinforced that my standards were very doable and gave me a framework to make it happen. I have learned so much from these boards and find them incredibly helpful, especially now when I'm in full-on planning mode and feeling the "stress" of doing it right. I'm calmer now, after quite a few great posts with advice on planning, but still have that nagging "did I pick the right" resources for the year - LOL - I hope I did!

Scientists Anaxagoras - Greek mathematician and astronomer Archimedes - best-known invention was a machine for raising water, called Archimedes' screw; famous for his work on buoyancy, which led him to develop Archimedes' principle. Aristarchus - Greek mathematician and astronomer Eratosthenes - Greek mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and poet, who measured the circumference of the earth with extraordinary accuracy by determining astronomically the difference in latitude between the Egyptian cities of Syene (now Aswan) and Alexandria. Eudoxus - Greek geometer and astronomer Heraclides - was the first to explain that the apparent rotation of the heavens is brought about by rotation of the earth on its axis rather than by the passage of stars around the Earth. He proposed that the seeming westward movement of the heavenly bodies is due to the eastward rotation of the Earth on its axis. Herophilus - known as the father of anatomy because he was the first to base his conclusions on dissection of the human body. He studied the brain, recognizing it as the center of the nervous system. He distinguished the motor from the sensory nerves and accurately described the eye, brain, liver, and pancreas and the salivary and genital organs. He was first to recognize that the arteries contain blood, not air. His works, which include commentaries on Hippocrates and a treatise on anatomy, were lost. Hipparchus - Greek astronomer and mathematician. He founded trigonometry and scientific geography. He discovered precession of equinoxes and invented methods of fixing terrestrial positions by circles of latitude and longtitude. Hippocrates - regarded as the father of medicine. Among his other significant works are Airs, Waters, and Places, which, instead of ascribing diseases to divine origin, discusses their environmental causes. Three other works-Prognostic, Coan Prognosis, and Aphorisms-advanced the then-revolutionary idea that, by observing enough cases, a physician can predict the course of a disease. The idea of preventive medicine, first conceived in Regimen and Regimen in Acute Diseases, stresses not only diet but also the patient's general way of living. Pythagoras - mathematician and astronomer; marked an important advance in ancient scientific thought, for they were the first to consider the earth as a globe revolving with the other planets around a central fire.

When DS started swim lessons at 2, he was in the water with the instructors on his own....once a week parents were expected to join the class (last day of each session, with a session lasting two weeks) - he turned 3 that summer and had ascended through two levels. Second summer, he did one level.....third summer, after doing quite a bit of swimming with us (DH and me)all winter and becoming quite a good swimmer, I pulled him out of lessons last year when he was bored silly and the life guards wouldn't bump him up a level because he was still just 4 and hadn't completed the Red Cross level yet - so DH and I took turns working with him solo in the water - by end of summer, just as he turned 5, he was doing deep water dives for dive rings at 12-feet, so we did something right - LOL! This year we're springing for private lessons for him so he can work on stroke development and endurance. Anyway, I think it depends on the Red Cross program they're doing (there are a couple out there) and how large the groups are.

I'm fairly new to this and toyed with taking the summer off (DS is 5 and will turn 6 in mid-August), but decided to set the stage for year-round HSing since our schedule isn't always predictable - DH works an incredible schedule, with most Sunday's off, half-days on most Saturdays and M-F...so when he gets a weekend off, I want to be able to do stuff with him and DS, when he gets a quick longer weekend off (just did last weekend) we like to get away somewhere, and when he has a conference, we travel with him too....we never know when he'll be able to schedule his one vacation a year, so I need to remain flexible....and I think simply planning to do HS year-round will give me that flexibiliity to take a week off here or there, head out to the east coast to visit my parents if I want, etc. If you're concerned about possibly having to do intensive review and/or getting behind, maybe you can do something "light" for a schedule - enough that it's something, but not so much that it's killing summer?

I started reading Stephen King pretty early - around 12 if I remember correctly.....Pet Semetary scared the bejeebers out of me, but other stuff was a "good read" - intense stuff, but good nonetheless. Some of the newer stuff he's written has more sexual stuff to consider, but older books are more scary than anything else.

"I leave a space next to each subject where I write in what we did rather than what we hope to do. At this stage of the game (and with two younger and unpredictable children) I would rather not feel constantly 'behind' or 'off kilter.' I don't want to rewrite the plans 100 times..." SOLD! It's the fine details I'm agonizing over and what you wrote just struck me as 'sensible' for us - if I have a big picture plan set, I can incorporate my details for each week as we go as long as we're sticking to the bigger picture (ie. math 5x a week, phonics/reading 4x a week, etc.) --- deep breath --- I feel better now!

