We also participate in CC, and I am planning on using MFW Adventures for next year. It covers American history using living books as well. I'm sure your soon to be 5 year old would enjoy listening to the books eventhough the curriculum is designed for 2nd/3rd grade. http://www.mfwbooks.com/category/M50/40#Adventures

I agree with PP about www.letteroftheweek.com It basically does for your child what you mentioned wanting to do. It picks a theme for the week and then incorporates everything you learn into that theme. Plus, it's free! I'm using the Preparatory Curriculum with my 3 year old now. In the fall once my DD has turned 4, I will be using Heart of Dakota's Little Hands to Heaven. I used it with her big sister, and we had such a fun time doing school! It is all laid out for you so you don't have to do much prep work (just grab the stuff you need for the art activity) and by the end of the year, they will be ready to head into K knowing the basic phonics sounds. http://www.heartofdakota.com/little-hands.php Most of all just have fun so that you can begin teaching your child that learning is a joy, not drudgery!!!

I'm tutoring a dc who is in 1st grade at a public school. They use Saxon phonics and for their dictation it is done exactly as you describe it. She gets her paper with three dictation sentences on it at the beginning of the week. On Friday they have their spelling test and have to write their dictation sentences on the back. I haven't started dictation with my dd yet, so I can't help you much from personal experience. I think that with LG kids that letting them practice what you are going to dictate to them would be a good way to let them learn the process and reinforce grammmar and spelling all week. Just my .02!

I have to suggest Reading Made Easy. It was sooooo easy to use and my daughter never complained about having to do her lesson. A friend of mine who used to teach 2nd grade in ps but now homeschools said that it was the easiest way to teach a kid to read she'd ever seen. I can't say enough good about the program!!!

Our CC group is very religious focused: Devotional every morning to start the day, prayer at the end of the day, etc. However, the CC group about 20 minutes away is not religious focused at all other than what is in the curriculum, ie. the memory work and Veritas cards. I think that each group is different when it comes to how "religious" it is based on the CC director's leadership. Ask the director or ask if you can come for a day to try it out.

I took three years of Spanish in high school and 4 years of Spanish in college. Was I fluent after that? No. I became fluent when I went on a 6 week mission trip to Argentina. There is no substitute for speaking the language as much as possible to a native speaker. If you really want your children to become fluent in any language, you must either speak that language to them (have "Spanish only day" 2 or 3 times a week) or ask an acquaintance who is a native speaker to work with them a few times a week. It is important to have the mechanics and vocabulary of a foreign language in place, but to really be fluent you have to speak it daily and no giving in to English. Wish I could tell you that there is a curriculum that will do that for you, but there's not :sad:

:iagree: My daughter said she wanted to read when she was an older 4 year old, so I bought Reading Made Easy. We got through a few lessons and my daughter started getting so upset whenever it was time to do reading. I decided it wasn't worth the battle. Put the book up, took it down about 6-9 months later, and she was ready to read. Sometimes they want to do something that they just aren't quite ready for!

we have finally hit our stride with Horizons :iagree: We love Horizons math. It is advanced for it's grade level and it has spiral review built in, but not crazy amounts of review. Every now and again something from a previous lesson will show up again to make sure your child really learned it. My daughter loves math because of this program! We can complete an entire math lesson (review math facts, skip counting, and her worksheet) in about 20 minutes.

I bought one quarter of the DE edition for $45 to try it out and I didn't have enough money on hand to buy it all at once. I'm so glad that I did this! It was not a good fit for my DD7. TOG was just a little too much for her to handle at that age and she was starting to hate history. For me (a history education major) that is beyond bad!!! We switched to Biblioplan to finish out this year and things are going MUCH better. Anyway.... I said all that to say this: I recommend trying the digital download for one quarter you will definitely be able to tell if it will work for your family by the end of it or not!

Thanks so much! I don't why I didn't think of that, but it's been one of those days!!! :tongue_smilie:

We are in the middle of our school year, and I'm changing sciences to BSFU. I am in LOVE with the idea of integrating all the sciences so that kids can see how each branch of science is inter-related. However, I'm not sure how to structure the order of the lessons. :confused: Could those of you who use BSFU post what order you are using for the lessons? I know that some lessons build on previous lessons, but I'm not sure how to integrate between all of the sciences (my ps background of study one science all year long is coming back to haunt me!) My natural inclination is to start on the first lesson and just go straight through, which totally defeats the purpose of why I bought the book. Thanks in advance!

