Old Yeller (not sure exactly when this one was), Caddie Woodlawn, By the Great Horn Spoon, Turn Homeward Hannalee. Most of these are toward the 1850 range.

I use a mixture of both. I use SL for history, lit, and a smattering of geography. I use SL readers, but we use WTM LA and MM or CLE for math. I love what we're doing. I don't care for SL LA; I feel I need a bit more hand holding, especially as the kids get older.

While dd isn't 100% identifying the parts of speech, I feel she has a better grasp after fll3. She is just beginning to be able to do it at the end of the book. I suspect that the grammar is building and as she gets older it will stick more. That being said, I really like the Brian Cleary books, I have a few and think it will make a great supp.:001_smile:

I have not done Right Start, but I have a bit of experience moving into MM. I think it might be wise to go ahead and start at MM1. Even if you have to skip parts because your child is familiar with it, it is essential to get a good grounding in the way MM does things. I tried putting our eldest DD halfway into grade 2, and it was a disaster. I put our second DD halfway into MM1, and I noticed a lot of things our older girl should have known before moving on. There are little tricks and methods MM uses that need to be mastered before moving into MM2. I hope that makes sense! :001_huh: You can move quickly through MM if your child already knows some of the stuff. I know boscopup moved through many levels this way. Maybe she'll chime in here.

I would say Time Travelers also and lapbooks. We put lapbooking components in a notebook format (ours is a 3-ring binder), as we don't really like making lapbooks, but maybe your DD would.

I haven't in the past, but this year with 5 core on our shelves, I decided to put some on. I haven't even finished, as I can't find some of the right sheets, so I'll need to get those on my next SL order. I didn't want to, as I couldn't imagine putting stickers on beautiful books (the horror!), but it makes it nice and the girls feel more free to pull things off the shelves, as they now know where to put it back. DD9 made me laugh, she was upset because I was messing them up (just like me). :001_smile:

Same here. I have not ordered the older SL LAs yet, but when we get to Core D, since the material will be in the core material, I've decided I'll scan through and pick out things I might find beneficial in addition to WWE and whatever grammar I choose after FLL4. Thank you for these comparisons! What I am worried about in SL LA is a lack of guidance in writing. I need a lot of hand holding to guide my children, and I'm worried SL won't fit the bill. Same thing, we plan to pick and choose from the SL LA in Core D and still continue with our own mix of WWE or WWS and FLL (and whatever I choose for grammar after FLL4 :confused:) I have decided to be a guinea pig for the new SL LA K, though. I figured, she's young and I can switch to OPGTR for first if I need to, along with FLL, etc.

I have done this in the past, though not currently. I used SL's schedule and added in FIAR here and there where appropriate.

Fabulous! We will definitely be doing these this upcoming year with SOTW2!

Subscribing, as we're doing animal classification this upcoming year for science. I found these cards for practicing animal classification. This site has a lot of good stuff! http://www.guesthollow.com/homeschool/printables/printables_science.html

That's amazing! I bet your heart skipped a beat! That would have been, what, 32 dollars new? :party:

I am snipping some things here and there that I know they know. I'm condensing some of their ETC books and considering dropping some of the WWE2 weeks, as they have summarizing down. DD9 already finished her spelling book, and we moved into the next book. DD7 has 2 levels left of AAS. I do want to finish their grammar books; they have about 10 lessons left. We have a week and a half left of SL Core B. I want to be done too, but we have a few things to tie off. :glare: Whatever is left by the end of May in ETC and WWE, though, we are going to snip it.

Yes! All of WWE2 basically teaches summarization. My girls are such good summarizers now, I truly think they are better than me sometimes!

Nevermind, I did confuse your post. It is too early!~ :tongue_smilie:

We like SL. I agree with boscopup, not to let bad reviews sway you. I like the idea of looking at what a bad reviewer uses now to help you decide too. One of the things I am liking about the new SL IGs are the questions. I hated the questions before, and we just read the books, which is fine for the ages of my kids. As I want to get into more discussion, this year's new IGs look to fit the bill. I just got in Core C IG, and the questions are more intuitive and not as "out there." Sometimes the questions in the old IGs were just irrelevant and I just would skim them. The questions are very more pinpointed now, and they remind me of our SOTW questions. We actually use SL more like we use SOTW, we read the selections, the girls narrate and either copy or dictate their narrations on a notebook page that I either made or purchased or they create their own with illustrations, etc. So I do add notebooking and narration to it, so maybe that's why I find it so meaty. In the lower elementary years, I don't expect huge narrations, and I believe SL's intentions are to get your children used to hefty reading and to expose them. It's not to get them analyzing literature, but to learn to love learning. My girls retain tons with SL and notebooking, and I am learning a lot, so I know it is meaty enough for them. We like to read a lot, so if you don't like to read a lot, it may not be for you. The new IGs, in my opinion, have addressed some of the concerns raised about the discussion questions.

