Liberty-- that looks awesome! Ds is excited to give it a try. Thanks so much! I have looked on HSS some, it's just not as inspiring looking as I need I guess, cause I just couldn't see it. Off to look and see if byFIAR can be bought individually. Thanks!

Thank you hunter, I was thinking of this thread, but unable to find it!

I have been tossing this around for a bit, but it really cemented when ds asked for more books. I want to base our studies around a really good interesting great book style chapter book. I read some about this in the big Circe thread last spring, and it really made me want to do this when I read the breadth vs. Depth thread. I want it to be something like read the book, do research on topics, tie in our writing IEW style, copy work from the book, would love for it to spring us into some science stuff, and history could be included too depending on the book. I am having trouble finding a book to try this with. I would love some help choosing a great book, ds is a great listener, and a good reader, some violence is ok, death is ok. Any topics you think could be covered would help too. We will still do our math, Spanish, and Latin. What would this look like for you? thanks! Oh and I know I could do the later FIAR or byFIAR, but I don't want to spend a lot of money, so looking to do this on my own.

It is not spiral bound, it's. Regular workbook. I will be getting min spiral bound the next time we go into town. If I had access to a printer I would have gotten the ebook but we are printer less right now, so I ordered the book.

Excellent! Thanks so much!

I need WWE 2 as we only have 2 weeks of WWE 1 left. I don't have access to my main computer right now, and I wont have access to it for most of this year and next, so i need to be able to put it straight to the iPad. We use our own paper, so I am not worries about printing it. Thanks!

We use these too, we have done our best so far by just getting out and looking around. Never thought i would know the name of every type of grasshopper we see here! Also a backyard bird Study is pretty easy, we have lots of birds and hummingbirds at our feeders.

We are very LCC inspired. Daily we have reading, writing, math and Latin, science and history twice a week and art on Fridays. We haven't started this year yet as I am 40+ weeks pregnant, but I think it will work well for us!

We are using it as a transition year, ds has been doing wwe/fll/aas, and just will not write unless its all laid out for him already. I really want to take this year to get him to see writing as an every day activity that is fun, and isn't perfect all the time. So I set it us to write every day, and each day has a focus, so day one is the writing mini lesson, day two is a grammar mini lesson, day tHree has a spelling mini lesson ( based off of his writing mistAkes), day 4 is a conference, and day five is writing only. So we aren't ignoring spelling and grammar, just using them a bit differently. I dint think NMID is the answer to spelling, but I do think there is value in getting down thoughtS on paper without so much worry That it's perfect. I think I really just want to hear what HE has to say, copy, copy, copy is getting old and think maybe telling him his thoughts aren't as important. Alte veste-- I would love to hear about your southwest field guide project if you have a minute, we are in southeastern az, and working on something similar in our nature study.

this is/was our method adding slightly to say we learned the most from watching ONE tree in our yard all year long, we drew it often, found and identified bugs on it, identified the birds in it, drew it again, watched it during a storm, looked up the wind patterns, looked at the clouds through the leaves, looked up clouds. once you get started its easy, but that one tree last year man he learned so much from it!

Sonlights level 2 reader list would work, also go to scholastic book wizard and do an advanced search for her reading level, that will give you tons of books to choose from.

I did this this year, we alternate weeks with pal and wwe. It has taken us longer to get through, but I think it has been worth it. Ds likes the variety, and they work on different skills. I am very happy with his progress.

This is very interesting to me. Our goal has never been a 4 year college, so maybe for me it's a bit different. However, the goal has always been to support his interests, and to be always learning. I want him to be prepared for a 4 year college if he should choose to attend. As for planning, I think the only things I have really considered is where our math is leading us. He dosent have to " stay on track", but I want to know where he is headed, so I can match his interests. What I don't want is for him to decide to be very stem focused in 5 years, and not have the basic math to back it up. other then math, we simply focus on a quality education that will work for whatever it is he decides to do. The goal isn't to make a doctor or lawyer, it's to make a happy, self supporting well educated adult.

Ds did the same thing about 6 months ago, since then we use it more as a reference point, so when he reads, I notice where he struggles, and then we will fit in a couple of lessons on that bit. So we haven't stopped it altogether, we just use it more as a reference then as curriculum at the moment. We have also gone back and used it for dictation and spelling lessons, and these lessons help with cementing our phonics skills as well. For a reference we stopped. Using it regularly around lesson 185 I think, I would have to look to be certain. We are pretty fluid around here, if I noticed him not advancing in reading skills or really struggling with something, we would just pick it right back up and use it again.

