I loved these. They helped *me* feel like not so much of a art-challenged person. Perfect for a 6yo.

Here's my review: Analytical Grammar website is http://www.analyticalgrammar.com. The videos at the website do a great job of explaining the program. We are using Analytical Grammar for 6th-7th-8th grade. AG breaks it up into 3 seasons. 6th grade has 10 weeks of daily grammar work, then review 1x every 2 weeks. 7th grade has 7 weeks of daily grammar work, then review 1x every month. 8th grade has 17 weeks of daily grammar work and then you are done. It can be completed in 1 or 2 years as well. We have completed Season 1 and are reviewing the rest of the year. Season 1 - basic grammar (parts of speech, parts of a sentence, basics of diagramming Season 2 - advanced grammar (verbal phrases and subordinate clauses) (this completes the study of grammar) Season 3 - application of grammatical knowledge to the rules of capitalization, punctuation and usage Pros: • Clear and concise • Pick up and go (little to no preparation required from mom) • Teach lesson on first day of week and student can work on their own for rest of week. Only checking/correcting required from mom. • Each lesson has a theme (American flag, humorous Johnny Carson story, women & math, Mexican-Americans, Martin Luther King Jr., Jewish Americans, fairy tales, etc.) which makes the lessons more interesting. • Sentences are much more complex than Shurley grammar • Novelty of getting a letter grade on test • Comfort of letter grade for perfectionist mom (ds is missing some but still getting an A) • Student book turns into a reference manual when you remove student exercises. Cons: • None that I have found • Some say it’s expensive. I spent $120 but will use it over 3 years. Disclaimer: I have a master’s degree in Operations Research, which is concerned with all things efficiency. Part of the reason I love AG is that it is the most efficient use of my time and my child’s time. This leaves time for other wonderful things like math, history, music, and sports! I suppose if you are a good teacher and you teach grammar year after year after year, you learn to make your lessons more and more efficient. That must be with the author, Robin Finley, did.

Here is my review: I chose HO because it's the only secular history program I know of for logic age. Ds would be in 6th grade this year. We have completed 48/66 lessons. I have mixed feelings about it so far, but my thumb is starting to point up instead of down lately. Pros: • History is all planned out • Outlining is learned and practiced • Map work and timeline work is helpful • Can be done independently • A large amount of history is being covered Cons: • KHE is dull (reading snippets of information and picture captions) • Retention may be low • No review/discussion questions to assess comprehension • Little supplemental reading • Required literature is never discussed, only read • Too much freedom for an unmotivated student to do a mediocre job • History Pockets involve too much time for knowledge gained • Expensive if you buy package • This is picky, but the study guide in the 3 ring binder format is completely falling apart because of all the flipping back and forth that has to be done. We have to keep those little, sticky o-things right in the binder because the pages are constantly being ripped out. 20/20 Hindsight: • Buy only the study guide (maps included) and timeline • Do not buy the supplemental books – get them from the library, substitute from the library, or buy used • Do not buy the History Pockets unless the child likes cut & paste & color • Add Life in the Ancient World by Bart Winer

Analytical Grammar website is http://www.analyticalgrammar.com. The videos at the website do a great job of explaining the program. We are using Analytical Grammar for 6th-7th-8th grade. AG breaks it up into 3 seasons. 6th grade has 10 weeks of daily grammar work, then review 1x every 2 weeks. 7th grade has 7 weeks of daily grammar work, then review 1x every month. 8th grade has 17 weeks of daily grammar work and then you are done. It can be completed in 1 or 2 years as well. We have completed Season 1 and are reviewing the rest of the year. Season 1 - basic grammar (parts of speech, parts of a sentence, basics of diagramming Season 2 - advanced grammar (verbal phrases and subordinate clauses) (this completes the study of grammar) Season 3 - application of grammatical knowledge to the rules of capitalization, punctuation and usage Pros: • Clear and concise • Pick up and go (little to no preparation required from mom) • Teach lesson on first day of week and student can work on their own for rest of week. Only checking/correcting required from mom. • Each lesson has a theme (American flag, humorous Johnny Carson story, women & math, Mexican-Americans, Martin Luther King Jr., Jewish Americans, fairy tales, etc.) which makes the lessons more interesting. • Sentences are much more complex than Shurley grammar • Novelty of getting a letter grade on test • Comfort of letter grade for perfectionist mom (ds is missing some but still getting an A) • Student book turns into a reference manual when you remove student exercises. Cons: • None that I have found • Some say it’s expensive. I spent $120 but will use it over 3 years. Disclaimer: I have a master’s degree in Operations Research, which is concerned with all things efficiency. Part of the reason I love AG is that it is the most efficient use of my time and my child’s time. This leaves time for other wonderful things like math, history, music, and sports! I suppose if you are a good teacher and you teach grammar year after year after year, you learn to make your lessons more and more efficient. That must be with the author, Robin Finley, did.

