You ladies really are a wealth of knowledge! I think I am going to switch things up, if my 3rd grader is hating school now, what will things be like in 6 months if I force him to push through and continue on?? Of course there will be some resistence no matter what we use, but I'm sure it could be better than it is now. For you ladies that use AAS, FLL and WWE, how long does your Language lesson take altogether? For my 6 yr old, I'll still need some sort of Phonics lesson right? Do I bother with AAS with her or do I wait until she's reading? Should I bother with FLL with her, or WWE? Any recommendations for a fun phonics program? I'm worried she'll find FLL and WWE really dry, and will need something lighter and more fun for phonics. For my 8 yr old, can he start WWE on level 3 or should he start that from the beginning as well?

Thank you Heather! That was a wonderful post, just what I needed. It is easy to feel "not good enough" when you read what some families are teaching, I picture happy tantrum-free young children working at a college leve all day long lol. You've really got me considering changing up my LA plans. My daughter (Gr.1er) is doing okay, but I just don't know if McRuffy is solid enough, I think it may have too much fluff. My Gr.3er is definitely hating it and his spelling is sliding downhill. He seemed to be spelling and writing much better at public school last year. Now, whether that was all him or assistance from teachers, I don't know. But I just can't see any progress being made with his spelling, and the rest of the workbooks, he absolutely hates. The only thing he enjoys is the readers. So, I think I may continue using the readers, and the reading comprehension questions from the texts. Other than that, I may switch for everything else. What would your recommendation be for a complete LA program for a Gr.3er who is a good reader, but horrible at spelling/grammar/writing? I'm thinking All About Spelling, WWE, HWoT and either FLL or GWG?? I have no idea if those are good picks or not, but they seem to be quite popular. I'm just going to have some blind faith on this one. He definitely is the type of kid that doesn't enjoy the extra fluff, he likes to just sit down and get his work done as quick as possible. But he does enjoy reading. For my Gr.1er, which of those above would be recommended? Or should I try something different like Explode the Code or something else? She's 6, and can read small 3 letter words like Pat, cat, pan, etc. She knows a capital letter is used for the beginning of a sentence and for names and that a period is used at the end of a sentence. She recognizes all letters, but when writing, she has to ask me a lot which way b's and d's go, and gets them mixed up when reading. When I'm spelling a word out to her aloud, sometimes she has to ask me what the letter looks like because she can't remember. So I dont' know if she's where she should be at for Gr.1, or whether or not I should switch her from McRuffy or stick it out. It does seem like it would be easier to switch them both to the same program though...

Thank you everyone for your replies, it really means a lot to me. I think my biggest problem right now is not having any energy and being sooo tired all the time. It's hard to make things fun or have motivation to do anything when you feel like you're always running on no sleep. The doc said that I should be feeling better within the next month, so hopefully it kicks in fast! I guess I'm just second guessing everything I had originally planned. I do think I'm going to relax more about science/social/geography, and just teach those as interests arise for now. I'm very happy with MM, and am just going to add in some fun math games online for the kids. I guess LA is the kicker for me. Because I was public schooled, and my kids have been public schooled up until now, I just don't feel comfortable dropping LA, but I don't know if McRuffy is a strong enough program. As far as spelling goes, it does briefly touch on a few spelling rules, but it's mostly memorizing word lists IMO. My daughter is picking up on reading short words, so it definitely does work, but I can't shake the feeling that it might not be enough. I really want my kids to have a strong foundation in LA, but I also worry about whether I'll create gaps and just be wasting time by curriculum hopping. So I guess right now my biggest worry is whether to stick McRuffy out for the year and then reasses, or to jump ship now and switch to something else. And then I run into another problem, if I decide to switch, what do I switch to? lol, I know I'm overthinking, but LA and Math are important to me. My kids are so used to the fluffy stuff the schools use, that I'm worried about switching to something like FLL and WWE. I've only looked at samples online but they seemed very boring and repeitive to me, I can already hear my kids groaning. There's just so many programs out there though that are supposed to be solid programs, like The Writing Road to Reading, Sping Spell Read Write, Phonics Pathways, Spell to Write and Read, etc. etc. I was so relieved when I had finally chosen and ordered our curriculum for the year, and now i feel like I'm right back in that same place again. Does anyone else have any recommendations for their favorite (but not extremely boring) LA program for 1st and 3rd graders?