We have been doing both, ds is doing very well with IEW, today he wrote his first keyword outline paragraph all on his own. I like how his narration skills have improved as well. I think they will work very well together. My plan is to alternate weeks in each as I don't want to go too quickly into swi a. Good luck, I have been very pleased with PAL writing.

This exactly. I am not really even sure how I changed it. But school used to take 2-2.5 hours, and now it takes 1.5 on a long day. And we read so much more, I think I just rethought priorities, and went from there, I also set a goal for each 6 month term we do, so the last goal was to be reading magic treehouse on our own, this goal is to be able to do IEW key word outline rewrites on our own, so we will focus on that for this term that means spelling and IEW get the main blocks of time, followed by math, and then Latin. We also read about an hour at night, and he reads about 30 mins at night and whenever he wants to during the day.

We start in September ish, after I have the baby in mid august... Finish opgtr AAS 3-4 Getty dubay C FLL 2/3 Finish song school Latin then start LfC A CHOLL ancients IEW finish up PAL writing then do articles and stories and story sequences Finish RS B and do SM 2 My own nature studyish science focusing on the desert, birds, astronomy and maybe oceans. Tennis, violin, soccer, and clay class, Lego club too! We will do school until I go into labor, and then restart a month or so after the baby is born.

Lots of good ideas, but I wanted to add, we live in the desert, and last year we were in a city, so we had a double whammy. Last spring we found this big tree in a park we could walk too, every two weeks we walked down and drew the tree, paying lots of attention to what was happening with that one tree. We found it also had a a bug or a flower, or something to study, I was amazed at how much we learned from that one tree. And we have a really great book of drawings of it too. There were birds, and even a squirrel in it once. So even in the most barren of cities we found a years worth of nature to study. You will too, once you start looking around. You just have to use fresh eyes! Good luck!

HWOT is really awesome for getting started, I still use most of their "language"when talking about letters. This year we switched to Getty dubay italics, I really just hate HWOT's cursive, and so that made us switch, I will start all my kids in the prek and k levels of HWOT and then make the switch again! Good luck!

I was just discussing this with dh last night, my ds needs a bit more work in multi syllable words, but will be there by fall. We are going to concentrate on literature study and focus on learning to write next year. I haven't made any goals for next year yet, but I am thinking along the lines of writing his own 2-5 sentence narrations by the end of next year. Seems a bit lofty, so it may need revision. Then again I was laughed at for having this years goal of reading at a third grade level by the end of this year, and he already surpassed that. So we will see. We also do AAS, so he will continue with phonics as well.

I have been working on this too after reading that thread, so far I have pulled from AOs free read list and the angelicum list, for read alouds, for ds to read I really don't know, we are working through SL readers 2 now, but I have no idea where to go for next year at all. He seems to want more non fiction right now, so I guess I will see where he leads me on that.

I am doing sopmething similiar we are finishing up sm 1b in two weeks, I have 2a, but would just like his recall and his addition skills more solid, so we are going to start rightstart b and do it and then start sm 2a in the fall.

We got ds the Lego wedo for Christmas this year, he loves it, it's not hard and gives an excellent base for him...he is already eyeing the mindstorm kits. He also worked wit h a FLLjr team this year, and had a lot of fun. He can use gears and the motor to create his own things now, we have more legos then any one family needs....I should go take a picture of my living room, the 10x12 rug is covered in legos!

We are just coming off this stage. I am 12 weeks, and just started to feel human again. If it makes you feel better, it has only taken me 4 days to wean my 5 year old off screens( tv, iPad and computer). And he can now magically do subtraction. So I will add to to everyone else, he will live, it's only a very short time in his life. Is there anytime when you feel a little better? If so I would add some good books there and call it a day. I was able to read early in the morning when I first woke up, as long as I didn't get out of bed. So we would read from 7 to 8 or so, and then he would play on the computer while I went back to sleep. Then we just muddled through the rest of the day as best as we could. I was honestly more worried about feeding him, because I just couldn't stand the sight of food ever. So I promise it's ok, he will be ok. Good luck I hope you feel better really soon.

He may not be ready, and that's fine, but what do I do now instead? The rest of 1A is easy for him, so what do we do while we wait?