Well, I only tested one last year and I have two to test this year. I test in small chunks... one section (or two if shorter) in the morning and I think this year I'll try and do 1 or two in the afternoon as well. It took us a whole week to get through testing with the ITBS last year. (Maybe my kids are weird, but my son tired quickly last year so I couldn't cram too much into a small space of time) I'm hoping to maybe cut that down this year? Also, last year I did not take off school entirely to do it. This year I think we'll take the week off and just concentrate on getting our testing done. I'm planning on sending the little boys off to watch videos so they stay quiet. To me, this is a huge waste of a week! :-0 I can't imagine doing two tests... why two?

My kids are young, but the older two are somewhat independent. They do handwriting, grammar, their independent reading time and math independently. All of these things I go over with them the same day they've completed it when we work one on one. If they have questions in math, we do it together when it's their time to work with me. They are not independent for spelling, reading out loud to me, memorization, writing, history and science. I don't know that I would have them work independently in history or science until high school. Maybe some reading in middle grades... but there would still be some involvement of mine. My younger two are still pretty dependent on me. My 6 y/o has some significant fine-motor issues so writing independently is difficult for him. He can do math independently after I teach it... other than that I work with him.. and of course, my 4 year old is completely dependent! I know it's popular to instill independence in our kids, but I find that when they work too independently we miss out on a lot of conversation. Or, they try to tell me about things I'm not aware of because I didn't do the work with them. I would really like to foster discussions and interactions between myself and the children, so creating entirely independent workers is not on my agenda. I find great value in discussions.

Why not just use the WTM suggestions? It looks like 1/2 the week is history study (out of suggested books, or of course, substitute your own spine) and half of the week is Great Books study. She then has suggestions for how to respond to the readings. Sounds pretty simple and do-able to me....

We just started using Elemental Science which follows the WTM recommendations from the recommended books. We love it! We are doing Biology this year and I plan to go through all 4 grammar books. It's inexpensive... you do need to buy the WTM recommended books as well, but far less expensive than other programs. Heh, heh... didn't read through all the posts, but looks like someone else already let you know about this! Well, another ringing endorsement!

1. Spelling: We use All About Spelling. Remember that reading and spelling are two different skills. Just because someone can read well doesn't mean he/she can spell. Instruction is needed... some kids more, some less... like any skill. 2. Reading: I use this list when I'm looking for literature that's not too heavy. Still good literature, but lighter. http://www.classical-homeschooling.org/celoop/1000.html Otherwise, for school reading I usually choose something from the WTM lit. list. This is usually the reading the kids do with me because it tends to be more challenging to understand. Their independent school reading is usually taken from the list I gave you above (or something history or science related). Then, I let them choose anything they want for their "fun" reading time on their own. 3. History: I would start with ancients. I wouldn't worry too much about trying to be exactly on schedule. I have 4 kids and I keep them on the same topics for history so no one is really "on track!" (we started late according to where my eldest should be in the cycle) I figure once they get to HS we can start clean and do 4 years of history from Ancients on... 4. I don't care for FLL so I don't use it for my olders... they use Growing with Grammar. Not quite so much repetition (although the books themselves repeat concepts from year to year). You may want to check out other grammar programs if FLL isn't working for your twins. I know it would not go over well with my kids as they don't have a high tolerance for repetition. I know you didn't ask about science, but we just started using Elemental Science which follows the guidelines for WTM and uses the recommended books. All the narration sheets are provided and there is one experiment scheduled in per week. I'm really liking it as are my kids! And our narrations are actually getting done! You might want to check it out... http://www.elementalscience.com/index.html Welcome to the journey! :auto:

I don't think you can really correlate the levels with grades. It's a mastery program where skills build on each other. In order to move onto the next concept it doesn't matter how old or what grade the child is in, it just matters that he/she understands the concepts that were taught prior. Very nice for LD kids... no label indicating some perceived grade level. That said, your child is probably just not ready for spelling yet. Is it your 5.5 year old child? IMO, that's probably pushing it for spelling. Especially if your child is not a writer... really, spelling is unnecessary at this point. I would concentrate on the reading and get that going, then tackle spelling later. Spelling is a life long skill... you don't want to burn your child out on it when he's 5!

