My middle son did the Sonlight version last year at age 11 -- he loved it. He did the SL workpages along with it. My next son did the Guest Hollow version last year at age 6-7. He says he is going to be a scientist when he grows up. This year he wanted to start off with more of the human body, so I bought him the Apologia book. He likes the book a lot and the experiments are interesting. I think the notebooking book is a little -- well, boring for a 7-year-old. Some copywork, word searches, copy a fact here and there, fold a booklet. The plastic body cut-out seemed worth the price of the notebook and that is about all he used. I am thinking of ordering the Jr. Notebook for my son to use as an end of the year review of his studies. In comparing the programs, I do not think the Apologia books are worthy of upper elementary school, but that is just me. If science has been sparse for your son so far, then maybe you would think differently! In any case, I would highly recommend the Sonlight program. It is very full and totally interesting. Apologia is just 1 book. Sonlight is 11 books if you do the 5-day program, plus a DVD. But Apologia is affordable by anyone and Sonlight, well, it's a little on the spendy side. I've had 4 kids so far do the Sonlight program for human body -- it's been a winner here. ;)

Background: Son had vision issues (at age 8 -- "Mom, why did God give us 2 eyes when we can only see out of one?" groan) He did phonics with maybe 6 different programs before learning to read. He is now age 12, currently reading at grade level (Sonlight 6). Writing is, well, like this: sentence, sentence, sentence, sentence -- "How many sentences does it have to be to make a paragraph? Okay." sentence, sentence. DONE. Most sentences are 5 or 6 words, very elementary in ability to make a cohesive paragraph, let alone anything that would require multiple paragraphs. This is child #5, and I've been through more writing curriculums than I care to count. Can WWE help him? Will he think it babyish? Is there a placement test of sorts to figure out where to place him? Is it too elementary? Then I look at MCT online. Sigh. How can I choose between these 2 based on online viewing? They both look so good. I need to concentrate on writing with my ds starting this semester and into next year. Focus, dedication, lots of practice. Advice?

Yes, I meant what to say to my kids. I mean, I do talk to them and often point out the wisdom in achieving academic goals versus giving up and closing doors. My have graduated 2 from college, have 1 in college and 3 still homeschooling, with my youngest at age 7. We've seen so many examples of kids giving up before they even get started. I do like to collect quotes and spout them off now and again. I find them incredibly helpful at times to lighten up my seriousness, so that my "encouragement" doesn't cross that line into mom is nagging again, kwim? So I originally posted my favorites: Work first, play second. You know what my grandfather always said? Get back to work! (from the movie, Cool Runnings) Whenever you decide you can't do it, you are closing a door that is really hard to reopen. So, if any of you have any more lame but useful quotes I can add to my collection, I'd love to hear them! ;)

Well, I tried to delete the thread, but couldn't figure that out. Maybe I'm just feeling a little bit a member of my non-achieving community and you guys are out of my league. Your arguments are so well-versed. I wish my kids would have the chance to listen to some of you on this board. Maybe that should be my plan. That they hang out here to find out that they really are NOT the overachievers that my homeschool community thinks they are.

Thank you for this. You won't mind if I copy this down and share it with my Careers class next semester? We are using "Do Hard Things" by the Harris bros. as part of the class. I agree with you perfectly on this. ;)

I have lived in 3 states now where no testing of any sort was required of homeschoolers K-12 or to graduate. We have been "proud" of our homeschool freedoms that allow this. We are free to low achievement if we want that. I have known too many non-testing, non-achieving, minimum-wage earning "graduates" of home school. Your claim that "every single standardized test shows that homeschoolers, as a group, outperform public schoolers" assumes that homeschoolers as a whole take these tests, and I would not say that is generally true. I realize in Wisconsin and Maine we may have lived in backwards areas, as these are backward states and Maine is barely on the map and all, but I have also lived in majorly populated central California. In my experience of 15+ years homeschooling, I have seen maybe 1 out of 10 students even attempt a college entrance exam. So to compare homeschoolers taking tests with public schoolers taking tests, is irrelevant to the low expectations I have seen. Testers vs. testers are easily compared. I know too many non-testers. I still say I have seen many -- too many -- mothers with too many children give up the effort in say, middle school, and never quite their act back together for the ones following. Low expectations -- call them graduated. But most of these kids I have known have low expectations of themselves as well, and I call that a shame. "Too many children" can even be 2 or 3. Homeschooling is a long-term effort. My youngest (I have 6) does NOT deserve the short end of the stick. Because of the freedom from testing, many homeschoolers I have known just give up trying to even keep their kids on a path of achievement, whatever that path may be. We are free to just be, and some believe that just being is good enough. But again, I live in the woods of Maine -- maybe I am just among the backwards people. Your experience with homeschool scholars may be different. I come here to meet with achievers around the world. I do not know many in my real life.

