especially enjoy the 4th grade book because of the religous content about the book of Job. The science content is very good. We like the way Bible is really woven into the lessons, not just a few quotes tacked on to the lesson. I recently read a Cathy Duffy review where she also says their content is high quality. What some people don't like is that it is not experiment driven. There are activities mentioned, but it is not an inquiry based method. This doesn't bother me in the least. We still do some experiments and I am fine with waiting until junior and senior high to tackle extensive experimenting. I have had my son copy many of their diagrams and illustrations into his science notebook and label them with explanations. He's learning and enjoys it. He also loves the way Bible is discussed in terms of the topic being studied. Did you know there are online samples you can look at? One of these sites has samples. www.rodstaff.com or www.rodandstaffbooks.com Shannon

but, I don't have time (we are on our way out) to answer in depth. Also, I need to sit down and look at what my goals are more extensively. Our main problem with CC was the extensive memorization, especially in the younger years. I don't want my 6 year old daughter spending all that time on memorizing when she could be riding my neighbors pony, reading aloud with me, cooking with me, painting with her father (who is a part time artist), training the dogs, etc. Some of the memorization was completely inappropriate and misguided in my opinion. Advanced math concepts should not be memorized by children who haven't even approached the stage of abstract thinking. To me, this seemed against the ideas in TWTM. We aren't against all memorization, but the question is just how much should a young child be required to memorize? I have read The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill. His early focus on academics lead to a break down (I'm not equating CC with breakdowns-- it's just a thought I have had about memorization and academic pressure in general). Memorization does not equal education. I feel my efforts are better spent teaching how to think logically and evaluate ideas. Our family also has a problem with some of the things being memorized. While I am teaching some mythology, I am not having them memorize list of Gods. I would prefer to spend our time memorizing scripture. I am also concerned that many of the memorization type programs out there are giving a false standard in education. No one can remember everything they learn. The brain just doesn't function that way. When I was shopping for pianos I knew everything there was to know - - which pianos were manufactured in the US which ones used to be quality but aren't anymore because they were bought by Japanese companies who are just using the former name of the US company, etc. Now I couldn't begin to tell you all the information I knew then. But, I could find it for you, and I have an idea of what is available. I don't want to pressure my kids into memorizing a ten minute timeline (I think that's one of their goals?). And just because someone can recite that timeline, doesn't mean they can think logically and apply that knowledge. A child who can recite the alphabet song knows his or her ABCs, but that doesn't mean he or she can read, write, or spell. As an artistic family we also had problems with some of the artwork being taught..we have ideas about what should be taught when based on our knowledge of art history. I won't get into it here, but basically it involves honoring God in artwork and teaching children to evluate art without just accepting someone else's idea of what art is. All that being said...I still think you could do CC and adapt it to your own views and family lifestyle. It really comes down to how you use it. For us, it just would have amounted to too much adapting to justify the costs. The co-op activities looked good, but we are burned out on co-ops, and the ones we have participated in have not met with our standards for education, or behavior. A co-op is only as good as the instructors and the people attending it. We had serious issues with bullying that were not taken seriously, I got tired of constantly being the one raising concerns and tired of subjecting my kids to mediocre lessons and bad behavior and examples. There were a few good experiences, but not enough to justify the time and effort we invested - - not to mention the emotional roller coaster of not knowing when my son would be targeted physically again and how I would handle it. So, I would seriously investigate before joining. Homeschooling is becoming more mainstream and many homeschool events (at least in my area) are starting to show some of the same problems found in public schools. This got really long and rambling - sorry. Hope this helps someone. Shannon