Surfside Academy was probably talking about me. Here's a link to a thread with my review in it: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4793

We school year round. That meant for many years, that we took a spring and fall week-long vacation and all of December off. That would be 46 weeks. Last year, we took a spring and fall week-long vacation, all of December off, and 4 weeks off during the summer. That would be 42 weeks. It seems the older ds gets, the more he has a desire to have off some during the summer due to ps kid comparison. Even though the vast majority of the ps kids are not much more available during the summer <shrug>.

My son has a December birthday. We started "formally" hs'ing in January after he turned 5. I didn't tell anyone that we were homeschooling until he would have been officially in K. By then, I had a bit of confidence. When asked, I just say that I figure I can teach him better one-on-one than the best teacher who has 20+ kids.

I love it. I have a degree in math and another one in operations research, which is concerned will all things efficiency. I love MUS because it is clear and concise. I have a wiggly boy, and I work part-time, so I need programs that are clear, concise, and minimal teacher prep time. I myself would have loved Saxon as a child because I loved detailed, tedious work. My son does not :rolleyes: To answer your question about thoroughness: I think MUS does a great job of teaching math in the present and preparing for higher level math in the future. The scope and sequence is so different from other programs, but I am always amazed at how they teach one thing, but prepare for another. For example, when they are teaching addition, they have problems like 5+A=12, which is preparing them for subtraction. When they are using skip counting to find the area of a rectangle, they are being prepared for multiplication. Throughout Alpha through Zeta, they are solving for the unknown, which is preparing them for algebra. As much as I love MUS, I personally will not use it at the high school level because there are more rigorous programs out there. To answer your question about how much time is required of me: In the younger grades, I watched the DVDs religiously before I presented the lesson to my son. Now, I spend under 15 minutes reading the lesson at the beginning of the week. I present the lesson to my son. He reads me his answers when he's done, and we go over what he got wrong. I don't consider that time-consuming. In the early grades, they do a lot of skip counting. This helped my son "know" the answers to his multiplication facts even before he had heard the word multiplication. Maybe that would help your ds9. And, working with an abacus might help him with his addition/subtraction. I have a detailed review of MUS. Email me if you would like it. Somehow, I think you may already have it, though. Good luck!

First, they have a pre-test and a post-test, which will help you determine if everything in the list needs to be covered. My ds frequently does very well on the reading portion, so we can skip a number of the pages that are geared towards reading. Second, some of the pages have words that the teacher needs to dictate to the child. The words are in the teacher's book. Third, all the answers are in the teacher's book. It would take more time and effort to check all answers without it. Sue

Okay, if you start Megawords in 4th grade and there are 8 levels, do you just do one a year? It's easy to do more than one a year. Is there a reason to stick to one a year? If you do stick to one a year, you finish in 11th grade. Since I have no idea if we'll still be homeschooling in 11th grade, and I am obsessive about finishing what I start, I'm starting to wonder if we should do more than one a year. Maybe I should set up a poll so people can vote :rolleyes:

Would someone please explain synchronous vs. asynchronous? Thanks!