This is where low expectations come in. Low expectations -- the bane of ambitious, academic homeschoolers as mentioned above. Too many homeschoolers I know do NOT challenge their children to excel in any area and therefore, do not accomplish "what they are capable of doing." To "graduate" homeschool to them means to pass the time and avoid the public school. Far too many homeschoolers have not caught on to this idea that our main job is to challenge our children. To work hard, as someone said -- daily, consistently, making wise choices every day. I am my kids' greatest cheerleader! But that implies that they are trying to achieve something, anything. It is my choice to require that they excel as best they can in academics until they have chosen either academics or some other choice (art/technical skill) on their own. Low expectations are the devil's workshop in the homeschool world. The mind is a terrible thing to waste.

We've upgraded the past 2 years to 300 and then 500. This year my boys are getting Snaptricity (7-yo) and the Rover kit (12-yo). I think these have been among the best "toy investments" I've made and are often used around here.

I am just finishing up covering this with our co-op as a 1 semester class. I used the Hewitt syllabus with their tests. Totally doable! We added the bacteria experiment kit and the food chemistry experiment kit sold by Home Science Tools, along with the handwashing glo-germ lotion. That added a lot to the "fun factor" of the class. Edited to add that the Hewitt syllabus is for one semester - 2 quarters. Hope this helps,

Well, maybe it's not the teens you dislike so much, but the Facebook. After all, it is a place where the goal is to be all about me. Me and my page, me and my pictures, me and how many friends I have. Facebook sells -- or rather gives away for free -- the idea that life is all about ME and my friends and my social agenda. I feel totally opposite about teens. I do really enjoy being a influence of "normalness" in a world gone crazy. I find conversations with teens among my most enjoyable activities (I am not counting all those nagging moments I do with my own!).

I used this last year with my son and he LOVED it! He is pulling those books off the shelf all the time. Loved it, loved it. Thank you Jenn!!

I watched the teacher DVD set for IEW a year ago, borrowed from a friend. Now I am ready to buy a set for my 7th grader to do lessons from. What is it I should buy?

I'm just a little confused on the audible.com book purchases. If I sign up for a year and get 1 free credit per month, I understand that credit is for 1 book. The thing I'm not sure of is this: Is there a limit on how many books you can purchase per month in addition to the free book? Or is it just pay the monthly fee and get a book per month? That is really not clear on their website, or today is just not my day for figuring things out! :tongue_smilie:

My son only got headaches when we did phonics. I never really put 2 and 2 together. We did 5 or 6 phonics programs because he moaned and groaned and it was too hard and his head hurt. He could work from a chalkboard or orally, but when reading from the book, it was tough. He didn't really read until about 7. When he was 7 -- yes 7!!!! He asked me one day, Mom, so why did God give us 2 eyes when you can only see out of one? (Ummm, WHAT???) Well, if I look through this eye, I can see everything, but if I look through THIS eye, I can't see anything. So why did God give us 2 eyes? It was a very bad mommy moment. Make sure your child can see things far away equally with both eyes. Together and individually. Turns out my son had lazy eye without a visible "cross-eye" look. He ended up wearing a patch for several years and it helped some, but it was too late to help much. Reading tortured him because his eyes were so uneven. The closer the print, the harder to see. Today at 12, he has 20/90 vision in one eye and that is the best it will ever get. He did 4 months of vision therapy and it helped him tremendously. I am so thankful that was available in our neck of the woods. He can read the smallest print, has no problems whatsoever and is on grade level with everything. Just don't stop trying to research the problem . . . that's all you can do. Blessings to you both!

You are an amazing woman. Just LOOKING at all that stuff was enough to make me cry. I'm thinking you're going to have a great year, being so on top of things already! ;)

For the past few years, I have done this for my kids and we all really like it: I copy the schedule pages and then bind them into 2 schedule books for the student, one for each semester. I use separate colors, so this year they look like this: week 1 IG - bright green week 1 LA - light yellow week 1 Science - deep golden yellow week 2 IG - bright green week 2 LA - light yellow week 2 Science - deep golden yellow Etc. So each week has 3 pages to flip through. They X out each thing as they do it. I do not like to set up a "working binder" of chunks of weeks because I lose stuff real easy. I'm working with 3 cores and keeping a handle on things gets tricky at times. I make copies of book notes and give those out along with each book. I am using the "36-week file system" for this. I am copying the notes and copying the maps for the 36-week file. It's a lot of copying, and yes, I could just divide up my binder but I've done that before and, well, I lose parts. I would like to end this year with my IGs still completely whole. I have been inspired by the idea of a whole week's worth of work in 1 file. I cut apart the IG notes (copies) so they are separated by the week. I am excited about this!! Plus in the copying, I can see where some week's notes have TONS more to read than other weeks (in Core 100), so I can plan accordingly.

Thank you for that Zaner-bloser link! That is exactly perfect and I am so excited to add that to my resources for this year! ;)

I have had to repurchase IG's many times to reuse purely because we lost huge chunks when trying to rearrange in smaller binders, etc., so I'd agree with being careful about that. I do copy the schedule sheet, though, and my kids get a copy of each week's plan. I do it on colored paper, different per child. They do like marking off what they have done. So I've already made my copies for the year and filed them in the 36 files per kid!

