I was wondering if some of you could compare the different programs such as English From The Roots Up, Rummy Roots, and I think there's another one I can't remember --- something Vine??? What did you like or not like, how did it work, and just anything you'd like to tell about them. Also, I was thinking of starting one of them with a 2nd grader, but someone told me that was probably a bit young. What age do you suggest? Thank you, Jenny

I saw a post on the MUS yahoo group from a mom whose son had trouble with MUS because it was just too plain for him. He was learning well, but hated it. He's a very visual child, so she decided to ask her son to choose a picture from a book they were using for composer studies. She scanned it, and printed it with only about 10% of the color. Then she scanned the MUS page he was to do and printed it on the page with the painting as the background. That was exactly what he needed, and it worked great for them. I'm with those of you who like the plain pages on a book. A friend gave us the teacher manuals and DVD set. I only use it as a supplement. Our main curriculum is Math On The Level. That works better for my boys than a straight workbook type curriculum.

I have the Nesbit book for my boys, but I think a picture book like the one you mentioned would be a better "1st step to Shakespeare". I'm going to look for that. I was never exposed to Shakespeare until I hit high school. I hated it at the time. Took me years to learn to appreciate it. I want to give my boys a better start.

Maybe that's what I need. I wasn't an executive, but I'm constantly asking myself why I was able to deal with disorganized people at work all the time but still keep my sanity and keep "my" part of my work world organized, but I can't even come close to that at home. My husband and I are gradually discovering that one of our sons, (he's only 6) is turning into a "control freak" as my husband puts it. He can't stand it if supper is 10 minutes late, or if the desk gets a pile of stuff on it. Right now I'm particularly disorganized, so he's been organizing the bookshelf as far up as he can reach. He totally reorganizes it at least twice a day. Guess this is something he can control, and it keeps him from going nuts amidst my mess. :lol: Oh, I'll be sooooo glad when he's older and can keep me on track. In the mean time I'm going to try to learn from all the wonderful tips here, and take a look at that book. Thanks!

I wondered EXACTLY the same thing. So funny. I'm afraid I'm a hopeless mess. I LOVE to plan, and when I was single and worked outside the home in a professional career, I was the most organized person in the world. But, now that I have a husband and children, I just can't seem to be that way anymore. I drive myself nuts when I'm not organized, which is all the time nowadays. :001_smile: Jenny

I use parts and pieces of Simply Charlotte Mason. I also love Ambleside Online. There are so many wonderful ideas on both sites, and I especially love the SCM for teaching ideas. I keep my children together (except in Math and Reading/Writing. If I were going to teach the ancients, I would definitely have chosen the SCM program. I don't care for the way Ambleside covers history. But, we are using Truth Quest and starting with American history in the early elementary years.

Yes, I've found the same thing. There is a yahoo group for MEP users. They are VERY helpful. You can go to yahoo groups and do a group search for MEP math. I think this is the correct link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mep-homeschoolers/messages Best wishes, Jenny

Is it possible for you to post it so that all of us can get the benefit? Or, could you PM me with it? I've been having the same trouble as the OP. My weakest area is in organizing. :bigear: I'm listening for more suggestions. :) Thank you, Jenny

Oh yes. I'm looking forward to using those when my children are just a little older (I hope).

When we did Apologia Astronomy, it was a bit irritating to read her "proof" of YE in several places throughout the book. I didn't think her "logic" held water. But even with younger children, it was easy to discuss it. I have not decided whether I believe YE or OE, and I don't really see how it matters. I tend to lean toward OE, but there are just so many more important issues that this one really takes a back seat. But back to the astronomy book, I was able to use it as a way to start teaching my boys not to believe everything they read, to think through things rather than just blindly accepting what they read, and to compare it to the Scriptures. They're young and I'm sure we'll have many more discussions about it, but it's a start.

