I like Italics very much but I can't do it myself. So now I am leaning towards this font http://practicalpages.wordpress.com/handwriting-pages/ because it is basically like my very own. I like the way it is consistent and clean...and rythmic somehow. The lady blogger told me the official name for it is ABC Cursive plain, for those who might be interested.

This coming year I am aiming for 3 weeks on/1 week off. I am hoping this will make the year go by faster.

Downloaded. Print what you need as you need and no shipping charges.

What an "aha" moment. I didn't realise the art workshop counted as...well, art! They also do read-aloud and singing at the end of the session so I guess I could really clever and consider the whole thing as a giant art-read-alound-music class. Ha! :D Maybe I AM keeping up with the Joneses... Hey, and thank you all for the words of encouragement. I feel so much better now.

I have asthma. This years \i've had some disruptions because I'm tired from not sleeping the night before and taking antihistamines and steroids makes you drowsy. I am lucky I have a young child. However, I take it easy. I have decided to school all year round. This means I feel I have a bit more time to reach my yearly goals. Also I encourage independent work whenever and wherever I can. Must say I also have a star of a husband who helps out around the house. Bless him! Good luck and don't be so hard on yourself. Whenever you feel lonely and ovewhelmed come here and chat with us. We'll give you a :grouphug:

WOW thank you all so much for the :grouphug: Yes, I understand about the 4-5yo being young thing. I guess I have seen so many mums going all over the place with makeup intact and every hair in place I sometimes feel inadequate or slower if I can't keep up with them. In any case now I know I am not doing anything wrong. I'll start looking for after school classes in the afternoon.

Praying!

I am beginning to wonder if I'm doing something wrong. I home school my 4.5 yo. Every week I take him to an art workshop or some other activity. For the art class we have to be there by 9:30am so we leave home about 40 minutes earlier (which is the time it takes us to get there). The workshop lasts until 11:30am (there is a break in the middle of it for a drink and snack for the little ones). We come home in the middle of the day tired, and hot (we live in the Gulf). The rest of the day is shot. By the time I make lunch and have quiet time it is around 2pm+ and the kid is in no mood to buckle down for lessons. I do workshops like art and others so my son has a chance to socialize and interact with other kids, but it ruins that day's schoolwork and I end up exhausted trying to take him to activities, do home school and keep house. Is this normal? I mean, how do you fit in lessons when other activities take such much of the day? What am I doing wrong? :ack2:

The Gambler (Kenny rogers). Reason? All will be revealed when my autobiography comes out! ;)

It says it is for students 11-18 yrs. Are there any plans to extend this to the primary years? I've said it before and I say it again. There is a severe lack of suppliers geared up to home educators.

xxx

Will check out. Ta.;)

Sorry I didn't see your reply earlier. They only ship to the U.S. and Canada. I decided to go with Christianbooks. 4evercanucks: thanks for the info. :iagree:

I can't believe this thread came back to life! Please let me know how you like the schedule. So far and because I am looking at kindy, I 'm liking the character building aspects of it and the chores, and the literature. I bought some of the books so I think I may just get the downloadable schedule. I still need to sit down and write lessons for Singapore and I do my own science just because my kid of beyond K in this. Well, maybe next school year I can actually stay on track! :auto:

Thank you for this post. I was about to ask the same question :lol:

Thank you! :grouphug:

This is a big bone of contention in our house. My hubby is a dedicated Mac user...I miss my "cheap" programs that ran perfectly well in my old pc. We need to buy a laptop because fight like tasmanian devils over the one computer in the household . I tried a Mac planner but I haven't been able to make it work. The developer is still working on it and it's had many teething problems. I tried Appleworks to make a "excel" planner but it freezes all the time so I use Open Office behind dh's back. I am now looking at online planners as excel type of planners are not very flexible :tongue_smilie: I'm told windows on a mac runs better than windows on a pc but it is an added expense.

MEP didn't work out so well... Not even revision - no retention. I'm switching to SM (don't know if getting Essential or Earlybird yet). Step by Step Reading - I think it was because my ds is not that good at writing yet so having to write letters at the same time than learning the sounds was drivig him crazy. Also, it was a bit dry... I'm going with Jolly Phonics now.

Hello. Looking around for next year's curriculum (K, Year 1 in the UK) I stumbled into books by Scholastic's curriculum bank. Here's an example: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Curriculum-Bank-Stephen-Bugg/dp/0590534165/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1304536517&sr=8-13 They seem great but I have no idea whether they are meant to be "spine" books or just support workbooks for something taught in a classroom. Does anyone here have any experience using these books, or has heard about them? All comments/ideas welcome! :bigear:

Any one? :bigear:

After a lot of soul searching I have to admit I am not one of those wonderful mums who can sit down with a bunch of books and whip up a whole year of lesson plans. I need something to keep me on track. So I stumbled into Easy Classical and loved what I saw :drool5: ...except that I would like to go with Singapore Math and not Saxon,and I want to use Jolly Phonics (widely available in the UK), and I would like to use Italic handwriting like Dubay-Getty but Penny Gardner's version (which I already have). I really like the geography and literature, and spelling, and chores, and art, and character building aspect. I am adding science for my science mad kid. So now the question is this. Can you tweak Easy Classical easily or is it going to ruin IT and send ME into a spin? How do you tweak a curriculum successfully? :willy_nilly:

Roxanne? It reminds of the movie made with Darryl Hannah and Steve Martin (based on Cirano de Bergerac). Loved the movie.

Thank you for such a detailed reply. My family is in South America and I am in the Gulf so shipping is way too expensive. I may have to do what you did except that because I have to teach ds English as well (long story -read under "dh doesn't teach kid his language" thread). So I am doing half of the week in English and half of the week in Spanish. Not ideal but better than nothing. I got some "Litttle Einteins" dvds and Mickey Mouse and the Spanish is from Spain -which is all right, except I don't say things like "Habeis visto mi lo que habeis logrado hacer" because my Spanish is Latin American, well, you know... Darn, this bilingual thing is much harder than I expected. I spoke to ds to Spanish only for about 3.5 years and I just assumed he would pick it up... :toetap05:

Hello. I am looking to "teach" Spanish to my 4.5 yo who understands Spanish but can't speak it. As a native speaker I suppose I can draw shapes and colours and all and make my own materials from scratch but I don't know where to start, and don't have the time since I have to teach the other subjects too. I can print stuff off the net, yes. I looked into Calico Spanish and the price knocked me backwards. Is there something good out there that doesn't cost the Earth? Please? :bigear:

I don't mind being corrected. I may blush, then shrug and move on...