I have a 7" Kindle Fire. We need another ereader of some sort, so we're considering passing mine down so that I can get a 8.9" Fire, or maybe even the big Google Nexus. I'm wondering how difficult the larger ones are to hold one-handed. I do read on my Fire at night, one handed. I'd be irritated if I could no longer do that. I do seem to have a touch of mild arthritis in my hands, too. I plan to hop down to Staples to hold one myself, but I was also hoping to hear from someone with actual experience that lasted more than 5 minutes in a store. :-)

That's cool. I think the newest books my library has, not counting bodice rippers, came out in 1968.

If you're concerned about your skill and knowledge, you could work on improving your writing at the same time. Both of you can do the narration, then you can talk about the differences, correct mistakes on both papers that either of you sees. I *know* this can be difficult, especially with a baby in the house and another on the way ((hugs)). Another option is to find someone else who can read her work and offer suggestions. You could post some of her work in the Writing Workshop for others to comment on: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/forum/20-k-8-writing-workshop/. Another option is to not worry too much about it just yet. As you teach skills over the years, as she reads quality literature, and as she continues to write, her writing should continue to improve. She's only 8. Right now, encouragement and continued practice may be what she needs most.

This is not what you asked, and is highly opinionated, so feel free to skip it. It depends on what you mean by journal prompts. I just did a quick Google, and the prompts I got varied widely. I saw some that I felt were essay topics, not journal prompts. Most journal prompts, though, seem to be creative writing. I would not use them, especially for children who already don't like writing. Many people think that if we're just asking children how they feel about things, what they think about things, about events that have happened to them, that these are going to be easy for them to write about. But this type of writing is not easy for all kids. Even worse, it doesn't do anything to actually teach children how to get those thoughts down on paper. For many kids, a journal entry is a difficult assignment with absolutely no instructions given on how to complete the assignment. I despised this kind of exercise in school. I love narration. It's gentle. It provides the subject matter. It presents a model to follow, complete with vocabulary and advanced sentence structures. Start with the shortest Aesop's fables you can find, and even the most writing phobic of students can begin without frustration. If I were going to force my children to do creative writing, I would give them a choice on the subject.

Narnia and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. These were both childhood favorites of mine that my children have also enjoyed. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, and The Wind in the Willows are three of my personal favorites for classic children's literature that I never read until I was an adult. Yes, my children enjoyed them, too. :-) Harry Potter Holes Red Sails to Capri History and historical fiction my boys have loved: Sonlight's book called Incans, Aztecs, and Mayans. I consider it dry, but my three oldest boys have all absolutely loved this book. D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths The Bronze Bow The Golden Goblet The Boy and the Samurai The King's Shadow Adam of the Road The Shakespeare Stealer If All the Swords in England 12 yos loves a series called Crafts of the Ancient World. He's read Crafts and Culture of the Ancient Greeks and Crafts and Culture of the Vikings. He also loves Hiccup the Viking.

Now I feel all boring. The most frivolous thing I've purchased for school is comp books with the pictures on the covers instead of the black marble ones. And the ones I bought were on sale, so they were cheaper. :-)

I think I saw the other thread, but I don't remember the details. I handed my son (the math hater) the sample chapter, told him to read it, and asked if he'd like to try it. He didn't seem too excited about it at first, but he did want to try it. After he started it, he began to enjoy the stories. He still doesn't like math, but he does prefer LOF to any other math program we've tried. He understands the concepts, and he retains the knowledge. I say let her read a sample and see if she's interested. We have not supplemented with Fractions and up. It's only with the lower levels that I'm not comfortable using the program except as a supplement.

There aren't many problems, maybe 5 to 10. However, the thing that convinced me that Fred can work just fine even without lots of practice problems is when my math hating son came and told me a complicated bit of mathematics while telling me about the story. Years later, my boys continue to retain the knowledge well enough to keep progressing. Having said that, I'm not a fan of the elementary and intermediate series. We will only use them as supplements. My third son loves the books, but he was not demonstrating any understanding or retention of the material when only using LOF Elementary.

I know this is going to come across as all sanctimonious and priggish :biggrinjester:, but in all honesty, money would not change the way we do things. We might travel some, but unless we gave up the farm, we couldn't much. I'd never give up homeschooling just so my children could make contacts for future opportunities of questionable and arguable value. But then, our goals for homeschooling don't include an absolute desire for college, and we don't define "success" as "a really good job." I believe we're providing an education that can lead to those things if they are important to my children. However, I will be happy if they're all well-educated plumbers, electricians, and farmers. Even when the economy tanks, people's toilets still need work.