I tried SOTW and another, but studying the ancients, no matter how I presented it (textbook or historical fiction) it didn't click with my boys. I was bored, too. I decided to present history so that my children can relate to it. That meant biographies of people like Daniel Boone and other exciting people and events in American History. I found Truth Quest and have started reading some wonderful books to my boys. They are now having a wonderful time with it. We're currently studying American history chronologically, but when they get a little older, we'll start back with Creation and go from there. Also, I think historical fiction, if well done, is an excellent way to get children excited about history. The point at that age is to get them interested; it is not to have them remember every detail perfectly. I have explained what historical fiction is to my boys and they seem to understand it very well.

Glad to see this thread. I'm working on putting together an Earth Science study in about a year and have been looking for some good geology resources for elementary age boys. Thanks!

I LOVE::001_wub: :thumbup: Math On The Level :thumbup: Noeo Science :thumbup: Truth Quest History Many of the books on the Ambleside Online site and Simply Charlotte Mason.

Very independent. :001_smile:

I bought Skip Count Kid's CD. http://skipcountkid.com/. If you go to the website, you can hear samples of all the songs. They have the original version and Bible Heroes, which is the one we bought. They have it on CD or MP3 download, very reasonably priced. The words are very clear and the sound quality is better than any other skip count CD I've heard. My boys LOVE the songs and learned to skip count very quickly. Jenny

Our family is on the opposite end of the math spectrum. We use Math On The Level (MOTL) http://www.mathonthelevel.com/ My children are adopted and my youngest has some developmental delays. Until we started with MOTL, he wasn't the least bit interested in even learning to count. Now he LOVES math. My oldest loves anything having to do with numbers, so he'd probably excel with any program I plopped in front of him, but he is so much more motivated now that we have started with MOTL. I also use lots of the math readers and games suggested on Living Math http://livingmath.net/ Both websites have links to their yahoo group forums, and the parents and website owners/curriculum publishers are very helpful. MOTL is a very different program. No workbooks at all, although you can download some worksheets if you like. It teaches math through real life instead of workbooks. When your child can write the numbers and do written work, you certainly make that part of your lessons. But the wonderful thing about the program is that YOU, not the curriculum author, decide which concepts to teach, and when to teach them to your child, when the child is developmentally ready to learn. When you get the program, there are books for you that teach you how to teach your child. There is a book for Operations, Geometry and Measurement, Money and Decimals, and Fractions. There's also a book called Math Adventures, which, like the other books is filled with wonderful teaching ideas. There is also a binder that comes with the program that goes over how to use the programs. Everyone uses it differently, and the book gives you lots of ideas. The forum members also help out greatly with this. In the back of the binder, there's a sample scope and sequence chart. It is just to give you an idea of the "typical" order for covering each topic. But, the author, Carlita acknowledges that different publishers uses a different scope and sequence. It's just there to help out if you need a general guide. If you work on a concept and your child just isn't getting it, there's no need to beat your head against a wall or end up with your child in tears. Just move on to a different concept from a different book. After a few months of using the program, my husband and I were completely shocked at how much our boys were learning. Forgot to mention that the program covers material from Pre-K through Pre-Algebra. It is such a different kind of program that at first it looks confusing. But, after using it for a month, I found that there was almost no prep time required for me at this stage. I just look over one or two of the books every couple of weeks to get a general idea of the concepts I'd like to cover. There is a wonderful system in the book for the "5-A-Day's". When your child has learned a concept, it goes into a review cycle --- practiced daily, every other day, weekly, or less. Your child only does 5 written problems a day, and all the concepts are covered. It doesn't seem possible, but the website and the binder do a great job of explaining exactly how that works. My oldest is on a second grade level. We have not been using the 5-A-Days yet because he has some vision problems we're working on and his fine motor skills make too much written work difficult for him. We'll probably start with the 5-A-Day's next year. I think most parents start that around 2nd grade. This system fits our family PERFECTLY! My youngest son and I would both go nuts with a workbook program, but then there are other families who would go nuts without a rigid plan. I talked about how we do history in another post recently. They have so much fun, they don't even know we're having a history lesson. Now that we've been using MOTL, both of my sons are having so much fun that they ask to "do school" every day. We are not at all "unschoolers", but I do try to make school as enjoyable as possible in every subject. So, as you see, there are lots of different styles out there. The hard part is deciding what will work best for your family. Just don't get locked into the idea that it has to be either "workbook curriculum A or workbook curriculum B". There are many totally different kinds of programs. I'd say Saxon and MOTL are at opposite ends. Jenny

Yes, Laura. I'm glad you mentioned the ThinkWrite activities and the comments section. I read the comments to my children at the beginning of each section. They might only be a few sentences, or a whole page, but they tell a little about the upcoming person or event, and they get the children thinking about what was really going on, along with "why" so it makes more sense to them and helps them tie things together. The ThinkWrite assignments are scattered throughout, and are very helpful, too. Krissik, maybe I didn't explain it well in my post. My children do understand that the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman gods were false. But they also understand that those people believed in those gods just as strongly as we believe in the one True God of the Scriptures --- the One we believe in. My sons questions went much deeper than I expected out of 6 year old, but his ability to understand the answers was limited because of his age and the immaturity that goes with it. He wanted to know HOW we know we're right and they were wrong. No matter how many passages in the Bible I could have shown him, it still all basically boils down to faith. None of us can PROVE that our belief system is absolutely true and right. That son is a very deep thinker. Actually all of them are, but this one often does not tell me along the way what he's thinking. He waits until he has thought it through and come to his own conclusions. It is sometimes difficult to undo that when his thinking is flawed, and I was concerned that since this is not a "black and white" issue, that he might gradually begin to develop what I consider too much of an open-minded approach to religion --- one of "oh, what difference does it really make? They have their gods, we have ours. One is as good as another and it all works out the same in the end." I think we all try very hard to and are very careful to see how what we teach (both directly and inadvertently) could affect the future for our children. I have had conversations with people who where brought up in very religious Christian homes, but who now do not believe in God at all. They were raised with the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, Santa Clause, wishing over candles on a birthday cake, and many other things. As they matured, they found out these things were all false, even though their parents assured them of their validity when they were younger. They gradually, unconsciously began to lump every "belief without absolute proof" into the same category. I know other people who say they have spent their adult lives drifting from one religion to another in search of the Truth. Some have told me that when they were younger in school, they did lots of fun projects in school when they were studying the different world religions. At the time, they were strong in the Christian beliefs of their families, but they just thought these other religions and gods were just kind of neat. At the time it did not cause them to go against the teachings they'd been getting in church and from their families, but both have told me that it had a strong influence over them and kind of stuck in their minds. Every culture had very strong beliefs and faith in their gods, just as we have very strong beliefs and faith in our God. They were apparently very good at putting themselves in the shoes of the people they were studying, just as my son appears to be. Right now, my son knows the other gods are completely false and he has talked about how silly those people were to believe such foolishness. But, even though he can rationalize it in words, he very well MAY end up years from now FEELING that since we cannot absolutely prove that our beliefs are right, then our beliefs are not superior to the beliefs of anyone else. He may not end up feeling that way, but to me it is just not worth the risk. I introduce my children to other cultures as they come up in our Bible study, but I no longer go into any detail with them (at this age, but I will do much more later with them). I'm not trying to convince people not to teach the ancients to young children. It does not affect every child the same. The concern for me is that we have no way of knowing how what we teach them now will affect them in the future, and my husband and I have decide to approach their history education differently. On the lighter side of it, my children just don't get as excited about ancient kings and pyramids as they do about explorers and pioneers. At this young age, I want my children to really get EXCITED about learning everything they can. If they get excited about the things we study in history now, they'll be much more likely to continue to love learning about it later, even when the topics don't thrill them as much. Right now, they're having a blast pretending to be Jedediah Smith, Daniel Boone, Sam Adams and Paul Revere. They're turning into little "history buffs" and they don't even know that we've been having history classes. For them, this is just a fun part of their day. That's good enough for me! :)

