We have used the book and CD for all four volumes. We often go back and listen to the older volumes on car trips. We listen to our weekly lesson in the car as well. All of my ds' take piano lessons and it is a 25 minute drive, so we do the lessons in the car. We are going on a cross-country trip and I am taking these with us. My children love Jim Weiss, the narrator.

We start around 9:00 and finish around 2:00. My 2nd grader has to work around the schedule of three others, so he has several breaks in there where he goes out and plays. We are using Singapore 2B and 3A Handwriting Without Tears (he wants to start cursive) FLL Science at co-op American History at co-op (although he will be sitting in on SOTW 4 with brothers) Music - Piano Lessons and Practice PE - co-op and team sports Spanish - co-op Religion - whole family Latin - he will sit in with brothers, but is not expected to do any writing ETC We do not do all of these subjects every day.

I also keep a video log that lists all of the educational videos that we watch. Fortunately, our library has a history of your account on-line and if I don't keep up weekly, I can go back and look at what I have missed.

My four ds have the Lands End Lighthouse Tote and I wish I had one. They are roomy and made of nylon material...so they can be easily wiped clean. They are structured enough that they stay standing when you set them on the ground. I am asking for one for my birthday in Nov.

I saw myself in your post. We had used SOTW for 3yrs and then was introduced to Sonlight. I love SOTW and we read many of the supplemental books, but if I did not read the book myself, I didn't spend much time discussing the book with my 4 ds. We purchased Sonlight condensed 3 and 4 last year and are still working our way through it. We love all of the books and they just don't forget them. The IG is great for vocabulary, comprehension, and general discussion. We still used SOTW because one of my ds took SOTW history in a co-op. This meant that we had to keep up with our SOTW reading and narration, so we did not get all of SL 3&4 finished. In my early years of homeschooling this would have bothered me immensely, but it does not bother me now. We will just keep going. I had 4 reluctant readers, but they are all slowing changing and I know it is a result of SL books. They are proud of how much they have learned too.

We have used PL and LC with success, but my 4 boys do not like it at all. They seem to not like things that are repetitious in the manner in which they are presented. I was looking into Lively Latin. Any thoughts on LL?

We have used calculadders' worksheets and a CD game called Quarter Mile Math(QMM). In QMM your child tries to win the race by answering math facts correctly.

Your plan sounds great, although I would suggest that you just do FLL and leave out the WWE. I have used FLL with my four children, and it has copywork and dicatation built into the program. I really felt like it was enough for my 1st and 2nd grader. They learned a great deal from FLL. My two older boys still recite the list of helping verbs and prepositions as they learned in FLL five years ago. Good Luck

We started using SS about two years ago. My oldest ds is also an auditory learner. We started the program when he was 11 yo and I have seen improvement in his spelling, and he does retain the word patterns. When we do spelling, I say the word, have him repeat it, and then I use a whiteboard to write the word. I give him two lists per day, but I use two different levels of books. He is using Book 3 and Book 4 simultaneously. The root words change within the list, so you can't just write the root and add onto it in all cases. My son likes it because you don't have to study word lists and it is quick. If you have any questions, call the company. It is a very small company. I called to ask if they offered a book of spelling rules and they had the president (Don) come to the telephone to speak with me. They did not have a book of spelling rules. He did tell me not to do more than two lists a day. Also, the order in which you used the books doesn't matter; other than it was best to use Book 1 first. He also told me that you should do a list everyday, seven days a week, if possible. I did this over the summer last year and I have seen improvement in his spelling. Hope this helps.

I tried to combine Singapore and Saxon, but it was just too much for my boys. They did not like Saxon because it had so much repetition, but my boys are all conceptual so the Singapore was a better fit. My boys are not good at math facts at all, but their math application skills are very good. They all have ADHD and slow retrieval skills, but have still mastered the concepts with Singapore. I used Times Table the Fun Way to help them master their multiplication skills, but they still are slow to retrieve.

