Middle Ages Such great literature and hero tales. Radical transformation in people's lives. The Plague. The Muslim Empire. Feudal system. Ultimately though I had an AMAZING teacher in college for my History of the Middle Ages class. He made it all come alive and it's been my favorite ever since. Second place would be turn of the century United States history (industrialization, immigration, WWI, Roaring 20's). There is a lot of groundwork laid in those years for what evils would befall us later in the 20th century. It's interesting to watch it unfold and make connections.

I purposely have slowed WAYYYYY down with Grace so that we hit Chirea in 6th. When it came out I knew that she would not be ready for it this year in 5th. I would be pretty astounded if there were 4th/5th graders who didn't struggle with it.

Chipolte Pork Burgers with cilantro lime mayo (I've made them with chicken and turkey and they turn out just as well.) and sweet potato fries on the side. I had mine sans bun with a huge amount of sauteed onions, peppers, and mushrooms.

Egermeier's (sp?) Bible Story Book (maybe)

Following. I have one of the Killgallon books, but I have no idea where I should use it in reference to a specific sequence or grade or what. So it just sits on my shelf......lonely and untouched. :tongue_smilie:

I'm unbelievably grateful that we sign the paperwork to sell our house tomorrow!!!!!!! Basically that's like dh getting a $1500 a month raise since we no longer have a house payment!!!! I fell like we've won the lottery. For the first time in 11 years, we will have no debt and money in our pockets. :party: :party: :party:

Logic of English has CC aligned info for every lesson at the beginning of the teacher's manual.

South Texas here too! The horrific summers are why we started schooling year round years ago. We actually get more school done in the summer months than the rest of the year.

We use MCT but not the writing. Not my cup of tea as far as writing programs go.

I have the LOE game book and NEVER use it since I'm using Foundations with Sophia anyway. You can have it if you'll pay for shipping.

We tried to start back up on the 5th after arriving back home on the 3rd from Christmas vacation. While we got some school done we were all dragging, the house was a wreck, and our school stuff was all unorganized. We muddled through, but this past week (the 12th) we took off and cleaned house, rested up, and I organized the school area. We will be ready to go again come Monday and I learned a valuable lesson: never try to start school when you just made a 12 hour drive two days before and your house/school area are not ready. I'm looking forward to the coming year though. Lots of fun stuff planned and a new scheduling option for our content subjects that we'll be trying out in earnest.

I'm going to be the crazy one and say that I'm not planning on doing much of anything with Sophia and Levi before starting Writing and Rhetoric in 3rd. No intensive grammar or writing beyond copywork and handwriting workbooks. Right now here is how things are progressing with Sophia: LOE Foundations has been her phonics/spelling program for K, 1st, and 2nd. We are finishing up Level C this month. I just got Level D in the mail and it's going to lead us perfectly into Writing and Rhetoric for 3rd. It includes spelling, grammar (covers basic punctuation, noun, verb, adjectives, capitalization, sentence v. sentence fragment), copywork, dictation, and some beginning writing skills. The grammar is sufficient enough to move into Fable in 3rd. I plan to follow this progression with Levi as well if at all possible. For Grace who didn't have the benefit of using LOE, she did the following before beginning Fable: FLL 1, The Sentence Family, Island Level of MCT, WWE 1, 2, and part of 3, and Apples and Pears for Spelling. Just so you know, ELTL didn't fly here either. I LOVE the program, but Sophia really, really started hating it about 1/3 of the way through Level 1 so I dropped it.

Watch this. It's by Dan Willingham about learning styles.

I use Nature's Way Alive Once Daily Women's Ultra Potency vitamin. It's amazing! I can actually tell a big difference in how I feel when I'm not taking them versus when I am. It is the first vitamin that has every had a noticeable effect on my overall health in a positive way. There are no added dyes, but it does contain vegetables and herbs. I buy mine off of Amazon because it's about half the price of buying it in stores.

50 Shades of the Hive around here. I think I need a stand of pearls to clutch as well.

I had mono in third grade. I was out for a month due to tiredness and enlarged spleen. After being out a month, I then went back for only half days (my grandparents picked me up at lunch) for another month due to fatigue. :grouphug: to your dd. I've said many times that I wouldn't wish mono on anyone. I had to take a nap after walking to the bathroom. It was awful!

The bolded is why I went with NAC for cursive. It kept all of the lowercase letters as cursive and replaced almost all of the uppercase letters with a more modern print type version. I find that I tend to write my lowercase letters in cursive because it is much quicker, but I dropped those crazy, traditional cursive letters a LONG time ago. NAC is the closest to how I write in cursive. I didn't go with italics cursive because my daughter wanted loops. :D

I hate the way most of the uppercase letters look in traditional cursive so I purposefully chose New American Cursive because it gets rid of most of those wonky capitals. They still didn't get rid of the capital G so I teach my kids a different way to write that one than NAC teaches. I'm just letting you know because if you are a cursive purist, you won't like NAC. I have to say though that teaching kids to write in cursive using NAC has been pretty painless.

Writing and Rhetoric by CAP could almost be used independently. You would only need to confer together over the writing project (pre-writing and editing). I love the discussions that my dd and I have using the program, but it is set up in such a way that you could hand the workbook to the child and have them do it on their own.

We do book A (K) and book B (1st) of the italic series listed above. I spend the first half of 2nd grade just doing copywork for handwriting practice, then the second half of 2nd grade, I switch them over to New American Cursive Book 1 by Memoria Press. So far this has worked for both of my girls, but we'll see if my son can transition to cursive this early. If not, we will keep doing copywork for handwriting practice until he's ready.

My favorites (I'll start young and go up): Bible Study Guide for All Ages, Logic of English Foundations, Math in Focus and Miquon, The Sentence Family, Writing and Rhetoric, MCT Language Arts I still haven't found a favorite history and science. I'm hoping that Beautiful Feet will fix that when it comes to history, but we haven't started using it yet.

Getty Dubay Italic was our favorite as well.

You have a great memory! Yep, Wild Bill was played by Josh Brolin who is indeed now super famous. My favorite role of his was in Goonies though. I stopped watching when Jesse James showed up too. And as in most girl disguising herself as a boy scenarios, it was highly unbelievable that she tricked everyone for that long.

Lou Diamond Phillips was in the movie Young Guns so I'll switch your vote for you. I have a difficult time choosing. LDP was quite yummy in Young Guns, but I really love Josh Brolin in Young Riders. I wish I could combine different people from each cast. That would be the perfect Pony Express.

Ugh. You people are ruining my Pony Express fantasy. How about a vote? The Young Guns movie version of the Pony Express or The Young Riders TV version of the Pony Express Let's just keep factual, historical information out of this! :tongue_smilie: