Seeing by your signature that you have ONE student, ready to begin first grade, I would recommend moving your WinterPromise program forward one year. I'd do the Hideaways in History program over two years as you have, but I'd do it for first and second instead of second and third.

I can't really compare GTG to SOTW because I've never seen SOTW AGs. We are using GTG as a light supplement and summer study (2nd grader). I *do* love the recommended resources, though I'm reserving judgment on Missionary Stories with the Millers. I am very happy about the "Our Father's World" social studies workbook from R&S. It's a very nice intro to the continents. The picture books recommended have really pulled ds in, and I can't wait to dive into Children Just Like Me this week. (we are only on week 2). GTG is set up like a unit study, with recommended resources and page numbers listed by topic (General, History, Science, Bible, etc). You schedule it all yourself. I like that there are so many books and activities from which to choose, but this unit study type set-up would drive me batty if I needed to get through the book within a certain time frame. (I am a scheduled Instructor Guide lover, ala WinterPromise).

Introverted Sensing Thinking Judging.

ISFJ (Introverted Sensing Feeling Judging). I used to be an ISTJ (Introverted Sensing Thinking Judging). I believe that motherhood and homeschooling, as well as working with other homeschool moms to start a homeschool support group has brought out a more sensitive side to me. I also think I strive to be more feeling that thinking/analytical. It's probably a good thing, because I'm not sure my middle-aged addled brain is up to the heavy thinking and analyzing I did as a young adult. :confused:

Mandy is right, you will have to use WP's placement evaluation checklist to make sure your student is ready for WP LA1. We did it this year and it was PERFECT for us. My ds had completed much of first grade reading using Pathway Readers and Learning Through Sounds. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the readers. I also found the phonics and reading comprehension components solid and easy to use. The grammar and spelling were gentle but effective. I'm happy to answer more questions... I somehow missed this post last week.

Quest for the Ancient World (with MOH1) and Quest for the Middle Ages (with MOH2) are listed under Themed Programs. MOH is included in the purchase price. But, yes, the other materials WP pulled together compliment MOH, so you have illustrated books, literature, timeline and notebooking activities to go with the MOH study.

WinterPromise schedules MOH along with lit and activities.

This would be a deal breaker for me. I wouldn't put them both in the same program, no matter how much easier for *me*. If I felt I'd be cheating dd by not accelerating, I'd go to an ungraded program like MUS.

Mother's Day is a stressful time for me, because I take on the responsibility of making my MIL happy (which, her dh is one of those, "you're not MY mother" guys), when she lives 12 hours away. I didn't do well last year (our card with gift card arrived a day late). I did much better this year. A handmade mini scrapbook was Priority shipped Tuesday and flowers were delivered yesterday. I even sent cards with photos to the grandmothers and great grandmothers this year! I'm so virtuous, ROFL. We usually go out to eat with my mom. She gets flowers and gifts. I get a card... but this year we are shopping for a new digi cam (thanks, stimulus check) and I will call that my Mother's Day gift.

I think it sort of depends on the age of the child. My ds was a first grader doing the program, and it was perfect for him to read about ONE animal per day and read two pages in the One Small Square book. To read more from that book would have overwhelmed him. What I do to make our reading session go smoothly is to open up each book to the assigned pages ahead of time. Then I may lay them out on the table and we'll move from one book to the next, or put the light ones on top of the Ency and just go down the stack.

Rainbow Resource and Christian Book Distributors both sell them, but they're not very inexpensive.

God Made Music: We have used the first grade level. What I like: The manual has EVERYTHING I need to know. It's colorful. It has a great mix of Gospel, classical, and folk songs. It gives a nice music theory foundation. Ds LOVES it. The only drawback: Occasionally there will be group activity planned but we've done pretty well at modifying for our small group.

This sounds like a great plan. :iagree:

Slow. (If they happen to have the whole program in stock you might get it two weeks after ordering, but this time of year many things are not in stock and are drop-shipped from Amazon).

I guess I need more information... what about the IG appears to be confusing or overwhelming? Is it the "Working on My Own" checklist you can give older students? I am finishing up week 36 of this program and I find the IG *extremely* user friendly and easy to use. Because I am a perfectionist, I did make my own schedule deleting the resources we weren't using (we skipped the Alphabet Art book) and putting the independent reading list on my checklist (ds wasn't up to reading them yet). BUT, if I had used all the resources of if ds *was* old enough to read the independent assignments on his own, I would not have done that. I won't be doing that for American Story 1 next year. As far as the forum posts about "choppiness", they leave me completely clueless. With the exception of some farm animals stuck in the Polar Unit (there is no farm unit, and there's a dearth of Polar animals), I didn't find the schedule choppy. Maybe that's because I approach schedules from a weekly viewpoint rather than daily. I don't mind reading about Sharks on Tuesday and completing the notebook page about them on Friday (since Friday is notebooking day). And we just do activities on any given day that feels like activities day, so I wasn't looking for the craft to correspond with the "animal of the day". I feel the term "animal of the day" is a misnomer anyway, because WP never uses it. They schedule an Animal Encyclopedia reading each day, but to me that doesn't designate the it "day of the Shark" because you happen to read about them in the Ency. KWIM? I'm happy to give more detailed info if you have more detailed questions.

