I school year round.. No breaks for anything in particular. Well, ok we take a break when people are sick, and we do everything a lot lighter when the weather is favorable. Also, the more activities we have, the less table work we do. So in the spring an the fall when weather is lovely and we're running all over the place, we might not do much in a week. :) When it's gross and cold and rainy or hot and sweaty outside, we do a lot more schooly stuff. Also, we don't really do grade levels. We use a book/program until we're tired of it and just go through it as quickly as we feel is nice. So we could be ready to move to another book at any random time of the year and it doesn't necessarily coincide with any other change. :D Currently, we're doing a lot of inside stuff. We just took a 2-3 week break while I was horribly ill plus the holidays (a lot of family visiting), but right now we're chugging away happily, 4-5 days a week.

BFSU. :) It's easy to dress it up or down or go faster or slower. LOVE IT! :)

I'm happy with the first 2.5 books or so. We sort of gave up halfway through 3 and we're skipping 4 for now. My son had no problems figuring out god myths vs actual history. But I'm aiming at 4-7 year olds for these books. :D Plus we add in lots of other things. We're starting with book 1 again for my daughter who's just turning 5. In general, I'm just looking for them to get a general handle on major events, cultures, time periods, etc. so it's nice and familiar to them next time we get around to it when they're older. We started with the Magic Treehouse and Timewarp Trio books for them when they were younger, for the same reason. :)

My second child turns 5 in a few weeks, so she barely makes the cutoff for mandatory K. Shes already been doing "school" for awhile though, because she demanded it.

$416 for addition through calculus, statistics, and linear algebra. So K-12 then college. ;)

Okay, I have an 8yo boy (will be 3rd grade in the fall) who loves history and a 5 yo girl who wants to start doing history for school. (She'll officially be a kindergartener in the fall, and we're in a compulsive kindergarten state). We've done SOTW with him since he was her age, and he's loved it. History is his favorite subject, and he's really good at understanding what's going on and comparing say, Caesar to Napoleon. We've gotten 75% of the way through book 3, so I need to figure out what I'm doing next. ;) We're planning on skipping book 4 for now and start over with the ancients. The 4yo is sensitive to even some of the issues in book 3, and the projects for the ancients will be more fun for her anyway, I think. (And I'm not going to try to teach them two different time periods at the same time...!) So, I was wondering -- is it possible to have the little one do SOTW and the activity book while having the 8yo do one of the levels of HO? And if so, which one? I'm worried he'll feel level 1 is too young, but level two might be too much. He doesn't write a lot, and his fine motor skills aren't that strong. Most of his school is oral, or on a white board, or whatever. Not writing lots of things. I'm considering letting him write things on a laptop, but I'm not sure. Anyway, any ideas? :D I'm looking for something to stretch his mind, but if it's all writing (or mentally beyond him so he wouldn't get much out of it), then it won't help much. I'm also feeling exceptionally insane and might try adding in lessons and reading from Living Math... you know, in my copious free time. (Did I mention there's a hyper, needy 1 year old who avoids sleep?)

I didn't think it was possible, either, but my infant told me when she needed a diaper change. :) It does make you feel a little crazy though, huh?

It's weird, it's like kids are all different. ;) My kids are enjoying AAS. My son is 8 and is on level 2. It's a bit easy, but he likes learning the rules and he likes being *successful*. If he gets too many things wrong on something he knows he's not great at, he'll just refuse to do it. It's gentle, it's nice. He can write on a white board or spell with the letter tiles. We're not using it to build vocabulary (his is huge -- it's why he didn't read well. Any book he was capable of reading when he was young was too boring). My daughter is 4. She's using level 1 to learn to read. She doesn't always remember how to even write the letters, so the tiles are helpful. She didn't really even know all the sounds the letters made when we started, but she wanted to "do school", so I thought it would be fun for her. She loves it. :)

You're not the only one! I'm burnt out on everything. On life. We moved from CA to MD last summer and the weather's been horrible and we were sick on and off for 5 months. I feel like we've been inside for years with kids just climbing the walls and making each other crazy. I'm exhausted. And irritable. And I feel incredibly guilty about everything.

Okay, I've always known my ds8 is like my husband, and not me. I'm so linear. I'm awesome at managing time. I love lists, and organization. My husband as ds are really good at spacial things... and awful at time. Or organization. If they can't see it, it doesn't exist. So all organization schemes involve everything sitting out all over the place. (Which, BTW, makes my head explode and is horrible for baby proofing) So... I try my best to pick things that use pictures, audio (not his favorite), hands-on, doodling, whatever. he draws or plays with plah dough while I read history. We use MUS. We use MCT for language arts. We pretended to be egyptians for a month in SOTW. but I just realized something. I don't believe you can learn that way. I never have. I feel it's all the play stuff we do after you do it the "real" way. In order. Linear. And I know they aren't like that, but I'm SO SO SO linear/checkbox oriented that I can't imagine learning a different way. I mean, I can follow a bunch of stuff on wikipedia and learn randomly jumping from thing to thing. But I can't see how coloring a viking ship and wearing a beard teaches you anything! I really want a nice, good, solid, rigorous education for him, but I also want to present it in a way he likes. And I realize I don't understand how his way is the same as learning, instead of playing. And I have no idea how I can make every lesson a fun dress-up game, or a building activity or something. :P And when does this end? I keep thinking "well, he's X age now, now he can do learning the "real" way." I don't even know what I'm asking here. :D