Does Biblioplan not have hands on activities? I see that you suggested the SOTW activity guide. What resources do you use to go along with it? Biblioplan does have some hands on activities in their Cool History packet. They have questions to review what has been learned that week and sometimes a word search, but their activities are kind of basic (my daughter loves them, but she's only 7). For example when we studied the Celts, we learned that their favorite color was blue. For the activity that week it was suggested to wear blue, eat blue foods, and paint your face blue like a Celtic warrior. She had a lot of fun with this, but I can see where that kind of activity would probably seem a little silly to an older student. Plus, only one hand-on activity is suggested each week, so there are no alternatives if you wanted to do something different. For now this simplistic approach works great for us, but as she gets older (3rd-4th grade), we will probably want some meatier hands-on stuff. However, as you rotate through Biblioplan the readings that are suggested for the students get much more lengthy (around 5th grade), so the time for hands-on stuff diminishes. Right now, I am using just Biblioplan resources and the STOW (without the activity guide). We use their Cool History packet, timeline, and maps. The suggested weekly program is to only do history three days a week, but we are doing four days a week just to make it more managable. You could actually do it five days a week, if you wanted to go that route. This is how our week breaks down: Monday: Read selected chapter from STOW. Answer questions from Cool History orally. Read from the Family Read Aloud book (This is our favorite part. It is a historical fiction book about the time period or people you are studying. It usually carries over for two or three weeks. Some of the Biblioplan selections I didn't think would interest my child, so I used Sonlight's read aloud list to get some alternatives.) Tuesday: Read selection from the Usborne History book. Do our copy work from STOW reading the day before. Read from Family Read Aloud book. Wednesday: Map work, suggested book for the K/2 grade, and Family Read Aloud Friday: History Activity from the Cool History packet, timeline, and Family Read Aloud This is WAYYYY longer than I intended for it to be, but that gives you an idea of how Bilioplan works for our family. We really do love it, so I hope it works for you as well :001_smile:

I'm currently using Biblioplan with STOW2 for my DD7. We were using TOG until recently because it was just too much for her at the LG stage. We really like it and it is a much, much, gentler introduction into history. Bilioplan does increase in its difficulty as the children get older. One thing that you might want to know is that you can use MOH with Biblioplan. There is a section that corresponds MOH with the Biblioplan lessons and STOW2. If you wanted to use all three at one time, you could. Use MOH and STOW2 as your spines, Biblioplan maps and timeline, and the STOW2 Activity book for hands on. That combo would probably work really well, IMHO :D

Since your daughter will be in K, I would only do formal Phonics/Reading, Math, and Handwriting with her. I asked my parents (teachers with combined 60+ years of experience) when I started homeschooling my oldest what they would do in a perfect educational world with kids in Kindergarten. Without hesitation they said, "Teach them to read, teach them basic math, and start handwriting the second semester." I followed their advice and it couldn't have been wiser!! A good, focused foundation in those three subjects will be invaluable as they get older. If you really want to include science/history/art/etc., I would reccommend HOD Little Hearts for His Glory as a general outline for the "extras", but spend most of "school" on the meat and potatoes. For reading I recommend Reading Made Easy (LOVE it!), for math I recommend Earlybird Math by Singapore Math (lots of fun, cheap, and a gentle introduction), and for handwriting, I love the Reason for Handwriting series Book K. Just my two cents...Good luck with taking the curriculum buying plunge! :lol:

I just ordered BFSU from Amazon for my dd (1st grade). I felt like our science could use a jumpstart, so I'm hoping this will help. What do you like about it (besides the price)? Thanks, Chelli

I LOVE HOD for the ages you are describing. I did Little Hands to Heaven with my oldest when she was 4 and we had the best time. It sounds exactly like what you were describing with the songs and the FUN!!! I didn't find it that pricey. I think that I spent around $75 for the whole thing (manual, books, CDs). Good luck with your decision!

I am using TOG right now with my 1st grader and we are getting rid of it after we finish this quarter. (I was buying the DE version and downloading one quarter at a time to see how we liked it.) I actually have a degree in history education so I LOVE the idea of TOG, but trying to do it with my 7 year old was causing both of us to hate history. I am switching over to Biblioplan to finish out our study of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation. It seems like such a more gentle approach than TOG was. I might go back to TOG when she is older, but for next year I was thinking of trying out MFW. I really want a history program that my other children can jump into with us when they get older, so I don't know how long we will stay with MFW. We might wind up back at Biblioplan!

I have a dd who is in first grade, but she is a wiggle worm to the max. We spend about 2 hours a day on school. But there is NO way, I could get her to sit for that long, so here is what I do. First, I invested in a plastic kitchen timer. I put it on the table where we do school. I turn it to 30 minutes and we start with out first subject. When the timer goes off, she is able to leave the table, I set the timer for another 30 minutes and when it goes off, she comes back to the table for another 30 minutes of school. If she does not focus on her school for the entire 30 minutes (daydreaming, being lazy, etc.), I just reach over and add about five minutes onto her school time which takes 5 minutes off of her break time as well (so instead of 30 minutes, she just gets 25). On bad days, I only have to do this a couple of times and she will buckle down and do her work. On good days, I don't have to do it at all. If she doesn't come back to the table within five minutes of when the timer goes off from break time, then I start adding five minutes to her work time and take it away from her next break time. She is usually very prompt back to the table. We do this cycle about four times during the day, so she is actually "doing" school for only two hours a day. This routine has been a life saver for me!!! It pretty much got rid of all of our school battles, plus the break times are long enough that I can really got some other stuff done around the house.

We live about 20 miles south of Richmond/Rosenberg area on Hwy 59 (Southwest Freeway) and about 50 miles from Houston.

"I will NOT be using SOTW during our first rotation.....its my personal preference as I prefer to limit discussion of gods/goddesses, monsters, etc. " I am using TOG for the first time this year with my first grader as well. I started on Year 2 instead of Year 1 because my daughter is really into princesses, castles, etc. which is covered in Year 2. I'll go back and pick up Year 1 later when she is older and can handle all of the other stuff. So don't let what is talked about in Year 1 bother you, just pick a different time period and go for it!

I don't know if this is exactly what you had in mind or how old your children are, but this looked like a good resource to have that breaks down animals by continent. http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-Animals/dp/156189544X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292722016&sr=1-1