Look into Managers of their Home. It really helped me think through what we could fit into our day as everything has to fit on the schedule. I discovered I wanted to get about 10 hours of school in each day! Not realistic! 1. Chaos and noise. If you do Managers of their home , you will have each kid doing a different activity for every half hour or hour. This will help with the kids that wander around distracting others. Your older 5 kids could each have 30 minutes each with your 2 yo. They would have to watch/keep safe/entertain/ teach your youngest each day with a preselected activity/game/outdoor time. They would also have to clean up what ever they got out at that time. 2. With your older two, start the slogan, "Messy doesn't count". Do it first with one subject. Pick one, like spelling, and tell them that for their spelling workbook, if it is too messy they have to redo it on their own time after their other schoolwork is done. They won't like having their free time spend on redoing subjects. You must be consistent (which I struggle with). Once they are doing well with neatness in one subject, add another. 4. While I love Managers of the Home, I use it more as a loose structure because with 6 kids, we never have a day that we can stick to a schedule exactly. With my older kids, I let them work on whatever they wanted to do independently. But I made them meet with me daily as scheduled, and watch the baby/toddler as scheduled. We also did as many subjects together as we could. So with my oldest 4 as they were close together in age, we did history (SOTW and extra books related), science, read aloud, Bible, art , music and Spanish together (but we rarely got to these last 3 subjects). They did math and language arts on their own level. 5 attitude and mood. They have been taught that it is acceptable to complain and whine. Once again be consistent ( I am not good at handing out consequences). If they whine or complain about math, they must give up 10 minutes of computer/TV time for each complaint. Or make them do an extra chore, or an extra 10 minutes of math. It may seem like a lot of work to keep track of but if you are consistent, they will quickly learn. You really need to work on this or soon you will have all 6 kids acting this way. When my kids were younger, and we were starting a new school year, I would start our schedule gradually. So like at 8:00 am they would like up in front of the chart, and see what they were supposed to be doing for the next 30 minutes. Then everyone would go off to get in done, with one kid watching the youngest and me working with one. Then when the timer went off, we would meet at the chart and if the kid did what they were supposed to do during that time, they each got 1 m&m (yes, when they were younger, they were excited by only 1 m&m!) For the first week, we would only do two things on the list, the next week we would add two more and so on. After we got the hang of it I stopped the m&ms, lineup and timer, but every so often we would bring it back if we needed to. Hope this helps! You can do this!! Gretchen in NO. CA

Me too! I want to hear your answers. I am considering this for my son. I also have Biology 101 dvds to add to it. I am also looking at Guest Hollow Biology, but leaning toward Friendly Biology. My son has no interest in science, but this looks more interesting than most.

What about Real Science 4 kids? They have a middle school chemistry. I'm thinking about doing that with my daughter and I have McHenry's Elements so that might be a good combo.

I'm looking for a science program for my 13 year old daughter. She is dyslexic so struggles with reading, but is doing so much better. She also has Auditory Processing Disorder so all the past years that I have read her books to her so hasn't learned much. I was thinking of getting Exploring the Building Blocks of Science 5. I like how it has chemistry, biology, physics, geology and astronomy. After doing this in 8th grade, she will pick which 3 of these areas she would like to do for high school. Has anyone used Exploring Building Blocks of Science? How did you like it? I tried doing the search but didn't have any luck. Thanks in advance!

I'm looking for a science program for my 13 year old daughter. She is dyslexic so struggles with reading, but is doing so much better. She also has Auditory Processing Disorder so all the past years that I have read her books to her so hasn't learned much. I was thinking of getting Exploring the Building Blocks of Science 5. I like how it has chemistry, biology, physics, geology and astronomy. After doing this in 8th grade, she will pick which 3 of these areas she would like to do for high school. Has anyone used Exploring Building Blocks of Science? How did you like it? I tried doing the search but didn't have any luck. Thanks in advance!

Thanks for these ideas. I haven't looked at Easy Peasy before so I'll look at that. I do have Getting Started with Spanish. I was looking for something more fun for her, but maybe I can combine it with something else.

I am looking for a middle school Spanish for my 13 yod. She is dyslexic, APD and low working memory. She wants to learn Spanish as we live in CA and she hears Spanish everywhere we go. Does anyone have any recommendations? It needs to be fun, not move too fast, interesting and start to prepare her for High school in a couple of years. Thanks, Gretchen

Does anyone have any experience with Audiblox? It is now called Edublox and mostly a computer program now. I was just reading about it and they had a case study of a girl named Maddie who had very similar testing scores as my daughter. Any one else use it? Thanks, Gretchen in No. CA

I'll give her the screening. Thanks. Right now we are doing Logic of English Essentials. She does struggle with hearing some sounds, like the difference between m and n so I was wondering if I should go back and do FIS.

I haven't used it but have heard mixed reviews. Some say it is amazing and their child has improved so much by using it. Others have said their child didn't improve at all and it was an expensive mistake. I'm looking into it too. Another recommendation is HearBuilder. It is similar but not very expensive. My daughter is being evaluated by a speech and language center at a nearby University in Feb. so I'm hoping they can help me choose one of these or have other suggestions.

My daughter scored very low on the CTOPP 2 test. Would something like Foundations in Sound (precurser to Barton) help her with this? Thanks, Gretchen in No. CA

Great job! Do you have the teacher's guide for intermediate for sale? I have the older kids one and it is too hard for my daughter so I wanted to get intermediate. Thanks! Gretchen

My son will be reading SWB The History of the Medieval World this year for 10th grade. He will be doing independent study with our local school. They are used to having regular tests at the end of the chapter. Are there any tests for this book? Anyone made up any? Thanks!

Great! I'll take a look at it.

Does anyone know of a course that would cover more modern music?I don't know if it would be history or music appreciation. By modern I mean 1940's till now. Has anyone written curriculum for this or know of a book that would cover this? Of course, we would add plenty of listening to music! Thanks, Gretchen