Sorry so long! I haven't read all the responses, but did read a few. Definitely have a chore chart for your kids. I am amazed at how well the girls do chores. At first, it takes a bit of effort on my part, as I'm teaching them how to do a good job, but it pays off. They unload the dishwasher, clear the table, collect bathroom trash, wipe counters in kitchen/bathroom. Mop the floor in the bathroom, sort dirty clothes, fold and put away their own laundry, sweep, dust, wipe microwave. That was the first thing that stood out for me. The second thing, as mentioned in previous posts, is have schooltime before playtime. We start at 8:30. Both of my older girls do independent stuff right away, so I have a good hour to hour and a half with my 5yo to finish her K stuff. She can wander off after her stuff is done. I intersperse her lessons if one day I didn't get to her as I wanted. Just do one thing on her schedule if need be, let her play, and call her back. It is very, very hard to get good, focused attention after they have been playing for more than 30 minutes. Both of my girls also have been trained (not without a lot of effort) to skip things they don't understand and keep them all in one part until I get to their turn. We also take turns. Every single part of my morning, one of the girls is getting one-on-one time. One girl will be "first" for the day, and after her independent work, we do things that require me. We finish all of the girls' work by about 11 to 11:30. We eat lunch, then I do chores and have a time for mental downtime (which I need by now!). I plan out some meals and make sure I have those items beforehand so that I can just make something instead of sitting and thinking what we're going to have for lunch. At 1 p.m., we do history reading and any projects that can be fit into an hour. At 2 p.m., no matter what, everyone has either a nap or a 1-hour of quiet, by-yourself time. No exceptions. I have a whole hour where I can unwind completely by doing whatever I want to. The older girls read on their own at this time for about 20 minutes. The little one plays quietly by herself. No one is allowed to talk each other. This is good for them too since they are being stimulated throughout the day by each other. One last thing, sorry to overload you! At 3 o'clock, I have taken pains to find things for the girls to do that require none of me (Yay! More time for me). Things like notebooking pages, crafts, coloring, playdough (yes, they still love playdough), drawing from Draw, Write, Now etc. Some things are schoolish, and others are just fun. I have a craft book that they can choose what they want, and I keep a craft box supplied for them to just have at it. After that, they may play together outside or inside for whatever they wish. I hope that our schedule may have a gem you might be able to find. I am done with everything except a read aloud by 2 every day. We do bigger art projects and catch up on reading in the weekends too.

After this upcoming year, I'll be in the same shoes. I was thinking of MCT LA for a change of pace and to come at grammar from a different point of view. I haven't used anything yet, obviously, but hoping to bump for more recommendations.

This looks really good. I can't wait to use some of the American resources next year.

Also Stories From Around the World from P4/5, New Toes For Tia, and Granny Han's Breakfast. The last 2 of these books are missionary books. The Family Under the Bridge takes place in Paris.

The TT CDs have more paper work, like notebooking pages and 3D components. They have activities also, but you would have to come up with the supplies needed, which can sometimes be a nuisance.

Definitely have all of them take the end of the book tests if possible. I do have the other child leave the room while the other narrates. In WWE3, though, the child reads their own passage, so I'm splitting them again to allow for them to read on their own without 2 workbooks. FLL3 can be done as a stand alone. A child doesn't need to have completed 1 and 2 to do 3. It assumes no prior knowledge of grammar. You will have to pause now and then and work on memorizing the lists of helping verbs, prepositions, etc. since they didn't get them in 1 and 2, but it isn't a big deal. You will have to supplement with some good literature, nonfiction, and readers he can read himself for SOTW to work for the 11yo and 13yo. You will need more in-depth mapping activities too. Does the Well Trained Mind book have suggestions for your age groups for ancients? Check out some book lists on TOG and SL to help flesh out SOTW. Also, check out History Odyssey, as this will schedule out SOTW, some encyclopedias and have great suggestions to beef up everything for your 11 and 13yo. I hope this helps! Bumping for more responses. :001_smile:

We use both, as my DDs LOVE to draw. We have all of the DWN, and 3 volumes of the DAWTH. The history drawing has cursive sentences, a whole page full of it, for the child to copy. I actually don't use any of the handwriting sentences, but they are good summaries of the different civilizations. We really enjoy both of these resources. I draw with them, as I love it so much. I have noticed as I do it with them, they keep a close eye on the techniques I use, and they copy them. Their pictures turn out better that way. I am by no means an excellent sketch artist, but I can draw if I see the lines someone else already drew. I can't look at you and sketch it, but if someone else did first, I might be able to copy it freehand. :001_huh:

WP and BF are the only two I know of. BF has more literature selections and WP is more nonfiction selections with a huge amount of notebooking pages/activity pages.

There are good suggestions in a book called Family Math. If you look on Amazon, there are different levels, make sure you get the one for younger children.