It is difficult to come up with a list of goals for history and science, but you have to look at all of the approaches that are available and then decide what fits. In order to know what fits I think you have to look at your general goals for homeschooling and your beliefs about what your approach to instruction should be and then match up your curriculum (or design your own). For example if in the lower grades you are aiming to give the big picture of history, you wouldn't want to get bogged down in forcing lots of memorization of dates. For us, creativity rates high in our goals. We do some memorization, but nowhere near as much as a program like Classical Conversations. It doesn't fit with many of our goals. There are a lot of great things about Classical Conversations, but we have limited time and want to spend time on the approaches that most reflect our beliefs and goals for education and family relationships. (I'm not picking on CC--it just came to mind. It works very well for some) I think it really helps to remind yourself what your ultimate aims were when you started homeschooling, see if they've changed, or if you've gotten off track. It's easy to get lost in all the choices that are out there now. Shannon

and I agree with Angela. And I am a book snob too! BJU offers systematic instruction that would be very time consuming to pull together on your own. We have used it the same way as Angela has. We have always had plenty of time for living books. The stories in BJU for younger years might be considered twaddle by some, but we liked most of them, and they accomplished the goal of getting the children reading. Very few of the 6th grade (and up) selections could be considered twaddle (in my opinion, of course). I will say that you need to discuss the selection (especially at higher levels) with your children or they will not be getting the benefits of the program. We have had some wonderful discussions this year with BJU 7th Literture. It didn't work well at all when I tried just assigning the lessons. There was not enough learning happening. We have never done all the workbook pages. In younger years we did some aloud and some written. In 5th- 6th I often made up my own assignments which included more writing. But I always sort of followed the workbook for topics covered- just did a lot of them my own way. Shannon

You are not alone. I feel scattered too! I have been considering TOG for the same reasons! After thinking and rethinking until my head feels like it will explode, I have decided to sit down and write out some goals just like I did when I was first homeschooling. I'm asking myself what is truly important and what would be nice but isn't that crucial. One thing we've done this year is to limit outside activities. I've discovered there are very few field trips that can't be done as a family. We learn more that way and aren't as stressed. It also builds family memories. Having close family relationships is important to us. I am thinking about the idea of using structured curricula for core subjects and doing my own thing for history and science. I suspect we might learn more that way too. I think I just need to relax a little more about not getting done all the creative ideas I dream up. My kids were sick of Egypt way before I ran out of ideas--I had to scrap a lot of them! I just have the feeling if I buy Tapestry I'll end up trying to do both Tapestry and my own ideas - - that's what I seem to do with everything I use for curriculum. A real recipe for burnout! Even though Tapestry looks great, in a way all the guidance on discussions (and the discussions are great) sort of bothers me. Today I started thinking about all the students who have had the exact same discussions because thats what the guide told their parents to discuss. Possibly we are missing out on truly tailoring our homeschooling to our own children and families. Please don't think I'm slamming TOG because I really like what I see, and we may use it too. I just think maybe we are all looking for some ideal when we should really just be reading and dicsussing with our children in a way that is unique to our own situations. I'm still sorting through my goals to try to match what I do to fit. I've been reading the beginning chapters of Cathy Duffy's guide for junior and senior high which does a pretty good job of making you think through goals and approaches. I am scheduling a break within the next few week so I can have some down time and evaluate just what our schooling should look like for the remainder of this year and next year, too. Is it possible that a break and evaluating goals would help you? Here's a suggestion I might try. If you are really thinking Tapestry would solve the problems you are experiencing, print out their sample units and set a trial period where you will do nothing of your own design. Just follow the Tapestry plans. See if it truly helps and if it solves the problems. Borrow the books from friends, or the library if you can. Several posters here have said they do only the core assignments, which helps to keep TOG from being overwhelming. You could do this during your trial period, and then add creative assignments when you feel ready, while keeping a close watch for those feelings of being scattered and overwhelmed . Shannon