I'm going to use a different example, one that doesn't have any numbers with the same digits. 61 x 42 Multiply units, 2 x 1. The last digit can be written down. The tens are mentally "carried." Multiply units by tens, 4 x 1 and 2 x 6. Add these together, plus the tens carried from the previous step. Write down the final digit, and mentally carry any hundreds. Multiply tens, 4 x 6. Add the hundreds carried from the previous step. Note that each step is simply what you'd be doing when writing it down line by line. The difference is that the final step of adding is done with the multiplication rather than saved as a final step. When I practiced this regularly, I could do up to 4 digits by 4 digits, but it eventually gets really hard for me to hold the numbers in my head.

I don't worry about what my children may be missing, not even if I completely ignore any negatives which might be present in a public school classroom. In my opinion, family relationships developed in a home that welcomes the Lord, in an atmosphere where real books are valued over textbooks and learning is presented as a delight rather than a job, trumps school friends, field trips, and extracurricular activities. Nah, we don't do it perfectly, but at least I can look at our goals with approval.

I blogged recently about how I would do things on a budget if I had to start over from scratch. Full disclosure: I do mention using LA products that I sell, though ironically, I didn't mention them by name in this post. :-D I came up with a total of $1370 for twelve years, with nothing to re-purchase, which averages out to $115 per year. I would spend the extra money on awesome books not available through the library. http://barefootmeandering.com/blog/archives/2013/07/if-i-were-starting-homeschooling-over-from-scratch/

Here's boy#2's schedule. Those pics at the top are ZOMBIE unicorns. I'm not sure what's wrong with my kids. Older boy's has a line of TARDISes and says "History is Timey Wimey." Who says schedules can't be... interesting?

I recently gave each of my oldest two boys a single page with their school plans for the year on it. It's a one week schedule which we'll repeat approximately 36 times with varying degrees of variation. :-) It tells them which days they should do which subjects, how many pages of each spine to read and when, and reminds them to choose additional reading from our master reading list. I never attempted to micro-manage subjects like math, but I used to schedule all the reading out, 180 days with places to check off each reading assignment. My children are happier now that I've relaxed, and weirdly enough, boys #2 and #3 actually seem to read more now.

My nine year old works independently in several subjects, so it's not a myth. :-) His brothers did, too. But we do use programs that don't require tons of mom time, and when I'm pregnant, I do say things like, "Go do math while mommy takes a nap." My oldest wanted more hand-holding. I told him to suck it up, do the work, and call me if he needed me. He found out pretty quickly that he didn't actually need me constantly. I did have to force the issue with him, but his brothers just kind of fell into it as a normal part of 3rd grade.

I've not used Cornerstone, but this sums up why we didn't stick with Omnibus for long. I felt that both the text and the books were hyper reformed. If there had just been some reformed choices here and there, we might have been able to substitute, or it might have opened the door towards discussion. As it was, everything about the program has a reformed slant, and since we don't lean that way, it just didn't work. I would like to point out that those of us who aren't reformed also believe what we see clearly spelled out in God's Word. We simply have a completely different understanding of what is clearly spelled out. When I hear the word "reformed," I think Calvin, and I think TULIP. I'm not sure if one can be reformed and not believe in Calvin's interpretation of Scripture.

It's forty pages, so I think you can be forgiven for the quick glance. :-D I have trouble marking them by reading level. I marked primary sources and adult level non-fiction as HS, but my 12yos can probably handle some, or all, of them. A couple of books caught my eye because of content, though the reading level is such that my 9yos could handle them fine. It's tricky and it makes my head hurt.

To my knowledge, only one of them is a picture book, and it's marked in the description. High school level books that I added specifically for my oldest begin with HS. The rest appear to be what I'd call "family read aloud" kind of level. As we read, I'll probably make notes of any that don't quite fit that general category. Ficbot, thanks for the additional books! I'll work on getting those added.

I wanted to add a geography specific study, so I worked up a list of possible books. The books include descriptions which I copied and pasted from Amazon. The boys will continue their normal history studies, but we'll cover some of these books as read alouds, they may do some as readers, then we'll add some free online maps. The focus is on countries that we simply don't read a lot about during normal history studies, though there are still many countries not represented at all on the list. We already cover U.S. geography, so the only contiguous U.S. books which I added are Newbery Award winners which take place in the U.S. http://barefootmeandering.com/images/WorldGeographyLit.pdf Eventually, the list will be on the page in my sig, but I haven't gotten it added yet. If you have any suggestions or want to point out mistakes or twaddle, just let me know! There are almost 200 books on the list, and I have never seen most of them. In particular, I'd love book suggestions for countries which aren't represented here.

