I meant you're trying to do a lot:)

This is our lfc schedule: Mon we watch DVD and practice chant Tue we practice chant to 1st page of worksheet from student book Wed chant & another worksheet page Thur & Fri we do the activity booklet pages. We don't usually spend more than 30 min on Monday...the rest of the week it's only 10 or 20 minutes. I consider Latin vocabulary so I don't use an additional program for that. For language arts I rotate & don't do everything everyday. We do history & science 2 or 3 times per week but almost never on the same day. We rarely spend 4 or more hours on formal lessons per day. Looking at your schedule it seems your trying to fit a lot in everyday. We do all the things you have listed (minus vocab) plus bible & Greek but we don't ever do all subjects everyday.

There has been a lot of good advice so far! I also came out of the corporate world to stay home. I would add that it's okay to give yourself permission to take a break when you are feeling impatient. Sometimes I find myself getting frustrated & realize we both need a time-out of sorts. I might send her to play and read or just gather my thoughts & pray. Take a day or afternoon to do something fun just because you can. When I feel us getting frustrated with each other I like to get out and go to the park or museum or something like that. While we are there we discuss what a blessing it is to be able to go to the park at noon if we want to while everyone else is in school. I remind my daughter frequently that she is fortunate and that she needs to work hard for the few hours of lesson time and then enjoy her extra free time. I think the biggest realization for me when I started was that just as much of my time would need to be spent on character training as actual lesson work. I envisioned a lovely little student who was eager to learn but in the real world she's lazy, easily distracted and not all that eager.....especially during math! I also think it's important to read, listen to tapes or something regularly for encouragement. I like Marilyn Rockett's materials and also read a daily devotional for wives & moms. If I don't do that regularly I find myself getting more frustrated more often. Being a homeschooling mom is a tough job but it's very rewarding once you adjust to it.

You might try Explode the Code. The booklets are inexpensive and simple to use. The drawings are done by children and my dd loved to color them after lesson time. Also, the simple silly sentences to check comprehension seemed to motivate her because they made her laugh.

I'm using HWOT and the suggested pace in the teacher guide is 1 to 2 letters a week if you. DD is really eager to learn to write in cursive so we've been going a little faster than the book. We've learned 5 letters in 2 weeks. I've been doing a letter then a day or two of practice and then adding the next letter. So far this pace seems good but we'll see how it works out when we move to more difficult letters.

We just set up a binder too. I didn't think of the 8th tab for oceans but we'll add it. My dd was suprisingly excited about this new idea. We did the flags & printables from my link before and she really enjoyed getting fiction books from the library. There was a good list on the page with the printables and we searched for some additional books. We started last week with Kenya. I liked the printable map work from that link also but we couldn't find 2 of the 3 mountains it told us to label....we looked at multiple maps and only found Mt. Kenya.

We've been using the Kathy Troxel geograghy songs along with the workbook. I downloaded the songs and we started with Africa since we were at the time on SOTW 1. We've memorized most of the countries with the songs and recently started doing some printables and using some of the lesson plans from this link someone posted a few weeks ago http://www.homeschoolcreations.com/Africa.html We're doing a new country every few weeks but we're not really formal about it. Also, since we just got a new ipad which we love we downloaded flashcards of African countries & capitals from qwizlet for our flashcards app. I'm planning on just doing this continent by continent until we get to US history and then we'll to states & capitals.

I would recommend reading materials from Answers in Genesis also. Everyone on here has their own opinions about the topic but if you want to educate yourself you have to read materials on both sides of the fence. It is true that virtually all texbooks and/or library books you are going to read as part of a good education will reference billions of years. The AIG website has materials which clearly explain the ye thinking. If you find yourself unsure about what to believe at the very least it will help you present both sides to your children. I think it's important to be able to discuss these issues with children when they are young. I personally never heard of ye until I was an adult and there are a lot of children who have only heard of ye who will be quite confused when they get to college. I would also be careful about setting up the idea of science vs God. There are talented, well-educated scientists who believe in ye and there are talented, well-educated scientists who believe in billions of years.

I haven't done earth science from apologia but we've done Astronomy and are doing anatomy. Although the books have a lot of words they are also have great illustrations and dd & I both enjoy them. We move slower than the recommended schedule because there is a lot information in each chapter. We use the notebooks and get the recommended library books as well. The experiments are easy to do and usually fun for both of us. For anatomy I was able to order a kit from christianbook.com that had most of the supplies needed for the experiments. It was a little pricey but worth the convenience for me.

