[What level to start with in MEP?]

All sorts of caveats--I'm new to homeschooling and MEP and I'm completely unfamiliar with Horizons. We're about at the end of the first group of Y1a lessons at this point, and I would echo and perhaps even amplify what Annie has said. There have been any number of activities (in the lesson plan) and exercises (in the workbook) that I've thought would be too easy for my son. I've done them anyway because, well, he needs some things that are too easy to balance the things that are really throwing him. Then a few lessons later we'll see the same kind of activity, but with a twist that makes it much more sophisticated and difficult. I think a lot of the initial activities are to build confidence and to ease the students into trickier mental work. What does all this mean in terms of a recommendation? My humble suggestion is that you start with Y1 and give both the lesson plans and the worksheets a try for a week or so before deciding whether to skip forward, especially if your interest in MEP is based on conceptual math. At that point, you'll have a better feel for when an activity is a necessary preliminary to future work or whether it's just too plain easy for your guy. As I said, though, my experience with all of this is very limited, so I look forward to hearing what others say.

[printable extra large world map ?]

subbing. . .

[Jane Eyre or War and Peace?]

Read both, and I have to go with Jane Eyre.War and Peace is different from Anna Karenina; LOTS more historical analysis, philosophical digressions, etc. I recently "reread" it and I have to tell you, I skipped almost everything except the parts that had actual real people talking to each other, and it was over very, very quickly. I'm not saying not to read it, but I wouldn't expect it to be the same as AK (and if we're talking depressing, JE is considerably less so than AK, so that shouldn't pose any problems).