I totally agree. The less pieces the better!

I have a decent idea of what materials and types of assignments to require to fulfill my vision for our children, but what I need help on is state and college requirements, test prep readiness, etc. The basics I have planned are: Saxon Math (as high as they can go) Art: drawing and painting of people/portraits and landscapes, exploring of other arts and crafts as time allows and with interest Music: instrument study (my preference would be violin, guitar, and/or piano but their choice) Formal Logic followed by SAT/ACT Prep Spanish (not sure which program yet, but husband speaks fluently so probably his department) Mounce's Greek and Hebrew (not at the same time) Essay writing after readings in all content subjects (I'm sure we will use something to guide literary analysis and Bible study) Science labs as needed for credit or interest (hoping to do more of a living book approach) Unsure of outside activities or jobs, but I know my oldest will participate in girls' choir all the way through. The boy's choir ends when their voice changes so then they will likely choose something else. We are not big on sports now but my boys definitely have football aspirations so if my husband desires to take them to practices and games we may let them participate at some point. Maybe tennis or golf as my husband loves tennis and my father and sister are golf pros. I am pretty sure this will meet most college and state requirements as long as we document the readings but my oldest may need a vocational diploma instead because I am not sure she can finish all the math she needs, but we'll see. My requirements for her will be different, but this is what we are striving for academically in our home.

The Reader's Digest may be, I just couldn't see samples on amazon. I want to cover as many ages as possible. The one I linked to has comments about how it is not complete. Maybe I will order the RD one. I appreciate your reviews.

I just looked at my WTM notes for narrations by grade level. Maybe what I need to do is have my children tell back orally their Bible reading and only give me a written literature narration when they finish a chapter book instead of daily. We rotate our nonfiction topic each day so they can write daily on that topic, which may be as simple as recording a few facts they learned and working up to a one page report from an outline. On a day when they write a literature narration I would maybe excuse them from writing about nonfiction or allow them to only record a few short facts rather than write an outline and report. For Bible reading I may ask them to jot down one question, one interesting fact, one way it applies to them, and a prayer unless they would rather pray with me after showing me their notes. If I had them do that for Bible I may just have them do their oral narration from whatever they read about in fiction instead (again, only requiring written work at the end of a chapter book).

I am having trouble deciding what to do about narrations these days. Recently I realized that I had dropped the ball with my younger children by not having them do much of any oral narration, so I have been having at least my 8 year old tell me back what he has read for silent reading. He is doing better at this and at times it has revealed comprehension issues so it is a good thing. I do not expect him to write out narrations. I see value in CM narrations because I think it trains children to pay attention to details and sequence, and to begin to form better sentences as they turn their interpretation into a sort of story or report for the me, the listener. But I also see that written narrations of this sort can be very tedious if they are doing it for each reading assignment of the day (fiction, nonfiction, and Bible in our house). I think they tend to not do their best because they don't want to write that much. Their written narrations are not their best compositions because they are written in a flowy, unstructured CM style but cut short with many details left out to save their hand. Because of this I think that a structured narration more like an IEW or WTM style makes more sense for written work. I do want them to continue to do oral CM type narrations daily though because I really think it does so much in the way of composition skills and speaking skills long term. I guess the answer is that they should choose one of the three to tell back orally, one of the three to KWO and write from and possibly one to follow more WTM style writings? To be honest I am a little fuzzy with my IEW because we haven't been using it the last few months and I am even more fuzzy on WTM. I have not read The Living Page yet. Maybe that would give some better guidance? Anyway, I do want them to keep a reading journal of sorts each day, but I am just unclear how I want it set up. They are using Hake Grammar right now which includes a daily journal topic (5 min. impromptu writing from a topic) and either copywork or dictation of a passage, though the passages in their current book are related to animals and not great works of poetry, literature, or Scripture. I think these are important tasks but it adds to the writing load daily so I have to be careful not to ask too much of them in their reading journals. Thanks for any suggestions......

I finished the teaching English chapter. I'm trying to figure out her major points. Delay formal grammar study until age ten. Lots of copying of excellent works. Reading hard things with a dictionary next to you. Rereading passages to children and having them try to read themselves passages that they have memorized. Not focusing more on rapid, accurate oral reading than meaning. Teaching children to do oral narrations, writing the best sentences on the board, and having children copy them to teach composition. What else? I look forward to reading about spelling tomorrow.....

I guess I don't care much about how much or little they slant the letters. I'm sure some of my kiddos slant more than others. What I care about is that they start at the baseline for all lowercase letters, that it is legible, and that they form the letters with the strokes in the proper order for speed purposes. One could nitpick all day about slant. I do also care if their letters are too skinny or too fat, but only when it is extremely obvious. I do care that their words and letters sit on the lines as they should. And I don't find it necessary to put in all the extra loops, but I have at times shown them that there are other ways to make the letters if they prefer because they come across other ways of making the letters in books they see.

