There's a constant emphasis in TWTM to give children in the grammar stage the tools they need in order to do abstract and creative work later on. That's what teaching the phonograms and spelling rules does. Giving children words without the information necessary to decode them is not a "feast of information." It's giving them tiny little dribbles. You want to talk feast of information, that's giving children the phonograms and 30 spelling rules. At that point, you've given them the information necessary to decode most of the English language. Sight words--dribble by dribble, one word at a time. Eventually--hopefully--the child will get an instinctive feel for the phonics so he won't spend the rest of his life guessing at words and struggling to read. Classical education, in my mind, is about using old methods because they've been proven to work. Teaching reading through sight words has NOT been proven to work. In fact, some research suggests that it can actually cause dyslexia. I've read other studies that indicate that children who are taught to guess are still guessing when they read as adults. And our literacy rates certainly don't indicate that there's anything to be gained from it. While some people learn to read through sight words with no issues, many others develop problems reading. The only research I've ever seen that suggested that phonics doesn't work was based on an idiotic definition of phonics--they seemed to be teaching only the most common sounds of the letters, and then pointing out that children get confused when they encounter words where the letters make other sounds. To this, I can only say, "Duh." Phonograms are completely concrete. Here's a group of letters, it sounds like this. Period. The symbols represent the sounds. If a five year old can't understand this, then we shouldn't expect him to understand that numbers represent something, either. 8 means ........ and PH means /f/. The sight word argument is based on this idea that eventually, we just look and words and recognize them, so we can cut out the middleman by just teaching children to recognize words by their shape. DH read recently that according to new research, this doesn't happen; it was a flawed premise from the beginning. We actually just begin to sound out words really fast with experience. Not all children can learn to read with sight word approaches, but barring any unusual issues, any child should be able to learn by learning the phonograms and spelling rules. Indeed, these are often the methods used with dyslexic children. *sigh* Sorry. I'm almost at the point of standing on my chair and shaking my fist. :-)

Homophone = same sound. They sound the same, but they have different meanings and may have different spellings. Homograph = same spelling. They are spelled the same, but they have different meanings and may have different sounds. Homonyms = homophones and homographs. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homonym

Another fan of the humble composition book here. They stand on the shelf neatly. They have enough pages to last for a while, but not so many that they'll get really ratty looking before the boys are done with them. (Except for boy#3, but that's an issue for another post.) For things that I need to print out, I'm printing the whole blessed thing at once and having it spiral bound. Not as neat as the comp books, but not too bad all in all. I've decided I don't believe in curricula that need pages added later. I think they lack moral fiber; they're all wishy-washy. I don't like comb binding. I thought I did, but my 2yod taught me otherwise. She can take one apart in far less time than it took me to put it together. Spiral binding, $4 each at Staples. I don't like 3-ring binders. Pages fall out. Pages which are taken out get put back in wrong. They do not stand neatly on my shelf. Instead, they fall over like teenagers at a kegger, spewing their contents everywhere.

Agree with farrarwilliams. In the past I've used Miquon with Singapore, and now we're using it with Math Mammoth. I've never tried to rearrange pages. For most programs, I feel like we get the most out of them when we use them as they were intended to be used. At the very least, it's easier than trying to coordinate them. :-) In this way, the programs provide review rather than reinforcement for each other, but the child still gets the benefit of learning multiple ways to do problems.

Someone asks ME what grades my kids are in, and I have no idea how to answer.

My little sister sent her kids to public school for a while. For two years, those poor teachers kept hearing, "My sister says..." I hope they listened. ;-)

I have a seriously opinionated response, so just ignore me if you want. :-) I don't believe in sight words. Teaching sight words is asking children to memorize hundreds of seemingly unrelated details in order to read. Instead, I believe in teaching phonograms. For instance, "igh" is three letter /ī/, so there's no need for confusion. All of my children have started studying phonograms and analyzing words now. Recently, ds9 asked me how to spell "laugh." I asked him which phonogram says /ä/, /af/. He said, "Oh, yeah," and wrote it correctly. My little guy is the same way. He has to be reminded sometimes what the phonograms say, but he does understand that certain groups of letters make very specific sounds. It makes it much easier to help him understand the basics because he's not having to deal with what he would otherwise see as a world of too many exceptions and not enough hard and fast rules. In the past, I believed that the Orton phonogram methods of teaching reading were probably the best, but I resisted teaching that way because all of the programs just seem too blasted complicated to get started. More and more, though, I can't imagine teaching reading any other way. This is the only way I know of that gives children ALL of the tools that they need to read and spell. My son did improve when he started ETC. I finally figured out, though, that it was just because he was regularly writing the words. I can get that without the $10 a book sticker price. Off my soapbox...