We tried SOTW, too. Like you, my boys were bored. They had fun with the activities and additional books I read to them, but they really didn't learn a thing from the SOTW book. I think it was because they could not relate to it in the least. I had it all planned out how I wanted to cover history --- chronologically starting from Creation when my boys were in 1st grade. I gathered lots of books that I thought were great supplemental reading. But, no matter how engaging the books seemed to me, and no matter how wonderful the pictures were, my boys just could not relate. My husband reads to the boys every evening while I clean up the kitchen and wash dishes. He started reading a biography about someone like Daniel Boone or someone from that period. The book was written for much older children, but my boys LOVED it! They would act out parts of the book as they played, use expressions they'd heard from the book, and ask questions. Then I found TruthQuest History. At first I was a bit worried about covering only American History in grades 1-5, but the more my husband and I discussed it, the better I felt about the program. We can still teach them things about ancient civilizations as they come up in our Bible studies, but we don't need to dwell on the darkness of those pagan people. I think that is too much for such young children. They need to be grounded in our Biblical belief system before they get caught up in others. One of the things that constantly bothered me while using SOTW was that I freqently had to stop at the points where pagan ideas were discussed and explain to my children why we don't do that. One of my sons asked me how we know that we're right and they are wrong because they believed in their gods just as much as we believe in the One God of the Bible. I think he was beginning to believe that one belief system is as good as any other. Children believe what they are told. If we read about all these pagan beliefs, and do activities about pagan beliefs (like mummifying a chicken or building pyramids), then those ideas really stick with children. I began to wonder why I would teaching them all these things while they're so young if I don't want them to believe it. I don't teach them about witchcraft because I don't want them to think about it right now. Children, as they get older will eventually be exposed to many things that oppose our beliefs, but that doesn't mean that we should expose them to such things while they are still very young. I know there are many people who totally disagree with me, but those are my reasons for quitting SOTW less than halfway through the first volume. If other cultures had been presented differently, without so much about their religious beliefs, I think it would have been much better for this age group. But, it is hard to separate some cultures from their religion. I recently got my first TruthQuest guide, and it looks wonderful. The parents can choose any books on any of the topics that they would like to read with their children. You are not locked in to specific books and other resources, and you can do as much or as little with the program as you want. We already have quite a few books, and my boys are getting excited about history now. I realized that is the point. At this age, we don't need to cover everything in history and they don't need to remember every detail. They need to have fun with it and love learning. The best way to achieve that with my young boys is to present history in such a way that they can relate to it.

We've only done Biology 1 so far, but we absolutely loved it! The books are wonderful! The Noeo program itself does not overwhelm you with experiments, but there are plenty of activities and experiments suggested in the books if you want to do more. I like the 4 day schedule because it allows time for us to do nature study on the 5th day, or do extra things like read from another book, lapbooking, more experiments and projects. We've tried Apologia and have all the elementary books. Although my boys loved the activities, and enjoyed most of the readings, it was just way too much for the early elementary age children. We might try it when they're a couple of years older, or use the books to supplement Noeo when we want to learn more about a topic that Apologia covers. Noeo offers so much variety that my boys never got bored. With the different books and different writing styles of the authors in the Noeo curriculum, there is plenty of variety to keep it interesting. As someone else mentioned, when you describe the program, it sounds dry. But, once you see the books and start using the program, it really comes alive. Another thing I loved about it was that it works for children of different ages and learning styles. My boys are total opposites, but they both loved the Noeo science and learned so much. The main thing I want for my children now is for them to learn to love science, and be curious about their world. As they get older, we'll formalize things a bit more, but for now, it's all about enjoying science. The details will come later.