I had the same dilemma. I loved SL as a base and wanted to read the books and do it the SL way with discussion, mapping, vocab, etc., etc., but I wanted a few activities here and there. While their Core Tips CD is barely okay, it did have a few gems in it. Therefore, I made a schedule (which I will share a free PDF if you want). I am doing Core C this upcoming year with SOTW2 and AG. Most of my activities are through SOTW AG, but I have scheduled out the SOTW chapters to correlate better with Core C (they are out of SOTW order). I have notebooking pages, lapbooking components (not full lapbooks; we don't do them), coloring pages, history videos, music selections (Gregorian chants come to mind), online games, LOTS of recipes. Let me know via PM if you would like a PDF. I will share it on my blog below sometime soon, but just making sure I have everything I want to add before I do that. ETA: I have found many free resources on the internet and utilize those. I saved them to my hard drive, so the problem with sharing the PDF now is all of the places I got them need to be figured out, as I didn't keep track when surfing earlier in the year. :( Wish I had thought of that, as it woudl have been less work for me, but I love sharing my schedules.

I always run out of good pencils, glue sticks (although I did well this year!), and scissors. The scissors get dull and are hard to use around February, so I'm going to make sure we get a few extras of those. Also, pencil sharpeners. I like to get a whole bunch of the hand-held manual ones, as they go dull quickly. If you use dull sharpeners, they take big chunks out of the pencils and the pencils break then. :glare: The girls must use these on their colored pencils, as colored pencils seem to kill our plug-in pencil sharpener every time. I have to buy a new electric sharpener every year, but since they are 10 dollars at school time, it's not such a huge deal. It is worth it, though.

I don't use SL LA. I use the Core and that's it. Otherwise, I use WTM things for LA and don't use anything SL offers for math. I like the base of SL books to work from. I've tried another program that had activities and "fun" things, but the fun things were not fun for us, and we didn't like about 1/3 of the books. I came back to SL because I liked the base of books and the ease of the schedule, and I add in activities here and there with a schedule I make up. It takes some time to make my schedule, but I want the good base. Hope that makes sense! So even though I use other things for LA, I don't consider it ridiculous to buy just the core. You could even piece together with Amazon (used or new with 4 for 3) and only buy things not found from SL plus their exclusives.

We have a small walk in closet, and ours is in there. We do our lessons there too. I always joke about homeschooling in the closet to friends. :tongue_smilie:

We like them, although we start out strong, and then after January, we usually start skipping a lot and don't do them every week like we do earlier in the year. I'm trying to think if we added other things, and the only thing I can think of is recipes. I love to cook foods from the time period we are studying. I like the recipies in the SOTW AG, but I want more! :001_smile: So I add more. I found some for nearly every week in our SL Core C/SOTW2 combo for next year. I can't wait to try them!

You sound like me. I am a book hoarder too, but to my credit, I have recently put over 100 books on my Paperback Swap account. Now I just like to hoard books "just in case" the girls want to pick it up and learn something. :001_huh: I am adding recipes and notebooking pages that I made for Core C/SOTW2 every week of the core, and it took a lot of work to schedule it out, but it is done now, ready for July. If you want notebooking pages, I have a set of 67 pages (free!) that follow along with Core C and SOTW2 (some are more for SOTW and some are more for Core C) on my blog. I made them for my girls, but I shared, as I hoped someone else might be able to use them or at least some of them.

I use the scope and sequence to add in materials. If you have an old guide, it is in the front. If you have a new guide, they moved it to the back.

:lol: Well, we'll be starting C in July, so you should hop on the forums and jump in the chats that are started. I hope you like it.

-SL Core C with SOTW2 and activities/extra books -MM3 -WWE3, FLL3, AAS3/4, finish WWW2 (might start 3), HWOT3 -Artistic Pursuits book 2 -science and history notebooking -SL Science D

We have a K'er this year. She will be doing: SL P4/5 with a few supplements here and there Abeka math K (I like this for K, then will switch to CLE1) SL LA K with sound portion of AAR pre-1 Preschool Art by Maryann Kohl

I see. The Sir Lancelot book is started early, as it is a 5-day book which is scheduled only one story (it is broken up in stories, not an ongoing storyline) a week, so you are reading about it during castles and knights, just starting it early. Regarding adding stuff in, I do, like a mad woman. :001_huh: Our girls will be 8 and 9, though if you read a lot already, I don't see any problem adding stuff in. I am adding SOTW2, and I always add many of the selections in the AG and do the activities there. Sometimes I drop books that I don't see the point, like I'm dropping Captain Nobody (or whatever it is) because it doesn't have to do with anything, and I don't want to read it, even if it is good. :D I may drop Encyclopedia Brown too. ETA: The Lancelot book is started early and not exactly when knights and castles are started because they are also doing Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! as a 5-day book, and it is during this time also.

Our last day was today for most everything, although next week we're tying up a few loose ends with 2 lessons in FLL left and 2 lessons in WWE. We take off June and then go back in July.

I am completely hijacking, as I have no recommendations, but I glanced at the title and thought it said "Looking for recommendation for underwear camera." :lol: So sorry, thought I'd be silly and share.

Get back up again! I lost 35 pounds before my last child, but gained back more than I started with after I had her. I just recently started jogging/walking, and while I don't have a scale, I feel my stomach is smaller and tighter. Last time I checked, I was 190.

We had a little cosleeper bed that I used until about 4 months, when I moved them into their crib because they were sleeping through the night. I did breast feed.

I'm confused. Did you think those particular books didn't go well with the time periods? I have my Core C IG, have perused it greatly while tying in SOTW2, and those books are in nearly perfect sync with the history portions. There are probably a few weeks here and there that a longer book goes over into another topic, but that's to be expected. Maybe this has already been answered on this thread? Sorry, I'm confused. :001_smile: