Well, I tried to use Omnibus I but reformed Theology is shot all through it and I found it a lot of work to pick through it and discern what we agreed and disagreed with. I found the Angelicum teaching guides very mom friendly in comparison. I didn't have to do all that thinking! I could just have my daughter read and then answer the questions.

I agree about the being confined to a church building for 3 out of 4 meetings! However, I'm hoping that wherever we wind up meeting we could go outside and observe something: trees, worms, insects, flowers, clouds, wind direction,rain, squirrels, birds. Right now most of the kids are pretty young. Mostly 5 to 7 years old. But in theory we want the co-op to be available to older kids and even high schoolers. One reason why we liked the idea of doing Nature Study is because it is so adaptable to different age groups. I just ordered Mother of Divine Grace's Natural History curriculum. That looks really interesting and perhaps it could be applied to middle schoolers. And I'd completely forgotten about the Handbook of Nature Study. Gotta go dig that gem out! I used to use it a lot but it's gotten buried over the years. I was thinking that each week would have a different focus. Maybe we'd take a theme a month and the first class focus on learning basic facts and then sketching. The next week could be doing some kind of scientific activity or experiment or game maybe tying it to a poem or Latin names. The 3rd week could be a nature craft and maybe a focus on a naturalist. Then have the fieldtrip be something that ties the whole thing together. Thank you for your ideas. Please keep them coming. I'm going to go dig through my books to find the Handbook!

I am currently using this program with my 12 yo. Yes, you do need to purchase all those things, but I never ever even opened Aesop. I do refer to the Homer book quite a bit to understand what I'm supposed to teach and the Instructor's guide is very helpful. I didn't purchase the Harvey's workbook. We do the older student Harvey's (there is one for youngers kids and one for slightly older and we have the latter. I can't remember what's recommended). You are also supposed to have the student write out all kinds of grammar definitions, etc. We do at least half of the program orally and just utilize one notebook. We pull spelling words out and list spelling, some grammar rules as we see necessary, and then some analyzing/outlining (you can do some of this right in the Student workbook.) I give him spelling tests at the back of the notebook. So we've simplified things considerably. It's a very complicated and thorough approach. It took me all of last semester to really get it. I just couldn't apply myself enough! I am learning so much right alongside my son. I think it is a great program but it does require the teacher to read ahead and know what each lesson entails. But other than that everything is set out for you.

how would you go about doing it? A new local support group I just joined wants to start up a co-op and I'd really like to make part of it Nature Study. I have always wanted to do Nature Study more deeply than we do it. We are very unschoolish about it, but I'd like it to be a vehicle for deeper study. I'd like to incorporate drawing and photography, nature crafts, literature, biographies of naturalists, learning to identify species, learning the Latin names for things, etc. The group wants to meet 3 Friday mornings a month at a location (probably a church) and then take the last Friday of the month for a fieldtrip. I was thinking of trying to set up a guided nature hike at a local nature center for those fieldtrips. So how would you set things up given those perimeters? Thanks for any and all suggestions and advice! :)

to her for a while, but I'm on a list with her and I just popped in yesterday to lurk. She's having a tough time right now, you might pray for her. Her immune compromised son came down with nasty chicken pox and I think she's spending a lot of time at the hospital.:(

Hi Asma, I am not crafty either, but I've found that if the kids know where the craft supplies are, they'll dig into and come up with their own thing. I have a basket that has crayons, coloring books, paper, scissors, stamps, ink pad, stencils, playdough, various paper dolls. I keep this basket in the family room. Sometimes they'll do crafts while I read aloud, other times they just listen (or snack!) and sometimes they'll dig into it during their free time. You can also buy occasional kits that might correspond to whatever your doing during history. My 6 yo dd loves paper dolls. I got her Little House ones when I read Little House in the Big Woods, Alice in Wonderland ones when reading that. That was as crafty as I got! So you aren't alone in not be crafty but there are ways around this!

