My DD12 and I are going to share the Spencerian penmanship workbooks. http://www.rainbowresource.com/searchspring.php?q=spencerian+handwriting My DD has used cursive from the beginning, and did have beautiful handwriting, but as the years have gone by her handwriting has become a little bit sloppy. I would like to work on my penmanship, so we are going to share each workbook page for extra practice.

Thanks, Capt. I will have to give it a little more thought and maybe I will just wait to see how full our days are with the amount of work I am adding, before I decide what to do.

...are you doing additional writing? I am thinking about outlining in particular. My DD12 is in 7th grade this year. We were working on two level outlines last year. I decided that my DD needed to go through WWS, so we are back to one level outlines for the rest of the year, which I am okay with, because the two level outlines were hard for her last year. We are just about to start our 7th week of WWS, and I am also adding in our content and elective subjects next week. Do I need to be doing additional outlining? We will still be working on taking notes and doing narrations in history, but I am thinking that it might be overkill to do more outlining, especially because WWS is taking quite a bit of time to do each week. I am interested in what others are doing. Thank you,

Thank you, Chrissy. I do have the TruthQuest guides, but I do find that they are a little hard to schedule into a year. I was just hoping someone else had done this already. By the looks of it, I will probably have to get out my guides and quickly work out a schedule using them.

Thank you, Cleopatra. I know it won't be difficult to do a schedule. I am just crunched for time now that I want to change what I had planned already. Thank you, Ruth. I think I have most of the books that are on your list, but a few are new to me. I will have to take a look at them. I will go and take a look! Thank you for taking the time to link your Reading Guide. I am totally stressing myself out with this change.

I start history with my crew on Tuesday, and I still haven't made up my mind as to what spines to use. We will be covering the Middle Ages, Reformation and Renaissance, and I want to keep them all together in history for the most part, while assigning some extra writing and reading to my 7th grader. I thought I was all set to use SOTW2 along with the Famous Men books, but for some reason, I am feeling like SOTW2 is not the right fit for my DC. It would include my youngest, but it would not be enough for my two oldest. I have the Dorothy Mills books, which I think are great, but they would just fit my oldest, and not include anyone else. I have MOH2&3, but I don't want to use them either. I am leaning towards the Guerber/Miller books, and I am wondering if anyone has a schedule to use both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance & Reformation books in one year. If not I am going to have to do some quick planning in the next few days.

:grouphug: I agree with a pp. Start slow, and ease into your school year. We did some schooling in the summer, and now, starting next week, I am adding in our full load for the year. It has been nice to have had some of the basics going for a few weeks. We will be adding in the content subjects and some electives so that we will be up to full speed.

I am just finishing week 6 of WWS with my 7th grader. I think that to use it with a 5th grader, they would have to be a very strong 5th grader. My 7th grader has to work at it, and it is still not easy at times. It really does need them to be thinking at a logic stage level. I think that it is a fabulous program and I will be using it through all the levels, so that means that my 7th grader will not be finished it until the end of 10th grade. The skills that are taught in WWS are so fundamental and foundational, that I am willing to have it take that long, and in the long run, I think that she will be a better writer because of it. I do have a 5th grader this year, but he is no where near ready to do WWS. He is working through WWE3 right now, and I am planning on having him do WWE4 next year(or at least part of it), before we move into WWS near the end of 6th or beginning of 7th grade. HTH!

First of all, :grouphug:. I am sure that planning school with an illness in the family is difficult. Have your girls had any grammar up to this point? I know that others on this board would disagree, but I do not start any grammar until 4th grade. Last year my DS10 did Rod & Staff 3 in 4th grade. It was very thorough, and it is a great program, but it was very time consuming, as I did most of the lessons orally with him. This year he is doing GWG4, and is doing it pretty much all independently. My twin DSs(just starting 4th grade), who haven't had any grammar instruction, are just finishing the first section in GWG3. They are doing it fairly independently, with only occasional questions. The GWG texts are written to the student, and each day has plenty of review built in. My DD11 is doing GWG5 as a side note as well(she did R&S4 last year). We really love GWG and both of my children who used R&S last year say that they prefer it. I would say that if your children have had grammar instruction before, they could probably go right into GWG4, but if they haven't, GWG3 might be a good place to start. From what I see, there isn't a whole lot of difference in the levels, except that I think 4 does expect a little bit of prior knowledge. Hope this helps,

:grouphug:

Thank you, Angela. I really don't think that my DD would have been ready to start the logic stage in 4th or 5th grade. I was just thinking about PMing you, Angela. I had printed off a post that you had made awhile ago about how you have your children keep note cards about what they read and how you divide them into 10 categories. I would be interested in how this might work for a beginning logic child. I really like the idea of having her think about what she has read and I like the categories that you had laid out. Any words of wisdom?

