Thanks OhElizabeth for you great reply! I am so excited about a self-paced omnibus!! Next school year my oldest dd will be finishing up the last self-paced history (1815-modern). My dds have really enjoyed it. They have completed 2 of them already. Because we live in China, the live classes are out of the question. We are sleeping during class times ;) I am considering going ahead and ordering Omnibus I with the CD and the primary books so that I can have the next year to be working on the readings myself. I actually wrote the wrong date in my original post. My dd will be starting 7th grade in fall 2013. She is really looking for a challenge! She is an avid reader and a lover of all things history, literature, and theology. I have posted my questions on the VP_omnibus board but I only received one reply so I thought I might get some more info from here. Thanks again for you reply!

Hello everyone, I have 4 children, grades 2nd - 6th. I am thinking ahead about starting Omnibus I in 2015 and hoping to gleam wisdom from all of your experiences. My questions are this: Having 3 younger students at the same time, will keeping up with the reading for me be doable? For those of you who also teach omnibus, do you, as the teacher, need to read all of the primary and secondary books? Before deciding on Omnibus, did you consider other programs like SL,HO, TOG, and why did you ultimately decide to move forward with Omni? Have you it been what you expected? Would you recommend buying the books early so that I have time to read through them? (remember I have 3 younger students also) Would you recommend going in order? Must I start with Omni I? I hear that some start with Omni II because the content is "easier". I am not sure what that means. Becasue I will be starting in 7th grade, could I take my time going through it and still finish it by the end of 12th grade? My husband and I are really impressed by what we have seen/heard about Omni so far and believe that it fits our family well. I just need to wrap my head around everything. I don't want to bite of more than I can chew. Thank you in advance for your help. Jackie

Thanks you guys! That is all encouraging to me. I do really want to keep them all together in the same time period because we like having family discussions. We are definitely a history loving family too! I am excited to hear that they have coloring sheets for SOTW 3 and that others have had their younger children go through it too. Those coloring sheets are a great plus. My kids love coloring and drawing what they learn in history.

Thanks Wendy. Maybe I should just do SOTW 1 if it is more geared to younger kids.

I will have a 6 and 7 year old, both not reading well yet. Their older two sisters are doing Explorers - 1815 with VP self-paced online next year. However, i want to keep them on the same history time period. I was thinking about purchasing SOTW 3 to do with them next year since it covers about the same time period in history. My question is more about the activity pages. Would they be able to use the activity pages for the SOTW 3? I have not seen any of these activity pages so I am clueless and I have no way to get my hands on them to check them out since we live in China. Thanks for your help! :001_smile:

I have been through Levels 1 and 2 and will start 3 soon. In my opinion she does a most excellent job in teaching grammar. We have done Shirley Grammar in the past, and we much more prefer PR grammar. A lot less complicated as for as teaching goes and less repetitive and boring for the Children. It really is a great all inclusive program. I got tired of having separate currics for spelling, writing, grammar, etc... and I have been very impressed how she intermingles all of them together in one unit. I do also teach IEW methods for writing too. :) :thumbup:

CLE Math: I have used Singapore Math, Math U See, and Saxon Math, but once we switched to CLE, we never had any reason to search out something better! All 4 of my children love this curriculum. In fact, there is not one thing I don't like about it. I really would suggest getting their math flashcards and using their system for review! It really increased my children's recall and speed on their speed drill. In fact, my child in CLE 2 was just tested and on math fluency (the speed of recall of facts) was rated at 3rd grade, 8 months. This is a big jump from before where she would get so overwhelmed at the thought of doing a speed drill, freeze up, and barely get through. We have done CLE 1, 2, 3, and 4 between my four kids and have ordered 2, 3,4, and 5 for next year. CLE has fit all of my learners and and all of their styles. For my quick, proficient learners, I cut down their review section for their daily lesson. For example, each lesson they are given 5 addition/subraction facts to work through which reviews their past lessons. If they get all 5 right for 4 lessons in a row, I tell them they don't have to do them until the next light unit. This keeps them from getting bored. Okay. That is my 2 cents! :thumbup:

I have natural spellers also. I like phonics zoo because we don't waste time on extra worksheets that are suppose to enforce the remembering of the spelling. It also works with the phonics rules, and I like that. day 1 - I introduce list and rule then day 2 till whenever - you give them a test until they get 100% then move on to the next list. this usually takes my dd about 3-4 days. There are also the lists on cds so you don't even have to call out the words to them. I put them on my Itouch and give my daughter some ear phones and she goes at it independently and then turns in her spelling sheet for the day. There are 3 levels A, B, and C that are all contained on large flash cards. if you don't want to use the cd and call out the words yourself, just by the cards and you are good for 3 levels of spelling. I know VP stretches level A for 2nd and 3rd grades. Lesson 1: "ai" and "ay" words: a few of the words are brain, played, chained, railway, pail, sailed, train, painful, etc... I know your daughter is in 1st grade, but if she already is reading at 2nd grade level I think it would be fine. ChinaLady