This is our first year HSing, my kids are in Gr.3 and Gr.1, and I also have a 2 yr old and a 3 yr old. My Gr.1er is a bit behind due to a rough Kindy year at Public School. My Gr.3er started out right on track, and has always been a pretty good student and had a love for learning, especially math and science. Everything's gone downhill though... I promised the kids we'd have so much fun HSing, and would have a less-stressed schedule compared to public school. I just feel HSing is a better option for us, but I feel as though I'm failing on my promises. The kids groan when it's school time, and there's been plenty of tears. :( We started out with the plan of using: McRuffy LA K & Gr.3 MM Gr.1 & 2 SOTW 1 for both Canada, My Country for both for Cdn Geography REAL Science Odyssey Earth & Space We've piddled down to only making it through McRuffy & MM. I just feel like there's never enough time in the day for it all! Plus I haven't been feeling well the past couple of months, and have just now learned it's due to a Vit. D deficiency, so hopefully that should be corrected within a couple weeks and I'll start feeling better. Still though, none of us are enjoying school right now. My Gr.1 doesn't mind, with enough positive encouragement she does fine, and is picking up on reading well (although she's nowhere near grade level yet). My Gr.3er is hating it though. He does well in Math, and just buckles down to get it done. But LA...he hates it. He's not doing well in spelling, and has regressed from where he was last year. He does enjoy the readers though. The other day he had to write his first report. The book gave him all the information, he just had to take the info, and turn it into sentences and make a paragraph. It took him forever and he ended up in tears over it. I don't know how he is compared to other kids his grade level, but to me his grammar/spelling/everything isn't up to par. I'm not expecting perfection by any means but I really think he's below where he used to be. So now I'm wondering where do I go from here? I like McRuffy LA because it's scripted, and I'm not worried about gaps since it's an all in one curriculum. His spelling is horrible though, but I'm wondering if it's smart to supplement since McRuffy is an all in one, and all the different aspects are intertwined. Such as, they get their spelling list at the beginning of the week, and throughout the week they do workpages that include those spelling words in other activities, then have another test at the end of the week. So how do I completely take out the spelling component to use a whole new curriculum such as Sequential Spelling? Or do I keep doing both? For my Gr.1er, she's doing okay but LA only takes up 10 minutes. By that point she can't wait to quit, but since our lessons are so quick I'm worried it's not enough. Same with math for both my kids, they are doing well with MM, but the required amount of pages for us to get through the material within a year only take them about 10-25 minutes to do. So should I be supplementing? I think for science for my Gr.3er, I'm just going to provide books. He loves science and will read as many scienece textbooks as I can throw at him. SOTW, I'm just not sure about. We made it through the first two lessons and the kids were bored silly. Geography, the kids were bored to tears. I just keep reading all these lists about what other families are doing for these grades and I just feel like we're not up to par and I'm setting my kids up for failure down the road. Any advice? :( (Sorry this was so long, I just have so many thoughts going through my head...)

I don't have any advice, but I'm definitely watching for replies as I'm in the same boat. We're using the same thing, and even though I bought the experiement kit from homesciencetools.com, I still seem to not have the supplies needed for many of the experiments, and I am not an experiment lover either. My kids sure do love them though, but I find since I hate experiments so much I'm skipping them a lot....

I guess I should correct my wording above, I didn't mean that I expect to not have any involvement, but I've looked at some programs that seem to have a lot of parent involvement for a long period of time. Of course for spelling, I do realize that I will have to be reading spelling words. :) Thanks for the Sequential Spelling recommendation, it looks like it has awesome reviews, is affordable, and might be just the thing for helping my son understand spelling. Also, thank you for the Harcourt website link! It looks like an awesome site! Thanks to everyone! I think I'm going to give Sequential Spelling a try.

Hmmm....sounds like I'm on the lower end. We're using Math Mammoth, it takes my 1st grader maybe 15 min and 3rd grader 20-25 min. My 3rd grader is using the 2nd grade level though because he was in public school last year and MM follows a different scope and sequence than what his school was doing. For those of you that use MM, do you not think that it's a full program and feel you need to supplement? My Gr.1 just does 1 page a day and my Gr.3er does two pages a day. So far they're grasping it all really well and finding it quite easy, so I'm wondering if maybe I'm not doing enough???

We're on our first year HSing, and my oldest who's in 3rd Grade is having a lot of problems with spelling. If anything he's backtracking from where he was at after Grade 2 in public school. We've been using McRuffy LA (3rd) for him, but I'm thinking that the spelling component is just not enough for him. Problem is, I have a very reluctant student who does not love school and I also have a Gr.1er, 2 yr old and 3 yr old so I'd prefer something that doesn't have high parent instruction/interaction. Any recommendations?

