I see you've made your decision, but just wanted to encourage you that you can use only the main text, especially if you going to speed it up. We used the workbooks for Level 2 and just the text for Level 3. Although it was more work for me, it worked much better for us to just use the text. I did prepare 6 weeks at a time of the narrations with questions and dictations, so that it was open and go during the week. Hope that helps and best of luck :).

:iagree: We've used Hannah's timeline figures.

I agree completely with making sure that the basics are cemented. My ds will be finishing phonics, even if he reads early, and he will be doing math fact drill from the beginning as I've seen the results of not emphasizing those things. Also, such great advice to solidify your relationship with your dc over getting it all done in the early years. I treasure all the time dd and I have spent sharing great books and working on projects together. It's so much fun to watch your children learn! I'm also curious why you say no four year cycle for grammar stage? We have really enjoyed the four year cycle for grammar stage. Dd may not remember everything, but there is a knowledge base there plus she loves history & science. It's been a very positive experience for us, so ds will be doing the same. I couldn't get rid of Latin or dd would revolt and if I didn't plan ahead, well let's just say it wouldn't be pretty :tongue_smilie:. I need to have a rough idea of where we are going. I agree though that your first 5 year plan will probably not be your last and things will change! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Ah, that makes total sense :). You should be fine if your dd will be turning 10 soon after you begin. My dd will turn 10 only a month or two before we begin 5th grade. Forgot to mention this before, but have you see CHOLL-Ancients. It's free, WTM style lit curriculum that would be all scheduled out for you.

Thanks Amy! This helps me to see what we need to accomplish :).

Are you really set on starting ancients in 4th? I might take the year to do US History (or your countries history) or World Cultures/Geography and then begin Ancients in 5th. Just throwing another option out there :).

I had no idea HOD does things that way, that's great! I agree that the % of your order is really not fair, but so much about overseas shipping is! PS-I thought that CBD charged $5 per book plus a fee, am I wrong? I usually get all my materials when I back in the US, but it's good to know where to go when I forget a few books here and there.

I recently ordered from Rainbow Resources and even though it did cost quite a bit (like 75% of my order), it did get here quickly. It was packed nicely in a box with 3 catalogs. (They even let me request to send two more catalogs to give to my friends.) I was pleased with their international shipping service, so maybe things have changed :). I've also ordered internationally from Better World (cheap and they have sent me the wrong books, but they did let me keep them :)) and Sonlight (expensive and they didn't even send me a catty, plus I had to pay a huge customs fee because of how it was marked). I've heard good things about Book Depository, but they don't ship to my country anymore :glare:. All that to say I understand your plight, international shipping is the pits!

We do Friday Fun Day! The plan is to do Bible, Math, History and then our electives (art/music and state study. It doesn't always work as sometimes we get caught up in an art project and don't do music, but we are doing better than before :).

No worries, I was kinda wondering the same thing :). Here's what I'm thinking (I like to have a picture of where I'm going, so I can set my goals)... 5th grade-Adventures in Logic or Logic Liftoff series, may use the Fairy Tales book also (3 days a week-one puzzle/exercise a day) 6th-grade-Critical Thinking book 1 and Fallacy Detective, may use Red Herring Mysteries (3 days a week-one puzzle/exercise a day) 7th-grade-Critical Thinking book 2 and Thinking Toolbox, may use Red Herring Mysteries (3 days a week-one puzzle/exercise a day) 8th grade-Wilson's Introductory Logic 9th-12th-we'll pick up logic as scheduled in CW But I'm still wondering what my goals for 5th grade logic should be, do I need to make sure to teach her certain terminology? Is is just to do puzzles and thinking exercises that begin to work those muscles? Would anyone who has had some experience teaching logic care to comment?

Thanks guys, anyone else?

I'm beginning to look ahead at materials for 5th grade as I'll be making my purchases when we are back in the States over Christmas. What did you use and like for beginning logic in 5th grade? We've done no formal logic up to this point, but we have done word problems and the occasional analogy or brain teaser. And I'd like whatever we use to be less than $30. I haven't really researched this much at all, so I'm open to all suggestions :). I did find this in the Rainbow Resource catty, has anyone used Teaching Thinking Skills with Fairy Tales and Fantasy? Seemed interesting, but I'm not sure it's what we need to be doing for 5th grade logic. Actually, I'm not really sure what our goals should be for 5th grade logic, so if you want to share that as well, I'm :bigear:. Thanks!

AAS, I had two levels of this with all the trimmings that I sold for reasons I can't remember right now. So wish I hadn't done that because now I can't bring myself to paying the price for it again. WRTR is good, it's more work for me, but it costs a lot less ;).

