Thanks for responding! I am going to drop 180 Days from my list of possibilites. I may use the Trail Guide to World Geography.

My children choose their chores each day (but they have become quite predictable.) dd 10 morning: room clean/bed made fix breakfast for 4 children wipe counters and clean up after breakfast afternoon: pick up outside after free time pick up and sweep the porches mop the kitchen floor (every other day) mop the bathroom/porch (every other day) evening: dry the dishes wipe counters and clean up after dinner dd 8 morning: make bed/clean room feed cats / cat litter box afternoon: Fix lunch bathe the toddlers clean the bathroom (sink/toilet daily and tub weekly) wash/dry/fold/put away towels (usually one load every day) evening: feed cats / cat litter box carry out the trash dd4, ds - nearly 3 help make bed and pick up room help pick up living room help dry dishes (only because they want to) help fold laundry wash all windows (also because they choose to)

How does Around the World in 180 Days compare to Trail Guide to World Geography? Any other similar geography curriculum?

Isn't there a website for setting up a (free) discussion room - where people can speak from their computers and others who are logged in can hear them and join in and speak as well? * I apologize for my complete lack of computer vocabulary.

Thanks! I never though of looking for a yahoo group.

I checked here first and I've checked e-bay, amazon and the sale/swap sites that I normally use. But, I am looking for some curriculum from the Center for Gifted Education. I thought there might be a site aimed toward gifted education that has a swap board. If not, I will simply have to purchase the curriculum new. :)

Do any of the websites directed toward gifted learners have a sale/swap board? Thanks!

I believe Greek for Children will also be Koine Greek. As far as I can tell - Galore Park will have the first classical Greek for younger students. I may purchase Athenaze and work through it myself. Right now we are only working on the basics, letters and such. I believe Laura in China uses a beginner book from Galore Park that could be stretched out for a semester or so of beginning classical Greek.

Thanks for all of the replies! I decided I really want to begin an American History study this year that combines both girls. I think I am going to go with: Building a New System: Colonial America 1607-1763 and The World Turned Upside Down: The American Revolution put out by the College of William and Mary They are written as a school curriculum for grades 4-5. Each is supposed to be one semester. I like the look of them although I don't know anyone who has tried them. Their website says only the small group work has to be modified for homeschool use. As I will have two children, as well as myself and the two little ones, I think we can do quite a bit of the small group work and discussion with a bit of modification. For science, I may just keep the girls separate. I like the curriculum I have but my younger daughter is not anywhere near the level necessary to join her sister.

I use MCT for all of our language arts including grammar. I do Classical Writing by buying all of the supplements (Core, teacher's guides, student guides) reading through everything, taking notes, reading through again, working some of the assignements, and writing out my own plan. I try out my plan for a few weeks and when I feel comfortable with where we are going I sell the teacher's guides and student guides saving only the core book. For Aesop my dd wrote one paper per week. They are fairly short so it wasn't difficult. For Homer we do one paper about every two weeks. We school year round so that is about 20 papers per year. I had to take notes several times out of Homer to come up with a plan that would work for us. I do have my dd do all of the grammar, vocabulary, dictation, etc from the core guide. But we use our own grammar book and I choose the examples that we work from. I plan to use Homer over two years and start Diogenes in 7th grade. I am in the process of reading through Diogenes now. I've done my first read through. But I have quite a ways to go with that text. I use MCT as a guide for our content writing. My dd10 writes one paper every two weeks for history and one every four weeks in either literature or science. She applies what she has learned so far about paragraph and essay writing. We discuss each paper, looking back over her MCT writing book. Each paper must be at least three paragraphs and have a thesis, an introduction, a body and a conlusion. Next year we will work more on essay format and expanding the essay to a minimum of five paragraphs working up to seven or more.

