We do 4 days a week also. Our Fridays are lighter to incorporate art and music studies.

Our very first one took about a week and a half. Since then, we get ours within 3 days. I thought I read somewhere that they were supposed to acknowledge it within 2 weeks, but that would be for Ohio. I'm curious as to what state you are in as well. Did you send it with a return receipt? Did they receive it? You might want to call them and find out what's going on.

We usually go thru roughly 2 cartridges a year. I figured out to make it last longer when I print (both b&w or color), I use the setting as draft instead of normal. I also select using less ink. I'm almost positive it doubles the use! Also, when my printer tells me it's time to change the cartridge, I dont' change it right away. I use it until my documents are so light I can't read them. I've been able to use it for over a month, even though it tells me to change it.

I list the curriculum and then a brief summary that usually comes with the book. For instance: Math-Saxon-Math 7/6 helps improve preparation for high school math by introducing concepts your child will need for upper-level algebra and geometry, including circumference and pi, angles, coordinate graphing, and prime factorization. After every tenth lesson is an investigation--an extensive examination of a specific math topic, discusses at length to ensure solid understanding. English-Rod & Staff-Following the Plan-English 5 has 119 lessons divided into 10 chapters. The first two chapters deal with understanding sentence types and structure. Chapters 3-7 and 9 focus on the eight parts of speech. Chapter 8 teaches concepts about punctuation. Chapter 10 deals with miscellaneous lessons on capitalization, the dictionary, synonyms, antonyms, Bible reference books, hyphens, and colons. Interspersed throughout the book are 28 composition lessons. Continual review is built into the course. For Ohio, my understanding is that they want a brief description, so I just take the description straight from the book/website. HTH

I have one that does that. I know he's trying to be funny, but he's so serious sometimes that it's hard to tell! He just turned 7. He doesn't do it too much anymore, but he did it when he was about 5 & 6 years old. It drove me crazy! I think he just outgrew it. Or he realized he wasn't getting the reaction out of me he wanted and gave up. I figured as long as he really knows the answer, we're doing ok. It's just something silly he liked to do!

My son prefers the worksheets, so when there's a worksheet he'll do that. On days where there aren't worksheets, he does the book work. We always go over the oral exercises together. I don't have him do both the book and the worksheet because I think it's overkill. If he's having a hard time understanding a concept I'll have him do both the book and the worksheet, but that rarely, if ever, happens. I haven't had any problems with him not retaining a concept either. Hope this helps!

Thank you all so much for your input! You ladies are awesome!!! We've always stuck closely to the public school, but I hate having such a long summer break. My oldest is in public school. My 9 year old wants as long a summer break as possible and my 6 year old wants to do school year round, although I'm not really sure he understands what year round means! I like the 6 weeks on with 1 or 2 weeks off. I'm worried if we do the year round thing it'll get too hectic and we'll get behind or take too many breaks. I guess my 9 year old will just have to suffer! Thanks again!!!

I'm trying to decide how to schedule my year. I gave this list to my kids to find out what they'd like to do, but I'm still indecisive. I'd like to know what you guys do. (Plus I wanted to try a poll!)

My son is 10 and he absolutely hates to write! He writes for all his other subjects but for his narrations he dictates them to me and I type them up. Every now and then I'll make him do his own, but I find that he gives better narrations when he dictates them to me. He still does handwriting and copywork, so at this point I'd rather he give me really good narrations. We do one narration a week and it's usually about a paragraph long.

Thank you for your quick replies. I realize I shouldn't skip 5. I can't sell my four because I have 3 more children that will be using it. I did a little checking at Amazon. They have a used student text for $9. I think if I just keep checking over the next few weeks/months I should be able to find some in good condition. I appreciate all of your comments! Thanks!

I'm wondering if this is even a possibility. My son will be in the 5th grade next year. Right now we are using Rod and Staff 4 for English. Money is EXTREMELY tight and I'm trying to really revamp our curriculum for next year. I have Rod and Staff 6 that I had used with my oldest son. I'm wondering if it would be possible to skip 5 and just do 6 with him. We would take our time with it, of course. But, I'm just wondering if that's even a possibility. I don't want to change curriculum. We really like Rod and Staff English. Any thoughts?

Thank you all for your replies! I was worried about him not getting enough out of SOTW itself. I think if I supplement with Kingfisher and other books it'll be fine. Plus, I think that he'll probably even catch a lot of stuff this time around that he didn't before. Thanks!

My now 4th grade son has gone through the SOTW series. My now 1st grader has done them alongside as well. Now we are ready to start over with the ancients. I know I want to use it with my 1st grader since he was really little when we did it the first time. I would still love to do history with both of them instead of doing 2 separate things. So, I'm wondering what to do with my older child. I've looked thru the activity guide and was thinking about having him do SOTW, too, but also do what's reccommended in the WTM book for 5th grade. Using the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia to do outlining, etc. But, the problem is trying to keep them together. In the activity guide it lists the pages that correlate with what's being read in SOTW, but the problem is that there are alot of repeat pages for the KHE. I should also say that money is very tight and my budget leaves very little room for buying curriculum this year! So, I'm wondering what you all do when you come around the second time. What do you do or suggest? My other reasoning for keeping them together as much as possible is that I have a three year old who just HAS to do school (according to himself!) and a new baby coming in August. Anyone have suggestions? What has worked for you?

I do a rough schedule for the year, then break it down. I schedule our planned weeks off throughout the year. Then I use the yearly schedule to do the weekly/monthly planning. I usually have a schedule typed up for the next 3-4 weeks. Then every Sunday I organize for the week, sometimes 2. My kids have 5 folders: one for each day of the week. So, I put all the papers/assignments in the folder for the week and we're all set to go.