If you assign your child a weekly or biweekly report, can you fill me in on some of the details? Does the child choose between science, history and literature? Do you rotate subjects? When do they work on their reports? Maybe I will start DS out with a weekly one-paragraph report that has to be polished. I could see him quickly moving to a three-paragraph report with research, but maybe every other week would be best then.

wintermom, I have the course books, as I am currently taking the courses. Some of the material is great for him, but some it would just bore him to pieces. Large chunks of the sample dialogues are about topics like finding an apartment in Denmark, job interview role playing and the like. Not that engaging for a sixth grader :) But the more I think about it, I realize that what we are doing is also teaching him how to teach himself a language - and I like that.

As of yesterday, I have scrapped most of what I had planned for science. I pulled out a heap of science books, and spread them out on the floor for DS. Then we chose a balanced program of topics. I already have everything necessary for one topic (the periodic table), so we can keep moving along while I figure out how to regroup for the rest of the year. I'm also on the fence about continuing with MCT Caesar's English. But we are happy with everything else - not a bad outcome for our first HS year.

I am teaching my son Danish without a curriculum. I have the advantage of living in Denmark and the disadvantage of only being only one step ahead of my son... I agree with regentrude - try to find a spelling and grammar book that Norwegian children use and see if you can order a teacher's manual to go along with it. It took me quite a while to locate this information, but I now have exactly this on order. There were no previews available to me, so I went ahead and ordered several grades. I backed up to about 3rd grade hoping to skip over "learning to read" but not wanting to miss any beginning grammar lessons. I was not exactly sure where to place him, and I don't have the books in hand yet to know if my choices were wise. How old are your kids? I can give my 11 year old exercises out of my Danish textbooks. Other than that, we do a lot of the standard language learning stuff: vocabulary on index cards taped to objects around the house, films, etc. Again, hunt around on the internet for the websites that Norwegian kids use to learn their language. I have had reasonably good luck finding them for Danish - certainly enough to keep us busy for a while!

I have listened to SWBs lecture on middle grade writing and read the thread "What does WWS replace?" Makes sense to me. And now my question is this: If you give your child a writing assignment outside of WWS, when does the child work on it? For example, would a history outline be written during the time that you have reserved for history? Or do you do something different than that?

DS did the flower lab today and I thought that it was a really good lab. Not too complicated, but certainly more than just a demonstration. We are using CPO to supplement Cambridge Science Year 7 (which opens the year with botany). FYI, we used a lily. It is an easy flower for parts ID and I found this diagram and to go along with it. That is great that you are enjoying it! I agree about the math & I am planning to pull out as much of the math-related content as I can manage to tie into our program.

Two weeks into our first year of homeschooling: Math: Math Mammoth & LOF Literature: Narnia, Sign of the Beaver, Number the Stars, H. C. Andersen Fairy Tales. National Mythology Exam. MCT Poetry & Figuratively Speaking. Grammar: Rod and Staff Writing: Remain indecisive about WWS. Used Write Source and Remedia's Outlining Workbook so far. Vocab: Caesar's English. Spelling: Spelling Workout. History: K12 Human Odyssey. Once we get a groove going with K12, I hope to shift to two strands of history (world and American). Science: Cambridge International Year 7 with LOTS of supplements (including Ellen McHenry's Cells and Elements) Foreign Language: Danish. Currently playing around with Greek but may go back to Spanish. Logic: Prufrock Press Music: Piano Art: Drawing Still tweaking our schedule.

Thanks for the replies - they have really helped me think this through. I had not really considered using copywork and dictation, but I think that both would be helpful - and doable. I will have the tutor do the dictation since her pronunciation will be accurate. When we can't work with the tutor, some of the audio books are read slowly and maybe we can use snippets for dictation.

We are living in Denmark and trying to learn Danish as quickly as possible. My son is in 6th grade. Last year, he had Danish lessons at his international school and I would say that he has acquired a bit of conversational Danish. I need to help him learn Danish without an open-and-go curriculum (because there isn't one!). Hopefully, some of you can guide me and inspire me. Keep in mind that my own Danish is only at beginner/low intermediate level. But I have plenty of resources: An excellent library for books, audiobooks, songs and films An occasional tutor. Searching for a weekly tutor. A few online resources. Weekly language cafe at the library. Best of all: a highly motivated student with an aptitude for foreign language. And all of his extra-curriculars are in an immersion environment. What I don't (yet) have is structure. Thoughts and suggestions are VERY welcome.

With the concern that this adds little to nothing to the discussion...remember the skill of the HANDWRITTEN essay. At an IB parent meeting last year, the director of my son's IB program noted that so many kids needed to be taught how to write an essay without a computer. The kids had been brought up producing essays on the computer. Well, the IB essays and the SAT essays are still written by hand...something to keep in mind as you think about the skills that your child will need.

Can you make your own playlist? Of course, buying the individual songs might cost more than the Wee Sing CD. I don't know. I have the same need (6th grader living in Europe) to teach American "stuff" but we can just pull up You Tube clips as I am not trying to do it in the car. Here are some links for you to consider: Patriotic Songs WTM thread Songs all children should know I am thinking about making a "Name That Tune" game out of it. And doing the song lyrics for copywork/handwriting practice. ETA: I just found a Guess This Patriotic Tune game on the NIEHS site. Saves me the trouble! Yeah!

