I use SOTW for 1st, 5th and 6th. I use the maps and coloring pages from the AG for my dd1st and have her narrate to me. My dd5th and dd6th usually have 2 other sources they are required to read or look at (could be an encylopedia, biography, internet site, or documentary) to gather more in depth info. about what we have read in SOTW. I then have my dd5th write a summary or a few paragraphs answering specific questions from me. My dd6th will choose from a summary, a short report from my questions, an outline or I will sometimes have her create a 10 question quiz along with an answer key to give to me or her sister. Sometimes we will also have a craft or art project to go along with the chapter. We just finished watercolor interpretations of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and a ziggurat diorama. My dd6th chose to read a historical fiction book from that time frame instead of the art. (She has informed me that she has a mysterious medical condition that prevents her from doing anything art related.:glare:) Anyway, that may be more info than you needed but I thought maybe reading about how you can use it for mutliple dc might be helpful and also to demonstrate that you can use this curriculum as is or you can beef it up to meet your dc's level of interest. For science I combine my dd1st and dd5th using parts of NOEO. I do the same with it...use as is for my 1st and tweak it a bit for my 5th. I'm not familiar with the curriculum you mentioned but could you use the higher grade level for both and then just tweak it to meet the needs of your dc? Just a thought since I know how frustrating it is to have to consider purchasing a new curriculum.

I first found Writing Road to Reading and decided I definitely want to try this out but then found Spell to Read and Write which, if I understand correctly, is basically the same thing but reworked to be more user friendly for homeschoolers. Is this right? So, WRTR is very affordable whereas SRW is much more expensive and actually seemed a bit more confusing. What can anyone tell me about the one vs. the other. Thanks. Aime

We have only been hs for about 1 1\2 yrs. at this point and I made most of my curriculum choices for this year based on my children's learning styles and from CD's top 100 list. I am very drawn to classical education and have been trying to read about it when I have time. I am trying to slowly integrate aspects of a classical education into our home and have done very well with the science, history and literature. The grammar has me stumped. I have several questions. Right now I am using Easy Grammar with my dd5th and dd6th. dd1st is doing phonics with ETC but I am about to purchase Writing Road to Reading for her. 1. At what age do you start and stop grammar instruction? 2. Is EG to easy as the foundation of language in a classical education? 3. If so, what do I need to look for in a replacement? 4. What comes after grammar and at what ages? And now for Latin. Honestly, for some reason the prospect of starting Latin instruction scares me. Probably because I know nothing about it. I will be learning it too, so I would need something very user friendly. 1. Again, at what age do you begin and end Latin instruction? 2. Is is done in addition to, as part of or instead of a spelling curriculum? 3. Can it be taught to multiple levels at one time or does each grade level need individual instruction? 4. Considering I have never had any experience with Latin what should I look for in a curriculum? Sorry for all the questions. I kept telling myself I would muddle through it and figure it all out as I went but when I looked over my notes last night there were to many conflicting ideas because I was reading many different sources and some of those sources had agendas ( "To find out more buy my book.") KWIM I find the information I read from this forum is much more reliable. Thank you ladies and\or gents in advance. Aime

Most of the time my dd6th checks her own math and grammar and corrects. Usually she has just made a careless mistake. If its a concept issue she brings it to me and we go over it. Her writing assignments I look at on our test\rework\cleaning day. If she needs to rework she does it then but with this dc that hardly ever happens. My dd 5th and dd1st do their work at the table with me right there so we correct as we go. The 3yr.old also wants his "work" checked occasionally so I have to fit that in.;) I don't grade daily work; I only grade tests and cummulative review tests to give a better idea of subject retention. If they made a 95 we are good; if they made an 85 we need to do some remedial. If they made a 75 we are doing the whole lesson over again. I check these immediately after they are completed. I don't grade science, history or writing at all. If they are doing something wrong or don't seem to be getting the gist of things I correct them or re-explain it immediately. I'm not required to turn in grades to my state so grading isn't as critical for us. Once they get into highschool and are doing the majority of their work away from me we will have to re-evaluate. I'll have to save this thread so I can refer back to it for new ideas.:001_smile: Aime