I just read the poetry chapter and I liked it a lot. We used to memorize poetry from Andrew Pudewa's Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization. It was cute to see my kids lined up every day reciting poetry and especially to see my 4 year old recite My Shadow in front of his little co-op class. I have kind of let the ball drop in general on memorization and I need to figure out how to get it back into our day. I sometimes thought Pudewa's selections to be done more out of humor or interest than beauty or how classic they were, but it was nice to have a selection all put together. And I worried they were missing out on other poems so I began reading a page of poetry each day, usually twice so that we could read it once, discuss the meaning, and hear it again. Even though I enjoy Pudewa's voice, I am not sure it was the best example of presentation on the cds. I think I do an ok job but there are some poems and words I am not sure about. I also wonder at times if having them choose the poem to memorize would be more motivating......

I don't even know what anthroposophy is.....lol. I will soon start another thread. I just finished chapter 4 and I can already say that without having even read her methods yet, but just her convictions about home schooling, this is one of my favorite books ever. I think it is one of the best books I've ever read on WHY people should homeschool. Quick thoughts on science labs: I don't enjoy science and I don't usually see the point of getting out a bunch of equipment to do science experiments or demonstrations that answer questions we haven't asked. It doesn't matter to me if those materials are around the house or real science lab equipment, though I do think that there is something special about real science equipment and I think lots of kids would enjoy using it if they knew how it works. I do think it would be interesting, even to me, to observe others on video doing science experiments and then repeating at home the ones that catch our interest especially and then naturally expanding on those through experimentations of our own (or the child's own). This might inspire real research into a topic. So I am interested in science videos of labs that are interesting. The only ones I know of are from SonLight. Hunter, is there somewhere where you explain the difference between slant cursive in theory and vertical cursive? I don't get why it matters so much. We use vertical cursive because we used Cursive First and I find it similar to the cursive taught in the EMoM (though the capitals are a little different). And I don't see how tally marks are tied to either......maybe I'm missing some major thread that went on about this topic. I see you mention it a lot and I feel like I'm supposed to understand what you are talking about but I don't.....

Right now I am using number cards (just from the grocery store with numbers 1-100 on them) and I picked out five cards and had her show me on an abacus what that number looks like. She has to read the number to me first, but I was already pretty confident she could do that because she used to copy the 100 number chart and read it to me. And I am pretty sure I have had her read the cards to me in the past as well. But I wanted to make sure she understood what that looked like visually. When we finish doing them with an abacus I will have her do them with base ten blocks to see it another way. She is also beginning math flash cards with basic addition and subtraction. We are using the Saxon cards so the inverse is on the back. We are going really slowly with this. In my experience with my third and fourth children so far, copying and reading a 100 number chart over and over in preschool was very helpful. I am going to do it with my poor neglected 5 year old (who is still technically in preschool until the fall). I only have them do about 10 numbers at a time at first and then they usually choose to do more each day until they have worked up to doing the whole thing. We sing skip counting songs and when I know they can recognize all the numbers from 1-100 I have them write them out and sing them. This makes multiplication and patterns easier, though if you don't do enough rote drill of the facts they end up using it as a crutch. Because of this I have mixed feelings about skip counting by song, but I also know that there have been many times where knowing those has been so beneficial and useful.

Ok, so far I have only read the first three chapters so I have nothing to say about arithmetic yet, but I really enjoyed what I have read so far. She is giving me confidence in home education when high school seems daunting with a struggling child and a new baby coming on top of health issues. There is a Waldorf school opening near my sister soon and she is considering putting her kids there in the future (she has a few years but sometimes waiting lists start early in specialty schools like that). I did not have much to tell her except that Waldorf looks really crafty and interesting in some ways but I am unsure of the underlying philosophies and would want to know more before considering enrolling my child there. Since I know no one in real life who talks about Waldorf, much less uses it, can someone please point me to one or two good introductory books on it that I can share with my sister and possibly read myself? I have looked at the Waldorf stores and the art supplies look really tempting but I am overwhelmed with the amount of books and don't know where to begin to understand the basics. When I get to the arithmetic part of EFL I will come back and comment. This week I have put down S-U and Ray's and picked Saxon back up for my ten year old (13 year old never switched) and math flashcards and an abacus for my 6 and 8 year olds. I am thinking about just having my 8 year old finish mastering his facts (I don't think he is far off and should be able to finish this summer) and then go right into Saxon 5/4 for third grade at a pace he can handle. I will hold his hand a bit at the beginning and then let go. I like Ray's and S-U a lot but I find that they are reliant on me whereas counting (1-100 and understanding those numbers on an abacus and with base ten blocks) and skip counting to math facts to Saxon is much more independent more quickly and goes straight through high school. I don't think I will use Intermediate 3. The format is just too different. If we need to do the roadschooling thing I may rethink Saxon because of size. Money is an issue but I won't need anything else for Saxon for awhile since I have 6/5 already except maybe the tests and worksheets book. They now sell a separate copy of the Saxon math facts for $10 so I may pick those up for my younger two. I have some old sets from the 1st-3rd grade Saxon books but I am not sure they are complete.... But after EFL I may have totally new revelations.......