I love your plan! I am a total newbie (um, exactly four days of homeschooling under my belt lol), but we worked on our first "real" writing assignment today and I created it from Write Source. I was so excited! I have the 6th grade book and Write Source 2000, and I paid less than $5.00 for each. I have also bought some Warriner's composition books. Again, less than $5 each. I had planned a zoo field trip for this afternoon, and this morning we read the Write Source sample descriptive paragraph about an animal. Sentence by sentence, we went through it. What exactly did the writer have to observe in order to write that sentence? The shape of the body, the time of day, how the head moves, etc. And then I pointed out that there was a sequence of events embedded in the paragraph (the bird sat on the fence, looked around and then flew away) that was never explicitly listed. Because of course it would be BORING to write that way! Today's assignment at the zoo was to choose an active animal (not a sleeping one, lol) and take the sort of notes that would facilitate writing an interesting, descriptive paragraph. Make observations. List a sequence of events. I can't wait to see what he writes tomorrow!! (BTW, I want to use WWS too but there is no way that I could NOT interject my own thing. I just think that we will both need the variety, and I like coming up with ideas. And thank you for the Comprehensive Composition resource. I am going to buy that.)

Today was our first day of our first year at home. We put in a full day, but the only subjects that got properly done were the ones that we had been previously afterschooling. We just picked up where we had left off with those. Otherwise, it took the bulk of the day to just look through the new books and get acquainted with a new lifestyle.

You could also explore linguistics and move through language families (Romance, Germanic, Slavic, etc.) Right now, Kids Discover has Language for $1.99 and Ellen McHenry's Excavating English looks interesting. Language tree links to check out: http://www.danshort.com/ie/ http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/Indo_EuroLangHANDOUT.htm

Do you know of any options for a virtual science fair? We are living overseas and I have not been able to come up with any options for participation in a science fair unless I can find a virtual one. Searching online, I have only come up with this and there is very little information. Thanks.

OhElizabeth, Well, for starters this will be my first year of homeschooling. So who knows what will happen to my lovely ideas once I inject a real, live child into them:001_smile: I have WWS and I very much like the looks of it. Some of the assignments look harder than, say, the persuasive essay section in Write Source 6. The spectre of having this child return to school in 8th or 9th grade hangs over me, I guess. I want to make sure that he is familiar with the types of writing that his classmates will have learned in middle school. But I realize that trying to do everything would be a frenetic mistake. Maybe it would be best to just begin with WWS then work in some other ideas as they seem to fit in (for example, a descriptive paragraph about an animal after an afternoon at the zoo).

If you use WWS with another program, do you change the schedule of WWS? I really want to use WWS, but there are some other types of writing that I also want to teach this year (drawing from Warriner's, Write Source, MCT...) Or do you just do WWS as scheduled in addition to another program/assignments? I think that DS is going to find the program challenging - I don't think he could manage THAT. Ideas I am considering: Using WWS 3x per week instead of four. Fridays will be for creative writing. For example, we could use day four to learn about persuasive essays. As soon as I think he "gets it" then the persuasive essay would become a writing across the curriculum option. Doing Part 1 of WWS then taking a one or two week break. Coming back to Part 2 WWS after said break. I don't care if it takes us longer than 36 weeks to finish WWS. Would love to know what you have done or planned!

I am a MM fan and, yes, I think that it is challenging. This will be our first year of homeschool but we afterschooled with the MM topical series last year. My DS11 is a rising 6th grader and he can pretty much do the types of fraction and decimal calculations found in MM5 but he does not have algebraic thinking and he struggles mightily with word problems. I am planning to start him in Chapter 1 of MM5 so that he gets the word problem strategies he is missing. I expect him to go quickly through calculation type stuff (simplifying fractions, dividing with decimals...). He will do this along with LOF Decimals and Percents (he did the fractions book last year). Much as I would love to just start (next week!) with MM6, I don't think that this would be in his best interest. Anyway, hope this helps you somehow. I own both MM5 and MM6 and have spent countless hours looking through both of them!

My middle son transferred to an IB school and discovered that (unlike him), most of the students in the IB physics had already had quite a bit of physics in their earlier grades. That really sold me on the value of more physics sooner!

Me! My middle child will finish an IB diploma this year. We are focusing on schools that are generous with IB college credit :)

In Denmark, summer vacation is 6 weeks long. Feels very short to this American, although I admittedly appreciated a week off in October and another week off in February. The school day is much shorter so I think that the number of hours spent in the classroom is similar to the U.S. (although I never took the time to actually figure out the math...)

DS11 and I are both learning Danish. We have lived in Denmark for one year. Last year, DS had Danish in school and I went to Danish classes 4 days per week. This year, I will switch to evening classes but they are only twice per week. And I am piecing together a curriculum for DS to learn Danish that includes time with tutors.

No words of wisdom...just wanted to let you know that I am pretty much in the same situation. Except that my son is going into 6th :)

BibleBeltCatholicMom, I'm sure that math journaling means different things to different people. I want my son to create his own personal reference book for math. Example #1 Example #2

If your logic age child has a morning math time and an afternoon math time, what does that look like in your homeschool? DS has had two problematic years of math instruction at school, and he has some catching up to do. I also want him to rediscover a love of math. Next year will be our first homeschool year, and I want to place a heavy emphasis on math. This is what I am considering: Morning math: Math Mammoth (45 minutes daily) Afternoon math: A mixture of LoF (Decimals and Percents), living math books, math games on the computer, math journal etc. (30 minutes, 4 days per week) Thoughts?