Sounds like your going to have to go way out of the box for this one. She sounds like a definite visual-spatial. I have one of these.(Who could handle two?) Try this site http://www.custom-homeschool-curriculum.com It gives great information on different learning styles and has suggestions for curriculum suited to each style. If you decide she is definitely visual-spatial check out the visualspatial.org website. Aime

What is the difference between a phonics based spelling curriculum and a rules based spelling curriculum? Or are they one in the same. I seem to be getting conflicting information or I'm just not interpreting it correctly. Also, I have looked at AAS and wondered if you need to continue phonics instruction with this for a 1st\2nd grader. Those who have used AAS what did you like\dislike about it? And would this be beneficial to a 5th \6th grader who spells adequately but does not currently have a formal spelling program. Lots of questions.:bigear: Aime

I have used the Konos in a box Obedience set. It comes with the curriculum manual, 7 or 8 books, and craft\science supplies. The lessons all make reference to the main theme of Obedience. This set covered properties of light, horses and kings and queens. The manual tells you exactly what to say and do for the lesson so you will just need to make sure you have everything ready to go for the day. Nothing puts a damper on things like stopping a lesson to get your supplies together. It comes with a lot of the things you need but there are some projects you will have to supply the materials for. For example when we did the kings and queens we made crowns, sceptors, royal orbs and costumes. We learned about how a coronation takes place and acted it out for family members then we had a medieval feast to follow. My dc performed Greensleeves during the dinner and answered questions about kings and queens from family members. It was a lot of work but it was fantastic. They remember everything we learned and still talk about it. If you love doing projects you'll love this. You can of coarse pick and choose which projects you do but we took our time and did almost everything and it took us about 5 months to complete it all. Of coarse 3 weeks of that was preparing for the coronation but the dc learned some organization skills, cooking and sewing skills, and why we shouldn't use silver spray paint next to daddy's truck. :) Keep in mind that this covers history, science and literature so I would not recommend using this if you already have a history, science and literature curriculum that you don't want to get behind on. This is very time consuming and not something I would want to start at 2 in the afternoon when all our other school is done. We actually used it last year right after I pulled my dc out of ps in February. I wanted to focus on math and grammar with them since the ps did such a poor job of it and didn't want to start a science, history curriculum half way through the year. It was perfect for beginning our hs'ing. So, sorry for the long post...hope you can glean some useful info out of it. Aime I wanted to add that if you want to get the full benefit of this product do try to follow the manual as closely as possible. I had a friend use this 2 years ago and she complained that her dc didn't learn anything from it. When I asked how long she spent on it she said about 5 weeks. Enough said.

Congrats! When thinking back to my big leap into homeschooling there is 1 thing I wish someone had told me. If you feel more comfortable right now using a boxed curriculum then by all means get your feet wet with something your at ease with however, later when you have both had time to adjust... take the time to really diagnose your dd's learning style and structure her curriculum to that style of learning. IMO you will save yourself lots of money and time if you do this. Keep in mind however that someone's learning styles can change as they get older so a re-assessment over each summer might be a good idea. Oh, and before you buy any curriculum read as many REAL reviews as you can about it. Not just the reviews and testimonials on the product websites. I don't purchase anything without doing a search of the curriculum on this forum and on the homeschoolreview.com review site. There have been several times that I was about to purchase a curriculum and then read something someone said about it that would make me change my mind. Usually they were praising the product but would mention for example that it only took them 30 minutes a day to prepare the lesson and I would say "uh, no that's not for me...I only want to spend 30 seconds preparing the lesson" KWIM. So good luck and remember to have fun! Aime

I was at the same place with my dd. I brought her home from ps last year and ordered MUS Delta before realizing she didn't know all of her xfacts. We went ahead with it and she is getting through the lessons easily. She understands the why's and how's of division she just takes a little longer in coming up with the answers. We did stop for a week to work on memorizing her facts but with little results. She HATES rote memorization. She asked me why she can't get the answers her way as long as they are right. After all, memorizing the facts is nothing more than a time saver right? Isn't our main goal to get them to understand the mechanics of HOW to arrive at the correct answer? Anyway, I started letting her use a xtable chart and she actually started memorizing more of the facts because she began to see patterns in the chart which allowed her to come up with shortcuts for memorizing them. Lo and behold about a week ago I happened across an article that described this process exactly. We are having great success with our facts now but I am still not pushing the memorization and she can still use her chart if she needs to. Here is the article: visualspatial.org/articles/mthstrat.pdf

My dd6th is about 12 weeks into her school year and has become very comfortable with our schedule. She is self motivated and an extremely efficient worker. She is the type that likes to get up at the crack of dawn and get her work done before anyone else is even out of bed. In the last few weeks she has been getting her math-MUS, grammar-EG, writing-WS, penmanship and spelling completed in about 1 hour. Her history-SOTW\HO and science-Aplogia GS take her another 1 to 1 1/2 hours. We do literature read aloud for 30 minutes during the day and she reads for 1 hour before bed. Since the math, grammar, writing and spelling are only taking her about 1 hour combined it leaves me to wonder if they are to easy for her. Do any of you have a child that works this efficiently? I have nothing to compare this to since my dd5th takes 1 hour just to find what page she should be on and my dd1st can't even start her lessons until she has the proper tutu on. I don't want to penalize her by giving her extra work to do just because she is quick about getting it done but on the other hand I want her brain to be getting somewhat of a work-out. Anyone in the same boat?

If you both enjoy your time working together and if your teaching methods are effective why re-invent the wheel. The time when he doesn't want you hovering over his shoulder will come soon enough so you should enjoy him being little and needing you. It makes me sad every morning after instruction time when my dd5th and dd6th collect their books and trot off to some isolated spot in the house to do their lessons. I've tried to get them to sit at the table with myself and dd1st but they prefer to work alone. However, if you want him to begin being more independent more power to you but don't do it just because your mother thinks it should be that way. No offense to your mother intended at all, but I'm assuming you chose to home school at least partly because you didn't want to duplicate ps so why would you take the advice of a ps teacher who isn't educated in the many different ways of home schooling? Aime

I'm just curious how many of you use a formal spelling curriculum vs. learning spelling the CM way and why. If I understand it correctly, CM suggests that you teach spelling through dictation of quotes, verses, passages, etc. Is this correct? The reason I ask is that we don't use a formal curriculum but we don't do dictation either. I pull words that they have misspelled out of their written work (reports, summaries, answers to science and history questions, etc.) and we learn those. A list for the week might consist of anything from spatial to Hammurabi. Is this enough? 5 LittleMonkeys

I didn't mean to offend anyone who likes Bunnicula! I wouldn't have a problem with them reading that as long as they were experiencing some of the classics also. They have read Where the Red Fern Grows, Little Women, The Secret Garden and Around the World in Eighty Days all of which I could have gotten audio versions of. I will definitely look for audio versions of some other classics. I already read everyday to my dd1st, I could just bump up the level of what I'm reading to her and have the others sit in to listen too. I'm actually reading Around the World in 80 Tales to her now (fairy tales and legends from other countries)...my other two would probably really enjoy that. They each have their own curriculum for every subject so I didn't even think to combine literature. Can you tell I'm still new at this? THANKS! 5LittleMonkeys

I have been homeschooling for a little over a year and am very pleased with most of the results. We seemed to have just slipped right into a great routine (very surprising considering we have a 3 and an 8 month), and everyone is very happy with their curriculum. I customized each curriculum to my dd's learning styles. The only problem I'm having with my dd5th and dd6th is reading. They are both using a mostly literature based science and history so there is reading required there but I want them to read in addition to that and they say it's to confusing to read more than one book at a time because the books I pick are to hard. They both attended ps prior to homeschooling and although they had an accelerated reading program they were allowed to read what I consider to be fluff and garbage. My dd5th came home with Bunnicula about a vampire rabbit !!! :angry: Hence, my frustration. I recently had my dd6th read White Fang hoping her love of wolves would help carry her through the book. She did read it but complained the entire time because of the "old fashioned writing and weird words". The reading they do in science and history does not seem to be enough to count toward a true literature curriculum. They read mostly informational books in those subjects with a few biographies and fiction selections. So, If I demand they do additional reading do I give in and let them read what they want so that at least they are reading or do I demand they read from my selections and hope their brains eventually stretch and they become accustomed to the vernacular and syntax of books written in the past? Are the books I'm choosing to much for them? I didn't consider White Fang to be advanced for a 6th grader. Perhaps I just have lazy readers. Any suggestions or advice you can give? 5LittleMonkeys