Lori's right. That's kind of what I did with BF. We studied Mesopotamia and Egypt our first six weeks, we'll do Greece the next 6, and Rome the last 6. BF already had the guide divided up that way. I believe that Biblioplan only schedules history for 3 days a week for 34 weeks (at least the one guide I bought had it scheduled this way, but they might have changed it since then). It would be very easy to say that we will do 5 days a week for 18 weeks and you would almost completely cover the guide in that time. As for MFW, I have no idea how they schedule their history (if they do it every day or alternate it with science), but I have been seriously considering using Wayfarers next year just so I have some ideas about planning science and geography beyond the things I make up. However I'm really enjoying the freedom I have using BF for history so I would hate to give it up. Anyway, when I think about using Wayfarers, I would probably follow the history plans (scheduled 3 days a week) for three weeks doing it every day, then go back and pick up the science thread and follow it for three weeks doing it every day, and then go back and pick up the geography thread and follow it for three weeks (probably doubling up lessons since I believe the geography is scheduled every day). So it would work, but it would definitely require some sticky tabs in the guide to mark where we were with each thread. Now if MFW ties its science to history like HOD does, it would be much more difficult to do that because now the cohesiveness that most people love about MFW and HOD is lost unless you view the science as kind of a review of what you'd already learned. I tried using HOD briefly with a block schedule and it was a disaster. Everything is too intertwined in the guide to make it work. As for our geography, it is more of a cultural geography study of one country each week. People, religion, food, art, myths/tales, famous people, etc. I am making this up on my own using books and resources from our local library for the most part. I started this a couple of years ago with my girls (I called it Globe Trotting Girls), but we never got to finish it so now I work it into our regular studies with a geography block. I am using Geography of the Holy Land as our spine this year, but usually I don't have a spine. I needed a spine because there is very little on countries of the Middle East out there in most geography programs. We don't cover every country this way, but just the main countries of a region. For example we're doing Turkey, Israel including a 1 week study of Judaism, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, a 1 week study of Islam, and a 1 week study of Legends and Leagues (the old version) to round out our geography year. To cover every country we are using Visits to the Middle East by SCM this year and we do that in our Morning Meeting time. It is very quick and short, but by the end of the year my kids will be able to label every country in the Middle East along with bodies of waters and major land forms so that is more the physical geography part. Next year since we are doing the Middle Ages, we'll do the geography of Europe and Asia (if it's out in time) using SCM's books and the cultural geography of Asian countries since we did the European countries two years ago. HTH.

18 weeks of history x 5 days a week = 90 history lessons. Beautiful Feet has 70 lessons scheduled in their ancient history guide. I aim to get 4 lessons done each week which still puts us at 72 history lessons over the course of 18 weeks. As for science we are spending 9 weeks of science x 5 days a week = 45 science lessons. For the first 15 lessons we are studying chemistry using a combination of resources. For the last 30 lessons we are using Apologia's Zoology 2 which has 13 chapters and I'll spread those out doing 1 chapter over the course of 2 lessons so still coming in under the 30 lesson maximum. For the last 4 weeks that I have tacked on to the end of the school year, my girls have already said they wanted to do a science focus those 4 weeks (an ecology/endagered species unit) so we'll technically be getting more science. Hope that makes sense. And honestly, if we didn't finish it all in the time I have scheduled, I'd just continue on into the next school year. I'm trying to get out of the mindset of this has to be completed in one school year which stresses me out. ETA: I forgot to add this. Each time we sit down to do our content subjects we are averaging about an hour and a half or two hours a session. I don't schedule this we just go until we're done or the girls interest has waned. I actually find we are spending more time learning history, science, and geography doing it this way than when we had more days scheduled in our year. In previous years I would have science scheduled for two days a week and we'd spend about an hour on science. In a traditional 36 week school year that comes out to 72 hours of science, give or take. We are getting in 90 hours (figuring a two hour average) of science over the course of our school year with less days. I crunched all of these numbers before I started to figure out if block scheduling would be shorting my kids. In fact, it's the opposite.

I just want you to know momto2c's that I can focus on nothing else right now except planning this fairy tale study! Gah. There are so many other things I need to be doing!

I'm so sorry OP. Blech. :eek: I have a story that is very similar. When I was in 4th grade our teacher had us sit at our desks in alphabetical order by last name. The boy I sat behind (we'll call him James) was constantly getting in trouble for having his hands down his pants. He would pull them out and the teacher would just go on with class. I started to notice that he always made it a point to have his hands down his pants before the teacher would pass out papers. He would pull his hands out of his pants, grab the stack of papers, and then pass them back to me where I would grab a tiny sliver of the corner and lay it on my desk. The teacher never once made him get up and go wash his hands when she would catch him. :ack2:

I did a week at a time when I first tried it out but now we are doing 3 weeks at a time: 3 weeks of history, 3 weeks of science, 3 weeks of history, 3 weeks of geography. Repeat 3 times. We do a 40 week school year (just because I like it!) so for the 4 weeks we have left at the end of the year we either finish our history, science, or geo studies if we got behind and/or the kids do interest led learning for those 4 weeks.

Yes, the Milestones at the end of each week in the Wayfarers curriculum is a really nice touch. It's like a more mellow version of the Teacher's Notes in TOG.

I started out trying to have them notebook every day, but it was too much. Now I have them notebook three days a week and the other two days they have to do an oral narration of some sort. For example, here's an oral narration my oldest did about Hammurabi. She wanted to do an interview and dress like him. https://www.facebook.com/ThePlantedTrees/videos/vb.351834678235200/808340362584627/?type=3&theater So it's not always in the notebooks and it's not always as elaborate as dressing up for an interview. Usually their oral narration is just the basic kind, but if they want to get creative with it, I don't stop them! They really are having a lot of fun this year!

