Hmm, mine is a far, far cry from some of the other children in this thread. Mine was a late talker. Very late. Walked the latest of all my children and just generally on a slower time table. No loose teeth at 6.5. Not reading, but loves being read to by anyone in the house willing to read. Knows a few letter sounds and writes by copying other writing (sometimes quite a lot) Not much for singing, either self generated or from someone else. Can clear dishes from the table and other simple chores, but definitely not a fan and often pouts about it. Some drawing and painting, but still very simple stick figures with enlarged heads etc. No major behavior problems to speak of, but gets grumpy sometimes or storms off if asked by someone to not do something. No naps, not since before age 2, I think. This child does not need a lot of sleep and often stays up quite late puttering in their bedroom. This child is very mechanically inclined, loves doing science experiments, taking things apart, cutting cardboard, pictures from magazines, building with Legos and RC vehicles of all kinds. Said child has been riding a two wheeled bike since 5 years old. Likes to poke around on the skateboard. Loves playing with our 9 year old. Engages in imaginative play with said older sibling, as well as dear friend. Is also able to engage and play independently for varying periods of time. Oh, and my six year old is generally incredibly patient with his very talkative mother when we are out and about. My rising first grader reminds me very much of my DH and his father. Both tolerate people with a good nature, but prefer solitude. My DH definitely did many of the same things as our youngest growing up (including being a late talker), although our child has a myriad of words when interested in a topic.

Engaging Ideas is on my night stand! I started at the end of last year, then put it aside when our then 8th grader gave school a try. I am pulling it back to the top of the pile (oh, the pile!) to try and get through before the beginning of the year. Based on what I remember from first chapter, it will go along with Helm quite nicely.

Coming back to say my child and I just had a quick discussion about topics of interest to pursue, and said child had some immediate responses. Fever 1793 was a very enjoyed book from last year, so this child said learning more about plagues would be of interest. The other potential topic that my child wanted to explore was disasters (Titanic, Hindenburg) were what came to mind because of some independent reading from last year. I think these are both pretty macabre, but I am willing to do some investigating and see if I can get the wheels turning. They both seem both narrow and broad at the same time! Hmm, off to ponder.

I am about 3/4 through and really enjoying it. I will be honest and say I am not sure I feel intelligent enough to pull this off! The connections you make in your sample are pretty impressive. I don't feel like I am versed enough in the breadth of topics you are to even begin to link together those topics. That said, it is inspiring me to plan a conversation with my rising 6th grader to see if we can generate some ideas to explore. I really think this particular child would love this. I did something similar on a much smaller scale last year with decent results, but I totally missed the strong student input piece that i think is paramount to this concept. Reading this book has ignited a desire to put this type of education back in the forefront of our school.

Ack! What if I need a Lori pep talk or a slew of perfectly chosen links for planning?? :001_smile: Hope your break is productive.

Yes, my (then) 8 year old enjoyed this one last year. The littles and I read The Enchanted Tree by Enid Blyton last year, and it was their favorite read aloud of the year. My now 6 year says it was the best book. Here are some my reader enjoyed last year in that category: Did someone mention The Chicken Squad? Also, Emma and the Blue Genie. The Chocolate Touch The Stories Julian Tells Clementine series Flat Stanley Anna Hibiscus (we have not done this one, but it looks good) My Father's Dragon (there are 3 in this series) Gooney Bird Green Stink (brother to Judy Moody) Ling and Ting: Not Exactly the Same! The Three Little Princesses (there are 2 or 3 others, 3 little pirates/mermaids, I believe) Happy reading!

Both of the high schools we looked at for my rising 9th grade did not use textbooks. The biology teacher at one said she just made copies of pertinent information or the kids looked things up on their iPads. The charter school we used for a couple of weeks last year did not have a math textbook, again it was handouts or an online book. Several of the teaches wrote nothing on the board. My child knew to take notes, but said most of the kids did not. I never understood how schools can make a big deal about learning types*, but fail to acknowledge the learners who fall outside their prescribed methodology, like kids that need to reference a book or see information written on the board. *I am aware of Willingham's argument against learning types, but apparently none of the local schools are; they keep touting the concept in their "Our school is wonderful" speeches.

One of my kids is doing Beast Academy. This child is working on concepts we already covered in MM, but the BA twist is working the noodle! I love that it gets my kids thinking in a different way.