I really like the depth of Classical Writing and I like the structure of the progymnasmata. My problem is that I cannot figure out how to take Classical Writing and apply it across the curriculum. So with Classical Writing I have a very nice writing curriculum as a separate subject and my children writing summaries in all of their content classes. I want them to move beyond summary (narration writing) when they reach logic stage. WTM suggests outlining, which is fine, but is basically more summary work. Why MCT writing? ( I apologize for the numbering. I don't have time to bring my thoughts together properly and I don't want to forget to answer.) 1. I like the progression: sentence, paragraph, essay, advanced writing 2. My kids are engaged. They love the stories. (Only my dd10 has used the program, but the younger children sit in on the lessons because they enjoy the books.) 3. His curriculum is very discussion based. The 4th grade book is called Sentence Island. It is all about what makes a good sentence. We read, we discuss and we apply it to her writing in her content classes. 4. For 5th we are using Paragraph Town. And rather than have her summarize everything she reads, she writes a paragraph. We look it over and discuss how she applied what we have read about paragraphs and what makes a good paragraph and then we move on. I believe that the best way to improve on something is to practice. So we practice writing a paragraph every day. 5. By 6th grade we will be in Essay Voyage. I do feel that a child should be able to write a decent essay by this time. The problem I have with summaries is that they are basically chronological reiterations. I think that is fine for grammar level. It is important to understand what you read. But, by sixth grade I want my child to be able to take the information and think about it. I want her to be able to form a thesis and say something about it - and not in a chronological format. Essay Voyage explains many different ways of rearranging information and helps gently move children away from the standard narrative, chronological summary. I know that Classical Writing will get there eventually. But I do not want my children spending their middle school years summarizing and then throwing them into a sink or swim situation when they are suddenly expected to apply what they have learned and produce amazing essays at the end of Diogenes. (Especially when I can't even figure out how to apply that information.) MCT writing curriculum ends in 9th grade. I think the two programs will have melded together nicely at that point and I will be more comfortable in the process of getting there. 6. I have no intention of abandoning CW. I do not feel that MCT has the depth found in Classical Writing. In CW the student will understand what she writes. But I find that the subject matter is too narrow for too long (which it must be to have that sort of depth) to give the child enough time to practice content area writing long enough to get comfortable with writing. I find a combination of depth (CW) and breadth (MCT) to be a perfect combination.

Classical Writing for progymnasmata. Michael Clay Thompson writing for variety and a more modern approach.

Our days look something like this. We school six days. 7-8 Breakfast and chores 8-9 Preschool 9-10 Walk 10-1 Free outside time 1-2 Lunch and chores 2-6:30 School time (Preschoolers nap/quiet time from 2-4) 6:30-7:30 Dinner and Chores 7:30-9:30 Read Aloud 10:00 Lights out If we scheduled our school time it would look something like this: 2-2:45 Math daily 2:45-3:30 Language arts daily 3:30-4:00 Latin/French 4-5 American History, Geography or Ancient History 5-6:30 Unit Study (includes science, art, literature, etc) My dd10 also has a science text to work through. I leave it up to her to find the time to get it done. She will often work on it in the morning during preschool time or take it outdoors to work on during free time. DD10 and dd8 also have a book a week assigned to read on their own. They both love to read and have no trouble finding the time to finish these in their spare time.

After looking through everything I could find online, I decided to try and make my own three-year American History/Geography curriculum (for my kids, not to publish. :)) I am writing it out on Google Docs and I don't know how to share their word documents so I posted my first 12 week term to an old blog. The idea is to have two spines at any given time. For the first term they will be Story of America and World of Columbus and Sons. Each week the kids have one copywork assignment, one mapping/sketching assignment and one set of discussion questions to go with a spine. They will study one state every two weeks as well. Both of my dds need work on neater handwriting so I thought the copywork and map sketches would make a nice booklet to review American history. Then I have a list of additional optional reading that goes with the time period and two writing assignments due at the end of each four week segment. If you have some time, would you mind going to my blog and looking over the first term layout? It looks a bit more organized on the google doc, but it is basically the same. I only want to spend two (or at most three) days per week on American history and geography. The optional additional reading would be done on their own time. Does this seem acceptable? The writing assignments will get more difficult as we move into the year. These are rather vague, I know. Before I continue through the entire three years, what would you add, change or delete? How can I improve it without adding much more time? http://onceuponariverbend.blogspot.com/ Thanks!!

Island Eyes: The Adventures of a Shell - Laney Lee This is also very similar to the Hollings books. It takes place in the waters of Florida around Sanibel and Captiva. It is one of my favorites. The Little Island - Margaret Wise Brown (Golden MacDonald) is a nice young children's picture book.