I feel like I'm in the same trap with ya! Boy - the last year was easy - just do whatever, whenever (DS was doing K work and has already progressed well into 1st for math and reading, so things are going to be interesting this year for planning)....I feel since we're now formally at "first grade" I really need a better plan than the no plan approach - we should, I think, have some kind of structure to our day now.....as it is, sometimes we'll do things in the AM, other times in the evening - and I dunno, that probably won't be a good way to build his self-discipline and time management for the future! The last couple of days I've been trying to figure it out - hopefully it'll come together soon!

My son is on a new rock kick now, which is why I'm trying to figure out how to integrate earth science stuff into the overall picture of his lessons.....I'm thinking maybe to make it simply part of the geography/mapping and try to plan it based on where we'll be in SOTW (ie. when we're doing Egypt, do mapping of Africa....desert stuff for earth science.....tie in with animals that live in the desert and plants in desert?) Planning it is making my head spin.....!

I'm torn - WTM suggests Animals, Humans and Plants for first grade; Hirsh says Living Things + Habitats, Dinosaurs, Oceans + Undersea Life, Human Body, Matter, Intro to Electricty, Astronomy and Inside Earth; from most frist grade stuff for public schools, it's earth science, animals, plants and human body. I'd planned to simply follow WTM for our first year HSing, but now think I want to include some earth science since we're also including geography, so those two can compliment each other along the way. What I'm now trying to figure out is how to incorporate at least a basic intro to earth science into the mix without it being overwhelming since I do think in second grade a more in-depth exploration, with the solar system added, is well suited for SOTW 2. How to do this so it makes sense? Any ideas? Any suggestions for a good "spine" for earth science basics?

OMG - same here! And I'm already teaching to DS-5! Anyone remember the President's of the United States in order? We sang that too!

Okay - maybe I should have looked at the Gravitas website first....I was looking on Amazon and found the level 1 series - I just went to the website and see that they have a pre-level 1 series....that'll work!

I've been looking at a variety of options for teaching science next year to DS-5 (will be six in August) and really like the Gravitas Real Science-4 Kids series, but wonder if the level is going to be too difficult - but also wonder if I might be able to adapt it to a younger child and then use the books again when he's older? Any ideas? DS really likes science stuff, so I'm not worried about him being put-off by difficulty, but do worry that the workbooks and stuff are way beyond his reading capability yet....has anyone adapted this series? Is there something else I could look at to consider for his age?

DS5 here too! He's still a bit shaky with a pencil (or pen) too, but he's getting much much better lately - much more confident than he was a couple of months ago! What I've done is A) buy fatter pencils - this helps his coordination to hold it correctly, the thinner pencils seems to be too thin for him to get a good grip and feel comfortable writing with; also let him use crayons and/or fat markers when he wants to use those as opposed to a pencil. B) lots of various activities on paper, like connect-the-dots (helps build number recognition too), tracing broken line drawings of shapes (shape recognition), animals and other pictures (develop coordination between eyes and hands to keep pencil steady); C) lots of free drawing on blank paper - whatever he wants to draw, even scribbles - it's getting him to use the pencil and/or markers/crayons and hold them correctly; D) this week, I've started our letter writing practice by sitting with him and "practicing" my letters too, on the same type of paper (the type with the guide lines on it) - we tend to do one letter each day, upper and lowercase, and then write three words with that letter in them....so far he likes doing this and today asked when we get to do it - I think me doing it with him makes it something he wants to do. On his page and my page, I write the letters to start, do one set with broken lines and then we both fill in the page repeating the letters again and again until we're done. Same process with the three words for the day.

I'm new to the forum and just started K-1 with DS5 and he too loves typing! I let him do it on my computer so he's also learning mouse skills along with the keyboard....he just loves typing his name and small words by finding the letters on the keyboard and watching them appear on the "paper" on the screen and then getting to print when he's done! Other things DS really enjoys - going out at night to see the moon and stars, which DH and I help him identify and point out constellations too, and he likes now pointing out to us what phase the moon is in and things like Jupiter or Mars on a clear night! He is also very interested in helping cook....likes to be the one to put things in a bowl if we're making a recipe, stirring it, and such....we're now at a point where he'll pour something like milk into the measuring cup and carefully watch as he pours so it's one cup type things too.