I downloaded PDF expert earlier today & so far love it. I'm going to pick up a stylus tomorrow. I have the same problem with PDF expert that I'm having with iBooks. My PDF files come in with weird nonsensical names. Anyone know how to fix this?

I don't get to science experiments every week...or sometimes even every month but my daughter is more of a reader and prefers learning that way. As for math, we only spend 40 minutes doing it if dd is having a particularly unfocused day. I think there is an audio on the peace hill press website where swb discusses what it's like homeschooling real kids. I think for most of us It's not always as structured as it sounds in the book.

What about etc online? I would think anything online or a cd with pronunciation would work but I would also say they need to do it together so that mom can help point out errors when they are practicing reading together. Also getting audiobooks to listen to together while looking at the writen text would be another good option.

We're only in year 2 of the history cycle but dd often picks up a book she has already read and reads it again....sometimes she'll just read a random chapter or start in the middle because she says she already knows what happened but she likes reading it again. I plan to just see how it goes when we cycle back through the ancients again but I plan to just do more analytical writing and independant research from original sources. I ask her critical questons and we discuss things but since her narration skills aren't as advanced as her reading comprehension & memory skills I figure on the 2nd cycle we'll spend time working on more advanced writing. She'll still only be about 8 at that time so I have no idea what we'll do for the 3rd cycle.

What level did he complete in MUS? I wouldn't consider it skipping either unless you were staying with the same program.

I don't know anything about Chinese but I've been doing the Greek Alphabet with Code Cracker from Classical Academic Press and we like it. I'm planning on moving on from there to Song School Greek. I considered Andrew Teach Me Some Greek but decided to go with a fun approach because we're always doing LFCa and it's pretty challenging. After SSG we plan to use Greek for Children. I have used both Memoria Press & Classical Academic Press materials for Latin and dd and I both like CAP better.

Not exactly the same but my dd travels with my parents often and they used to fight be when I sent school work with them. My dad particularly would harrass me about being a slave driver and "even kids in school gets days off". They've discovered on their own if they actually spend the time to have her do the work I send with her in the morning she does better during the day. She likes structure. For me, because we both travel I've had to relax a bit on my scheduling. I used to get stressed out if we didn't finish what I planned for the day or week but now I've learned to be more flexible. I just make her do something every day....even if it's only for a short time because otherwise it's pulling teeth to get her back on track when we restart. My new motto this year is work hard while we working but play hard and enjoy ourselves when we're taking a break....even if that break is the 2nd week of September when an opportunity for her to travel with my parents comes one week after we started school. Maybe try a shorter schedule when you have visitors as a compromise.

I would go ahead and start teaching phonics 10 or 15 minutes a day. SWB has a Q & A section on her youtube channel where she talks about children who teach themselves to read and the importance of phonics. I don't think it's pushing so spend some time together discussing letters and sounds. I did it with my daughter at that age & she saw it as mostly fun play time together.

I thought I edited my last post but apparently I don't know what I'm doing.. I added that memorizing every detail about every thing you read is not necessarily an advantage when it comes time to write a narration. DD still struggles with condensing it down to 2 to 3 sentences. For grammar we skipped FLL 2 and will probably move straight to the new SWB curriculum that will cover middle & high school grammar over 3 years when we finish FLL3. We probably WILL NOT do this with WWE. We skipped WWE2 but when we finish year three we'll probably move to year 4 unless there's a lot of improvement this year.

My dd6 remembers just about everything she reads and/or watches.....even if it was 2 years ago.:) I still do some quizzes and seatwork and use it as an opportunity to work on handwriting, neatness, writing good sentences, etc. For example on SOTW we do the tests. She most of the time knows the answers...but doesn't always get them right because she rushes, doesn't focus, etc. We will go back over the test together and when we look at it together she generally finds her own mistakes. I also correct any grammar or punctuation issues. One adjustment I have made is not really doing any reading comprehension. We discuss what she's read and work on narrations, etc as suggested in WTM but we don't do any formal comprehension. We also don't repeat things as often as most curriculum outlines suggest. On FLL we did year one and then skipped to year 3 and we combine 3 or 4 lessons together at a time. For Grammar Island she basically read the whole book in one day so we didn't break it up in to individual lessons. We skipped right to Practice Island and just review a concept if she has trouble remembering an answer on 4 level analysis. It seemed kind of ridiculous for us to read three pages & then check her understanding/retention.

