My book is packed away and neither Ds and I can remember how far it went. I think I remember talking about the Civil War, but I can't remember anything after that. If I am remembering correctly it was somewhere around that time?? I would think it would be on the MFW website.

Here is a link to all their science. http://www.chcweb.com/catalog/ScienceAndMath/ScienceAndHealthPE/catalog.html The new program is called Behold and See and it goes up to 6th grade. We have used 2nd-4th.

CHC use to have this in an ebook!! They had all the science grouped together by topic. I bought it for under $5 a couple of years ago and it was for teaching science to multiple children. But, I didn't use it at the time. I looked and they no longer have it. I guess since they have the new programs they haven't updated this book yet. I wish they would update and sale it again!!

Catholic History http://www.rchistory.com/ and http://www.catholictextbookproject.com/project/project-volumes.html CHC has descent science program. I like it, but I prefer more of the WTM way of science and CHC is not. I use it some years, but not always.

I will admit that we don't use those pages. I just ask for a oral narration of what we read and I don't write it down. My 5th grader doesn't like to write, so I don't torture him by making him write it down. We do the pages of review questions, and I write down his answers so he can read them for review at the end of the lesson. (We save writing for other subjects.)

Thank you! This was very helpful. Right now my Ds can do a written narration with help. My writing goal this year is to get him to RtR writing placement. I am not sure if we will get there are not, but should be very close. We are not big on notebooking and this has been a concern for me with using HOD. I would love to do notebooking, but I have reluctent writers. We are working on this and making progress! :tongue_smilie: I really need to print out the sample week and study it hard. Thanks again!

I have heard the bolded part before and I need some clarifying on this. We will be using HOD for the first time starting in August. My youngest Ds will be using Bigger. My oldest Ds will (I think) be using RtR. What are these "skills"? Is it just being able to work independent? My Ds already has this skill and therefore would be ready to step in at this point in HOD. His writing is not up to what is on the placement chart, but I will be using a different LA with him, so I don't think that is a concern. I based his placement on age (will be 11 and 6th grade in August) and the fact that we are doing Ancients in history this year and it is not his favorite and I wouldn't make him do it again next year by using CtC.

Xtra Math Online is free and works on basic skills. My boys have been using it since December. Can't tell you much since we haven't used it long and they do it independent. They do send me a weekly report and they are improving. https://www.xtramath.org/ ETA-this would be a supplement to whatever you decide to use.

My visual learner has enjoyed Sentence Family. Stories with pictures and descriptions that he can "see" work well. We are going to use MCT next school year. Scholastics makes a Comic Strip Grammar (got it at one of the $1 sales) which was somewhat helpful. I wish the comic strips had described what they were learning about, but it had a story and you had to pick out the nouns or whatever part of speech the worksheet was about. My ds loves the Brian P Clearly books too. The pages are very colorful and it graps his attention and he listens great while viewing the pages. Our library carries all of them!

I didn't have time to read the responses, but I wanted to add my two cents. :D My oldest struggled with word problems. Even at the beginning of this school year he told me that he doesn't understand what he is suppose to do to solve them. I have just been doing them with him. Walking him through the problems. Now, after 5 months of doing all word problems together, he has greatly improved! He just took a little longer and lots of one-on-one practice. Just give it time.

We don't use all the pages either, but the pages are really nice and if you get it on sale it is worth it. I also just bought one for my boys to share. We are not big in notebooking, so sharing isn't a problem.

:lol: Too bad all of you nanosecond savers just used all of them up posting on this thread. Years of non-zero writting all gone. :D

I was taught to use zero and so was Dh. I saw in MUS that they were teaching without the zeros. I was confused and taught it how I was taught. My Ds struggles with place value, so it was a must to put in the zero!

I actually had to just go and buy a clock to hang in the living room. I had one but it was roman numerals which isn't so great for a kid trying to learn to tell time. Everything else was digital in our house. I replaced it and then I ask "What time is it?" random through out the day. I also had to break them of the habit of running to the kitchen to check the digital clock on the stove. :lol:

He doesn't remember a thing about FLL 3. :glare:

I am 99% sure I am going to start MCT with my will be third grader next school year. I am not sure what to do with my will be 6th grader. We are using Sentence Family right now. He used FLL 3 last year. I would like to use MCT with him too, but no idea where to start. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

:lurk5: I am looking at Hake and AG (and MCT) for next year too.

I have two boys and they shared it just fine. They were able to work together on it.

:iagree: We have ps friends that are well behaved, but their parents work hard at that! I know homeschool kids that are horrible! Over all homeschool kids are usually more well behaved since we spend so much time with our kids and we work very hard on building their character.

We skip some of the grammar stuff since we are using a seperate grammar program. We also skip some of the creative writing in the second week of the story since my ds is not a big writer and this is "painful" for him. I also don't make my Ds rewrite his stories. We edit it together and then I type it on the computer. My Ds is also 5th grade and he has no program sitting down and spending an hour on this subject. And some days we can get a whole week done in an hour. If I was doing this with my younger Ds I would use the 30 weeks as suggested, but I really am just trying to catch up my older one since we hadn't used a writing program till this year.

:iagree:I just got our first one this week and it was a big hit at our house! I thought the price was fine.

I used book one with my 5th grader this year, but we got it done in 4 months. He is not a fan of writing and that is why we have waited. I may use it with my (will be 3rd grader) next school year.

I don't think it is too important for a dc to write in cursive. But, they need to be able to read cursive! We do just 5 minutes 4x a week of cursive copywork. My goal is to have my kids writing to be understood by those reading it! They can choose manuscript or cursive when they write whatever it is they are writing.

Not a HOD user, but plan to next year. My boys are 2nd and 5th grade. I have tried combining, but it just doesn't work for my boys. We do read alouds, art, music, and PE (and sometimes bible) together and those work out fine. This year we combined for science for the first time. It is just ok. The program we are using should cover both their ages, but in reality it is sometimes over the younger one's head. The bad thing is once we get to that point, I lose him for the lesson. I don't think we will combine for science again. I don't plan to combine on history, but doing the same time era would be helpful for my sanity. Combining sound wonderful, but I feel like someone is always missing out and not getting what they need. Either it is too hard or too easy and that causes them to lose interest in the lesson. I know other families who don't have this problem, so it may just be us. :lol: We have been doing Sentence Family together and that has gone well. Combining or not combining, both are great and just figured out what works for your family and go for it. It may work some years and not others too.

:iagree: with the PP. I was feeling like we weren't getting things done and kept getting further behind. It didn't matter how much I changed our school around. Some changes I made to our school days included making sure we had less appointments during school time. I also made a list of chores for my kids and when they are suppose to do them. I also made myself not do a lot of the housework during school time. I saved it for breaks and after school and only did stuff when both my kids where working independent at the same time. I asked my Dh to do something that I hated to do and took me a lot of time and stress during the day . . . . . the meal planning (I hate to cook). He plans dinner about 4-5 nights a week and cooks it about 4 nights a week too. I use this extra time to do my chores that I put off during the day (or relax on a very busy day). To tell you the truth, that was the biggest life saver and pulled me out of our rut of not having enough time in the day! I also made sure I went through our lesson plans on Sunday night and had everything I needed and ready to go for the week. These activities cleared up some much time during our day! I would try these things first and see if that helps. Best of luck!