Hmmm. We've never made it through that core (or any core) despite trying several times. Great books, we've read quite a few, but as a program? Too many pieces to juggle every day. I finally got rid of our SL IGs - wtih only a little guilt. ;) I think you'd regret it. History and science have often been optional at our house with lots of littles until kiddos are independent workers :). If you want to do something pick one book at a time and keep it simple.

Exciting! Will you be making his work available on Audible? I'm hopeful! We own a lot of CDs, but digital is much easier for us :).

I'm in for the replay!

I'm switching out Manners Made Easy for the Family. Bleh. Trying Munro Leaf's illustrated manners books instead. Decided only to use ACE for geography and go to narrative history read alouds for the younger crowd along with written/dictated and illustrated narrations. We are now using The Story of the Ancient World by Guerber/Miller. We are really liking it!

Yep, we have some sentimental fluff. We use Rubbermaid tubs (the blue ones). We have in the smallest tub size on each of: baby toys, cars, dolls, plastic/wood animals, train track, stuffed animals (only the little ones passed the purge), play tools and food. In the shallowest larger size we have one each of duplo and wood blocks. In the tall large size we have play silks and dress ups. We had a few larger toys that live on the shelf (cash register, tractor, xylophone. This all lives on 3.5 shelves. Then we have some puzzles, pegs, math blocks, lacing cards, board games etc. I still need to trim this down a bit. Currently around two shelves of this stuff - I think I can reduce by half. The kids managed to keep a few things as individuals that they are actually attached to. We have seven children from baby through twelve. I think we did okay, but it still feels like a bit much at times.

At 9, if she's a strong reader, buy her whichever version if the text that you memorize/use at meetings of the local body. For us that's the KJV. We buy flexicovers in a somewhat larger font style with minimal helps inside (maps, red text, cross references). Lots of colors available. If you like ESV the Grow Bible has some nice simple call out boxes.

CLE for LA. Rod and Staff English was a flop for us because it was more teacher centric and a textbook. We do like their spelling (RS) when CLE becomes less phonetic in 4th and up.

I did do the toys (not KonMarid technically). We have three shelves worth now. They are actually getting played with. I basically decided on a core collection and got rid of most of the fluff.

Dear me. Composition by far.

Well. We are doing CLE 7 this year as well. I think we will be done after this ;). Latin instead and more writing.

CLE IS the best place ;). A few third party stores sell the readers, but I just order everything from them. Good prices, reasonable shipping.

Fallacy Detective - 20 minutes 1x/week.

Reference works that can be checked out and compared: dictionaries, thesauruses, atlases, science and history atlases, etc. Major math programs for comparison purposes. Say, grade 2 of CLE, Saxon, Singapore, MUS, Math Mammoth, etc. Homeschooling inspiration/planning books. Household management/organizational books. What Your Child Needs to Know series. Draw Write Now series. A good set of biographies. Colliers Junior Classics/My Book House. Phonetically levelled readers (as opposed to the much more common sight word based readers). Sadly, $1000 doesn't go far...I've likely listed too much already. ðŸ˜

I would evaluate your goals and make sure you have a firm idea of what is enough. That has been huge for us. If you don't have clear goals you can always feel you aren't doing enough. We eventually went to a lot of independent choices shortly after our fourth was born. It has helped a LOT. History does not need to be an all consuming beast. Pick one spine, read it to everyone, narrations (oral or written) and you are done.

In a different direction - CLE is very traditional/procedural, though it is spiral as well. Our journey looked like MUS for years (no retention) to a brief stay with MM (oh, the layout, it was painful to get two pages done!!). We stopped with CLE, it's very matter of fact, which your son seems to value highly. Worth looking at some samples?

Another vote for CLE. It is traditional...and MUS had almost zero retention for my kiddos due to lack of cumulative review and...yes...the spiral. We love it :).

Kolbe? Incredibly flexible, quite affordable.

30-45 minutes. It's incredibly independent. Love it.

Thanks so much!!

Yes, I've read much of the Norton 6th vs 7th debate and Norton vs Oxford Etc. interesting article on the Longman. I was previously unaware of that anthology.

And if you own it, the audible narration is only $1.99 with their whisper sync program on amazon.

So, you feel the Random House and Golden Treasury are fairly distinct in age appropriateness? Not a lot of overlap? If you could tell me a little about the differences, I'd love to hear them! I'm very interested in this combination of books!

Would anyone recommend an Oxford anthology or similar (Norton?) for older children?

I used to not plan. It makes me crazy now, since I've found that a weekly plan and goals really keeps ME accountable and helps us to be consistent.

We do a lot of these in our Together Time. Geography Songs from audio memory (their grammar cd has some interesting ones about punctuation, and Shurley Grammar has many songs as well), talkingfingervideos kn YouTube for spelling songs, it has most of the songs from their spelling song CD. Various you tubes for grammar songs. We sing a LOT of scripture songs from various places. We Choose Virtues songs. We learned all the Prime Ministers of Canada from a YT song. We use the Classical Conversations app for skip counting songs (they have some Latin songs on there too for endings). We have a Latin Songs CD from CBD which is far more comprehensive though.