Sorry you've had such an "eventful" year! Ugggg! I see your kids are only 5 and 2. I would SO not worry! I would find something else to use with your 1st grader next year and just start 1st grade work. In our house, we're never behind/ahead.... we're just doin' it! I'm sure my tune will change when they are older, but really... grammar stage... it's okay! Hoping for an "uneventful" few months for you!!

The oldest of ours is studying Latin with all the rest to follow!

I would really like to save for a new laser (bw only is fine, although color would be nice) printer, however I'd like one with a good scanner/photocopier on top. It has to be fairly quick as we have one now (not laser though) and it's so slow I hate to photocopy. After just spending $100 at Staples on photocopies, I figure we'd be good to get a new printer. Does anyone have one they really like? There's so much out there to weed through I'd love to have some personal recommendations! I'm not looking to spend an arm and a leg... just an arm! ;)

Another satisfied user of upper levels... I have one in 3 and one just started 4. We still love it! (In fact, today I mistakingly forgot to do spelling with my older ds. He reminded me to do it with him! I KNOW this would not have happened if we were not using AAS!) Sorry, I won't be selling for a long time either as I have 4 kids to put through! ;-)

We found them too long too... I can do a much shorter lesson just from the book. I don't know Latin and it's easy enough for me to do the lesson. We do use the pronunciation CD, without that I would be lost! That said, we did order the DVD's and I should shut my mouth so I can sell them! :-)

:iagree:Same here.... I have three kids using it right now (all in different levels), but I still don't use the cards. I will occasionally use the key cards to review concepts, but for the most part I have kids who don't need a ton of review. I keep a small list on the book mark in their book of words I want to review with them. Again, not a lot of need for this so it works.

I think you'll find more of that in Level 2 and above. The more you progress in the levels, the more complicated the rules get. It's not a list of rules to memorize though, Marie actually teaches you the "whys" of spelling, which is a different philosophy than just memorizing a list of rules. (akin to just memorizing math facts as opposed to understanding the "why" behind it).

I think you will get lots of different answers! Most of them will go back to educational philosophy or (in our case) the law. We have to start testing at age 7 here. I used the ITBS last year for ds and will use it again this year for my older two. I have to say though, if I didn't have to test, I would not. First of all, being my child's teacher (and parent) I am aware of what they know and what they don't. I see their strengths and weaknesses every day. The only thing a test will tell me is how they performed on that particular test at that particular time. Second, the scope and sequence of classical curriculum (at least most of what we use) does not necessarily line up with what test designers have in store for my children. So, more often than not, my child's score is not based on what he/she knows... it's based on how well he/she can take a test. It pains me to hear of teachers in PS merely teaching to a test and nothing else. :banghead: Give me a test that actually tests my children on what we studied this year and I may feel differently! I see very little value in standardized tests.... thankfully we do not have to report our scores so we just take it to follow the law and then forget about it. So, if I were you I'd skip it (especially this year). Ahem... stepping down.... :rant:

We did ancients last year into this year. My oldest is 9, youngest 4 so they are really young. We talk a lot, every day about the One True God. We did a lot of reading of the Greek and Roman myths. We talked a lot about them and compared them to our One True God. The kids understood very clearly the difference between the two. It actually gave us some really good conversations. For instance, they realized that the Romans and Greeks always felt like they had to be careful not to anger their gods. We were able to talk about the fact that we don't have to worry about that. Our One True God loves us very much and nothing we can do will ever change that. I guess I used it as a teaching time and not something we needed to steer clear of. All children are different and can handle things at different times, but for us it worked.

My K'er likes the Arthur books (by Hoban). (He's a monkey not the aardvark) We also like Little Bear, The Fox books, some of the easier Bernstein Bears books.... Rylan just read a Johnny Appleseed by Demuth, it's an All Aboard Reading book. We get all our beginner readers from the library. My kids go through too many of them to buy them all! If he runs across words he doesn't know I just tell them to him if he can't sound them out. At this point, he's doing really well though and need little help. We started on Bob books (which is what my 4 year old is doing and loves them), but I didn't see a big "reading explosion" until he started reading the beginning readers from the library.