I have not used Shurley so I cannot compare, but I used FLL for three boys and am working on the fourth. It is gentle, but my three ds still go back to the chants when they have to determine if a word is a helping verb, preposition etc. Also, they have fond memories of the program and the poem memorization and presentation. They can still recite many of them.

We have tried Spelling Workout, Phonetic Zoo, and Spelling Power and none of them seemed to work with my spelling challenged boys. Then I found Sequential Spelling by AVKO. It was designed for children with dyslexia, but is now the recommended spelling program in the Sonlight catalog. It does seem to be helping. I didn't notice any improvement until about 3 to 4 months into the program.

My oldest DS is 13 and we have used Singapore through 6B and supplemented this last year with Teaching Textbooks 7 to get the negative numbers, coordinate graphs, and probabilities. But...today I was on the Singapore website and noticed that they have a new program developed for the state of California who has adopted the Singapore Math concept for all of it's schools. The program included algebra, negative numbers, probablity, and coordinate graphs in the 5th grade. You can see sample chapters on the site. All four of my boys ages 7 - 13 have used Singapore and they have consistently done exceptionally well in math on their annual required achievement tests (I can't say the same for spelling and language arts, but oh well!)

We have just finished our 5th year of homeschooling and our first year with Sonlight. We have really enjoyed it. My reluctant readers have turned the corner into being more avid readers. I have one who loved every Sonlight book he read and one who liked some of the books. I didn't use all of the LA because my ds's take a writing class at co-op and we just couldn't fit both of them into the schedule. I loved the IG with all of the comprehension questions and vocabulary words. History has become my oldest ds's favorite subject, and I think it is a result of the wonderful books.

We will continue to do a short math lessons to keep skills fresh, an hour of reading per day, piano, and spelling (since spelling is a challenge for all four of my boys), and they are each researching and reporting on a couple of states. We are preparing to take a cross country trip in the fall, and I am having them pick a state, report on the history, geography, places that they want to visit, and the significance of the place.

We are just finishing 5th and 7th. They have a list each day and I ask that they do math in the morning, but other than that they decide in what order they will do the work. 5th Singapore 5A/5B and Teaching Textbooks 7 (1 lesson from each) Singapore Challenging Word Problems (2 pages) Word Smart Vocabulary Program (20 minutes) Wordly Wise (I used this most of the year, but they didn't really like it and I felt like it was just busy work for them, so I purchased Wordly Wise) Daily Grams 5 (One per day) Cursive Handwriting Reading Sonlight Books (1 hour) Landmark History 2 or 3 times per week (I read aloud and we discuss) Latina Christiana 1 (They don't like this, so I am going to try Lively Latin) Creative Writing (Co-op class one time per week and then homework) Piano (20 minutes a day and once a week lesson) Religion (I read aloud and we discuss as a group) Sequential Spelling - One list from Book 1 and one from Book 2 each day. 5th Grade Finished Singapore 6A and 6B and used Teaching Textbooks 7 for areas that Singapore does not cover and for review. Sequential Spelling - One list from Book 2 and one list from Book 3 All other items are the same as the 5th graders. We are lacking in the area of science this year, although we spend a couple hours a week in the car, so I have them watching Eyewitness DVD's or other educational DVDs in the car. Ex: We watched Ponds & Rivers, Natural Disasters, Bugs, and we also get PBS history series and watch those in the car; Liberty! The Revolutionary War, History of Chicago, Ken Burns' Civil War etc. They will take a co-op science class next year.

I have been homeschooling my four boys for 5 years. My oldest is 13. I wish I would of had more fun and less structure in the first couple of years of schooling. I wish we would have played more of the many educational games that we have, followed more of their interests (science experiments, astronomy, dinosaurs) instead of just following the curriculum. I wish I would have strayed from the curriculum to find more in depth answers to the many, many questions that they asked each day, and taken more time to just explore nature. I tend to be very task oriented!

I do not have experience with this, but in this month's issue of The Old Schoolhouse magazine there is an article titles "Teach Violin to Your Child-You'll Love the Experience". It suggests using a book called The Violin Book. You may want to read this article. Good Luck