I finished Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Heaney this week and thoroughly enjoyed it. The review is up on my blog. I have sitting and waiting for me Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Verne, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Ahab's Wife. Hopefully, I'll finish at least one this week and stay on track. 2012 Book list 2. Beowulf by Heaney 1. Cut Your Grocery Bills in Half by Economizers

We used it a few years ago with a 3rd and 1st grader. The suggested books listed on a given topic can range anywhere from K-12 grade. Some of the commentary went over my 1st grader's head and I paraphrased for her. Overall, it was a great year, and we really enjoyed it. I've been having my 2nd grader tag along with his sisters this year using the topics in the guides for older students, but I think I'll move him back to the younger guides next year and just focus on American history. HTH

The Latin Alive series teaches classical pronunciation. I've never had any problem with the grammar lessons having worked through all of LfC and half of the first Latin Alive lesson Actually the instructor usually makes a point to pronounce a word using both pronunciations during the lessons, although it's possible he forgets on occasion. We use the classical pronunciation so I've never paid it a lot of attention. HTH

The 2 year schedule is for students grades 3-6, and the one year for 7th and up. We do it over 2 years for 5th grade and 6th grade. HTH

Our week 18 is up!

Ours is up!

Our week 17 is up! Scroll down a few posts and I finally got around to week 16 as well.

I only made it about halfway last year, but I'm hoping to do better this time around. At least I'm off to a good start. My 3yo fell asleep in my lap so I squeezed in 2 hours of uninterrupted reading time this afternoon. I read Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half by Economides and reviewed it on my blog. Up next Beowulf by Heaney and probably a reread of Sink Reflections by Cilley.

I'm in! I need to lose about 20 lbs or so.

Ours is up!

Our week 14 is up!

Our week 13 is up!

The core has two schedules in the back a forty week one for younger students and a twenty week one for older students. The first six models are in the back of the book after that they can be found online with a little effort (http://www.mainlesson.com is a good site for this). The schedule lists the name of the model and the author, so for week 12 for examples it says The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships (Colum) so it is a chapter from The Children's Homer by Colum. I was pressed for time when my oldest was starting Homer so I opted to purchase a pdf of the Homer models from CW. It was worth 99 cents to me for the time savings. Other than a thesaurus, I don't use any additional books. Each new skill lesson has directions and then a gray box with a step by step example of what you are supposed to be doing. I find that to be sufficient for me. HTH

Ours is up!

I'm well behind for the year, but did add 3 books to my done list this week: #23 Five Children and It by Nesbit #22 The Nine Tailors by Sayers #21 On the Incarnation of Our Lord by Athanasius This week I'm working on The Dragon and the Raven by Henty, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede, The Book of Dragons by Nesbit, and The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien. Hopefully, I'll finish the latter two and maybe slip in something entirely unrelated to school for fun.

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Ours is up!

We are doing some of the writing currently, not all. I'm planning to slowly increase it over the year as we get into more of a flow. I don't have any samples to post right now. It would appear that her unit 1 assignment vanished (most likely was accidentally recycled). She should finish unit 2 in the next couple of weeks. I was planning to post it on my blog and give an update on how it's working for us. Yes, we just use the core for Homer as well. My prep work is printing the model, writing down which lessons/pages we are covering for the week using the schedule in the back for the analysis, and dividing the writing assignment up into daily chunks. Each day, I open the core guide to the lesson and go over the skills in the core. Then, I help DD work to use the skills on a portion of the model. I also assign a portion of the writing assignment to be accomplished.

No we have not dropped it. My 7th grader is in Diogenes Maxim, my 5th in Homer, and my son will hopefully start Aesop next year. Aesop is not very time consuming. I usually schedule 30 minutes for 4 days a week, but the full time is not usually required every day. Technically, you wouldn't need separate spelling or grammar. We have programs that we like, so we stick with those. Instead of spelling in Aesop, we work on alphabetizing, dictionary skills, and thesaurus skills. We use CW to reinforce grammar. I don't consider the student book or instructor guide to be essential. We use just the core here. Thanks!!

Our week 10 is up!

We have one up this week!

Our brief look at our week 9 is up. I did manage a few pictures this time.

CW is a solid writing program. It is going to still be time intensive for the Older Beginners core. I know for the Homer core we allow about 50 minutes a day for 4 days a week. However, once you move on to the Diogenes core, it is less time and teacher intensive. (We're doing about 5-10 min. of instruction and 15-20 of independent work for 4 days this year with my oldest.) For us, the time put into the Homer core has been well worth it. I've seen a definite improvement in my oldest DD's writing and that improvement has carried over into her writing for other subjects as well. HTH

I posted a very brief report without pictures. Hopefully, I'll be back to posting pictures next week.

:iagree: The DVDs are excellent. This is what we do as well. If you're trying it without the DVDs, you're going to need to work ahead of your kids to learn the material yourself before explaining it to them. Lesson 4 is basically about introducing the noun endings for the first declension. You just need to memorize the names of the five cases and the endings and be able to explain that case shows how a word is used in the sentence (ie, subject, direct object, etc.) At a later point in the book, it will start explaining what the different cases are used for. HTH