This fascinates me. I'm not tsk tsking you at all. I'm exhausted and would love to be a fly on the wall to see what you're using and how it's all going down.

It never ceases to amaze me how many blog posts and youtube vlogs go across my facebook feed with titles such as "homeschooling is simple" , "Done by lunch", "If homeschooling is hard, then you're doing it wrong". Then I click to see what kind of witchcraft they're using...and their oldest child is all of 8 years old or there's only one or two kids. When my oldest two were only in lower elementary it wasn't all that time consuming. We had pretty restful days. But it's gotten much more time consuming as I've added students and my older kids have more work. From morning till late afternoon, I'm occupied with homeschooling. And even beyond that I'm thinking and planning. So yes, I'd say it's a full time job.

I spent over a year with my oldest two trying to make it 3/4 of the way through SWI B. We took breaks and I gave them other assignments in there. I ended up sending it back and then just finishing out last year giving them reports, essays, narrations etc. This year my oldest is doing EIW and my 12 year old is doing GATB. Im really not happy with either program for us and know I won't continue with them next year. I asked both of them what has helped them the most in our homeschooling years and what they've like the least. Both of them said "Mr Pudewa" is at the top of the list for what has actually helped them with their writing. (Wordsmith Apprentice was their least favorite in case you're curious) So I'm wondering if I should give it another shot next year. You know....because I'm a crazy person. If you've struggled making IEW in the past but stuck with it and made it work, can you tell me about it? If you think I'm just nuts, I'm open to hearing that too. This year had a very rocky start for us. I've changed so much of what we started with.

Apologia General Science. I thought she'd hate it and truly urged her to try something more fun, but she's determined and is doing well with it.

At the beginning of the year (or the spring before more realistically) I write all the categories from the SCM chart that I want to cover down the left side of a piece of paper. I then start putting things down that I already have in my head that I want to cover. For example, I knew I wanted to study Beethoven this year...so I put that down for composer study. I put Book of Virtues under personal development etc.... I go through each category with SCM's recommendations open and just write down everything I think we'd like to try for the year in its category along with anything else that pops into my head. The past couple years I've referenced the Wayfarers lists for this as well. And just because I write it down doesn't mean we'll do everything. I just like having that direction in moving forward. Scratch that. I NEED that direction. My brain doesn't do open ended. And I don't do meticulously detailed plans, because they stress me out. But with this kind of loose system in place, I get the joy of feeling like I'm flying by the seat of my pants each day without feeling stressed out. It's glorious. Anyway, once I have some ideas for each category, I decide what I need to buy and what I can just hold at the library. Then it's easy to just loop through the books. For history I generally have a spine plus one historical fiction read aloud going at a time. Then I assign one book per child on their level for history from which they do their written narrations. All the other categories tend to just be me reading aloud and then discussing them. It's just as simple as finishing one book and picking up another. Funny thing is that this very flexible system works very for us and yet I tried to rock the boat and go with new shiny curriculum. We dropped it in about 3 weeks, and I'm back to what I had plotted out on paper in the spring

I've only used one history guide. I more often will used the book ideas for a history time period and just read through them at our own pace. Also when Im planning our Family Time choices for the year, I like to use the entire curriculum guide as a reference for what subjects to cover. (Personal development, Hymn, Composer etc). Sometimes I use the recommendations for those subjects, and sometimes I have my own ideas...and maybe in a given year a little of both. Anyway, once I have all my subjects sort of planned, we just relaxedly loop through them in the afternoons. Easy Peasy.

I'm going back through to read all the responses. It never ceases to be funny to me that when I find a post that looks almost like mine...its yours.

Sooo I purchased the History, 2 science units, and levels 7, 3, and 2 of language arts. My kids didn't enjoy the history, and I was adding too much to try to fill it out, so we dropped that. I felt all over the place with the science units, so we dropped that. And I have mixed feelings about the Language arts. My 7th grader is the only one still doing it. We're on lessons twenty something and she literally said to me this morning, "Oh gee...It's finally making me write something." While the grammar is plenty, imo the writing is really not enough. In order to MAKE it enough, she is doing more written narrations from her history books. For my younger ones, their reading levels are just way beyond what their placement in the program has them doing. And the reading/phonics is a huge part of the program. I felt like we were wasting so much time covering things they mastered YEARS ago, so I ended up trying to skip things...but then I began skipping more than we were actually doing which is ridiculous. So we dropped it altogether. I think my 7th grader will finish the year out doing the LA, but that's it. I have no plans to use it with any of my other kids. Im very disappointed. I just had such high hopes for it all. It's no fault of the curriculum. Just didn't work for us.

CLE Math- This is has been the most constant thing in our homeschool Pentime- Once I found this for handwriting, I didn't look for anything else. Cheap, well done, and my kids enjoy it Abeka Phonics- just the Handbook for reading and 1st grade readers CLE LA- not every year, but I do tend to come back to it SCM's list of subjects and book choices- No matter what we've done, I've always used this guide for planning as well as help for choosing resources Stacks of Books- When all else has fallen apart, we've read. Read aloud. Read to themselves. Consistently. It definitely fits my teaching style. :)

I bought it to use this year, and I would say that the 7-9 grade explorer sheets are most definitely not enough. The 10-12 grade ones are fuller, but I was still needing to add readings and narrations (written for the olders and oral for the youngers) from the Wayfarers list to make it feel like enough. And I'm NOT a rigorous homeschool mom. With that being said, my kids didn't like the history at all...so much groaning when it was time to listen to the audios. (Imagine chants of BRING BACK JIM WEISS! BRING BACK JIM WEISS!). It felt ridiculous to continue when the kids didn't like the program and I was adding so much to it. I really like the concept of it as well as the heart behind it. And I will say that everyone liked the game. But now it's all going to sit on my shelf till spring when I sell things.