Hi Lorna, Would you elaborate more on The Elements? It looks very interesting. I have a 12yo still wiggly boy. But, arts-and-crafts are not his thing. We used to do the Shurley jingles a few years ago, but he might be too old to do skipping and clapping now.

It contains a lot of information. If you can teach writing off the top of your head, you don't need it. It has lesson plans, editing & evaluating, positive & encouraging comments, addressing errors lesson by lesson, common problems of mechanics, student writing samples, skill builder keys, pre-writing & lesson activity keys, handy references, and supplemental activities. One example: We are on lesson 5: describing a food. For the practice paragraph, it tells you to make hot buttered popcorn. It walks you through the 5 senses of popcorn. It tells you which word lists to focus on. I need all the help I can get. Finally, the TE covers both WS 1 & 2.

We used Noeo Biology 2 for 5th grade science and are currently using HO Ancients 2 for 6th grade history (we're a year behind). I would not consider either of these multi-sensory. Noeo might be considered multi-sensory if you take into account the experiments, although many were fairly lame, like looking at dust under a microscope. Some were good though. The body book was all cut-and-paste. Do your kids like cut-and-paste-and-color? Mostly, Noeo was reading 2 pages in the Science Encyclopedia and writing a paragraph about it. History Odyssey is similar because it is a lot of: read 2 pages in Kingfisher, write a summary or outline, fill in the map, fill in the timeline, keep track of the major characters. They use 2 history pockets. Do your children like cut-and-paste-and-color? That's what they mostly are. I must admit that the depth of material is much greater in HO than in Noeo. I have more detailed reviews of both these curriculums. Email me if you would like them.

Hi Cheryl, I've scanned the pages, but either I'm not savvy enough with this new board or you don't allow people to email you from it. Send me an email, and I'll reply to you. If you don't know, you should be able to click on Sue in St Pete and then there will be an option to email me.

I considered LfC, but it looked "ambitious" to me. And, I figured, having no Latin experience myself, that I didn't need ambitious. Here's my review: We started Matin Latin 1 when ds was 10. We completed Matin Latin 1 & 2 in 2 years. We homeschool year round. I liked the looks of Latin for Children, but I read a review that called it "ambitious". It looked great, but ambitious to me. And since I have NO Latin background, and Matin Latin is supposed to be good for those of us with no Latin background, I went with it. I've been happy with it. Matin Latin 1 covers nouns (subject, predicate, direct object, indirect object, object of the preposition, possessive), verbs (present, future, imperfect), sum (the verb “to be”), adjectives, predicate adjectives, prepositions and prepositional phrases. Only 1st declension nouns (feminine) are introduced. Each topic is presented first in English, then in Latin. So, present tense verbs are presented first in English, then in Latin. It has an answer key. It has quite a bit of translating from Latin to English. We worked 2x per week up to an hour a day for 8-9 month to complete it. Matin Latin 2 covers 2nd & 3rd declension nouns, more verb tenses (perfect, pluperfect, future perfect), 2nd & 3rd conjugation verb, adverbs, conjunctions, and more. The last few months, we worked 3x per week, and I found that I needed to study more beforehand. We completed Matin Latin 2 in 1 ¼ years. The best advice a woman gave me about ML 2 was to allow it to take more than a year. Ds has now moved on to Oxford Latin with a Latin tutor. Yippee! Matin Latin was a great foundation! In Matin Latin 1 & 2, there are several stories from the Old Testament: Joshua & Jericho, Daniel & the lion, Adam & Eve, Noah, Tower of Babel, Abraham & Isaac, Jacob & Esau. There is the Roman myth of Androcles and the lion, Ceres and Persephone, and the Roman god Bacchus. There are stories about Roman life and a girl named Julia who lives with her father by the seashore. There are no prayers to be memorized and chanted daily. The only specifically Christian content is Jesus Loves Me on a “just for fun” page along with the song America. Hope this is helpful! P.S. We used Minimus Latin before Matin Latin. It was a fun, light intro.