We have used MM for 5 years. As far as physically organizing the program, here's my system: Print year in its entirety. Print off chapter and cumulative reviews and chapter tests. Then I separate each chapter, including reviews into its own three pronged folder. My children are colored coded for supplies, binders and folders. I can usually fit an entire chapter in one folder, but occasionally may need to split one chapter between two folders. We aim to complete 2-3 pages a day, so I go through and number the right hand corner of each page with 1-5. All of the pages we plan to do on day 1 get a one, all on day 2 get a 2 and so on. After day 5 I start again for the next week with a 1 and continue until the entire chapter, including both reviews are numbered. Occasionally, we have four pages numbered with a 1 because one page is mostly a teaching page, with few problems. Then I put the week's worth of pages in the folder, put a divider in, then the next week's worth, then divider and so on until the whole chapter is in the folder. The chapter test gets put in the back pocket and stapled at the top, so it doesn't fall out. Then I label the front with the chapter # and title and the number of weeks it is scheduled to take. Every chapter gets organized this way. I know what my kids can accomplish in a given math session and what Maria recommends to finish the curriculum in a year, so I have a general gauge for how to divide the pages. Because I teach each lesson to my child, I can edit the number of problems needed on the fly, although we usually do most of the problems, especially in the upper levels. I am also not tied to 'these pages must take a week', it is just a way for us to visually separate the pages and find our place easily. The dividers are helpful if we need to reference a previously taught concept. All of the folders are kept close at hand, so we can easily look back at chapters as needed. My kids are hard on things, so the three pronged folder keeps everything together nicely, without pages getting pulled from a notebook and then getting lost. I recycle the folders and dividers. Some of my 5ht grader's were from 4th grade, but they are cheap if I need to buy all new ones. It is not a fancy system, but it is orderly and tidy. It does not work for me to print as we go or evenly weekly. I really need things like this in my life to be as automated as possible. For me that means having it all prepped and ready for the entire year. No random pages floating around waiting to be lost or me scrambling to print that one page. Any of the extra pages that may go along with a chapter, get printed and put in that chapter's folder (again stapled, so they are not lost). As far as implementing the program, here's my system: I teach each concept. I do not ask my children to read the teaching pages and try to understand them independently. I basically take Maria's amazing, accessible instructions and teach them on the board. We work through the concept with manipulatives and several examples. We connect the ideas and concepts presented to our prior knowledge. Some days are longer teaching days, it just depends on how complicated the concepts are, but I find MM does a good job of breaking down ideas into manageable chunks for my children. Around 4th grade my children are able to have me use the above methods and then complete the remainder of the problems independently. In the earlier grades we do some of the problems on the board, I scribe, we do problems orally or any combination for a given a lesson. I also sit right next to them as they complete their math in the early grades. That jives with my math teaching philosophy and works for us. HTH!

That was great! I flirted with the whole tiny house idea years ago. I was all for it, but my dh has zero desire to ever live in a tiny home with me or anyone else. Maybe by himself, but with me, nope. It is actually comical that I ever thought that was a viable option. I want the hours I spent on the internet researching and reading about tiny house back!

So exciting! It's a bucket list item, although I do have 4 children... I feel like I had my last child too late to tackle something like this. I was 34. I realize not that old, but I am not sure my knees would tolerate a thru hike in my 50s. Maybe. For now, I will vicariously live through you! :hurray:

Yup, mine too. That thing has been going strong for 15+ years. Best kitchen goodie ever. :001_wub: I am working on seasoning a smaller stone to perfection.

Thank you both! Lori, as always I appreciate your detailed feedback. Great stuff to work with and ponder. Rose, I did see that post and glanced briefly at their blog, but I need to do a deeper read. I didn't see the templates etc., but I was checking on my mobile. I *love* the idea of BH giving us a spring board on where to head for 10th grade, as I would love for my child to have the opportunity to explore something that really ignites interest in our 10th grade year. Anyone else using BH next year want to share their thoughts?

I am vacillating on history for my rising 9th grader. I was kind of set on Spielvogel for 9th and 10th, splitting the text between two years for Ancients and Middle Ages/Renaissance study. But, I am honestly not sure we are up for another go 'round of those periods. We have hit those two particular periods harder than the other four throughout our homeschooling journey. I know there is a great deal of rich study we can still glean from both periods, and we certainly have not studied them exhaustively, but I am having a hard time getting excited about planning and executing another two years in those periods. My child is not particularly enthused or passionate about either of those periods and will be fine with whatever I plan. We poked around the Big History Project at the beginning of the year, and I really liked what we did. I put it away in favor of a very relaxed approach for history this year focusing on events from the Revolutionary War onward. I wanted to save BHP in case we wanted to use it for 9th. I recognized there was a wealth of info and because I came across it after our year had started, I did not want to short change the amazing resource it appears to be with a half hearted effort. Questions: What would you call this on a transcript? World History? Where would we pick up next year with history? Pros and cons of BHP? What did you add or subtract? What did you love about Spielvogel? Any great resources? BHP appeals to me because so much is already constructed for me. I still need to put together our English and bio classes, so having a big part of history fleshed out is very appealing. That said, history is probably the easiest of the three for me to design, so I am more than willing and able to pull together a class if necessary. I did read Chrysalis Academy's post about their BHP experience on the Middle School/Logic board (awesome, thank you for sharing!) , but I am specifically interested in making this a worthy high school credit. I would love to hear thoughts on either of these resources, as well as from those of you who are planning on using one of these resources for next year. This is on my things to do list for this week, so I need to figure it out so I can get something checked off! Lol

Edited because I realized I am talking about Spelling Plus, not HTTS! Lol.

