Yup, just hunt for all the books. My library isn't that huge that I wouldn't find them again (hopefully).

Fiction books I would set on the shelf where everyone can access and read them, so the "free for all" shelf that you have. Can you put them up high enough that babies can't reach them? If there are any textbooks, those have their own shelf at my house.

I agree that improvising is like the creative writing of piano. Some people love it, some people can't do it. For me, that was the fun part of playing that had nothing to do with my lessons, as my teacher never required it. So, no, I don't think it's essential and shouldn't be required, especially for the child you are describing.

I don't have my kids do history independently until high school. So my 7th and 8th graders listen to me read the lesson with the group 3x a week. On the third day, we also add things to our timeline and sometimes make a map. Each day's worth is probably about half an hour, but if we do timeline and map after the lesson, it might be closer to 45 minutes. If they decide to write a narration or an outline from history (they get to choose which subject they write about), that is done on their own time and would be an additional 20-30 minutes. I do all my prep in summer so that I have a nice schedule to follow during the year, and don't have to do any prep from week to week, except for printing maps. Our text has a timeline at the beginning of each chapter so we just follow that, and I don't have to do any prep work for the timeline either.

SWB's audio lecture A Plan for Teaching Writing: The Middle Grades lays this all out very nicely. She has kids starting outlining in 5th grade, and then she explains exactly how many to do, along with the other types of writing. It's really helpful for laying out a plan if you aren't relying on curriculum for writing. Her lectures are the foundation for how I teach the classical writing approach in my homeschool.

4th grade average boy: - listened to me read aloud our history lesson and answered oral comprehension/discussion questions - helped write down a few events/people to stick on our timeline - did one page of Canadian geography (workbook) - did one English lesson with me which was about friendly letters so he wrote a short one to his great-grandmother - did one page of French (workbook) Then he ran away to go to the shop with Dad and I had to phone Dad and ask to send him back to the house for art (this child does not like art). - made a painting for art with pencil, crayons and water colours That was Friday's work and Friday is his lightest day of the week.

Thanks so much, Lori!

Hi Lori. :) I noticed in the other thread that you said you created a fine arts credit for one of your sons around film making. I'm wondering how you did this, what you included, and which resources you used. I had given up hope that my oldest would do any fine arts, but he loves making his own movies, so this might be right up his alley. I'm just not sure if I should do more than to just count the hours he spends actually filming and editing on Adobe Premiere Elements. Would you mind sharing? Thank you!

We like typingclub.com.

How about Winnie-the-Pooh and the House at Pooh Corner? Not sure if those are a bit young for him. You could also try books by Dick King-Smith. I've only read Babe the Gallant Pig, but there are lots of others. It uses the technical term for a female dog in places, so that might not be so good for the language aspect, but maybe his other books wouldn't have that. Also, has he read The Mouse and the Motorcycle and others about Ralph by Beverly Cleary?

I guess I'm mostly looking for an excuse to not do maps next year. :P I think we need a break. We've done lots in the past, and my high school history students will do more in future, so I don't think taking a year off will hurt. But I was also just wondering if anyone else takes this approach.

I don't know what it means either, but when I was marking MEP tests, I just concluded that the question was worth 2 or 4 (or however many) marks, and marked accordingly. So, if kid made a silly mistake somewhere, I just docked him 1 or 2 instead of having the whole question wrong, kwim? I sort of used it as a guide on how to mark each question. Not that helpful, I know!

I have been integrating mapwork into our history studies ever since my oldest was in about 3rd grade (7 years ago) and I'm starting to question the value of actually making the maps (and admittedly, getting a bit sick of it because I seem to always use programs where I have to make up my own mapwork or get it from elsewhere). What if we just LOOK at maps? SOTW has lovely maps at the beginning of each chapter. I could have my youngers get the globe, look up the locations and compare what's there now to what was there in the past (whatever time period we're reading about). I recently bought Kingfisher's Atlas of World History, which is full of interesting maps. Do you think the kids have to make the maps in order for it to add value to history, or is looking at maps just as good? Does anyone else forego map-making and just look up places instead?

Yes, there has been a jump for him in 4th grade. He works almost totally independently now, has gone to regular note paper, capitalizes most proper nouns and writes the first sentence of his narrations. So yes, a little more, not double or triple.