I am going to be doing AS1 starting June 30! I am so excited I can hardly stand it, and I see I will be in great company on that theme, most likely. Rose is right, the notebook pages are mostly text to summarize or supplement the material you read each week. Sometimes it has a picture to color, sometimes a blank space for a child to draw an illustration. I would not buy more than one. If your children will feel "left out" by having only one notebook, you could use the WP MYO pages as a source and use them for copywork and inspiration for individual notebooks. (Naturally that only gets you one copy of each clip art though). For our timeline, since I am doing this with a second grader I chose not to buy the Timeline Notebook. We will do an accordion folded timeline to pull out and show the whole "line" at a glance. (I had planned to put it on the wall of our "school room" but school migrated to the kitchen, which is not timeline friendly). That way we will start our timeline notebook at "page one" when we do ancient history next. We'll be revisiting the American years and fill in that area then. For figures, I bought the WP color ones because they're so much cheaper and my ds detests coloring. However, if I had more than one student I would DEFINITELY have gone for the CD. That would give you more fodder for notebooking too, as the figures can be resized and used in many different ways. Hope you have a great time with WP AS1!

ITA with this recommendation. It could be your best homeschooling year yet!

This has been our experience too. :iagree:

I voted "other". You could describe our school year as "like the public schools but TWEAKED". I start school in July (June 30 this summer), so that we have a head start. Then we take a day off here and there when absolutely necessary (like we have houseguests), but we don't take such a long Christmas break or a full spring break. We finish up as soon as possible in the spring. This is our last week, which is a week and a half before the public school here. I am aiming to get out in April next year. (But I aimed that way this year and missed by a couple of weeks). I don't like a really long (more than 6-8 weeks) summer vacation because I long for structure and my kids benefit from structure. I do, however, enjoy the change of pace that comes with a defined summer vacation.

CLE is consumable.

My second grader and I are doing this right now as a very loose, add-on, fun when we want it type program. :iagree: It works well for young children, *and* you can get as in-depth as you like for your fourth grader. You will likely use more of the factual history and geography books than I am with a 2nd grader.

Kindergarten- Hands on Homeschooling K (Content Areas: Science, Social Studies, Bible, Art, etc) This worked great till Christmas. Then ds learned to read and he just needed *more*. So we concentrated on the 3 Rs at that point and dropped Hands on Homeschooling K. I plan to use WinterPromise's I'm Ready to Learn for K4 and Animals and Their Worlds for K5 with the next ds. Modern Curriculum Press Math K This was "okay", but a bit gentle by today's K standards. I am planning to use BJU Math K5 for the next ds. Pathway Readers Phonics/Reading: Learning Through Sounds, Before We Read, Helping Yourself, First Steps in Reading I have a lot of experience with this series, because I taught at a 1-2 room Amish school as a young adult. I like the system and find it simple and efficient. I was considering trying WP Basic K Phonics the next time but I have decided not to fix what isn't broken. First Grade: WinterPromise Animals And Their Worlds Theme (includes science, art, literature, poetry, crafts, etc) We have truly enjoyed this program. It was a pretty painless introduction to lit based education and the instructor guide is AWESOME. I like that it addresses so many learning styles. Modern Curriculum Press Math A At this level there seemed not to be enough word problems, mental math, hands on activities, etc. The teacher's manual wasn't very useful. I am switching to BJU Math 2 for next year. We also tried CLE math (discovered incremental or spiral approach causes us tears) and Singapore (pretty good program, but I prefer a more traditional approach). WinterPromise LA1 I love this program. It uses traditional workbooks for phonics and reading comprehension. The spelling program reflects the phonics concept recently studied. There is a light grammar introduction via worksheets (once per week or so) and little activities. REAL books are used for readers, and there are "creative narration" prompts to correspond with the American Story 1 or Children Around the World theme if you are using one of those (we didn't use these as our Animals and Their Worlds theme uses weekly notebooking prompts instead).

Just FWIW, CLE does not have a K Math program. They start off with first grade math. CLE K consists of Rod & Staff ABC preschool books. I have used MCP K and it was OK, fine even, though not very advanced. I am switching to BJU Math 2 this year (after doing Singapore which is fine but makes me nervous because it's so nontraditional, and CLE which I hate with a passion). I plan to buy BJU K5 for my younger ds and hopefully be a BJU Math only family. As for teacher intensiveness, I've read the program works great without using *All* of the activities, but I love that the activities are there for me when I want/need them. In my experience, the most successful curriculum programs we have used in any subject area involved a lot of teacher interaction. Maybe when my ds is older he will want more to study on his own but I doubt it. He has always been a highly interactive child. I would personally not choose math as a subject to spend less time and energy addressing.

I'd ask the seller if they have buying/selling feedback at another forum or on ebay for you to check. You could even ask them to list it on ebay if they are ebay sellers.

I'd use BJU history and save the Notgrass for another student a different year. Or you could sneakily read some of the lit aloud and require him to sit in on it