Calvert suggests that parents decide just how much of the info they would like their children to cover in each lesson. The introduction says the guides are written to the child, but my opinion is that younger children would need assistance to work through the guides. A child of 9 with average reading abilities should not have trouble and should find the guides very interesting. I'm sure most parents would find them interesting too. I would not assign these lessons for independent work, because I wouldn't want to miss them. Lessons are organized by chapter with page numbers for the corresponding Little House book in the margins. The guide could be read before or after reading the Little House chapter. You would have to decide what would work best. These are hefty guides. The section on Little House in the Big Woods is 83 pages long. There are suggestions for activities like cooking and some researching family history. There are no worksheets, although there are plenty of questions for discussion. The guides give chapter summaries and then explain page by page any vocabulary or historical facts as well as themes that are relevant to the story. They also explore the authors style and discuss literary terms. In lesson 1 (Little House in the Big Woods) similie, metaphor, personification, and onomatopeia are discussed. Songs and their history and significance are often included. Much attention is given to the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder and how her own life influenced her writing. The difference between biography and biographical fiction is discussed many times. A tremendous amount of research went into these guides. If you are looking for more activities, it should be easy to come up with some based on all of the information. Hope this helps some. Shannon

The Bisoph's Wife We love the ice skating scene and have had some great discussions about how nothing upsets Dudley (the angel played by Cary Grant) and how much everyone likes him. We have also had some good times at homeschool ice skating pointing out when one of us is skating like Sylvester (you'll have to watch the movie to know what I mean)! We could use a Dudley around here! Shannon

that any child in a 4h Gardening club will have the opportunity to earn his or her Junior Master Gardener's Certification by using their gardening curriculum. We haven't quite hit high school years yet, but my son has a definite interest in this area, so I've looked into it a little. Do you know about Kym Wright's Botany unit? Rainbow Resource sells it. I think I saw a discussion on one of the WTM boards about using this as a high school course along with some other resources. Shannon

Before teaching my son I did not believe in "poor spellers". I just thought there were people lazy enough not to care about their spelling. Well, God gave me the correction I needed! We too have tried several different programs. We've tried Spelling Power, BJU, Natural Speller, Calvert, Phonetic Zoo and Rod & Staff (I just sold this right away because I knew it wasn't the right approach). None of these helped my spelling challenged son. Last year I had him using Zaner Bloser's Spelling Connections. Of all the workbook type spelling, I think this one was the best. Zaner Bloser also has online spelling games on their site which have the kids sort words. These were very well designed, meaningful sorts that forced him to pay careful attention to the letters in the words. You can also print a spelling list for the week on their parents (or maybe teachers?) webpages. This is all free. Really, you could use all their free stuff to make your own curriculum. I thought buying the workbooks just gave me a little less to worry about. He did improve while using it, but I wanted to move away from the workbook approach. This year we are using Spell to Write and Read. I switched so I could work with both children on phonograms and rules together. I also have Megawords which we might use this summer. SWR is working, I think, but we just started it halfway through this year. It was very time consuming to learn the approach, but the SWR Yahoo group helps. My son actually thinks that ZB's Spelling Connections helped him learn better, but he admits he didn't enjoy it as much. I saw that you are already using ZB's Handwriting, so I thought I'd mention it as another possibility. Shannon

you like to be given a lot of information to use. That's what I loved about them. The Prairie Primer is full of good ideas, but often YOU have to find the info. I like to be given all the info so I can use it to complete my own ideas! I have friends who can't come up with things to study on their own and they love Prairie Primer. Calvert's guides have many vocabulary words - with their meanings fully explained, historical background as it relates to the story (also fully explained), recipes, songs, and many questions designed to make connections between the story and the reader's own life. Themes within each book as well as themes that stretch across the entire series are explored and discussed. They are very thorough. I can't say enough about these guides. They are wonderful! We love them so much that they will never see a curriculum sale - - they have a permanant home on our shelves. Shannon

52 Fabulous Discussion-Prompt Cards for Reading Groups by Laura Robb is for grades 4-8 and covers some of the things you may be looking for. Check the description on Amazon. Shannon