Hey Kelli, Gosh you sound really similiar to me. I have a second semester junior as well. I failed repeatedly at Latin too! And my 17 yo dd is taking Spanish at the local community college. One semester though is worth 2 high school credits. And she's really learning Spanish from someone who actually speaks the language and has experience teaching it. So I think things have worked out well. My dd got enough Latin to spark her interest and to help her a bit with Spanish. She's been talking about wanting to take Latin in college! I am not familiar with Apologia but when I was a poli-sci major I only took one hard science class, Environmental science. I think I took two psychology classes though. Anyway, I think your dd will be fine. The only poli-sci class I struggled with was statistics because I'm not a mathy and it was HARD for me. Fortunately I had a friend who helped me through that class. And about the writing thing. . . well, you still have another year to help her polish those skills! So imho, you have nothing to worry about! It's just that at 4 in the morning everything looms large and spooky! But hopefully with the morning light, things will seem better. Hope you get a nap today!

Hi, I've gotten 2 so far through 8th grade and I'm working on my own plans for my 8th grader to be next year. We have done very well with Saxon Algebra I which includes some geometry, but it sounds like you've settled on a combo of Lial's and Singapore. I have kids who really struggle with spelling. The best thing I ever did for them was to take them through Phonics Pathways. I did this with my oldest two when they were in 7th and 8th grade. I taught them one on one and in my little lessons I'd go over the spelling pattern or rule, then dictate them the words, then sentences from the text. Every two weeks or so I'd go back and make up a review test. I found the text really easy to use. I skipped the really simple stuff in the beginning and started where I thought my kids began to struggle with spelling. Really focusing on teaching spelling to them helped a lot and they gained lots of confidence. As for grammar and writing, I am using Classical Writing for the Older Beginner right now with my 12 yo ds and I really like it. It is extremely thorough, we do about half of it orally, but even so we are learning a lot! For me it was a very hard program to understand so if you go with it, you might want to spend the summer figuring it out! Your daughter will learn grammar, composition, and vocabulary very, very thoroughly. A really fun vocabulary program that I have used lightly but with great success is English from the Roots Up. I just post a root on my fridge once a week and review over breakfast. I make a kind of game out of it. My oldest dd who now attends the local community college said that learning those roots from EFRU helped her immensely in so many ways. So that's kind of a fun way to get vocab in. The other thing I worry about for my kids is if they can take notes or hand write fast enough to take notes. This is a problem with us because my kids would rather type and I've let them. But once my oldest two starting taking outside classes they realized what a diadvantage this was so if you are preparing your daughter for school, I'd say work on penmanship just to be able to write faster! I even had my kids watch Teach. Co. dvds and then practice taking notes during the lectures. I personally think that 8th grade is that year that you can be interest driven for science. If she's solid in math, she should do okay in high school science. Can she just take Beginning Spanish as a Freshman? Does she need to study it now? I'd work on English roots and grammar which will give her a good basis for understanding Spanish next year, but personally I don't think I'd focus on that for 8th grade. So in other words I'd work on the basics of math, grammar, spelling, handwriting, vocabulary and unschool the other stuff through good read alouds, movies, dvd lectures, fieldtrips or whatever. If she is solid in the basics the other stuff will come much easier, but if she's shakey it will be that much harder for her.

for next year. I'm going with a Latin-Centered curriculum approach after being very unschoolish for the last two years. Here's my plan: After Breakfast: Latin for Children (30 minutes?) MCP Math (30 minutes) Free time (can practice piano, cartooning and gymnastics, at this time - these are things he currently loves to do, don't know what will be happening next year!) During Lunch - Mom reads aloud or we listen to audio (depends on day) Classical studies - SOTW Vol 1 by Jim Weiss/D'Aulierare's Greek Myths audio Christian studies - Faith and Life Catechism/Catholic Mosaic Modern studies - we're going to read through the zillion picture books I have on American history in chronological order After Lunch - Writing Tales - looks like this has everything: spelling, grammar, composition, dictation, copy work. Science hopefully will be done with co-op/unschooled 3x a month, and he'll probably participate in the local homeschool science fair. After dinner - 15 -30 minutes of assigned reading. He's got LD's so we use readers, probably Seton's Faith and Freedom Grade 4. Before bedtime - Daddy reads from a classic children's book; then he usually free reads until sleep. Hopefully that'll continue. A lot of this is combined with his younger sister. I'm juggling 3 teens too! I think I'm giving more than you asked for! But I'm in the throes of planning for this child and your question gave me an opening! LOL!