My last year's 3rd grader busied himself recreationally with Lego, going outside, skating in winter, swimming and basketball in summer, going with Dad on the farm as much as possible, and some playing and giggling with his sister. He also read books on his own quite a bit. Do you mean how many hours of school he did with me? That would be about an hour a day, maybe one and a half. As far as narrative and composition skills, in 3rd grade he was still using the bigger-lined paper with the dotted lines in the middle, could write down a decent sentence from dictation about 12-15 words long, and narrated everything orally to me. His narrations still had a lot of sentences starting with "and" and a lot of "and then" in them. He almost never remembered to capitalize proper nouns while writing. Here are a few examples of his narrations: "James and Lewis were walking home from school and Lewis was thinking about a pellet gun. He wanted one a lot. Somebody in school had one and that gave him the idea that he wanted one." "Some Chinese farmers were digging a well for water and they came to a tunnel and in it were a lot of statues of people. They kept digging with some more people to help them and they found a statue of a carriage and a horse. They found a replica of the empire with mercury flowing for the rivers." "Carthage and Rome were both trying to expand so they started fighting. While they were fighting, the Romans were expanding east into Greek land. They fought three wars and Carthage was crushed." He didn't do that much independent work in 2nd or 3rd. I would say probably none in 2nd. In 3rd, he began doing his math mostly independently and maybe some of his spelling. I sort of used checklists with him. I have my planner for the day sitting on the school table. On it, by his name, are all his assignments for the day, so he used that list to know what to do that day, but he didn't check anything off.

Evanthe, I'm glad to see you are also thinking about doing Mr. Q Chem next year. I'll know who to ask if we run into trouble! :D

This is what I do. A state history report or a book report can easily be thought of as just a narration, so that's what I do. And, of course, if you feel as if your child is ready for it, you can certainly teach both processes. Otherwise, I just modify the assignments to fit our writing style/method.

I plan on doing all our high school years at home, too. DE isn't an option where I live and the only online classes we do are for computer stuff, because I can't teach that, and it sort of makes sense to learn computers on a computer. :) Next year I'll have two high schoolers: 11th: Math of some sort - either MUS pre-calculus or a distance learning course from the province Literature & Composition - homemade Mr. Q Chemistry Modern World History using Notgrass and R&S Speech elective Old Testament Phys Ed 9th: MUS Algebra 1 Lit & Comp - homemade Easy Grammar Ultimate Biology - not sure which yet Modern World History same as older brother Phys Ed Maybe Computer Science ETA: Stuff I forgot.

The other planning thread is mostly talking about online classes and such. Is anyone actually planning any classes with curriculum to do themselves at home? There is so much talk about online classes, DE, etc. on this board, sometimes I wonder if anyone is still taking the "old school" approach (of course, I know that's silly, there's probably lots - I just don't see much talk about it). What homegrown courses (either your own invention or using curriculum) are you planning for next year?

Cat of Bubastes by Henty is free for Kindle. My kids liked that one. It would qualify as ancient. The Story of Napoleon by Henrietta Marshall is also very cheap for Kindle and it has a chapter about Egypt in it.

My 7th grader spends about 3 hours per day. As for output, I have him write 2 narrations/summaries per week of his choice (either science or history, occasionally something creative). His science (Apologia) has in-text questions so he does those. In history and logic, we do the text questions orally. So there is more than one way to require output, and I think it makes school more interesting to mix it up a bit.

He does not have problems with print, and we already went through HWT Cursive because it is more straight-forward, but it just didn't stick like I wanted it to. I think I am just going to drop it for now and come back to it when he's older. After doing some searches on this board, I came across other people whose kids learned cursive at an older age. I think I'm going to try that with him.

What do you do with the child who can't learn cursive? He spent all of last year (Grade 3) learning it, and then I had him work through the summer because he still wasn't getting it. Now we're in the beginning of Grade 4 and he's finished the last book (we've done 3 different programs) and he still can't do it. I will give him a sentence in print like "The rubber band got hot" (related to our science lesson) and he can't translate it into cursive. I've spent hours sitting with him making sure he's doing the letters and exercises correctly. He can copy cursive pretty nicely but he can't do it on his own. What would you do? Take a break and then try again when he's older? Drop it altogether and not worry about it? I think he should be able to at least read it and he can't very well - sort of, but not really. Has anyone dealt with this before?

Yup, for sure that would work. :)

I start requiring it in 3rd grade. Before that, if they want to listen, that's good, but I don't make them.