Yes, we seem to be in the same place! What book is your eldest in? Jayden is in Delta. He is moving through at a pretty good pace... nothing is hard for him so I figure he'll be in Epsilon in 2-3 mos. What I love about MUS is if they are math minded they can do the higher math at younger ages. My guess is you won't scare your ds away since MUS is so gentle and the concepts are taught so concretely. I'm guessing at the pace we're going we'd hit pre-Algebra in end of 5th/ into 6th grade? I don't know how that lines up with a public school track?? That seems pretty early to me...but is it okay because of how the material is presented? I may start to look at some supplements once we hit Epsilon, if not only for the fact of seeing if the concepts Jay is learning are carried over to another curriculum/way of doing it. I just don't want to confuse him by giving him too many ways of doing things. I just don't want to mess anything up with how my kids love math. They never complain and I want to keep it that way! I have kids who love learning the "whys" of things. (We do a spelling curriculum that helps them see "why" words are spelled a certain way and they (and I) love that.) I would hate to resolve myself to a curriculum that only teaches rote memorization or formulas and doesn't give them the "whys" in favor of rigor. Ugggg.... I am so comfortable with the little ones and curriculum. As they get older this is going to stretch me! :glare:

All these different responses bring one thing to mind... why does it work for some kids and not others? I guess it's like any other curriculum.... but why are some kids able to do fine and others don't?

Not sure what ages you are teaching, but we pretty much just use MOH. I read the reading for the day, then the kids narrate (younger 2 draw pictures, older two write). We do the timeline and map work (modified for young children) and that's it. We don't do any activities. I'm hoping to continue to use MOH all the way through. I'm sure at the HS level you'd want to add in some other things, but I'm not even sure at the Logic level you'd need to??? Level 2 is VERY beefy in my opinion (maybe because my kids are so young), Level 1 seemed about right for us.

That's an interesting question and I've enjoyed reading the responses. It's neat to see all the different passions out there... I would have to say, since my kids are young, most of our time is spent on reading, writing and math. We love history told from a Biblical perspective, so we're probably pretty history/Bible centered here. The children are really enjoying reading literature that goes along with or is from the history period we're studying. However, we do just as much science (and we love that too) so I don't know that we are overly one thing or another. Maybe we just have a good balance right now... I LOVE history, so I'm guessing over time that will emerge as a driving force in the children's education.

Thank you so much for all your responses. It's good to see down the road sometimes! It's also good to see some who have used this program successfully through high school. I've been really pleased with our results so far so I'm hoping that will continue! If nothing else, I will be learning alongside my kids! I got lost at fractions!

My 3rd grader does the following: Bible: Listens to me read one story a day Reading: Books centered on history, science or classical literature. Orally narrates to me daily. Fun reading in his own free time. Writing: WWE3, cursive practice and daily science and history narrations (4 days a week) Math: MUS Delta 2 pages a day (5 days a week) History: Mystery of History (book 2) three days of lessons, one day of time line/map work (4 days a week) Science: Elemental Science Biology (4 days a week) Latin: Prima Latina (one lesson a week) Grammar: Growing with Grammar (4-5 times a week) Spelling: All About Spelling (4 days/week) Everything we're doing right now is working, so yes, I love it all! Memorization: Bible verses for AWANA

We have a similar system with our kids. Give, save, spend. They are allowed to use their spend money on anything they want. Yes, even dreaded $1 store purchases. Even though it's difficult for me to see them do that, we think it's better they learn the lesson of "quantity vs quality" now when they are young, rather than with those first "huge" paychecks when they are older. Our oldest kids are already learning that when they buy something from the dollar store it doesn't last. It took some years of those purchases, but we can already see their habits changing. Also, they only get $2 a week (one dollar of which they can spend) so it makes them really think about what they want to spend the money on.

The Oz stories are great. I have a 9 y/o ds and he loved The Patchwork Girl. (The character that goes on the adventure is actually a boy). I downloaded it for free from my library. If you go to your library website you may find a downloadable audio book portion. There are many options on our website.

The AWANA my kids attend doesn't make a contest out of it. We don't make a habit of inviting people regularly, just when their book says they need to. People are so busy now that it's difficult to find families that have an open evening to send their kid somewhere! I think if we invited someone I'd expect that they would let us know if they would like to continue to attend. If I don't hear anything I assume parents or kids aren't interested in sending/going.

What is the difference between the Usborne Science Encyclopedia and the Internet Linked Science Encyclopedia? (I mean other than the most obvious difference being the links included). I'm wondering if I have the Science Encyclopedia do I need to buy the internet linked one? Are the topics the same or have they changed enough content that I need to buy the new one? We are going to do Elemental Science and I see she uses the internet linked one, but wondering if I can get away with the one I have?