We just started a body unit. My ds is 3rd grade, but I'm sure what we're using could be used with a 4th grader as well... The Body Book (Silver and Wynne) is a book full of models to photocopy and assemble. It also gives lessons right in the book. A good experiment resource is Head to Toe Science. Oh, and we'll be covering "sex ed" just using the reproduction units in the books we have. (I'm using a Children's Human Body Encyclopedia I found at Costco for the older kids)

IMO WWE2 would be the book you want.

You've been given a lot of good reasons. I threw around a lot of different languages to teach and none seemed to really hit me. So, I decided to do Latin because Spanish and French will come easily after that. I'm guessing we'll hit Spanish in a couple years. My son is actually having a lot of fun with Latin because he now notices many words with Latin roots. When he sees a new word, he wonders right away if it's a Latin based word or not! He even tries to figure out what the root is and contemplates if that's the Latin word for it. (I know, he's kind of geeky... we all are here!) Anyway, I wasn't sure at first, but now I'm glad we started here. Latin is easier than other spoken languages as it's pretty much only written now. No need to beat up pronunciation. We started this year, in 3rd grade with my ds. I think I'll keep that pattern with the other kids as I do want them to have good grounding in English. This was a perfect time in my mind to start. We are using Prima Latina this year. Very gentle and easy.

Do any of you have any sources for free ITBS prep? I'm thinking general "test taking skills" as well as practice tests. All I can find are things I have to pay for and I was hoping to just do a little prep with my kiddos, not have to spend even more money on something I don't **really** want to do with them anyway... kwim??? :001_huh:

For WWE1 and 2 I tore the student pages out, left the teacher pages in and photocopied the student part. My copies are stored in a file folder until we need them. I bought WWE3 as a digital file so I just copy as we go. I like that because I don't have the problem of having to pass the teacher's manual. I just hand ds the pages he is to read. I store the teacher's part and readings in a three ring binder right now. At the end of the year I may have them bound into separate books...

Thank you for this feedback. I've been going around and around.... I think for me, the most important thing is that it is working for us and I need to stick with one thing. I want to prevent gaps and holes. I think something like LOF might be good as an "extra" if my kids would like that, but really, I need to keep it simple for them and me. I needed to remind myself that MUS is a WTM recommended curriculum. It can't be that bad! ;) Your post encourages me to just stick with it... as long as it's working and not worry so much about what others are doing, thanks!:D

Last year I sat down and plotted everything out for the year. I found it unnecessary this year. I don't really have any detailed goals for the year. We just continue on in what we're doing. So.... in math, we just do a couple sheets a day... if I see that my kids need more practice we slow down, if they need less we speed up. History and Science both get done 4 times a week... if we miss a lesson we just do it the next week.... we pretty much do the same thing every day so it's not like I have to schedule a bunch of different things each day. So, my "planning" book has become a record of what we actually accomplish that day/week. I write it all in the day we do it and highlight what got done. If I had a science planned that we didn't get to, I just circle it and move it to the next day. Doing my plans this way makes it easy to be flexible as I don't have anything written in that I feel I "have" to do. I never feel "behind" because we just keep doing the next step. Maybe this is a function of my kids being so young? Maybe when they are older I'll need to be more stringent?

I just started WWE with my 9 y/o this year. Can your dd take 2-3 sentence dictation? Can she give the main idea of a passage in 2-3 sentences? If she can, WWE3 is probably a good place to start. My ds couldn't so we backed up to WWE and did some work there. He was freaked out by dictation longer than one sentence and gave me every single detail in a narration (or had no clue how to even give me info. back). We just started WWE3 in January and now it's going really well. He still freaks out over the longer dictations, but he can do them well. His summarizing is becoming excellent. I see the crossover into history and science narrations too. WWE has been very good for us.... and as the PP said, you still need a separate grammar program. I did get the text and read through it. It helped make sense of the approach. However, if you do the workbooks you don't need a lot of what's in the text, at least at grammar stage. Maybe you could check your library to see if you can check it out? It's not necessary to do the program if you buy the workbooks. I don't refer to the text any more after finding the workbooks.

Thanks for your feedback! I'm not sold... I think I probably just need to stick with what we're doing until I feel like it isn't working. Why fix something that ain't broke at this point! I did look at the table of contents and a sample of fractions... the whole first section of the fractions book is what we've already mostly covered in MUS... I'm not feeling the love yet!