I taught my first three to read with 100EZ, but I decided not to use it anymore after noticing that #3 had picked up some... unusual beliefs about spelling. On closer inspection, my older two had some gaps, too. I decided to use something that didn't leave such huge, gaping holes in #4's reading education. We tried Phonics Pathways, the red book whose name I can't remember right now, and Explode the Code. I finally wised up and just started working on the Orton phonograms and a spelling list. He's 7 now, and making progress, but I think I have a combination of things going on: I think he's just naturally a little slower with reading than his brothers, this type of program is slower to see results than 100EZ, and there was all of that delay while we tried to find a program. I think you probably have at least the latter two issues. To me, it sounds like he just needs consistent instruction. I know you did 100EZ, but all of my boys were still sounding out every blessed word when we got to the end of that book. Can he sound out simple words? If so, I'd say testing is not necessary yet; he just needs more instruction and more practice. My youngest son is also my sweetest, and most stubborn, child, and he's not fond of this whole reading thing when there are so many people around here who can read to him. :001_rolleyes:

C. S. Lewis said in his introduction to On the Incarnation: I used to not like old books, partly because of issues like racism. But it really is far easier to point out the problems with the thinking in earlier ages than it is to try to pinpoint the problems with the thinking in our own age and explain those.

I do believe the average workbook is busywork, but I don't have any arguments against them, assuming the child enjoys them. I do question the need for critical thinking exercises, especially for a child that young. I would argue that they are not necessary to produce a child who thinks critically. IMO, teaching logic does this, and at a more developmentally appropriate time. I don't really believe children learn much from so called critical thinking exercises produced for elementary students. Rather, the workbooks are used when the child is naturally developing the skills "taught." It's correlation, not causation.

My oldest three check their work and then correct their mistakes. It's never been an issue.

It still just my four boys right now. Baby girl is only 2, so she's too little for anything like pre-K. I'm a better-late-than-early person anyway. :-) My boys are beginning 2nd, 4th, 7th, and 11th. I'm sure of this because I checked my list. I really find it odd that my oldest will graduate before my baby begins Kindergarten. I tried telling oldest that he's not allowed to graduate until he's 20, but he reminded me that he has internet access.

I rarely read the books that are on their lists. I would *never* ask for a book report. I think they're pointless at best and detrimental at worst. We *never* do discussion questions that are just about remembering details as this is merely training to remember certain types of information over others. Instead, we sometimes do a narration of a chapter, sometimes written and sometimes oral. SWB, in her writing audio lectures, recommends asking some beginning literary analysis questions for logic stage, oral at first and then written when the child becomes comfortable with answering them. We do those.

I have no problems using the television as a babysitter. I have no problems using the older kids as child labor to watch the littles as necessary. I throw my third graders in at the deep end. "Mommy's done, baby. Go teach yourself." Well, not exactly, but I do start working on getting them independent in third grade. I prefer programs that are not teacher intensive. My 9yos does his math on his own, and while I prefer to do grammar with him, he has been known to take it off the shelf and work on it himself if I'm busy and he wants to get done. We don't use a lot of curricula. We use books. My younger boys just read for math, science, and Bible. Sometimes they have coloring pages that go with the reading, but they don't need me for that. Sometimes we do a narration, but that's not something that has to be done daily, and older kids can type theirs up. We had to drop Latin for a while because between babies, moving, and farming, I just couldn't keep up. Now we're giving it another go, but I'll drop it again if necessary. No matter how much I want to cover some subjects, I have to remember that we can't do it all, and no individual subject or curriculum is worth making our household stressed or unhappy. For us, it's mostly been a combination of simplifying and acknowledging that we're not necessarily going to get everything done every day; we just pick back up the next day. We school year round, and we take breaks when we need to.

Our reading lists are in the link in my sig. It's a 40+ page document which will probably one day be used in a shrink's office to demonstrate my OCD issues. There's a TOC. We always bought our books because we moved a lot and I felt the need to plan the year exactly. I'm over that now. :-) Have you seen Heritage History? They have many public domain history books arranged by geographical and time periods. The books are online for free, or you can buy the collections on CD. In the beginning, I was uncomfortable with older books. I didn't like reading them aloud, and I had a bad attitude about giving them to the kids. However, I now realize that old children's books are the training ground for old adult books. Children who have read lots of old children's books aren't going to be as bothered by the syntax and vocabulary when they start reading old lit and primary source books. If I had it to do over, I'd buy HH and an ereader. Then, I'd ask here for the "don't miss" books for each stage and time period, and I'd buy a few of those if the library didn't have them.