I think that he did a great job, especially for his first real paper ;). There were a couple of places where it could have flowed better, but I'm not a grammar expert so I don't know if it's a grammatical issue or not. I was always told to read it aloud and if you got hung up while reading, something needed to change. The only other thing I would say is that he might want to mention which war he's referring to. In the previous paragraph he's referred to almost 50 years of raising the debt ceiling, so it seemed to me that it could have been any of the wars during that time, but then he says "in the war" which refers to a specific war. It left me wondering which one, but I'm guessing he means the most recent war on terror. Hope that helps, at the very least it'll bump you up :).

Can't remember if Sonlight sells this one, but my dd really enjoyed Heaven's Heroes at that age.

I think that's totally doable, we are probably going complete the American history portion over our winter break. (We aren't take a summer break or I'd do it then!) I'll probably have my dd read the stories herself and narrate back to me, then we can do the projects together. The program is very flexible, which is part of the reason I love it ;). PS-I also spoke with Angela about future products. At this point she's got a couple of options, but is not really ready to share them. I'm sure that when we know more, we'll let you all know.

The "spine" for the American History portion is included in the Teacher's Guide. Angela has written high interest, one page stories for you to read aloud. There are two for each week. If you want to do the state study on the third day, you would need Smart About Fifty States, that's it :). The read-alouds, readers and picture books are all optional, but are included so that you can enrich your study with them if you desire.

I only have Intermediate because that's what I was looking for, but I'm fairly certain that I saw the primary one as well at archive.org. I'll see if I can come up with a link... ETA: I can't seem to find it either, which is strange because I'm sure I saw it. It's possible that someone has renewed the copyright, which would explain why it can't be found.

There is, but you have to go to archive.org and search for Emma Serl. I think that Google books took it off because of the fear of conflicting with those who currently publish it, but unless it's Ms. Serl's family publishing it or the family has renewed the copyright and then sold it, it's still in the public domain. I also found it at Gutenberg, but the formatting is atrocious. Hope that helps!

Glad to see this here, as I really love Adventures in America! As to whether or not it's secular, it's written to focus on historical fact, so I think that it could fit in a secular or religious homeschool. The author, Angela, is a Christian, but she has tried very hard not to bring personal commentary into the mix. This being said, she does mention the faith of the pilgrims, what Quakers believed, the fact that most Pioneers had 2-3 books, one of which was the usually the Bible and so on. As far as I have seen, she only mentions religion when it was a significant part of the story and is backed up by historical fact. Does that make sense? If you have more specific questions or would like me to expand on what's above, let me know. PS-Angela, the author, is also a WTM Hiver and has been for quite awhile, so maybe she'll stop by and answer more questions, if you have them.

:iagree:

Marie, I know your laying low and hopefully getting a nap ;), but I'd thought I'd chime in. I agree with Joy and Ellie that it may be too much to do CW, Shurley and an integrated Spalding approach. I've read and reread and reread the Spalding manual (Writing Road to Reading) and honestly, I don't get the whole integrated LA thing. Well, let me rephrase that, I think that it would work great as an integrated LA from K-2, but beyond that you need something more, especially if you the teacher are weak in grammar (as I am). Here's what we are doing next year, using CW, WRTR and FLL... Spelling-3 times a week introduce 7 new words from the Ayers list and review trouble phonograms, 1 a week do a detailed spelling A&I using WRTR of some of the words from our CW model as explained in the Core guide, last day of the week give a spelling test using the Ayers list words & any trouble words-CW words would be a bonus as my dd's a bit behind on spelling Grammar-3 times a week use FLL as written, 1 time a week do a grammar A&I using the CW model as laid out in the Core guide, take the 5th day off Writing-spelling words will be done in cursive for handwriting practice and we'll use CW as it is written for our writing program I just wanted to show you how all your materials could work together. BTW, giving up the integrated LA approach to spelling doesn't mean you giving up Spalding. Just means you are using the pieces you find most useful for your situation, which is something all of us homeschoolers do well ;).

Ha! I clicked on this thread to see what was in it, thinking it would be good info to save for the future and there I am, in the thread :lol:. Thanks, Kim, I love the way you spelled it out and I'm saving it for later. BTW, the schedule and the notebook pages are also available at the ES yahoo group, links in my siggy.

I found an email addy for her from one of the links. I emailed her and I'll post back here when I find something out :). ETA: It got returned, :(, so if someone else is able to contact her, PM me and we'll try to figure it out.

I would use .com for the same reasons that Angela mentioned. Sounds like a cool idea :).