(hug) My youngest was born last August, full term, no issues. Still, we limped through last year's homeschooling. It was a lot of "grab your workbook and do page 14". History was only reading SOTW--no extras except maybe looking at the corresponding pages in UILEWH. It was bare bones and I didn't feel good about it. Then my 5 year old was diagnosed with a form of epilepsy and we went even more basic as we tried to figure out how to control his seizures. I went through a lot of guilt because I wasn't homeschooling to the level that I want/expect. This summer, however, I've spent a lot of time with public schooled children and I'm confident that last year, even as unadorned as it was, was good *enough*. Now, I homeschool my kids because I want something better than good enough, but sometimes good enough is the best I can do. Now the baby is nearly a year old (in less than a week!) I have more time and energy to devote to plannign curriculum and putting together extras. The kids weren't harmed. We can pick up and do better now, when we're better equipped to do better. You have a lot on your plate right now. You've been through a lot, surely, and with that comes an adjustment period. Kids at these ages are so resilient and they really do pick up so much without being specifically taught. You have time to fill in the gaps. Right now just might be a good time for you to just be. There's nothing wrong with a curriculum out of the box or workboxes or whatever system (or conglomeration of system) that works for you at this point. It doesn't have to be permanent. ETA: I just wanted to clarify with my "public schooled/good enough" comment that I didn't mean anything against public schooled kids. I just meant that my kids weren't falling behind their public schooled peers.

London and I are about halfway done with Island of the Blue Dolphins.

We haven't started school yet but I have our "getting ready" stuff up on my blog: blog

I think it looks good. :) I have to second (or third) RightStart Math. I'm doing level A with my nearly 6 year old and we love it. I also like the Let's-Read-And-Find-Out books. I tend to buy them since I have several kids and they're very reasonably priced, if your library doesn't have them.

We are getting ready to start R.E.A.L. Earth & Space so I don't have an answer for you...yet. However, I'm going to go to the library tomorrow and take some time to look up most of the books on the list for unit 1. My library is generally very adequate so I'm expecting that I'll be able to find at least the highly recommended books. If you'd like I'll look over the books and let you know if I think they are not-to-be-missed.

I don't know but I'm bumping this for you since we're using this program this year and I'm all about nifty schedules. :)

The only one I'm familiar with is The America Story. The stories are short and give a broad, very basic idea of US history. It's something that I read aloud to my older boys (ages 8 and 5) but I wouldn't consider it an actual American history spine (I would consider it more along the lines of, say, D'Aulaire's books--fun to read and not unfactual but also not complete). My daugher has been reading the children's version of The People's History of the United States. It's in a several-volume set.

Thanks! I'll have to see if my Target has that.

That's what we use as well. :) The book that comes with the CD has all of the lyrics, of course, like other Wee Sing books. There are some good quotes from JFK, Martin Luther King Jr, Abraham Lincoln, etc. as well as the inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty. We've used the book a lot for copywork ideas. My only complaint about the Wee Sing patriotic songs is that *I* would prefer the more classic, well sung versions of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and other songs rather than the cutesy children's voices. Still, my kids love it and that's the point.

Nope, we don't do the pledge at all. Ever. They do recite the Preamble to the Constitution about once a week and we're going to work on memorizing the names of the Presidents and the Amendments to the Constitution. But no, no pledge.

We're non (anti) vaxxers to begin with but boy, there is no way on earth even if we stood in line for every other shot would I sign my kiddos up to be guinea pigs!

We're using www.readinga-z.com It isn't a workbook, you just download the lessons. There is a lot of cutting and pasting, though, and my son loves it.

I forgot again--there's also a CD of math songs. Ours doesn't work though so I'm going to have to call them.

We just started RightStart Math a couple of weeks ago. So far we've used the abacus, square colored tiles, and the tally (popsicle) sticks. Also in the kit, which we haven't used yet, were geoboards, place value cards, a clock for learning to tell time, some flash cards, and it seems like something else. Oh, also a workbook. So far we haven't used the workbook. It's not very thick. Mostly RSM so far has been gentle repetition with manipulatives. I don't know if that helps you or not, depending on how easily available those items are for you. I do have to say that my 5 year old LOVES RSM. Loves it. He asks to do lessons on the weekends and he's a reluctant schooler.