We're studying the Middle Ages next year which is my FAVORITE time period in history. I'm also planning on using Problem Based Learning for One's Plague!!! to go along with it. I think that will be super interesting. I'd love to hear more about the Big Fairy Tale Project if you are willing to share, momto2Cs. That sounds like something my girls would love.

I found hardback composition books this year for just a bit more than the regular ones. The hardback ones do lay flat and make it much easier to write. Just FYI. And I like those covers!

This is a blog post I wrote about how I block schedule our content subjects: http://www.theplantedtrees.com/2014/08/from-type-to-schole-creating-table-time.html

No organization. We just do the next page. They love to flip through them and remember things they've learned. Also what they narrate and draw is totally up to them. I usually give suggestions of things that I think are important for them to remember and would like them to narrate and journal about. Sometimes they listen to me and sometimes they do their own thing. The two notebook pages I linked to were ones that they each wanted to write about. I tried to steer them in a different direction, but they were adamant they needed to write about the Nile flood. We are using Beautiful Feet Ancient History so there are notebooking suggestions in the guide which we sometimes use and sometimes don't. For science we are doing chemistry so lots of drawings of atoms, states of matter, experiments, etc. followed this section on Egypt. I kind of drew my inspiration from Waldorf's meeting books. We aren't doing it exactly like a Waldorf book, but I wanted the same kind of feel of having a year of our learning at the end. As for the narrations, my fifth grader does her own written narrations, but my second grader narrates to me, then copies it in her book. Honestly, this system has been our best year yet as far as retention and enjoyment goes. They love being turned loose to make a book all their own! HTH.

We are using one notebook for all of our content subjects this year so as the kids flip through it they have stuff from history, science, and geography in it. It has made notebooking, narrations, etc. super simple and the kids have had to be more creative. I even let them glue lapbook pieces or notebooking pages into their books so it's really turned into a year long keepsake. My dh was flipping through them just the other day and told me that I should never get rid of them because they are really great. Here's some pictures of some of the history pages my girls did when we studied Ancient Egypt. My 5th grader: https://www.facebook.com/ThePlantedTrees/photos/pb.351834678235200.-2207520000.1433281695./818461018239228/?type=3&theater My 2nd grader: https://www.facebook.com/ThePlantedTrees/photos/pb.351834678235200.-2207520000.1433281695./818460991572564/?type=3&theater

Our just for fun read alouds (aka not for school) are read during lunch time. It is usually about 45 minutes to an hour of reading. I start with the youngest child's read aloud book and read it first and then move up in age. They are free to leave the table if they are finished eating and their read aloud is done to go play. If they choose to stay in the room and listen to the other read alouds, they have to be quiet. 90% of the time the two girls stay in the room to listen, but my son tends to run off to play.

I don't believe that's true anymore. The few books that they used that had that tone to them have been removed from the packages and replaced with other books. I'm using their Ancient History and haven't noticed anything like that. It is definitely Christian based, but no providential stuff that I've found. And I am NOT a providential history believer.

I'm using the intermediate ancient history guide with both my 5th and 2nd grader. I find books on my 2nd grader's level that goes with the topic so it's been no problem here.

I took the Latin approach (since it's a classical homeschooling board) to explain my duel nature of both perfectionist and procrastinator.

:iagree: I left HOD because I could see what was coming: a huge increase in assignments and subjects and not delving deeply into thinking and writing about subjects. I really like their book choices for the most part so I still look at those.

They have already ordered evacuations for the west side of our town as the river rises to historic flood levels. With this latest round of storms coming through Texas tonight, it is not looking good around here. Our little town even made the news where my parents live in Arkansas because of the flood situation here!

I mark off problems with Horizons. It was kind of a shock coming from Math in Focus to Horizons how many more problems there are on the Horizons worksheets than there were on the MIF ones. Any way, if I know she knows how to do it, I mark off about half of them. For every one that she misses, though, she has to go back and do another one.

All the rain from central Texas has made it down the river to our tiny town in southeast Texas. The river is expected to rise to 43 feet which is well above dangerous flood level. They are evacuating the west side of town. Unfortunately we are expected to get more rain tomorrow. The highest the river has ever flooded was in 1998 when it reached 48 feet. We could possibly get there if central Texas and our area gets more rain this week.

Boo hoo. :crying: Too far for this southeast TX girl to drive. You guys have a good time though!

Beautiful Feet

Diamond Rio "God Only Cries"

We are the Olive Street School named after our street name. Nothing too inventive, but it has Biblical meaning for our family besides just being the street we live on. Our mascot is the Fighting Squirrels and our school colors are green and black.

It's really not that exciting. I wouldn't have bought it if it was obviously Crazy Town Christianity. It just presents a story of an animal and its behavior, then it compares that behavior to a Biblical example. As an example, the first character trait studied is loyalty. The first animal studied is the Great-Horned Owl. It talks about how the owl adjusts its life to take care of her eggs, even sitting on them through freezing temperatures and snow without eating to make sure they don't die. The Bible story that correlates with this is the story of Amasa not obeying King David to meet him on the third day. Instead Amasa does what he wants (refuses to adjust his plans) to obey David. Because of this Amasa is found without David's support and killed (2 Samuel 20:1-13). No weird doctrine taught at all just nature facts (apparently not correct ones based on FaithManor's post) and Bible stories. At least as far as we'd made it through the book.