Year 1, I covered the United States using the States and Capital songs (these kids are young enough to not think the songs are cheesy). I read one Five in A Row book a week. We used flashcards and played drill games. I also used "Simply Stated" as a refernence and a couple of fact books. We covered 2 states per week with reviews. We started on the east coast (we're in Maine) and made our way across. Last year, we used Five in a Row books the first semester. With a one-hour class, my goal was to cover the art technique and "techniques writers can use." Every week I made a page that I put in a plastic sleeve in a binder, and we often reviewed the books by paging through the things we had learned. I tried to have a weekly art activity to go along. Second semester we covered Maine Studies. I picked out a picture book a week and the kids made a page (color, watercolor, pencil, dot-to-dot -- whatever I could find to go along with the topic), and at the end, I bound the pages into a book for each child. This year -- same idea. A book a week. We'll be traveling around the world this time, learning the continents and countries. Making a notebook page and binding it at the end of the year. It's a really simple way to have a class. Have fun!

WOW. Thank you for this thread!! I've got my files set up - 36 x 3. One thing that just naturally came about as I've been filing and sorting and planning -- I used an index card tossed in a file with a note on it. For example, we got our CAT tests back, and I usually forget to plan these in my schedule. So I tossed an index card in weeks 35 and 36 that say "CAT testing." I want my daughter to sign up for the SAT question of the day, so I tossed a card in Week 1 saying that. I figure I am doing all the separating of workbooks now, the Sonlight schedules copied and filed and everything else divided up. As the year goes on, and I open up the next few files to refresh my mind on what's coming up, well, I'll see those notes. I am so stinkin' excited about this file plan. After 16 years of homeschooling, I cannot BELIEVE I never thought of it!! :tongue_smilie:

My 2nd grader studied the human body last year using the books and schedule from guesthollow.com. This was in addition to Sonlight K science. And he is an accelerated reader and read most of his brother's SL5 human anatomy books last year as well. He's got the Some Body game and about 6 human body part models from Timberdoodle that he does over and over (brain, hand, etc.) This year he wants to study astronomy and human body again. And he wants to do some "real science" that engineers do. He builds things with the Snap Circuits kit and calls himself an engineer. Not that he'll be one, but that he is one. I am willing to feed this interest. I have purchased SL science 2 and Apologia Astronomy. I am looking at Rainbow Resource and will probably buy the rest of the "Let's Read and Find Out Science" book set that he didn't do last year. The books he read from the guesthollow schedule, he has read over and over. I am not used to this sort of interest!! Compared to this child, my older kids were just average in science interest! Suggestions for additional ideas? Especially in the human body department?

My 7-yo wants to study astronomy next year. Your scheduled really blesses my socks off today!! Thank you so much. Perfectly awesome! :D

Does anyone have a source for lesson plans for this book? A daily/weekly schedule somewhere online? After years and years of using Sonlight, I feel somewhat helpless at just "doing a curriculum" without a schedule. ;)

In my world, having taught a number of co-op classes, I see the deadline issue too often becoming the impetus to lowering expectations by the parent -- in other words, we are not "legal" by the state to give grades, so the grades given by the teacher are only "suggested." The parent can give whatever grade they want on the transcript. So when the teacher finds students not meeting deadlines, or missing assignments altogether for a variety of excuses, then the parent gives them an 'A' anyway . . . . well, that student goes off to college learning nothing about commitments and deadlines. I will not be that kind of parent. My kids start about 2nd or 3rd grade -- we work from a list. The commitment at that early age is to complete the work. Maybe it gets shifted to tomorrow, but we don't "skip" the work just because our day got away from us. Sometimes we do 2 days worth so we can have Friday off. That type of thing is learning to meet a deadline. I am not sure it means keep this date, do or die in the elementary grades, so much as it means we do school every day, we work from a list and we complete our work. We have weekly goals and celebrate, however small, when we reach them. I think it is more of a commitment issue than a "deadline" issue. There are so many attitudes assumed by one who doesn't meet deadlines. Disrespect is number 1. Finishing what you start is a huge issue for all ages (I love that about my husband and his home projects!) At the college level (or in co-ops), it also is respect for the teacher, for the school, for the money being paid out for their education (their parents). Sorry for carrying on. It's a pet peeve for me, too. I have seen waaayyy too many homeschoolers turn not meeting deadlines into doing very little school at all. Use a list and require it to be used. That will take you far! ;)

Thanks for your reply! It seems a hard thing to think about for the entire high school years -- to apply before determining whether or not you would be eligible. The closest recruiting office we have is an hour away -- so I guess that will be a start. My son is 13. The eye condition is amblyopia. His is a mild case, as he is not cross-eyed at all. He reads above grade level and as I said, is extremely coordinated sports-wise -- plays baseball (pitcher) and shoots a bow and arrow. He has done a lot of vision therapy (and juggling!). The bone condition is called multiple hereditary exostoses. As he is well into the final growth spurt, all of the extra bones that he will grow have already shown themselves. The bones do not grow after the growth spurt stops at age 16-18 or whatever. Thank you for your help! It is most informative! -- Joan