We use the student pages, but the actual activity books just sit on the shelf. I'll give you a deal on them if you want them. ;-)

At Staples, I saw a kit for giving a comp cover a facelift, but I don't really know what was involved in it. We've often taken images designed to be notebook covers, printed them at a reduced scale on sticker paper, and applied them to the cover of a comp book. There are some free WTM history division notebook covers in the link in my sig, or you can find other free ones online, or just find a favorite image. I've been using lots of painting images from wikipaintings.org lately for various projects.

I have OneNote. I loved it when I first started playing with it, but it became like a closet—I added everything that I wanted to keep to it, and now it's a big mess and I'm scared to open it. :-) I honestly don't have a detailed, daily list of what we did anywhere. I'm not legally required to keep any sort of records at all, so I'm comfortable keeping the bare minimum. Each boy has his own comp book for his reading list. Every book gets written down. At the end of the year, I add a page of completed curricula. You said you don't always complete a week. We are like that, too, especially back when dh traveled a lot. Our "schedule" is more like guidelines. In a perfect world, history is M, W, F, science is T, Th. If we skip a Tuesday, we pick back up with Wednesday's schedule. If we realize that we've missed a lot of Tuesdays, well, we adjust. :-) We school year round, so it eventually all gets done; it just doesn't always look like what other people might expect it to look like, kwim? But yes, at this point in the game, most major decisions were made years back, and I'm just taking the appropriate book off the shelf. I also quit feeling like we *need* to use more than one resource in a given year. Simpler attitude towards resources definitely helps with a simpler schedule.

We using the Picture Smart Bible and Journey through the Bible for a family study, then the two youngest boys are using Telling God's Story. I think I'm also going to add in the What's in the Bible videos. We never do anything academic for Bible study. Instead, when they get old enough, they start going through some of the Precept Bible studies.

My oldest is an eleventh grader this year, so we're beginning our 12th year of homeschooling. I thought I'd post how I'm scheduling these days in case it might help someone else. I used to be known for my reading lists. 180 days of reading scheduled out every year, page by page, chapter by chapter. I didn't keep the boys together in history and science--it didn't work well with the reading list mentality. Over the last couple of years, we've simplified. I turned our daily reading lists into yearly reading lists. When each boy finishes a book, he simply moves on to the next. They seem to read just as much, but it feels more laid back, and it allows for more rabbit trails and exploring the library shelves. Ironically, though, I simplified a bit too much. History and science spines were being forgotten. So here's our No Spine Left Behind method. I have a master composition book. I figure if I go crazy and start making extra notes, I might need a second one before my youngest graduates, but probably not unless one of the cats pees on it. Inside the front cover, I filled out the handy schedule with our normal subjects, in the order that I'd like for us to complete them each day. This gives me a quick reference guide. Then I fill out a series of pages for the year. The first page has anything that we'll do together listed, and then each child has his own page. I leave the backs of the pages blank so I have room to make additions and changes if necessary. I list each program or book, how often we should do it, and how much we should do on each day. For example, Jared's history spine is listed as: Visual History of the 20th Century, 5 pages per day, 15 pages per week. The schedule at the front is the overview, and the details are on the pages. Those keep me on track. To help the boys stay on track, I made a single schedule page for each of them, but instead of being a detailed schedule (e.g. read pages 10-15), for Wednesday it just says to read 5 pages of the history spine and do additional history reading. It covers all subjects, just like a normal schedule. However, I takes only 1 page instead of 36 since we're just repeating the same week over and over again. With this method, the boys can still see at a glance what they need to do each day, but it's flexible enough to account for playing hookie or other interruptions, and it took me 20 minutes instead of 20+ hours to complete a year's worth of scheduling for four children.

Thank you for improving it! It's updated now.

Here's a link to a list on my website. It just has the winners. I tried to include at least an approximate time and place, though many of them are listed as "20th Century America." Others just have a place listed. http://barefootmeandering.com/free.html ETA: If the list could be more specific for any book, y'all can let me know and I'll update it.

None of these recommendations EVER worked for me. :-) Bright lights in the evening disrupt your circadian rhythm. They cause your body to NOT make the sleepy-time hormone, melatonin. When it starts to get dark, don't light up the house. Use dim lights only where necessary. Stay off the computer, and don't watch TV. I used to be a chronic insomniac. I would stay up till 2 to 4 in the morning, then I wanted to sleep away the day. We moved off-grid, and those suggestions I just gave you became necessities for us, not options. We ALL sleep better now. We all go to bed early, we all get up early. The only time I have a problem going to sleep now is when I ignore the advice I just gave you and I stay up fiddling on the computer. Nowadays, I generally wake up on my own somewhere between 6 and 8 am. Barring unusual circumstances, I always feel well rested. And generally speaking, I don't use caffeine.

Here's a link to my reading lists. My children have all read the grammar stage ancients list at various ages. Most of the books should work well for that reading level. http://www.barefootmeandering.com/reading_lists.html