We have the newest version. I believe there are 14 spelling words per lesson. The child takes a pretest at the beginning of each lesson and corrects any misspelled words. Then there is a mini-lesson. There are several screens which the computer reads or the student can read about the topic of the lesson. Ai words, three letter blends, etc. whatever the focus of the lesson may be. Then there are two games. They include all of the words from the lesson but I believe the missed words from the pretest appear more frequently. The games can be played over again, as the child chooses. Then comes the final test. Any words missed on the final test are reviewed after the test and reappear in all reviews at the end of each lesson. If the child gets all of the words in the pretest correct the games include harder words that follow the same focus of the lesson, but the final test will include the original fourteen words. There are built in review lessons as well. Each lesson is expected to take one week. At the end of each lesson is also an optional writing lesson using the spelling words from the lesson. It is a good introduction to word-processing as it has clip art pictures, spell check, colored text options, etc and looks very similar to Word or any other word processing software. Multiple children can use the software at the same time. Each child logs in under his or her name and the computer continues to track the individual child's progress. If you have other questions just let me know!

This is the program that we use. I would say more background and less structure. The teacher's manual has all of the answers and quizzes for each lesson. You can use only the teacher's manual at that level. I buy both teacher and student books for vocabulary so my child can keep a book to work with. There really isn't much writing. The few answers can easily be written on a separate page. The quizzes are meant to be photocopied from the teacher's manual. Caesar's English is more discussion based. Where programs like Vocabulary from Classical Roots are easily done by the student alone and have very definite correct answers, the questions in Caesar's English are really meant to spur discussion. A child can choose any of the four multiple choice answers and if he/she understands the meaning of the word and meanings of the other words and can defend his/her choice that would be acceptable and even encouraged. I will often suggest a word other than the one my dd chooses, which forces her to defend her word choice against mine. :) We find the program fun and I feel that the discussion of words helps her to retain the information more than a fill-in-the-blank approach. But, it requires quite a bit of parent involvement so time is always a factor.

We started schooling in the afternoon this year as well. We get up/have breakfast/do morning chores until 8:30 or 9:00. Then we walk for an hour. The children play outside from 10:00 until lunch (1:00.) When we had school in the mornings the little ones were bouncing off the walls. After lunch and chores the two little ones have rest time and both will usually nap. We school from 2:00 until about 6:30. Two days a week the girls have karate and we bring our math and literature. The girls are not in the same class so we sit through three classes. We school six days a week and get about 25 hours in that way. My dd 10 will have an hour or so of work to complete in the evening after dinner and we also do evening read alouds.

Memoria Press and Galore Park both have good beginner programs.

I just have to say Donna Young is awesome!!!!:thumbup: I emailed her this morning about this issue. I told her our favorite lesson planner was the Edwardian style weekly and she edited and sent me a six day Edwardian style planner this afternoon. And her site is just full of planning pages for free. She has moved to the top of my favorites list!!! http://www.donnayoung.org

Does anyone know where I can find a free online six day weekly lesson planner? Since we had to put in a new hard drive, I no longer have Excel. I don't want to spend the time learning a new spreadsheet lile google docs right now. But, I cannot find a six day lesson planner online. I checked Donnayoung.org but all of hers appear to be five day. Any suggestions?

Thank you for all of the replies! I have been looking through all of the curriculum mentioned. I think my main problem is that they take up more time than I want to spend on history. I was considering taking TRISM's History Makers and using it over three years. I am going to post a question about it now. Thanks for all of your help, and any additional suggestions will be carefully considered!

I have looked at TOG and Biblioplan. Are there any other curriculum options that combine children of multiple ages? Any science programs that do?

http://books.google.com/books?id=Vq48PvVCUTIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=john+comenius&as_brr=1&ei=fsXiR-a7E5XgzASBsMHNBA I don't know if the link will work, but the title of the book is Orbis Pictus by John Amos Comenius. It is supposed to be the first picture book ever made for children. It was a textbook to learn to read Latin and has about 150 lessons. Each lesson has a short reading in Latin along with the English translation. Have I mentioned how much I love Google books? :001_smile:

I think my family may be correct in calling me a bit too practical and tight-fisted. I paid $30 or $40 dollars for my wedding dress. It came off a clearance rack at Ross. My mother found it and called me. She wanted me to come look at it, but I assured her it would be fine and just pick it up.:) It is now in my children's dress up bin. We really did have a beautiful wedding, it was outdoors and on the beach in Florida. But I am practical and basically cheap. I asked a family member and friend that both dabble in photography to do my pictures - they came out wonderful. My cousin played the violin for music. My cake came from Publix grocery and was delicious. All together with food, clothing, hotel, etc. the wedding cost under $3000 and everyone loved it. After attending our wedding, I had a cousin get married in the same place and a sister in law who is planning a beach wedding. Cheap can really be wonderful! Oh, and we bought a house the week before the wedding instead of going on a honeymoon. :D