I used it with Alexander. We would sometimes do double lessons when we were at the early lessons and otherwise just one a day. As others have said he was ready to move on to other things around lesson 60 or so--we just moved on to him reading his own books (Magic Tree House, abridged classics while we would read the "real" version during family read-aloud, etc). Obviously all kids learn differently and have different strengths but here is my anecdotal 'evidence'. With London we were doing Waldorf-inspired homeschooling and she learned to read the Waldorf-inspired way. She ended up needing quite a bit of remedial help with phonics and was a reluctant reader. Now, a couple of years ago she totally took off and now reads high school level books but I really worried about her for awhile (she was also my first homeschooler and, well, worried too much anyway about whether or not I could do it). With that said, she is an atrocious speller. Alexander learned to read using 100 EZ Lessons and was a strong reader immediately. He is also an excellent speller and I think it's because he had such a strong base in phonics. We did do some of the later lessons in OPGTTR but it was too easy for him so we just put it away. So because of those experiences I started Holden with OPGTTR (he has a speech delay and is a bit immature in ways so I thought it was a more gentle beginning than 100EZ). It was not a match at all. So I put that away and got out 100EZ lessons. The problem with it was that he could not bridge the gap from "muh-uh-duh" to "mud". He just wasn't getting how to blend the letters. We switched to Readinga-z and he's now reading. Who knows what will work with Sergei! My final opinion on 100EZ lessons is that, for the kids that it works for, it is amazing. For the kids that it just doesn't click with, find something else.

I get ideas from Sonlight and Ambleside Online's reading list, plus I have a list of must-reads from my own childhood. I also do quite a bit of browsing at the bookstore as well. I don't plan out as far as year, though, I just have ideas of what I want to read and pick from book to book.

Oh, I like the Hey Andrew for Greek. We aren't doing it right now but I keep thinking every week that I'll get it out and add it to our schedule. I would also start with Level 2. For us we started with Latin. My 10 year old and 8 year olds are both learning Latin and, as I mentioned above, we've been less faithful with Greek. We're atheists so we aren't learning either for religious reasons but use Latin for vocabulary and to exercise the mind. Greek is a bit more difficult because there is a different alphabet, then of course Biblical Greek is different than modern Greek. For that reason, I think, a lot of people wait to introduce Greek until children are a bit older.

This past school year was really disjointed for us after the baby was born in August and my son has speech delay and only turned five in October (in Indiana a child has to turn 5 by August to be eligible for kindy, which is really neither here nor there) so we really just did a lot of reading and informal things. This year we're doing www.readinga-z.com, Starfall and Headsprout for reading, Right Start Math, A Child's History of the World, and More Mudpies to Magnets for Science.

LOL, it probably would. My kids hated it so we put it away without exploring too much.

They're very interested in languages, actually, and speak several. They also love computer play so I really thought that RS would be a hit with them. Part of the problem was that there is no instruction on the alphabets. They know the Russian alphabet but dd (she is the one who requested that I order the Greek version) didn't know the Greek alphabet. The screen shows 4 pictures--say, a dog, a cat, a boy, and a girl, with the words written in that language beside the picture. Since she didn't know how to read Greek the words were meaningless to her. There is also no instuction on putting the language to use. You can learn a decent amount of nouns--the ones I mentioned above, airplane, car, etc--but no verbs or adjectives. From what I've seen of RS it wouldn't be possible to go to another country and speak the language (or even get by, as I understand that fluency without immersion is so difficult to aquire) using this program. There weren't, as far as I could tell, any games or anything to engage a child's interest. It was just the same thing, pictures over and over and you were supposed to click the mouse on the correct picture. Perhaps others have been able to get more out of the RS program. I had high hopes with it and was disappointed. For us it was a big miss.

I definitely recommend trying RS before you buy it. We have both Russian and Greek and we never use them.

My daughter's violin lessons are $60 a month, my son's guitar lessons are $90 a month. Both are private lessons. My daughter's are in her violin teacher's home, my son's are at the guitar shop. I pay monthly.

I agree with Prairiegirl. If you're on the four-year history cycle they'll revisit this same period twice before they are done with school. Therefore I really am looking to give them some familiarity and not complete mastery. With that said, you'll be surprised at how much they retain. Last night we had a homeschool science fair. My two older kids did a shared project on volcanoes. When they were talking about the tidal waves that destroyed the island of Crete my 6 year old piped up and talked about the child bull jumpers.

We don't do standardized tests. I don't feel that they are necessary for homeschooled kids (well, at least my three homeschooled kids) until practice for the SAT.

We use FLL.