Hunter, I will have to investigate her tonight, but I wanted to read through the old threads first but your link to the old threads doesn't work.

IOW, something beautiful and inspiring as well as informative....

I think I am looking for something like this, but more complete: http://www.amazon.com/Maps-Aleksandra-Mizielinska/dp/0763668966

I think I a looking for something like this, but more complete: http://www.amazon.com/Maps-Aleksandra-Mizielinska/dp/0763668966

Harvey's would take them the rest of the way through high school I think. Also, if you found that it wasn't sufficient I bet there are many resources in the library for essay writing. It would be easier to evaluate that when you finished the other books and saw where they were at that point.....

The other thing I forgot to say is that we learned a timeline through song and that way we didn't necessarily need a wall timeline. A book timeline is nice, but not absolutely necessary and I'm sure some can be found in the library. But we have one in our head at all times (sans dates except the major markings of centuries and general timeline ranges for different eras). We can at the very least find what came before and after other things and get a general feel for where in history something happened so I don't feel the need to go chronologically with history. You can download the timeline song from classicalconversationsbooks.com for $8 I think. It is TOTALLY worth it.

I like what Mrs. A said. We also use cheap composition books to keep everything in. In fact, I am strongly considering not buying the next Greek and Latin workbooks and instead writing in their composition books, but it does make things less independent. Or I may buy ONE copy of each level of workbook as we continue to go along and just make them use transparencies and vis-a-vis markers (they wipe off less easily so they will hold the ink well until I get around to checking them.) I would recommend Primary and Intermediate Language Lessons as well because they are inexpensive and cover grades 2-7. You can use the easier level of Harvey's alongside ILL or before or after it if you want and after ILL use the harder Harvey's Grammar. They include things like copywork and picture study and poetry and such. They are very CM style, whereas I see Harvey's as being more classical with diagramming. Both are essential in my mind, but that is just me. May I ask which state you are in? We had a religious exemption removal scare recently in NC but it looks like it isn't going to happen and I am extremely relieved for now. If I were you, I would just pick up some cheap binders and use that for binding unless you can find somewhere to bind them for less than the cost of the binders. I am not sure about printing costs. You can actually buy a bunch of file folders and a hole punch and one binder and then rotate the books out of it as you go along. You could also look at printing out books from AO, OFE, Robinson Curriculum, and Dollar Homeschool and putting them in binders or something, but I would personally prefer hardback little vintage texts.....

I would suggest Strayer-Upton and/or Ray's. And I would suggest Harvey's Grammars and Primary and Intermediate Language Lessons for language arts after you have taught them cursive and how to read (I didn't look at the ages). If you want something a little bit similar to AAS but less expensive, you could go with Spell to Write and Read, which is a one time purchase. I found the instructions in the New England Primer edited by Wanda Sanseri to be enough for me. If you want to keep the phonograms the same as AAS I would just buy one set of the AAS phonogram cards to use for everyone. For spelling you could use the McGuffey or Webster's Speller if you don't want to use Spell to Write and Read. I highly recommend The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady for nature study inspiration. It is cheap and a beautiful classic. We draw from it all the time in my house. Also, you may want to consider just doing music theory instead of lessons. I am planning to buy Alfred's Essentials of Music Theory. The workbook (lasting 3 years) is $10 each and there is a teacher's manual with the answers. You may want to consider buying something for foreign language or holding off for the future. I would use the library and YC for your science and history for sure and spend the money on non-consumable or long lasting skills-based texts and workbooks. That's why vintage texts work well for the 3R's in a family with a small budget. I only plan to supplement with music theory and languages workbooks. I do still love Saxon Math and Hake Grammar, but they are more expensive than vintage texts in the long run.

I do own the Beginner's World Atlas. I will take it out and look again. Too bad the other doesn't have samples.....

And why. I'm not in love with any of mine..... Thanks!

I have several, but I am not in love with any of them. I am wondering if I'm missing a gem out there...... Thanks!

It is interesting to see people on here state the exact opposite mistakes. Too relaxed vs. too strict, too much research vs. too little research, etc. I don't know if that is comforting or scary. 1. Comparing 2. Overanalyzing 3. Making decisions based on fear (probably also related to the first two) I really wish I had enjoyed my kids more earlier. These mistakes are still the same ones I continue to fight against constantly....

Rays Primary Arithmetic Math flash cards Websters and/or McGuffey Speller Primary Language Lessons LNST 2 HA 2 McGuffey Reader (depending on level) classical music cds Drawing books Atlas The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady New England Primer A Child's Story Bible Hymnal Catechism Songs by Holly Dutton Home library or library card

The Country Diary is not very heavy.....It really isn't that big of a book.....