Same here. I have to fight with her every 5 minutes to keep her going. We only do 45 minutes of table work and two read alouds per week. I keep trying to add more but she fights me so much with just this. She says it is boring and she already knows how to do it. But I can tell she does not. She makes mistakes and gets frustrated when she doesn't know an answer. I have decided it has been worse for 2 reasons.... we took two weeks off, and we got cable. She started out advanced so we were all pretty lazy about being consistent. Well, she is not advanced any more. She is forgetting everything she has known for a year! I am establishing a new rule. The TV is on for the same amount of time she spends reading and on schoolwork. Hopefully this will work. We will have to put her into PS in the fall if she keeps up the attitude.

I typically have 16 hour days. (9am - 1 am) At least 7 of which are spent comforting and nursing my teething toddler. I can watch TV and surf the net while comforting him. Sometimes I can read. I mostly do a lot of thinking and planning in my head, because he likes to mess with anything I am trying to do, LOL. This has been about 2 weeks. He typically takes around 4 hours which is more doable. Before that, we all had the stomach flu. DH painted the living room and I had to keep the kids away from him. We had a religious convention to attend. I am getting less sleep because I stay up after he is in bed in order to get housework done. I still have to get him back to sleep every 45 minutes to an hour or so when I am not with him. My house is a wreck, I am stressed out, and DD is falling behind in school.

Thanks. I will make sure I figure up exactly how much I will be saving now that you mention it. I have two counties to use (my mom's and mine), so I am finding almost all of them available at the library. DH said definitely use the library when you can. I will make sure I send him to pick them up part of the time, so he can change his mind with me if we decide to order them. LOL I would still like more experiences if there are any out there.

Can I thread jack and ask how it is working for you to buy only the guide? :001_smile: I was planning on trying this for all of our WP journey. Many of the AS books are in the library (for 4th grade), and I plan to coordinate HIH with my already planned study of Josephus and Island Story over 2nd and 3rd grade. And I am already drooling over QAW for mid-jr. high, but I don't want to use MOH. I want to stick to the encyclopedia and SOTW. So I guess that is another question. :tongue_smilie:

PLUG AWAY! ;o)

My book was written after SOTW and it suggests that you use Kingfisher for the logic stage. SOTW was meant for grammar stage.

In SL it is taught in Core 3 science, maybe you could give that a look? Personally, I would just wait until logic stage to go into classification. We are learning where animals live and basically seeing the variety this year.

In WWE she only asks for one sentence. I guess some kids are more wordy! :lol:

No one else?

I don't know why I focused on the downsides so much earlier LOL. I LOVE the way SL has history broken up. 2 years of World History, 2 on American History, a focus on geography and then 2 more on World History seems perfect to me. And I am following that even if I go about it differently than buying a SL core. Cores 6 and 7 are meant for Jr. High School so as it was said earlier, it is a lot different than "flying through" with a younger child. I am using WP HIH it flies through all 4 volumes in one year. LOL You don't read the whole thing, and that is okay with me. I am hanging the pegs, I will decorate them later in the logic stage and we will read the whole thing then.:D

I did the same thing. I got a lot of used books from the RecycleSonlight yahoogroup and divided them up. They will last us about 5 years for $100!! Will have all of our read alouds and independent reading covered, and quite a bit of our science.

I knew you would respond Jessica! We are starting 1st grade soon. I just asked her, "What happened in My Fathers Dragon today?" She did the rest. No forcing. LOL. She did not even know it was school. I was just curious. It seemed she gave plenty of info. I wasn't so sure about the sentences.

It is for My Father's Dragon. It is the first time I have asked her for a narration. He met some tigers. He gave them gum and he said it would turn green. If you plant it in the ground it grows. What do you think?

I did not read all the replies. Forgive me if I am redundant. Downsides: 1. The read alouds in the cores typically work well if you go with the high range in age, and still there are some things better left for later. But I feel the reference type books are immature and some might call them twaddle. 2. My DD loves non-fiction, and most of their readers and readalouds are fiction. I feel like they need to have more variety in the readers. (biographies, poems, non-fiction, etc.) 3. Missionary stories do not work for my family. 4. Usborne books are hard to use. They are like comic books, have art instead of pictures, many captions that are hard to keep up with, just too busy for my eyes. 5. It is rare to find a reader that correlates with the history in the cores before 3. 6. Just plain too many assigned books, there is no room left for choice reading. 7. The books are low on pictures. 8. NO hands on at all. I still use some of their materials and look at the catalog extensively. I just won't use a full core until we get to American History. I have decided Winter Promise is a better fit for us right now. For science I like some of the SL offerings and pick and choose to add to our cycle. SL also has great programs for handwriting, math, art and music with information comparing each one. HTH

They do have a reader schedule, for the readers only. I have also seen used IGs for $12-$15.

Could someone explain why I would need a grammar program in addition to WWE? It looks pretty thorough to me.

"Think, Draw, Write!" That title sounds good, maybe you should put it as the title of your post.

Sounds like good reviews so far. Thanks! What's ymmv stand for??

I was all excited after ordering the books and DH said well you know how she doesn't like being told what to do. :glare: He does not think they will be worth it. I got them to help us make pages for our geography/ecology notebook. Books 7 and 8.

What if you concentrate on another "fun" area like music or art? Or you could do a literature guide that does not have to do with science or history. Or you could plan lots of field trips.

BUMP

I am using it now and through 1st grade and will switch to AAS for second grade, as I want a spelling program at that point and ETC is not one.

Lisa, I am happy you have settled with a decision. If you have to cut down on it, I am sure there are plenty of ways to do it. I had to drop out of college. I wish you the best!!

I decided not to go with SL right now for these reasons. 1. WP has more hands on 2. SL has too many books scheduled for us to finish. 3. SL books are long, and above grade level. 4. SL schedules so many books that it becomes more expensive. Maybe if you see what you agree with and don't agree with it will help you decide. For what it is worth, I AM going to do core 3+4 with SL I am totally in love with it.

LOL, Maria, you and I are so much alike! You are showing up in all of my posts with the same opinion. The main reason OP is being encouraged to use WP is that her DC have a wide age spread. With yours only one year apart, you should be fine with SL. That said.... I purchased Read Alouds for SL for the first 4 cores (about 5 per core). I will still use them, just maybe slower, and I might turn some into readers to save mommy's voice. WP does not have a chronological progression through history in younger grades, unless you get a one year overview program that was designed for 1st graders and stretch it out, which means you have to supplement and not follow the IG as a schedule. That is what I am doing, (I thought SL had too many books scheduled and not enough activity to begin with) but it will be easier for you to use SL. You might want to supplement SL with a couple of activity books or readers from WP, if your kiddos are like mine, (Emily prefers Non-fiction readers, and doesn't like the majority of SL readers, and is very hands on) but other than that, you are fine. Don't fix what ain't broke! The main thing I am planning on not missing with WP American History is a picture study book they have with famous paintings of America.