Wow, I'm blown over by all the great advice you ladies have taken time out of your day to give me. :) I'm definitely going to try to implement some of these things, starting with a trip to the doctor to make sure I'm in good health as I'm still exhausted today after sleeping from 10-7. Today is another rough start, and it's 9:00 here with no school in sight, plus library time is this morning, so maybe we'll get some school done this afternoon. Once again the kids beat me out of bed! I'm definitely considering just finishing this week out, then taking a break next week to potty train my 2 boys. The oldest is definitely able to, but he's very stubborn and it's turned into a battle between the two of us (and he's winning!). I haven't tried a reward system though so maybe that will be the answer. My youngest is much more willing and goes potty more often than my older son, but he's almost 2 so I'm not sure if that's too early? (My older son is almost 3 1/2.) School wise, we're doing MM, McRuffy LA, SOTW 1, REAL Science Odyssey:Earth and Space, and Canada, My Country. I also added in Draw Write Now for something artsy, and we do read-alouds every day. Is this too much? We have been doing math for the oldest and LA for my 2nd for the past few weeks as they were behind in those subjects because of public school. So we are kind of starting slowly, but this week I added in everything else all at once so that may have been a mistake on my part. I'd hate to drop the Draw Write Now or the Science as both kids absolutely love those. I promised both kids homeschooling would be fun so I hate to take away the fun parts of it, kwim? Thanks for the advice, if there's anymore keep it coming as I'm really finding all this very very helpful!

Thank you all for the wonderful advice! You give me hope that there's definitely things I can adjust to make things easier on myself. I think I may just tell the kids we're taking a week long break to do potty-training. I don't know if I"m pushing my youngest too much or not though, he's almost 2, will be on Aug.10. But he seems more willing to go try on the potty than my 3 yr old. It's like pulling teeth to get him to even try. Both are quite willing to just cruise around in wet underwear for some reason. Maybe a reward system would be the trick.... I'm definitely more tired than usual, all due to my own silliness. Dh is a late owl, and I'm a reality show addict so I stay up late to watch my shows and be with him lol. So I'm having a good day if I can get out of bed by 7-7:30! I used to get up earlier with no problems, so I think I may have to get back on the vitamins and lots of water, and set a bed time for myself. I've been staying up too late, and drinking too much coffee/pop. Thanks for the tips, it really is sooo helpful! And it's also helpful to hear I'm not the only one!

Thank you both for your replies. I guess I built up this fairytale story of how our homeschooling days would go, and it is sooo not the case! I do have a plan for meals, as well as housekeeping. We have chore charts that we complete in the morning after breakfast, before school. It seems that the keep-up chores get completed, but any deep cleaning like bathrooms, cleaning basement, cleaning fridge/wiping cupboards, etc. just doesn't get done as there's no time left in the day. My sanity is going on the computer, and getting a break in the afternoon from having to entertain the kids. By afternoons I'm soo tired, so I make the kids find something to amuse themselves while I watch tv, go on the computer, etc for an hour. Maybe I should work on getting up earlier in the day to be prepared though, I'm not a morning person and the kids always beat me up and I feel like I"m playing catch-up from the moment I get out of bed, so that might be a great suggestion. Thanks ladies. :)

Wow. Yesterday was our first full day of HSing (I have an 8 yr old, 6 yr old, 3 yr old & 2 yr old). It didn't go well. The toddlers kept bugging us, or making messes, and peeing their pants (I'm in the middle of potty training both). I was getting phone calls that had to be answered. We had to take a break for lunch, then a break for library program. We basically started around 10 and didn't finish until about 5:00. And NO cleaning got done. It was basically a horrible day and I ended up crying last night. :( Today, we started at 10. My 6 yr old was finished her math and LA within half hour-45 min. My oldst didn't finish math and LA until just before lunch. Then we took a break for lunch and when I finally got my youngest down for a nap we finished up history & geography. It went better, but still wasn't fun. :( I think that I tried to get my kids sooo excited for school, and now they're feeling let down because it's not as fun as they thought it would be. I know it would be better if I added in more projects/games/etc. but by the time we're done bookwork, I'm soo tired and running short of patience and I just want it to end so we can get on with our day. I feel like I'm already failing....Is this normal? Will I ever find a routine? I just don't know what else to do to make it better. I can't really speed it up anymore than I did for today. As it is I skipped out on a project because I was too tired and the kids were getting sick of it. If I wait to do school until the afternoon when the youngest is having his nap, I'm so tired by that point that I have no patience with the kids. If we do school in the morning, I have to contend with a million interruptions because of my youngest. He's a very spirited, hyper child who does not stay distracted for long no matter how many new, fun toys/puzzles/games I pull out for him. Any tips? Will it get better? (Feel free to lie to me, I just need some hope at this point!) I'm scared now that I might be making a huge mistake by pulling the kids out of PS! I know that it's the best thing in my heart, but I just don't know where to get more patience and energy from in order to make their day more fun and enjoyable. I guess that's what I'm feeling the worst about, is the fact that their day isn't fun and enjoyable because of my attitude. I just feel so tired and stressed about it all though.

