Absolutely by publication date here! Luckily I have my old set and that is the order they are in. Fall in love with Lucy and the wardrobe first, read the story of redemption, ponder who Aslan is. The four Pevensie kids are really at the heart of the Chronicles. Start there, as they were written, in my opinion!

I'm thinking mine are probably ready for The Princess and the Goblin books. But we have lots of piles of books sitting around to read, so I don't know when we'll get to it. But I think they would like it.

Noeo is my science of choice for early elementary years. We used Bio I in first, are currently doing Chem I, and plan to do Physics I next year. I love the book choices and we learn well from reading good books here. I think the experiment kits are good and it's enough for us, but folks who want *lots* of hands-on might find it lacking. There can be several weeks without any experiments, especially in Bio. Frankly, I don't know what we'll use yet in upper elementary. I will certainly consider the level 2 Noeo courses. I really love the style for early elementary--lots of reading together on the sofa, can require less written work for youngers, etc. Noeo is very easy to use, science gets done, it's pretty easy on me, and my kids are growing up enjoying science. And the books get used over and over. But I may want something a bit more systematic as we head toward middle school. It's definitely worth a look though.

Since you mention Living Learning Books and History Odyssey (secular as above poster mentioned), I'll also mention Biblioplan as one to look into (lots of living books). You can see a table of contents and sample pages at Biblioplan.net, but briefly it includes I think a 3 week unit on Creation to Jacob, a 7 week unit on the Nation of Israel, and a good 3 weeks of the Ancient Rome unit cover Christianity. This is all in addition to units on Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Ancient East. Biblioplan schedules many different sources, including SOTW as a possible spine. I think the newest version also schedules MOH. If you like reading a lot of readers (listed in 3 different age brackets) and family read alouds, you may find it a very enjoyable program. History is our favorite subject!

I have to admit I've never seen or heard any Diana Waring materials, but just want to say I love everything that I have seen and heard from the Teaching Co. That does not include the course you mention, but does include the Vikings, History of the U.S., Luther: Gospel, Law, and Reformation, the World History one with the high school teacher who dresses up in costumes (can't remember the name but it includes Fertile Crescent!), and How to Understand and Listen to Great Music. We are fortunate that our library carries some titles, but we (my dh and I) have learned so much that we have started investing in a few that our library doesn't have. I would not hesitate to include Teaching Co. courses, and I expect my dd to be able to learn from them by the time she's in 8th grade. Even now in 2nd grade she will watch for a few minutes. But keep in mind that the target audience is adults and that may not be a good fit for some kids.

I'll just mention that Biblioplan also schedules the History of US in its year 3 (volumes 2-5) and year 4 courses (vol. 6-10 I think). We will be doing this with an 8 year old, using History of US as a read aloud. Of course Biblioplan schedules many other books too, including SOTW, readers in 3 age brackets, and family read alouds. It does not include any discussion questions on the books. Whether or not Biblioplan meets your needs, it might help you just to know that other folks use History of US and use it with younger kids.

My dd also fell in love with the World History Encyclopedia and still reads it for fun. For ancients, we enjoyed the following also: D'Aulaire's Greek Myths Aesop's Fables (Milo Winter) Black Ships Before Troy (read aloud) Wanderings of Odysseus (read aloud) Detectives in Togas (read aloud) Later we found Geraldine McCaughrean's various books on myths (Greek, Roman) in the library and dd really enjoyed those too.

I'm teaching a second grader and a PreKer (doing K stuff). I schedule everything 4 days awake except math is 5 days a week and art is 1 day a week. There is enough flexibility to sometimes skip one day of a subject (i.e. FLL is sometimes 3 days a week). The subjects we do 4 days a week are handwriting, spelling, grammar, Bible, history, science, and Latin.

I wonder if they're planning to replace all of the other courses too? I'm done with EB, but now wonder if I need to buy years 4,5, & 6??

My dds loved Little Pear. They wouldn't let me hand it down to their cousins. But then they enjoy stories with naughty children! They don't act it out or anything--they just enjoy the antics.

I have the same age spread and I'm not too worried about SOTW 3 next year. But then we haven't had any difficulties arise yet. Also we use Biblioplan, so a lot of our content is from books other than SOTW 3--still using a lot of picture books here. Can you anticipate what will be big issues in this time period? French Revolution? Anything else? I think I would plan to go ahead and use it and try to read ahead so you can be prepared for the hot spots.

Cooking is where it comes up most in my life. I actually have a recipe that I multiply all of the ingredients by 2/3 to make the right amount for our family! Make half a batch of cookies with him--and make him do the math so he better be right or it turns into a science experiment! (what happens if we don't have the right amount of baking soda...)

Even with the lesson plans I found it frustrating to use with a 6 yo and 4 yo last year. The first few lessons were fine, but it reached a difficulty level that was way beyond my kids' level (I think something about drawing volumes/solids???) My youngest is actually very artistic and the assignments put her in tears and made her dislike art. Maybe it was frustration that she couldn't do it the way she thought it should be done? Anyway, we switched to Artistic Pursuits and everyone is happy. Except that we still have trouble fitting art into the schedule!

Hold On To Your Kids--Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld. Someone here recommended it and I just returned it to the library today (would have kept it longer but it's got a long wait list and I couldn't renew it). The first 3/4 of the book is basically about how kids instinctively attach to someone. Those who attach to peers instead of parents or other adult authority figures can have a rough go of it. Peers do not have the unconditional love, wisdom, maturity, or life experience to successfully mentor others to productive adulthood. In the last quarter of the book, there are some neat sections that debunk socialization anxiety. It's okay for kids to be shy. Or introverts. Or not have playdates. Or socialize primarily with siblings and parents. It's not just okay--it's very healthy and these kids mature into responsible adults. Check your library and see if the book is available. You'll see that your kids are just fine!