We are using it along with Teaching Textbooks 7. I schedule Aleks for my son during his independent work time which is in the morning. His regular math lesson with Teaching Texts is in the afternoon, so that breaks up his math so that it isn't like he is doing math all day! My children work independently for about the first hour of school so that I have time to make copies and assemble books and materials. They also have chores to do. I don't allow him to do it as his first subject because he needs some time to really wake up (just like his mom)! I have him set a timer for 20-30 mins. Sometimes if he has a heavy workload I will only have him do 15-20 mins. It depends on his other work. I write how much time he needs to spend on ALEKS in his assignment book along with his other independent work for the morning. I also sometimes direct which topics he should be working on. Just yesterday I switched his topic so that he is practicing some of the things he had trouble with in his math lesson. When we first started using Aleks a couple of weeks ago, we took a few days off from teaching texts and use it as our primary math lessons for the day. I may do that again in between chapters if I feel he needs it. So, my answer is that I basically take into account what other work we are doing and how he is progressing with math. Then I assign time, and possibly specific topics, for Aleks. My son likes it - especially the pie chart. I think it is an excellent supplement and the assessments are really helpful, but I do see why others say it probably isn't best used a the only math curriculum for your child. Shannon

I thought I knew that, but maybe in the haze of "curriculum brain" I forgot. Good advice for those facing junior and senior high ages. Brenda, I need to hire you to follow me around and keep me on track!! See here I am after looking at curriculum!:willy_nilly: Then after Brenda....:001_smile: Shannon

My frustration with it has been there is not enough meat for the older children. I don't mind having them do some research, but I want my 6th grader to interact with information, not spend all of his time searching for it! And if he doesn't search for it, that means I have to. One of my other pet peeves is that often there are controversies in history about times and locations. MOH seems to just pick one and present it. I don't think we are even told a controversy exists. I'm not positive about that because I don't pay that much attention to the book anymore! I prefer to be educated about the differing opinions so we will at least know what beliefs are out there - - even if we don't agree. Our family believes that for many of these controversies we will never know the truth. For example, there are differing opinions on Noahs Ark. For us, it doesn't matter if the ruins of what is currently believed to be Noah's ark are real. Noah really lived and the ark was real. We don't need proof. It's still interesting to read about all of the research that has been done. I think Diana Waring does a better job in the areas of controversy. She provides much more information and guides us to sources for more information so we can draw our own conclusions. We are still using MOH as a spine, but my son and I put a lot of effort into finding more information - - it is sometimes exahusting. For that reason I have added some textbooks to our study. That has helped when we aren't able to research. MOH is fine for young children, or families who want to do a lot of their own research. You would definitely have to flesh it out for your older children. I think Beautiful Feet has a study that considers American and World history at the same time. What about using literature read alouds to make history more interesting for your children? Shannon

goals. I had already decided I need to put the curriculum choices on hold and keep doing what I'm doing, while I think a little more carefully about my goals. Yesterday while searching the WTM boards I read someone's post about considering goals (maybe it was Brenda's) and that gave me the push to sit back down and write out just where I want to focus next year. Its so easy to get sidetracked when examining curriculum because there are just so many great choices out there. I think it's time for me to take a break from looking at all the choices and sit with nothing but a blank notebook in front of me. Brenda has hit upon some of my frustration with curriculum in general - - it is never tailor made to fit our family and I grow frustrated trying to meet my own goals plus meet the requirements or scheduled lessons of the curriculum. Brenda is correct math, spelling, and writing need to be the biggest focus for my 7th grader next year. I do enjoy putting together my own units, but I also put a lot of pressure on myself to do too much. So, I had thought following someone else's plan might be better....but, I think I may always be fighting between what I want to do vs what curriculum is telling me to do. I have already read the Cathy Duffy review, but wanted some real "in the trenches" opinions. I love CD reviews...but she doesn't always tell the down sides or mention who might not be a good fit for a particular curriculum. Thanks again to everyone for responding. I'll be focusing on goals for a while, but this discussion has really helped me. I think TOG looks like a wonderful choice, but won't know for a while if it will be the choice for our family. I hope this discussion has helped others. Shannon

generators listed. They all seem pretty much the same. Choose the highest and lowest number you want to appear. I think what Lisa was looking for is a generator that would allow you to choose several specific facts that your child is having trouble with - - like if he/she has trouble with 8X7 or 6X9 those two and others would be on the WS, not every number times 8. I'd love to find a WS generator that would allow you to do this. Maybe I just didn't look through enough of them, but I couldn't find one. Shannon