Similar to an above poster-we started AAR 4 with my 3rd grader sometime in late February or early March and should wrap up by mid-June. I think we are on lesson 47. Toward the end we have occasionally done two lessons in one day, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend that. My child is reading pretty fluently and some of these last few lessons on the -ice, -ace etc. suffixes are really short. I will say the stories are pretty long! Phew!

We did some with Pearson's Interactive Science for my 5th grader this year. I chose to add a bit, including science biographies and some fiction that pertained to the chapters. I used it in a couple of different ways, but the common theme was that it was all independent. There were a few interesting experiments that captured my 5th graders attention. Here is a helpful little thing I learned this year: DO NOT buy the Pearson Interactive homeschool set at $60+ a pop. Yes, you get some access to their education framework on-line, but many of the key components are missing-no tests, interactive videos, worksheets for the Explore It/Investigate It sections are available. I called them and told them the access they gave me was pretty useless and had them refund my purchase (I sent back the book, but am still waiting on the refund over 8 weeks later...). Then I bought a used copy of the workbook for about $3.00 on Amazon. It was almost new, with just a very small amount of writing, and was exactly what we originally purchased minus the on-line access. No guilt over the chapters we didn't complete, and we had more than enough with the workbook.

How kind! Looks like we are here for real. Very strange to be facing high school squarely in the eye. I feel so uncertain about this path, but the other option my child was pursuing did not come to fruition, so onward and upward! Kind of hard to believe one of my children is actually (almost) in 9th grade. I hope I can do this next phase the justice it deserves.

Eeew! Those pictures are seriously creepy. I can't yuck face enough. :ack2: :ack2: :ack2: :ack2: ... Gross, gross, gross

I did one earlier in the year. I did not eat out for 30 days, and it was a ton of cooking, but it overall a very good experience. It helped that I was already eating pretty cleanly. I will probably do another in the coming months because I did feel better. My favorite cookbook was Nom Nom Paleo. Everything I cooked from that my family enjoyed. Seriously, we did not have miss from all the recipes I made in that book.

Oh my, I have a huge list rolling around in my head! I am a chronic over estimator, so I no doubt have way more in my head than I can reasonably accomplish over the coming weeks and months. My eldest applied to a local high school program, and we are waiting to hear on that. I am in a bit of limbo on high school. If my child is home, then I will be spending a good portion of summer preparing from that. In addition to the potential HS planning, I have a couple of professional development books to read. I have some science and history to plan for the youngers. I have an entire school room closet that is getting a long, long overdue makeover. I need to put together some independent writing center type activities, as well as some morning work for my rising 4th grader. I would also like to catalogue our family library books and create a master library list. I do not work well on the fly, but inevitably I spend a good part of the year doing it on the fly. Down with the fly for 2015-2016!

I just want to 'like' all of the above! I am just sitting here nodding my head.

This is how we use MM. After going through it with my two olders, I have a much better conceptual understanding of math, and that allows me to teach MM more effectively, IMO. I know Maria wrote it to the student, but my kids get so much more out of the lesson if I present it. I also think MM in the younger years is very writing heavy, so we do some orally and try to practice some of the concepts with games. We gradually build up writing muscles, and by the end of third grade we are able to tackle multiple pages.

I apologize for not reading the entire thread right now, but I wanted to throw out a wonderful movie that I think you whole family will enjoy. The Pistol: The Birth of a Legend. It is the story of Pete Maravich. I will keep thinking, although I am sure you have gotten some great suggestions.

We also have the large ACT prep book and used tests on-line. My child took a practice test for each and one timed test. I didn't want to put a lot of focus on the test because I kept saying, "It really isn't about your score this round. You are in 8th grade, I just want you familiar with the format. Do the best you can." I felt like I couldn't make a really huge deal about preparing for it while saying that. Geometry is not my thing, so I couldn't have added much in the way of cramming, even if I wanted to. Lol That said, when we did the practice tests my child did perform better than I expected on some sections, which was a pleasant surprise. More than anything that gives me hope that with a few more years under the belt and a few more years to mature, I think a solid score is entirely within reach.