Analytical Grammar - highly recommend. Email me if you would like a review. Megawords for spelling and some vocabulary. Write Shop - we are about 10 weeks into this, so no real review yet. I chose it because it is supposed to be step-by-step for both the parent and the student. There is a bit of a learning curve for the parent because it is very detailed, which is good for me, since I NEED everything spelled out. So far, so good. IEW, with its videos, didn't appeal to me, although it gets good reviews. I seriously considered Classical Writing, but in the end, was too intimidated by it. Good luck! Sue

I learned Latin with my son for 3 years. Thankfully, we are using a tutor now. At first I didn't have to, but about the last 1/2 year I did need to stay a lesson ahead. Sometimes, I had questions that I had answer for myself first. Sue

I would start with CWP 3. If it's too difficult, back off to CWP 2. Sue

For K-4th, dh was the reading/language arts teacher. He was student back then and had more time. In 5th, he took over 1/2 science (Noeo which has a schedule) and I took over language arts. This year, we are sharing science. He uses TOPS and I use Science Explorer. It works better for us to use our own curriculums, although sharing Noeo was fine. I generally research and select the curriculum, and he executes it. I've always wished that he would do art with ds as he's the artistic one of us, but he's never done it. Sue

If your dd doesn't learn a single thing when you teach her directly, have you tried letting the MUS DVD teach her? I have a friend who's dd prefers that. Frankly, I think the fraction overlays in Epsilon are phenomenal. Here is a bit I wrote in my review: Epsilon (5th grade) works with fractions. They have fraction overlays that really help the kids SEE fractions. They are a little difficult to describe, but I'll try. On the bottom, there is a white background piece. On the top there is a clear plastic piece with lines dividing the white background piece into halves or thirds or fourths or fifths ... In the middle is a colored piece that represents 1/2 or 2/2 or 1/3 or 2/3 or 3/3 or 1/4 or 2/4 or ... When you add 2/3 + 1/4, you set up the 2/3, set up the 1/4, then take the extra clear plastic piece divided into 4 and place it crosswise over the 2/3, SEEing that 2/3 is the same as 8/12. You take the extra clear plastic piece divided into 3 and place it crosswise over the 1/4, SEEing that 1/4 is the same as 3/12. Adding, 8/12 + 3/12 is easy then. Good luck!

First, I hope that it will be a relief to learn that long division is the most difficult thing to learn in all of Delta and all of MUS that I've gone through which is K to Pre-Algebra. My ds is math-oriented, but we had to camp at long division for weeks on end. I would go back to division by single digits and work those out the long way until she understood what she was doing. Do not let her do it in her head - it leads to a dead end with double digit divisers as you have learned. I would use the manipulatives, like they do in the teacher's book to show her where the numbers come from. 3 div 756 is 252 -600 (3x200) ----- 156 -150 (3x50) ----- 6 -6 (3x2) ------ 0

This has happened to me so many times. I'm Christian, but apparently not the right kind. I have found that even groups that say they are open to all but based on Christian principles are that way. I have found that I am much more comfortable in a completely secular hs group.

My sister's oldest was radically unschooled from 4th-7th grade. He returned to ps in 8th grade. He was ahead in math, behind in Spanish (ps'ers had had 2 years, he had had 0), hated the writing, and was bored to tears by history. He had to work to catch up in Spanish, but was fine with everything else. He is now a sophomore at Lehigh University in Industrial Engineering. My sister's youngest went was radically unschooled until she entered ps in 5th grade. She did not know how to write in cursive. She learned quickly. That is the only problem I ever heard of. She's now a freshman in high school. The middle child has always been radically unschooled. She is 16 and taking a variety of college/technical classes. I keep waiting to see if she's ever going to learn a foreign language. She intends to go to a 4yr university. FYI :)

Can you find the student's text? There are 3 tabs less than 1/2 way down the page: student, teacher, technology. Click on the teacher tab. Here is the link for Astronomy teacher: http://phcatalog.pearson.com/program_single.cfm?site_id=6&discipline_id=808&subarea_id=5383&program_id=21992&prodview=2 It's quite obvious once it's pointed out.