For next year I will have an 11year old working at roughly 7th grade level (except in spelling!). I would want him doing the Dialectic level. I'll also have my daughter working at roughly 2nd grade level. I really like the idea of keeping everyone together for subjects as much as possible. We are working on Ancients this year with many materials I have pulled together to provide more meat than Mystery of History has to offer. Believe it or not we have also been doing American history at the same time using BF Primary guide (This is mostly for my daughter, but gives my son a good review). We alternate weeks. They keep a notebook with a BC/AD page showing the birth of Christ as a divider. This has been working out well and seems to help them put events in order. We pull pages out at times and then they have to try to reassemble them in the right order. We study geography as it relates to the history we are studying using some of the many materials I have accumulated plus library books and videos. We also add in art projects, cooking, and family read alouds as time allows. Bible study is included in these notebooks too, with key verses from each of the major Bible stories studied (from the King James Bible). Map work I create based on what I want them to remember. Our history/geography study has been very rewarding, but a lot of prep work for me. That's why I've been considering something that will put it all together for me. I also want to transfer more of the research to my son. I would want to do Middle Ages next year, continuing to add events/people in their notebooks. I am panicking over my choices more than ever because I feel like I have only a couple of years to play around and enjoy before we get to serious high school stuff. (Looking at my last sentence -- it sounds ridiculous--why can't we enjoy high school?? Could it be I've been made to believe that all enjoyment ends when they reach high school age!):laugh: Shannon

their online drill. Both give you some control over which facts, but I haven't found one that allows you to choose specific facts. I've just been making up my own based on the ones my daughter gets wrong consistently on oral drill. I'll be interested to see if anyone has a better way! Shannon

literature, but still the TOG quesitons and answers are attractive to me. Then I worry that I will get annoyed with all the extra materials and tired of wading through them. I think if I could do as you and Melissa and ignore a lot of the extras we would probably like it. Then I think I'm crazy to spend all that money to ignore part of the program. Decisions, decisions...:confused1: Have you ever sold items on vegsource? I think I purchased from a Rhonda in TX from their for sale boards quite some time ago. Thanks again for your answer. Shannon

What made you decide to wait on tapestry? Shannon

Which did you decide to use and why? What did you see as the negatives? To me, Biblioplan looks more manageable and less overwhelming. On the other hand, Tapestry's notes to the teacher look incredible. The website looks incredible, too. I just have trouble knowing how much to delve into topics in history. Right now I am organizing my own Tapestry-like study and I am constantly struggling with deciding how much info to require the kids to know. I like the look of Tapestry, but worry that I will lose my freedom to explore (because of my own desire to do it all). Also the price is a bit overwhleming! These are just my rambling thoughts. I'd appreciate reading other's rambling thoughts. Shannon DS-10 DD-7

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I've checked my browser's history over and over and still can't figure it out. I think I'm giving up and i'll check it again another day. Shannon

what history curriculum I was looking at. A week or two ago I previewed a curriculum that covered the Luddites. I was viewing the table of contents as a sample online. Now that I want to look at it again, I can't seem to figure out who the publisher was, or what book I was looking at. :banghead: Does anyone have any idea what I was looking at??? I think it would have been for middle school or high school. Any suggestions would be appreciated! Shannon

The methods I am using with my daughter would be too much for a child that young. No need to rush math facts at that age. Shannon