Ellie, I ordered His California Story. It arrived a few days ago. Wow! It is such a rich resource! I think we could drop our other history plans for the year and just work on Ms. Myers' book and easily have enough history for a year. I enjoy her tone and the flow of the book. His California Story has taught me more about California's history than almost 4 decades of living here. What to do... :)

I like the, "really it's the Art of Being An Adult..." My addition to the list: How to manage themselves, time, and goals. "If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything in it, and, which is more, you'll be a man my son." ~ Rudyard Kipling

I looked ahead as you suggested. I like...26 or 27 ... The lesson about revising. I think we'll do that next week, or the week after, with some of her first paragraphs. Maybe revising paragraphs for a few weeks will help her build better paragraphs??

I don't have the sentence family is it similar to killgallon sentences?

Thanks Gillian! I saw you had some Randall A. Reinstedt books in your list. Did you enjoy them? I think I saw a booth about him at CHEA last year and series looked fun.

Thank you so much Lori for such a detailed response! It is the best go to resource for for managing "hitting a wall" in any subject I've seen! Thank you for all the thought and time you take in posting your advice. I really appreciate it!

Which TruthQuest? And do you mean free e-books or books available on kindle or nook? I've been wrestling with Level 1 AH2 for next term. Most of the spine references can be covered by This Country of Ours, Story of the World and Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans (not referenced but the chapters are nicely titled so it's easy to match up). Those three books are available in ebook format. They don't cover the subtopics nearly as well as other books (picture books, biographies, etc). Hth

We are looking to camp more next year. Great idea! Thanks.

We seem to have hit a wall in lesson 22. Vocabulary, sentence structure and just the quantity of writing seem to be more than my 8 yr old can handle. If you have hit a similar wall how did you handle it?

I'm getting DH all excited about taking trips to Sacramento and Northern CA. Thank you for the tips. FYI your booklist came up by invitation only?

Thank you for all the book recs and field trip suggestions. Looks like we'll be making a trip up north! I love the idea of tying in geology. I really appreciate the links! Thank you!

I'm still wired to study CA History in 4th grade. Maybe it's the fond memories or spray painting everything gold for our model Gold Rush Town, playing with clay to make mini adobe homes or visiting the missions. Anyhow, I loved that part of 4th grade and want to give my girls some of the same fun. So for those who have BTDT are there any great resources or field trips you would recommend? TIA

Wow! What a great selection! I hope there will be workshop downloads to purchase after the series is completed. For now I'm going to have to pick and choose. It's like a buffet of fabulousness!

I voted for a year because that's how I initially start planning. Last year I laid everything out to see if it would fit in 36 weeks. Then I planned the first trimester. After 12 weeks we took a week off and I spent a few days planning to Christmas break, etc. etc. Next year I won't have an extra student and plan to shift to 10 weeks on 1 week off all year. One of my favorite blog posts about planning is Merry at Hope for Homeschool's Teacher Binder and Routine posts: http://hopeforhomeschool.blogspot.com/2012/08/organization-teacher-binder.html. Some subjects- History, Literature, Art, etc. seem to plan well a year at a time. However, planning them means that we don't experience the joys of rabbit trails that other homeschools seem to enjoy. Also skill subjects don't seem to lend themselves to long term planning as development in math, reading, and writing doesn't always occur at an even or predictable pace. I hope to find a balance between preparation and planning this year. :)

Posting to find this later.

KrissiK I see your kids use God's Great Covenant. Are they all using the same level? What do you think of it?

Thanks for the info! I like the idea of making their own flash cards.

Are the activity book and history reader required or useful for LFC?

Morning Time did not work for us. There is something with my eldest and she is awful in the morning. Between her morning insanity and the two littles (3 and 1) playing at full volume MT was torture and just angry. So we moved it to after lunch while the littles nap. MUCH better! CW's primer series was waaay too much for my 6 year old. So I switched to ELTL1 after we completed Autumn and that has been great. Math Mammoth was not the best choice for my 6 year old so we'll go back to RS next year. Popcorn reading with grandma, ssl2, and ambleside's poetry are great hits with my eldest (8). Librivox recordings of This Country Of Ours and SOTW activity book saved history. Poetry tea time, weekly field trips, and library science all worked well this year. Teaching a friend's daughter was an incredible growth experience and will not be repeated next year.

I found the science info on your blog and oodles of other great info too. Thank you!

We use ELTL for writing, poetry, grammar, picture study, etc. It takes 20-30 minutes to complete 3x a week. Math takes about an hour but my 1st grader is a dawdler. ;) She also spends 5-10min learning cursive. In the afternoons we cover catechism, history, bio/Shakespeare/geo and have a fun read aloud as a family which takes about 45 minutes. Then we have Mommy's sanity break aka silent reading for an hour (we worked up to that). My first grader does not read for that whole hour. But she spends the whole time looking through books of her choice. Once a week we go on a science field trip (1-4 hours), take a nature walk (30-60min), have tea and poetry (30 min), and library science (20 min). She participates in all those too though she needs help researching books at the library.

I looked it up and it was critterfixer. Sorry about that. :)

I thought you liked CW and we're reading through Homer to wrap your mind around how to teach it. What happened? Or am I getting you confused with someone else? I need to go look up last year's posts about CW.

Because of your post I looked up Nancy Larson. The year 2 kit looks perfect for my girls next year. The price is huge though! Do you find the program worth the expense?

How do you use Wheeler's Speller and for what ages? I've been drooling over it for a couple of years now. Last year I even printed it out and made lesson plans but opted to use Natural Speller instead. I would love to learn how it works for you.