We have never used a teacher's guide. We're just finishing 2B and have had no trouble just teaching from the text book. For teaching renaming, I liked using our base 10 blocks. I had a poster board and drew three columns on it titled hundreds, tens, ones. I put some "1" blocks in the ones category, then asked dd to add a certain amount. When the amount went over 9, we exchanged ten unit blocks for a "10" rod which we put in the tens column. Did lots of examples and later extended for renaming ten 10's as a "100" block. If you don't have base 10 blocks, you can used toothpicks instead. Bundle some up into 10's and secure with rubber bands. We actually don't use maniupulatives all that much, but I thought this activity was very worthwhile.

I have never used a Sonlight core, so I can't really compare the workloads between the two programs. We have enjoyed our first 2 years with Biblioplan and are looking forward to starting year 3 soon. I have always enjoyed looking through the Sonlight catalog and I've always been drawn to core 3 in particular. But the comments I hear are that it is really best for kids who are older than 3rd grade. Many book choices would probably be a bit much for a 3rd grader and a kindergarten tag-along. Which brings me to one of the things I love about Biblioplan. The book list is divided into 3 age groups and the k-2 books are typically picture books. We used only the k-2 readers (and about half of the family read-alouds) last year in first grade. This year we've used the k-2 readers but also added in many of the 3+ books (and most of the family read-alouds). I just love that I can custom-tailor the reading list to the appropriate level for my kids. Many of the books are in our library, and many are titles I recognize from the Sonlight catalog. We have enjoyed almost every book we've read. I do have to say that I spend as much money as I would for a Sonlight core because I choose to buy a lot of the books. I am very happy with Biblioplan and we plan to use it for the rest of our grammar rotation. May even use it for logic stage too!

I will be using Biblioplan America and the World 1600-1850 next year. It schedules SOTW plus many other books and beefs up the American history portion. One thing that you might look into is the History of Us series. Biblioplan schedules I think volumes 2-5 of the 10 volume series next year. We'll be using it as a read aloud for my then 8 year old (plus 5/6 year old tag along little sister)--I've heard it described as middle school level, but fine as a read-aloud for youngers. I was able to check out individual volumes from our library to see if it would fit us and liked it. There are so many wonderful books to add in for this history period. Add in your favorite Sonlight books. Lots of great picture books for younger kids too (If you... series, Jean Fritz books). Use your library to keep costs down. Have a great year!

I have Liping Ma's book and found it interesting. Mostly you will pick up on the difference between what teachers know in China vs. US. You'll appreciate that the Chinese teachers have a much better grounding in mathematics than US teachers, but this book doesn't really teach what the Chinese teachers know. It's not really a how-to book, but it is enlightening. It's rather expensive but if you can borrow it from a library or friend, it's worth reading.

YOU might be interested in the Teaching Company's How to Understand and Listen to Great Music for music history and appreciation. Our library has it and we have slowly checked out all 6 parts (I can't even remember how many lectures--at least 48). We made our kids listen along with us to part one on a long trip to California. Dh and I love it and have learned a lot, but it's probably more appropriate for high school age kids and adults. Still you mention that your kids are studying music so maybe the oldest would be able to sit through it! I thought it was just tapes or CD's, but apparently it's on DVD too. The professor is amazing.

I use a different program (Phonics Pathways), but started adding in the first Bob Books set when we got to CVC words.

The only "curricula" we used was Phonics Pathways to learn to read, Singapore Earlybird 2A and 2B for math, and RFH K to learn to write. The rest was reading reading reading many wonderful books to dd. I used several lists to plan my library trips to make sure we had great books to read: *Sonlight catalog (also bought some of the PreK and K books) *1000 Good Books List picture book section at http://www.classical-homeschooling.org/celoop/1000.html *Ambleside Online year 0 list *FIAR books *Let's Read and Find Out science books We also started reading chapter books as night time read alouds: the Little House on the Prairie series, James and the Giant Peach, My Father's Dragon, Mr. Popper's Penguins, and many others.

Okay, I haven't used WT yet. Just got it in the mail on Saturday. So this isn't a response to anything in or not in that program, but I am looking at doing more writing, perhaps making sure that dd is doing some writing each week. This may be as simple as writing narrations in history or doing more writing in science. I plan to get SWB's new WWE too (not the workbook) and may pick up ideas from there for weeks when we're not writing in WT.

We use Singapore as our main program and supplement with Horizons. We do both programs in order and do not try to line up topics. I do cross out a lot of the Horizons to keep the work load under control and just supplement topics of my choosing. For instance, Horizons usually has 2 or 3 rows each of addition and subtraction problems. This is review for dd--I cross out most of the problems and just have her do 2 or 3 so she doesn't forget how to do them. I don't time how long math takes dd, but I'm guessing we're in the 20-30 minute range total for most days, 5 days a week.

Biggest changes: 1) Starting writing with 3rd grader 2) Starting Latin grammar (have done PL, Minimus) 3) Adding Spanish (been on the schedule 2 years but never gets done!) Youngest will officially be K, but that doesn't really feel like a change. She's been involved in school from the beginning and is already doing K level work.

Ideally, we do chores together and then start in on piano practice. I think I want to get some hard stuff done before snuggle-on-the-couch time.