I'm in Alberta and our standards are quite lax. I think I might shoot for 4 days a week, 47 weeks total. Leaves us with 188 school days, so we have some days for review/catch up/sick days. I'm leaving Mondays free too because that's usually when I do the bulk of my cleaning/laundry, but that'll leave an extra weekday in case I need to do any catch-up for school as well. Thanks ladies!

I'm just starting to sit down and plan out our first year, but I don't know how many school days we should have. I want to do a year-round approach, with a couple weeks off at Christmas, maybe a week for Spring break, and some time off in summer. I'd like to do school 4 days a week. How many official school days do you recommend?

Thank you for this!! I have a question though, (I hope it's not a dumb one!), what does UILE and KHE stand for?? I can't figure it out for the life of me!

This is our first year, but I'm not planning. I have an 8 yr old, 6 yr old, 3 yr old and almost 2 yr old. We're using MM, McRuffy LA, SOTW and Canada, My Country for Geography, and REAL Science Odyssey Earth & Space. So it might make it easier for us to not plan since we have fairly easy curriculum to follow. We're doing year round, so I don't feel a lot of stress to rush to get done by the end of the year. I just plan on doing Math & LA 4 days a week, Science 2 days a week, and we're alternating History and Geography. I figure as long as we can do a lesson each day for our assigned subjects, then we should be fine. I feel much less stressed!!! I'm also keeping a journal though to write down what we've done everyday so I can check in periodically just to double-check that we're on track in all subjects to finish around the same time.

I'm using SOTW, and am going to throw in something for Canadian History off donnaward.net most likely. We're using the "Canada, My Country" for geography off of her site, but I haven't looked at the history options on there yet. It's the only publisher I know of though for Canadian history/geography so maybe you could try browsing around there?

This is my first year too, and like you I want my kids to have a really strong foundation in Language Arts. I decided to go with McRuffy. It's affordable, I've read good reviews on it, and so far I love what I see. He hasn't gotten started yet, but I have looked through it, and it looks like a very solid all-in-one program that is lightly scripted for you. Sorry I can't give you a review about the program, but I just thought I'd give you a heads-up so you could look into it further since it sounds like the type of program you are looking for.

LA- McRuffy 3rd Math- Math Mammoth (doing accelerated 2nd over summer to catch up, then going into 3rd - this is our first yr HSing and he's a bit behind). Science- REAL Science Odyssey - Earth & Space History- SOTW- Vol.1 w/AG Geography- Canada, My Country Music- Piano Lessons Mavis Beacon Typing We're also doing a read-aloud/reading comp. with The Boxcar Children series. I also have FIAR here to do for fun (as well as BFIAR). We're doing a library program over summer as well as swimming lessons, then probably more swimming lessons and karate in the fall. Also half hour quiet reading time daily with books of his own choosing.

This is sorta like me too. This will be my first year, and while I'm usually an extremely organized and well-planned type of person, I'm not planning out our whole year as I don't want to feel the stress of keeping up and putting more work on myself than what is needed. I'm definitely no expert yet, but I'm just planning on buying myself a journal. Then on the first page of the month, I will paste in a calendar and just scribble on each day what subjects we will be doing so I have something to refer to quickly. (Math & LA everyday, history, geography on alternating days, science 2 times a week). Oh, forgot to add, on the front page of the journal, I'm going to write down each subject, then write about how many pages per week we need to complete to stay on track. This should be fairly easy as all the curriculums we're using are fairly well planned out, and tell me how much I should be doing each day/week. So then when I'm going to plan my week, I'll just refer to the front page, check how many lessons I should plan out, and make sure I have everything I need for those lessons. Then, rather than pre-planning each day (which I will most likely get discouraged with if I fall behind), I'm just going to write down what I actually DID that day rather than what I plan to do. At the end of the week, I'll check back to how many pages I actually completed. If I didn't meet our "quota", then I can always add in a bit of school on Friday to catch up (we're doing a 4 day week here.) I don't plan on pulling apart workbooks or anything, just grabbing each book/binder where we left off and continuing on. Now who knows, maybe I'm nuts and this will be a complete failure! But I feel much more comfortable keeping it simple, and not pressuring myself too much. I *might* try some kind of modified workbox system once we're going, but right now I don't see how it would be much extra work just to grab each binder/workbook out of my cupboard as I need it. My kids will still need quite a bit of one-on-one anyways, so I don't know if the workbox approach would really help us out any. (3rd grade & 1st with a 2 & 3 yr old at home as well.)

