Ah! Gotcha. Thank you! :)

Okay, science isn't my thing, so I will probably sound like an idiot... The first year is biology, so what is the difference between that and Earth Science? :confused:

Where does this fit in? For some reason I was thinking it would be in first or second grade due to the mythology behind the names of the constellations and the time period of Galileo, respectively... but now I can't find any information anywhere indicating where it fits. Help? :)

What are you doing/have you done for 1st grade? Thanks in advance!

Yes! Peanut will be in kindergarten, so that's exciting! We're doing Saxon Math K, continuing working on her reading (she read her first BOB Book in July), working on her writing, reading A LOT, and playing. Little Bit will begin official pre-school work, which really just consists of read-alouds from the old SLPK program her sister did and playing. ;)

If you have a 13-year-old daughter who is a sophomore in college, no one should make you feel defensive about whether you're doing a good job! GOOD GRIEF! :) Back on topic... This is our first year, and at this point I'm aiming to work on school between September 8 and May 22, minus a week for spring break and a couple weeks at Christmas plus Saturday field trips here and there (the ps kids get to claim these as school days, so why can't we?). That should get us roughly 180 days.

What's funny about this is that my husband loves and has studied a lot of ancient history. He finds American positively boring and too modern to really be studied with enough perspective. ;) Anyway, with his perspective in mind (since this is more his thing than mine...), we're trying to do enough American in K that our daughter won't be woefully ignorant of the normal stuff, but we are very much in agreement with SWB/JW on the subject of the public school (and much of "Christian" homeschooling) curricula being too American-focused. We are okay with doing the cycles the traditional way; we just wanted our K'er to know a decent amount of the basic stuff before she gets to it in 3rd grade. Thank you for all of your suggestions thus far. Please keep them coming. :)

So while we know we don't *need* to do social studies in kindergarten, DH and I have been talking about some units on local, state, and national "history." Basically, we want to touch on basic geography; state stuff both about the state where we currently live and the state where we (and two of our three kids) were born; national stuff that our kids would normally get in school but won't because of HS (such as the pledge, national anthem, etc.); ETC. We aren't aiming for a US-centered philosophy overall, but we think there are some things we should touch on before 3rd grade, if that makes sense. :) What would you include? Do you have favorite books for this sort of thing? Thanks!

One of the reasons we are planning to read The Iliad this summer is that she is incredibly interested in and has already read quite a bit about Greek mythology. We'll probably talk to her more about that as the time nears. Please keep the ideas coming! :)

Would you please share what you plan to do/have done for 7th grade? Our oldest child will only be in kindergarten in the fall, but there is a chance we will take on full-time tutoring of a gifted pre-teen who sadly has been ignored by the system. We hope to put together a plan for what a prospective 7th grade year would be like so that her parents can have an idea of what we would do. We are thinking of putting together two options: 7th and 8th grade together including all of the four-year history cycle within the logic stage or jumping into modern history. At this point, I think she and her parents would be more interested in getting through all four cycles, and TWTM indicates this is doable. This is a very bright girl, so I have no doubt whatever we do is possible; it's just the fact that there are so many choices that makes this so difficult! On a related note, we are doing a trial-run of this arrangement this summer with a unit study on The Iliad. We are fans, but neither of us has worked with this piece of literature within the logic stage before. Tips, helpful hints, etc? Ways to incorporate math and science into this? Thanks in advance!

Laurel Wreath Academy It works with both our focus on a classical education (and our classical ed backgrounds; husband is into history, and I'm into literature) as well as our religious beliefs (Christian; see 1 Cor. 9:25).

Preferences? Thoughts? I had only considered Saxon for this fall (DD #1 will be in K) until a friend told me that she tried Saxon and ended up going with Singapore... so now I'm curious. :)

Looking forward to it... although am I the only one who can't seem to load cheohome.org? It's been down for weeks here, and I've tried both Firefox and IE.

Variety--it's actually one of the many reasons I wanted to homeschool in the first place! :)

I haven't read it personally, but just from the reviews on Amazon it looks to be very biased. It might be good to pick up a copy and read it through before making a decision.