I have completed some of my lesson plans for the fall, and submitted them to my DC's schedules in HST+. I have just realized that I didn't schedule in our week long holiday at the end of September, so HST+ didn't schedule around it. Is there a way to add the holidays in and have HST+ automatically move those assignments to the next week and shift everything else? Or do I have to go and delete all of the assignments, add in the holidays and start over? Any help is appreciated, as this is my first time trying to use HST+.

Me, too!

Thank you, Nan! My DDalmost12, is slowly moving into the logic stage(she is a late bloomer). We only found TWTM, and classical education in general, a year ago, so I continually feel like I am 'behind'. My DS6 will have the full benefit of a great set of foundational skills, but I feel like my DD has missed out. My other boys are somewhere in the middle. I know it is not too late, but time is slipping away, and I have to continually check myself to make sure I am not sacrificing the foundational skills we are trying to shore up, in the face of advancing content subjects that seem to take so much time. Not to mention my feeling of inadequacies as far as the logic stage goes. How am I supposed to discuss deeper thoughts when I don't even get half of them? (I am the product of a public school in which I was allowed to slide by because I was the top of the class every year. I just would study for the test, get 100%, and move on. I never actually learned anything, hence my desire to homeschool.)

Hi Jennifer...Biblioplan has SOTW2 and FMMA/RR on their schedule. I am using it this year with my DC, as well as some of the extra literature that they list. I think that the SOTW2 Activity Guide also has the Famous Men books listed with the appropriate chapters to read in the extra reading book list.

Thank you, 8. I will look for it!:001_smile:

My oldest two used Rod & Staff last year. It is fabulous, but I found that I ended up doing most of it orally with them, so it was very time consuming for me. It is written for a classroom, so you do have to keep that in mind. We didn't use the writing in it, because it was very basic and we were doing writing in other subjects. Fast forward to this year, and can I just say that I love GWG, and my DC would agree. My four oldest are doing it independently, even the twins who have just started grammar. (I don't start grammar until 4th grade.) We are about 4 weeks in and I would say that it covers most of what R&S does and there is also plenty of review included with every lesson. Let me know if you have any questions.

I noticed that my list didn't have everything on it as well. It is a little frustrating, as I don't remember what I had put on there. It was around 130 items long, but today it is 110 items long.:tongue_smilie:

I am doing roughly doing BP with my crew, using SOTW and the Famous Men books as spines. The four oldest will all be creating notebook pages/narration pages of each of the SOTW sections, and I 'think' I will have my DS10 and my DD11 do the list of facts(DD11, for sure). I am also doing WWS with my DD11, which includes outlining, so I do not think I will have her outline in history, although she was already doing outlining last year, so WWS will be a review. I will probably be adding some of the questions in the Famous Men books for my DD11 to do as short answer questions. My DC all are doing different reading plans, so I am planning to just pick some of the readers to do as read alouds, and I will probably create a book basket of related topics for each week that my kids can dig into, if they choose. This plan might be slightly too easy for my DD11, but I really want to keep my DC together in history until 10th grade, where they will branch off to do their own history.

I am having a hard time finding a read aloud for Alfred the Great. The only one that I can find is 'In the Days of Alfred the Great' on Baldwin Project. Does anyone have a review of this book, or an idea of something else I could use? This is for my grammar-aged kids. Thank you

I would love to see what you are using, Brandy!

Yes, and I have many books on my shelves that I have been collecting from anthologies like the Oxford Book of Canadian Verse, the Oxford Anthology of Canadian Literature, and the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, to my almost complete set of Great Stories of Canada, a collection of authors like Burton and Lambert, as well as books like the standard Madeleine Takes Command and the Bully Boys.

:iagree:What you have laid out is something I would buy as well. I think there is a gap in the logic history market that needs to be filled, and a North American/World history that could be unbiased(if that is possible) would be fabulous!

It sounds like you are doing an awesome job! I wish that I could spend 4 years doing the fourth year of the history cycle, but my oldest is in 7th grade and we are doing Middle Ages, Reformation and Renaissance this year, and I really want to finish the history cycle by the end of her 9th grade. After that I am planning a quick run through Ancients all the way to the Renaissance in Grade 10 and then we will take Grade 11 and 12 to finish up the last two years of the cycle.

I agree that from what I have looked at, most classical curricula are US-centric. I want my children to know US history, BUT we are Canadian, and I want to teach from that perspective.