I answered this in another thread recently but can't find it for some reason. I used flashcards, songs, worksheets, dominoes, number bonds and all kinds of stuff but nothing clicked until we used the MUS dvd's & manipulatives. We tried for over a year to memorize the facts & then she just "got" it as soon as we switched to MUS. I think it was the way the concepts were taught with the manipulatives. If you don't want to switch curriculums a cheap option would be to look for a used MUS vcr tape on ebay. I bought one for $10 and used it to review math facts before we moved in to Beta because I didn't want to spend $ just for the review. With that and the blocks we got the facts down in 3 or 4 weeks which allowed us to move forward with more advanced work.

Reading this thread the last few days pushed me over the edge and I finally bought one. So far I love it! I was up half the night loading pdf's and apps and playing with it. I already used it for spelling today which we normally wouldn't do on Saturday but both dd & I were so excited to have a new toy we couldn't wait until Monday. We also downloaded flashcards+ which allows you to download flashcards from the quizlet database (we played with Africa capitals & latin roots) or to make your own. I'm planning on making flashcards for our memory work like Bible verses, Latin for Children weekly words, Greek vocabulary, etc. I would also like to know about the best option for a Stylus. I'm thinking of doing the extra LFC worksheets from their website on the ipad & also some math and other things. Also, for experienced users..is there a way to change the name of a book in ibooks? Some of the lesson material I have in PDF came in to ibooks with weird names that I would like to change to something that makes sense. TIA.

You might try a John MacArthur Study Bible also. There is a newly published ESV option available I believe. I have both the NKJ and NASB and the study notes are basically the same in each so it would just be a matter of which version you prefer to read. I'm attaching a link below that looks like a link to several articles on reformed theology. I found it by googling "sola scriptura" which is another option for finding some stuff. http://www.mbrem123.com/

A simplified explanation for how carbon dating is explained by scientists who tend toward the YE side of things is that while carbon dating methods utilize some repeatable testable methods for establishing dates those methods and the results depend on things always being the same in the past. There is a technical term for this which is escaping me right now but basically the idea is that if we observe that something happens at a rate of x per year now it has always happened at the same rate in the past. For a scientist who believe there was a great flood, or a creator there is the possibility that there was a starting point or catastrophic event at some point that changed or altered the rate at which changes occur. That is way oversimplified and I'm kind of in a hurry but you get the idea. Also, someone made the point about the science being light on the YE side at times and the theories not being fully fleshed out. I don't think that is necessarily true of all YE materials. I do think scientists who believe in YE are very cautious about presenting theory as fact. They are very careful to distinguish between what is a theory and what can or has been proven. There is a difference between observational science and origins science. Because of this, YE scientists incorporate language in articles and papers that reflects their understanding that they can't state as fact things that can't be proven with testing. I don't see the same caution or humility in the writings of some secular scientists. Theories change regularly in the scientific community and one of the challenges I have with secular science materials is that often things that are theory are presented as fact. When those same theories are later proven wrong new theories are presented with the same level of authority as if there's no change they could be wrong.

It's funny how reading other posts makes you remember things you've learned that work/didn't work. I've also found that event though w e split work up in to 2 or 3 segments during the day we really need the first block of work to be started during or immediately following breakfast. If she plays first the whole day doesn't go near as well. I'm in the same situation as others who mentioned that the broken up schedule is more about them than their kids. I teach her at the office where my husband and I have our own business which means I have work to do....and we get interrupted a lot! I've found that if we do the first block of lesson work first thing after breakfast before play she is focused and when we finish she plays independantly for the hour or two before lunch. If we don't do it she interrupts my work every 30 seconds saying she's bored. Incidentally, this was true even when she was 2 1/2 or 3 years old when we first started Bible reading time and learning letters. The independant play wasn't quite as long but she still played well by herself for a while and I could get a few things done.

We used Song School Latin from Classical Academic Press during K & 1st as a gentle & fun intro to Latin. DD loved it and nothing about it was confusing. After that we completed Prima Latina which was a nice complement to 2nd grade grammar. We liked the CAP format so now we've moved on to Latin for Children and so far love it. It's challenging but still presented in a fun way and dd said she prefers it over Memoria Press