Ours was always a short paragraph. __________ made adequate progress is all areas. Clocked the right number of hours. yada yada. And then I wrote their favorite thing they learned, favorite field trip, and what they felt was their biggest accomplishment. Boom. Done. And a nice paragraph to show for it thus allaying any fears over whether I'd get a nasty letter/call/email asking me for more information.

All y'all who said it's not enough for 9th grade pretty much confirmed what my instincts were telling me. I wish that the high school levels were ready.

Level 7 for an average 9th grader? Really? This intrigues me. In your opinion would it really be enough for (average not advanced) 9th grade?

I'm having a hard time getting a feel for what the program looks like from the samples that are given. What would a week's worth of work look like? How often and how long are the videos?

Do you have Beyond the Book Report in hand yet? Would you share your thoughts? Ive seen it on SCM's recommendations and am considering it for my 9th grader next year. I feel like I need SOME structure/guidance. (Just not quite as much structure as IEW gives...)

Thank you!

I've heard at Mr. Q, but haven't looked at it. I'll take a look. Thank you. The way you're describing it sounds about perfect to me. I really do love just getting a stack of library books on different topics, but this would make it feel more cohesive as well as get SOME hands on done. I think one experiment weekly would be my limit....

Thank you for sharing those links! One more question abou Science in the Beginning- Does it completely derail the lesson if you DONT do every activity?

Ohh...I do like this one a lot! I had never heard of it. Did you find a science kit anywhere to go with your volume?

Thanks! I'll take a look. :) This one is definitely on my short list of things I thought MIGHT work. Do the activities/demonstrations require a lot of prep?

I'm trying to choose a science program to do with my upcoming 4th and 2nd graders. I have a tendency to just read books and have them read books, which I know is fine, but when asking my older two what their favorite science from elementary was, my oldest son said, "We did science?" And then my daughter said, "Of course we did science. Do you remember when we made ice cream? That was the best year." And then my son remembered and agreed. What they're remembering was Elemental Chemistry, which was really the only year we did science with actual projects. I'm not a sciency person. I can look at art, listen to classical music, and discuss history and literature all the live long day, but science? Not so much. Also, I have a very low threshold for mess, chaos, and activities that are crafty, open ended, or feel pointless to me. BUT I want to TRY and incorporate more hands on for my younger ones as I'm finally at a point where I know I'm capable of handling it now that I have no more toddlers and babies. I know they will enjoy it, so I'm trying to find what would be best taking in considerations their interests and MY WEAKNESSES. Any suggestions? I'm looking for -purposeful activites (ie not a bunch of crafts. Have I mentioned that Im allergic to crafts?) -SIMPLE easy to follow plans (I'm not so good with lots of detailed step by step instructions...just a general plan with clear goals is better for my brain) -relatively inexpensive -Nothing that even resembles a unit study format (they make me feel all over the place) -Christian or secular but Christian friendly -covers some branch of life science (my 9 year has proclaimed this is what he wants) -can be done 2-3 times a week Any suggestions?

4th grade CLE Math Pentime RS English 3 Modern Speller MAYBE All Things Fun and Fascinating (or maybe I'm just in a mood tonight) Science is TBD... Stack of books for quiet reading time Family Hour- Ancient History loosely merging SCM and Wayfarers, Poetry, Read Alouds, Hymn, Composers, drawing, Artists, Bible, Memory Work, HOPEFULLY Shakespeare this year!

This made me giggle as I feel the same when reading YOUR posts. :lol:

What did work -CLE math for my younger ones -Having a giant family/circle/table time after lunch. I've integrated as much as possible and not having so many people all over doing their own things has made our chaos feel more cohesive. Family history, family read alouds, poetry, music, drawing etc... ALL those things have been wonderful. I'm going to resist the urge to change that format for next year and just plug in different materials. Jury is still out on what those will be. Seriously. Y'all, I'm clueless. -copywork and narrations-simple and easy. Not hard to plan. Not hard to correct What I'm still pondering- -IEW SWI B-so I totally ended up send this back...and yet months later when I ask my daughter to take notes from her science/history and write a narration, she STILL uses KWO format and some of those tools. So, I'm feeling a little better about our time spent with it. Truth be told I'm even having second thoughts about having sent it back, because, ya know, I can be wishy washy like that. ((shrugs)) -We did NO grammar this year. That was fine as we'd done it every year for years and this year has been stressful.....but we WILL do it next year. What didn't work- -Feeling behind ALL year. It's been miserable. We started late, took over a month off to have company and have been trying to move (still hasn't happened). Feeling behind/rushed/not able to find a rhythm this year has made everything miserable no matter how delightful the materials or how perfect they'd be for us if our circumstances were different. I want a do over. -Algebra 1 for my son- We were moving along fine (I thought), but he just hit a wall and couldn't go anywhere. Felt behind. I think a lot of this is stemming from the previous point I mentioned of us feeling rushed and never being able to catch up ALL year. He's getting a complete do over for 9th grade. Dear Lord, I'm hoping that helps