Definitely not an expert as we're just about to start our HSing journey, but I plan on just writing down the subjects I want to cover on each day on my calendar. Then, I'm going to keep a journal where I can record what we did at the end of each day. I found (by searching through tons of posts here!) that lots of moms do this rather than schedule things out page by page as things never seem to go exactly as planned. They basically said it's easier to write down what you did rather than what you plan to do. Then, on the night before, you can look back in your journal at what you did previously so you know where to start/carry on from for the next school day.

I feel your pain! I'm just gearing up to start out first year HSing, and am sooo nervous about juggling everyone! I have an almost 2 yr old, 3 yr old, 6 yr old and 8 yr old. Plus, throw in the fact that I have a very stubborn, strong-willed, spirited 6 yr old who did kindy at public school, and she believes that our school has to be exactly like public school was, complete with centers, student of the day, etc. I'm hoping that after summer break she'll get out of that mentality and realize that it doesn't have to be so strict. Anyways, so I don't have much advice to offer, but here's my plan anyways: I'm using McRuffy for LA, as it's very scripted and includes everything so there's not much planning involved on my end so it's a time saver. I'm using MM for Math since it's very self-teaching as well. My older son is very independent, but I'll have to work more one on one with the 6 yr old. I'm using SOTW for history for both. This way it saves time since I can combine them and the 8 yr old can go more in depth with the activities and the 6 yr old can listen (or not) and color. I'm using Canada, My Country for Canadian Geography for both, another time saver since we're combining. I'l also combining Sciene and using REAL Science Odyssey Earth and Space. Once again the 6 yr old can participate as much or as little as she'd like. Both older kids will also start piano lessons (taught by me), these will most likely be taught during the 2 yr olds naptime so he doesn't come play "music" too! I'm getting a bunch of Kumon workbooks for the 3 yr old to help occupy him. For the littlest guy, I'm planning on lots of Thomas & and In The Night Garden, redirection, bribing with snacks and a bit of luck! He's extremely active and likes to do everything he's not supposed to, so at this point I'm hoping to get as much schooling done during his naptime as possible. The kids all go to bed around 8ish so there's still plenty of time at night to have my quiet time. Good luck and let me know if you find any tricks that work for you!

I think the looks of McRuffy would most likely fit my dd better too, but that's the thing, you just don't know for sure until you try. I'm also a major perfectionist and I hate the idea of wasting money. So I would suggest since you already have purchased the blue series, to start out with that approach and try to add in some fun math games/flash cards/manipulatives yourself. If it's not working or you're still not happy, then you can always purchase McRuffy after a month or two of giving MM a shot. :) Less money wasted this way! I was thinking to myself that as nice as McRuffy looks, MM seems to work for a lot of people, and I would hate to spend the money on McRuffy if MM works great for the kids.

This is my problem exactly!! We're getting ready to start our first year HSing, and I've gone back and fourth on curriculums so many times. I finally decided that there is no "best" curriculum, and I'm not going to figure out what works until I just pick something. I purchased MM (light blue series), and then I decided to go with McRuffy LA, but then I noticed McRuffy Math. LOL, so at this point I'm just going to stick with my decision, and use MM. If it's not enough or doesn't work for one or all of my kids, then I'll try McRuffy. Just keep reminding yourself it isn't so much about finding the "perfect" curriculum, but more about just making your curriculum work for you. I loved the look of McRuffy's math manipulatives, and MM doesn't have so much for manipulatives. My dd (6), will most likely do better with manipulatives (I think anyways), so I'm just going to add in my own manipulatives but still use MM to teach her. Now that I've made all my purchases and are no longer scouring review sites, I feel sooo much better! You'll feel better too once you just make your choice and stop thinking about all the other options you could be trying. It's so much more fun to now start dreaming about our days and starting to make up some sort of schedule with the choices I've made.

I'm glad to hear that! As far as I can tell, McRuffy mostly focuses on phonics with handwriting practice in the early grades until the child is reading so it should be perfect for my 6 yr old. If it's not enough for her, then I plan on trying ETC. Thanks you guys!! I thought it was a pretty solid plan, and not too overwhelming, but it's good to just hear (read) that from other HSers. :)