We use First Language Lessons without supplement, CLE math and Math Mammoth without supplment.

We switched DD9 from MM to CLE. She, too, was lost in MM even though I backed way up. She just didn't get it no matter how we worked with the material. I started her in the middle of CLE 200 and now at the end of third grade, we are in 307. We are pretty much doing everything since starting the 300s and not skipping like we did in 200. We actually love MM for DD7, but she is more math-oriented. Another thing you may want to consider when choosing between Abeka and CLE is since you are already doing Abeka workbooks for LA, you actually run the risk of the child getting bored/really used to a certain way of doing things. That's just a side thought for me. I have heard of burnout because of the same formatting across all subjects. :001_smile:

:iagree: It's disheartening at times to see preschool parents questions being downplayed. There are so many fun things to do with preschoolers and some people need more structure in their days. The preschool years are excellent years to get the feel of homeschooling so that when you get to the bigger kid stuff, you have a flow in your home and able to get things done. Structure is excellent for preschoolers, they thrive on it.

I love your extras! I haven't got my Core C IG yet, so haven't planned much, but I will definitely be using your supplements. You sound exactly like me, I can't leave anything well enough alone. Even if I don't use all the supplements, activities, and recipes, I like the option to be there and we can delete as necessary throughout the year. I'm glad someone is liking my notebook pages. It took me a long time to make them, but I couldn't find anything online (even for sale pages) that I really loved, so I decided to tackle it myself. :)

Funny you should mention it. I just shared 63 pages of notebooking pages that I made to go along with Core C. It also follows SOTW2 some, so some pages probably wouldn't be used with Core C. Maybe some of them will help you. We're using core C next year with SOTW2. Here they are. :) Note: They are pretty colorful, as the girls do well with color. If some pages are too much for you, drop me a line and I can easily augment them and share them on my blog.

This is really cool! I don't like having inappropriate suggested videos pop up on the sidebar when watching YouTube videos with the girls. Even if I prewatch them, there are always those pesky recommendations.

:lurk5: I don't think there has been any news, but just in case . . .

I wondered the exact same thing about SL writing (not grammar) and WWE. Looking through the samples of SL, the writing portion seems to be similar to WWE, but I'm not sure if SL has as much punch as WWS has. It seems to just continue with the same sorts of assignments. WWS seems to be more heavily composition in nature, while SL is more heavy on the creative side. I have not used SL, though, so can't say for sure. I would love to hear other opinions also. I have toyed with the idea of forging ahead on my own, using WWE style with the SL books and using the SL LA as a sort of guide for sentences, but it sounds too complicated right now. :001_huh:

I am sitting here just nodding my head reading through the responses. I do know that there is almost a developmental milestone with carrying spelling over to writing, and I have stopped worrying about this so much. It is normal for kids to not carry over the spelling rules consistently to their writing. That being said, while doing AAS and WWE this year and almost finished with the levels, our DDs have tremendously improved in their spelling capabilities. I still spell really difficult words, sometimes more. Their minds understand the words, just not the spelling. I, too, have often wondered why it has to be verbatim. When writing a paper/essay, we aren't copying anything. I can see copywork being verbatim and insisting on the correct mechanics and word usage. But with dictation, I am starting to wonder what's the use? Maybe just training to keep the thoughts there long enough to be able to write it down? The days they do narration and then dictation, their dictation comes much more easily, as it's their own work. Today, our dictation had 7 (!!!) commas in it (WWE2 week 32 or so) with only one sentence. I didn't even really agree with the comma placement, as it just seemed like too much pausing and losing the thought with the staccato-like comma usage. Anyhow, that's neither here nor there. I might be tempted to do as a previous poster did and use mainly their summaries or even choosing passages that don't have large words that 2nd graders usually don't know how to spell. It's frustrating, but I do think it will get better. I'm thinking of holding off WWE1 for our last DD until the very end of first grade or even the beginning of 2nd grade. Our 3rd grader is doing WWE2, and it is coming much easily for her compared to the 2nd grader doing it, though it is still very much a challenge for her. I think DD7 is going to have to practice more on the WWE2 skills before moving into WWE3. I don't know if that helped at all, but do know you're not the only one with these problems. :001_smile:

Since you have an older child, I would definitely consider adding on the younger. Check out this document made by a mom who did just that. You'll have to sign in with Google or make a Google account. It seems the new Core 5/F has considerably less book, so it might make it easier to incorporate a younger. Also, the EHE (problems with the young end of the core - 5th grade) has been cut down and incorporated into the Core F IG. I have heard of people having a lot of trouble with there being so many books in the old core. They have cut that down a lot this year.