I looked through the table of contents for Grade 10 and the only thing thing that looked unfamiliar to me were 'substantatives.' Not sure what they are! But everything else looked familiar. It is kind of quaint that they teach about card catalogs! I've done a fair amount of diagramming with the kids, though my 15 yo is the weakest in the family at it. But I think if I'm teaching him one on one, he'll be more likely to get it. I'd teach it to the whole family at one time and he just didn't engage the way my 12 yo did, for example. I have some grammar reference books and there's a TM and I'll be doing this one on one with him, so I'm thinking we could do this. Maybe I'm overly confident!

for my 2 teens. I'm going with The Teaching Company's American Identity as the video component of our course. We have the 1st edition of Hakim's History of U.S. I bought when it first came out for my own education. We've used it as a reference but never read it all. I'm planning on using Hewitt's syllabus to give us a timetable for reading through the series. My two teens will just have to take turns reading. One can read in the afternoon and the other in the evening. Since the dvd course starts with the founding of Jamestown, we are just going to start at that point too so I guess we still won't get all of Hakim's volumes read in one year either. We are going to study Economics, too, using Glencoe's Economics, Principles and Practices And I'm planning on using Lightning Lit study guides (for the most part) for our American Lit studies. The only thing I'm still unsure of is beefing up the study of Government. I am sure of lot of this will come up in book the Hakim books and American Identity but I'm looking for something to consolidate that info.

I think the Rod and Staff books look like the kind of thing I was thinking of. But I have two more questions: 1. Should he do the 9th grade or 10th grade texts? Does the 10th grade build on the 9th? I'd rather he do the 10th as I'd like him to really know this stuff thoroughly. 2. How much time each week would he need to schedule to get through the text? We are not the type to do every exercise, but do a lot of stuff together orally. But still, he'd need to do a fair amount of writing. So what's realistic, one hour, M - F? Ladies, thank you so much for your suggestions. I never would have thought of Rod and Staff. The last time I used anything from them was the Pathway Readers! The IEW program has always intimidated me. It just looks so teacher intensive and time-consuming. I can never understand how it works from the website. And once we tried Jensen's Vocabulary and couldn't understand it one bit. We gave up after about 4 lessons. I think we're just not on the same wavelength. Anyway, thanks a ton. I think R&S is the answer!

Hi all, I'm looking for a good, solid Eng. Comp and Grammar course for my (next year) 11th grader. He's already studied lots of literature and he's a pretty good writer but he's shakey on the technicalities of grammar and punctuation. He's never taken a high school level grammar and comp course and I think he needs one, especially as he prepares for the SAT. Any suggestions? Thanks!

I had heard of Jacob's but just didn't understand how it fit in with a regular high school sequence of math. I am not familiar with chalkdust at all, so the Pre-Calc sounds very intriguing! Brenda in MA were you on these boards 3 years ago? Your name is familiar! I haven't been here in 3 years! Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I am going to check them out!

My trouble is everybody in our family seems to prefer grazing rather than big meals, including myself. Here are "snacks" my kids eat every week. I shop at Trader Joe's which is so much cheaper than the other grocery stores around here, I spend less even though I buy more: Instant oatmeal cold cereal with milk Chocolate milk bagels and cream cheese yogurts granola or breakfast bars little frozen pizzas English muffins (often with pb or cheese on top) bananas (I buy two big bunches every week) a big bag of apples a big bag of oranges or tangerines Tortilla chips with salsa hot dogs (they zap these in the microwave) Chicken Taquitos (frozen, zapped in microwave as well) We go through bags and bags of baby carrots a week! celery and cucumber sticks cheese sticks Hope this helps!

Hi all, My 15 yo has whipped through Saxon Algebra II this year. However, he doesn't really want to go on to Saxon's Advanced Math. While he's good at math, he doesn't love it. He just wants to do enough of Saxon's Adv. math to get his Geometry credit and then stop all math. He is very musically inclined and somewhat computer inclined, so I think he'll regret not going farther (further?) with math. What alternatives are out there? While my kids do well with Saxon, I think this particular child needs the world of math opened up to him maybe in a more liberal arts sort of way, if you know what I mean. Any suggestions or advice? Thanks!

Hi all! I used to frequent these boards a lot (the old boards) several years ago. I went through an unschooly period but now I'm heading back to a little more structure. I've been lurking here for a bit. Anyway, I'm Faith and I have 5 kids, ages 17 to 6. We've been at this homeschooling thing for 11 years now. I really like the new board format and I have to tell you all that you are a wealth of information! I've been enjoying lurking but I figured it was time to introduce myself.