What you're describing, though, is having children figure out the letter/phonogram sounds for themselves instead of being explicitly taught. I honestly don't understand why you seem to say that phonogram instruction is completely unnecessary, but then acknowledge that phonetic awareness is important in reading. I'd rather teach it because no, not all kids can make those connections without help. I do understand how shapes can help in reading instruction; I've actually read the sentence "A rolling stone gathers no moss" just by the shape of the sentence and my knowledge of the sentence. However, I don't understand the argument that a word outline is more concrete than a phonogram. A useful teaching aid? Sure. More concrete? How? Besides which, in the end, looking at "cat," saying "cat," and recognizing "cat" in another word is really not any different than teaching "ph," saying "/f/," and recognizing "ph" in "phone." It's a recognition that combinations of letters make specific sounds, which is what phonogram instruction targets.

For the record, "ough" is a phonogram. When we talk about systematic phonogram instruction, we mean that we're having our children memorize these pieces of words from an early age. Yes, it can speed up the process of reading. But I don't have to teach things like "ent" because it's just a blend of letters.

Because if you're right, then children who have been taught strictly through phonics will still attain instant recognition of words through reading practice. But if the research that I've read is right, the children who have had too much focus on sight words and not enough on phonics are often at a disadvantage. No one (whom I would consider sensible) argues that phonics will disadvantage children in the long run. Indeed, even those here who argue that sight words are helpful aren't suggesting that no phonics instruction should take place, even if it's just teaching the basic sounds of the letters.

I agree with MotherOfBoys about Math Mammoth, but I am a Saxon hater and we use MM. :-) MM is also much cheaper and since you can buy the PDFs, you buy once and teach ALL of your children with it. I used Sonlight for two non-consecutive years when my oldest was little. The reason we don't use it now is that the books were hit or miss for us. We have Sonlight books that were so awesome, every single child has loved them. But there was also the stack that no one would touch, and having to substitute blows that whole pre-made schedule. So is Sonlight good? Yes, it's awesome. I can't use it. Others love all of their books, even the ones we hate. I also despise IEW. :-) These decisions are so opinion based that it's really hard to answer such generalized questions, so I'll say the following. If money is no object, and you really like the looks of the programs you named, buy them and use them this year. These are popular programs; many people love them, and you might, too. They will also give you an idea of what you like and don't like about various programs. Especially if you want some hand-holding this first year, do this. But if you'd like to go a different route, especially if money is tight, put together your own reading from free online books and the library. Use Story of the World as your spine. Add books from Heritage History and Main Lesson. Explore all of those great science books in the children's section of the library. Listen to SWB's lectures, especially the ones on writing. This way sounds harder, but it's really not, even when you're just getting started. Which way is better? Well, I prefer the latter, but I'm a control freak who has issues with authority, so other people's schedules drive me barking mad. :-) I also don't like comprehension questions and discussion questions, and I feel that it's best to replace such things with narrations and copywork. Because of this, history and science programs tend to be a big waste of money for me. I do much better with the WTM way of using a spine and adding good books.

We just study the same topics the same year. That means that although everyone is doing Modern history this year, they're doing it at different levels. The youngest two boys will have the same spine which someone will read aloud, while the older boys each has his own spine. With science, physics this year, my older three have spines to read on their own while my youngest son will mostly just see and hear about the experiments which we'll do together. Younger boys will read the same books that the older boys read, but perhaps at a slightly different age. We have a family Bible study, then there are individual ones depending on age. For things like Bible verses, it's easy to have just a master list of verses, and each child starts at the beginning and goes on to the end. Combining doesn't have to mean everyone does exactly the same thing all the time. Developmentally speaking, it's probably impossible to combine everything without holding one child back while pushing another too hard in some subjects. I think part of this question is the difference between using curricula and using books. For most subjects, we just use books, and they have a broad age-range. Curricula, OTOH, can be very tied to a developmental stage, and so must be used at the appropriate age. Our preferences--books vs. curricula--can dictate how much we can combine.

Honest to goodness, I have to keep a list, and it's written on their planning pages in my school comp book, too. I either have to look there, or I count on my fingers real quick. "Okay, he's ten. Six is first grade, seven is second,... Fifth grade! He's in fifth. Wait, why are you asking for that information?" LOVE the goat comment above, but, I have a goat. :-D