Thank you for the replies. On a side note, your locations are interesting. My husband is from KS, and I was born and raised in GA. Now we live in the Alaskan bush. No roads to this part of AK, so we have to charter a plane a few times a year for groceries, mail and supplies. There are a few homeschooling families in the area who are Christians (we are not --more below), and quite a few vacation cabins with frequent visitors on a nearby lake. As you can imagine, it is not really possible for us to join any kind of in-person group of Hebrew speakers, but Reneek and alpidarkomama, I greatly appreciate your suggestions. alpidarkomama, to answer your questions, I am part Jewish but was raised Christian. My husband and I hold to Jewish beliefs, but because we live so remote, we cannot officially convert. (I realize there are many strong opposing views surrounding that topic, and it is not my intention for it to become a confrontational issue here.) I would like for my boys to someday be able to accurately read Hebrew Scriptures so that they do not have to rely on the various interpretations of English translators. Of course, I would also like for them to speak, write and read modern Hebrew fluently so that they can easily communicate should they ever visit or officially convert and move to Israel. Currently, we have a program from Behrman House: Shalom Alef Bet, and Shalom Uvrachah with the Interactive CD. So far, we have only gone through most of Shalom Alef Bet, but it seems so dry. I think Shalom Uvrachah will be more interesting and helpful because of the interactive CD. But, a friend in the Lower 48 who has been studying Biblical Hebrew for many years suggested I find something else. So, now that you know a little more about "where we're coming from and where we want to go" so to speak, maybe that will help with recommendations. I'd also like to teach more Jewish and Israeli history to my boys, preferably using real books that are fun for that age group. They are early elementary. Ester Maria, I saw that you and I were posting about the same time, so I edited this to say thank you for that suggestion. Money is very, very tight, and I don't know if I would be able to use the program you suggested but it sounds wonderful. There seem to be different opinions on whether to start with modern or Biblical Hebrew. I see both sides. If any of you have other suggestions now, that would be great. Thank you all very much for your replies. Jenny

:iagree: The Astronomy is written for the younger children, but the others are too much (IMO) until the child is about 3rd grade level, at least to get the most out of it. All of us learn so much when we read the books, but I think my boys sort of zone in and out. The activities are great fun, and my boys live for those, and as another poster said, the pictures are fantastic and so engaging. They really make my boys want to learn more about the subjects. That's why I'm definitely keeping my books, and on a low shelf for my boys to use at will. We very well may come back to them in a year or so as our science curriculum. Even though we did lots of extras with Astronomy and went at a slow pace, we easily finished in 21 weeks of school. If a family started the series when the child was a little older, it would still be easy to cover the entire series at a leisurely pace. Jenny

I'm trying to decide on a Hebrew program for my young boys (early elementary). I'd like to learn, as well, but I have a terrible time learning languages. Eventually, I'd like them to learn Biblical Hebrew. Would it be fairly easy to learn Biblical Hebrew later, once they have learned modern Hebrew pretty well, or, since Biblical Hebrew is really my more important goal, should we start with a Biblical Hebrew program? Which program (s) do you suggest? Thank you, Jenny

We like Getty and Dubay for learning how to form the letters. It's an Italic program. Once they can form the letters, we switch to Penny Gardener.

Hi, I recently joined. Looks like there are a few of us from Alaska trickling in from time to time. My family and I live in the bush and are "independent" homeschoolers, meaning that we aren't using any of the government funded school programs. There are pros and cons to both. Glad to see some Alaskans here. Jenny

Have you looked at Living Math? http://livingmath.net/ We have used one of her Lesson Plans so far and enjoyed it, but that might be more than you want to do for the summer. But, on the website and the yahoo group, you'll find lots of wonderful math readers (living books) and math games that are lots of fun, educational, and will help keep skills sharp. Best wishes, and have fun! :001_smile: Jenny