Yes, Level 3 is set up for 3 days a week. We just do more...

Wow, thanks for letting us know about this. We have limited choices for office places here and I've always used Staples. I guess I haven't done big books. I will certainly choose another option when I need a larger book cut! Sorry this happened to you. So frustrating!

We don't supplement. I use MUS and see no need right now for a supplement. The older two do 2 pages a day, which I think is plenty. The younger two just need 1 page a day. We have a hard enough time getting everything in during the day, I can't imagine adding more! :-)

My kids are all grammar stage, but I'm curious who is using MUS in High School and how it's going. I hear a lot about how it's good for younger grades and not for the higher math. I guess I'm curious as to why people think it's not good for upper level math. What do other programs seem to provide that MUS doesn't? Do you find it leaving out skills, not enough practice..? If you are using MUS in high school are you finding it's working well? Do any of you have very strong math students using the program? My oldest is very math minded and one thing I like is that harder concepts are presented in easier ways so he can do more at an earlier age, yet he's building a really strong foundation of the basics. My last question is... have any of you completed the series and needed more math? (for instance, do you have a math lover that wants more?) What are you using? Do you supplement at all in HS? I think the driving force behind my question is that we love MUS now. I really want to stick with a math program in order to not have holes in their instruction. I'm hoping there are others out there that love MUS as much at the upper levels as they did at the lower levels. I want to make sure all my kids have a strong math background, but especially my oldest who is very interested in chemistry and the sciences.

We do WWE and love it. I did school with my girlfriend's girl a couple weeks ago. They use FLL3 and I didn't care for it. We use GWG and like it a lot. I'm going to stick with that for my olders. (I had considered switching to FLL).

My ds is in Level 3, but we do grammar most every day. He reads, does the sheet and I review it with him when he comes over to work with me. He's in the last section so we'll start Level 4 in another couple months. Is it much different from Level 3?

My reasons are much like the other posters... I came upon WTM kind of by accident. We just started HSing last year. I'm not a box curriculum person so I pieced together things I thought were good. My biggest problem was I didn't have a big picture plan. I had no idea where we were going with all these different things. Then, I read WTM and everything just clicked for me. The funny thing was almost every curriculum I had chosen fit right with the Classical model, I just didn't know that it was considered Classical Education! Since reading more about WTM I am sold. The goals of classical ed/WTM line up with the goals I have for our kids. And best of all I have a plan for how to get it all accomplished! And... we all have fun! I'm learning right alongside my kids!

Some recent ones we've listened to are My Father's Dragon (actually all three books in the series were included), Chronicles of Narnia, The Patchwork Girl (one of the Wizard of Oz books), Henry Huggins, 101 Dalmations and we're just finishing Paddington Bear. Check your library. I can download books for free to put on my ipod. (you can also download them as mp3's to play through the computer)

Just something to consider... we started with Noeo Biology I this year, but I switched just now to Elemental Science. I like it much better for the following reasons: Cheaper Narration is all set up for me in a fun way so it actually gets done One experiment a week whereas with Noeo we went several weeks with no experiments due to none included during some stretches of study You may just want to take a look at it... it's set up in a similar fashion as Noeo.

First blog report since before Christmas! I've been helping my best friend through the unexpected death of her father so we've been busy! Looking forward to a "normal" week?????? ;-) Link in sig...

We have Learnables German. I would have to say, I'm not overly impressed. We used a Rosetta Stone (Chinese) and I much prefer that. The exercises in Learnables did not capture my kids' attention well (they are also all cartoon drawings, not real people). And, there just isn't a lot for them to interact with in the early lessons. There are games, but you can't do the games right away and the "boringness" of the lessons got to them before they could get into the games. I may try it again at some point, but my guess is we'll bite the bullet and do RS instead.

During "school" time, my 3rd grader reads 20-30 min. on his own silently. I usually ask him just to tell me the best part of what he read. Nothing formal. Then, when he works with me he reads 10min. out loud to me in a book just above his reading level. As he reads we stop and discuss along the way. I'm thinking of adding 5 min. to this time because 10 is really too short. The books he reads on his own are usually either science or history related or good classical literature. The reading he does with me is usually history centered (but sometimes just a good classic). We just started the Middle Ages and right now ds is reading a version of Beowulf to me. He also reads every night before bed on his own just for fun. I don't have anything to do with choosing these books.(other than making sure they are appropriate!)

We use Prima Latina. Very easy... comes with pronunciation CD. You can buy DVD's... we did, but we don't even use them. Latin is a great language to study. Since it's not really a spoken language you don't have to worry too much about pronunciation!

We use Bob books as well as some A Beka readers I bought last year. I have the "Reading for Fun" Enrichment Library for Kindergarten and they are pretty good.