Ok... a couple of comments. I did SL5, although I did the 5 day and there was TONS of reading. That is my only Sonlight year, where I really didn't supplement. Are you going to do the EHE portion of Sonlight?? If so, then the geography may be overkill. You label a TON in EHE and I wouldn't do more. As I said, I'm not sure you want to add in all of the reading, Shakespeare on top of SL. Just a thought. I really supplemented with Cores 3 and 4, but not nearly as much with Core 5. Christine

He is a proficient typer. He did Maevis Beacon and typing Tutor several years ago and is a better typist than I am. (Now his handwriting is almost unreadable!!) As far as PE, we live on 50 acres and get plenty of exercise. He and his brother ride bikes and play one on one basketball all the time. He and his brother are taking tennis lessons. They will both play flag football in the fall. Christine

The study guides for SL...at least in the younger grades were pathetic. There were no worksheets just questions with the answers on them and they were just for you and basically were very light questions without any thinking. TOG has a wide variety of worksheets to go with the literature for each grade and VERY high (college level imo) literature analysis for high school!!! There is absolutely no comparison. I did SL 3, 4, and 5 and TOG is MUCH better on the literature side! Christine

Ok..here is my plan for my bright 8th grader next year: Math- We are about 2/3 through TT Algebra I. I plan to finish it and do TT Algebra II and count this year as Algebra I on a transcript (yes I know you don't have to keep them for 8th) Science- Apologia Biology (has done General Science and physical Science) TOG Redesigned 2- This will be history, literature, geography, writing Piano- continue with competitions Rosetta Stone Spanish 1 Semester of some Logic Course and 1 Semester of Computer Course- Web design or programming already done basic courses Language ARts- I probably need to do some kind of vocabulary program. I have Jensens' Latin Roots...would that be ok? We blew off grammar this year, but have done grammar and he did VERY well on the ACT English section when he took it in the spring as part of the Duke Tip program, so I'm not sure what I should do.. He is only doing Editor n Chief right now and he loves it. Should I do Analytical Grammar of something? That is it. He might take a drama course at the co-op. He is really going to co-op for the Biology lab and might take a study hall instead of the drama course. He did dramas in children's choir previously and had a GREAT speech course at co-op this last year (Hi Gwen!). Drama is not his forte. He is shy, so... how does this sound? Christine

It depends. Do you REALLY like the look of TOG and think you will use it for all of your children from now on? If you are just going to use it for K this year, yes it is overkill. I did it with a K, but also with a 5th adn 7th. She did very little of the actual TOG. It was fun, though. IF you are going to use TOG from now on and will recycle through it, then it would be a great year for you to read the teacher's notes, some of the dialectic/ rhetoric just for you to go through the material and just do the ACTUAL TOG with your K very lightly. All I did with her each week was read one book aloud and maybe some coloring pages. We mainly concentrated on reading and writing with her. She is at the point now where she could do some copywork, but I'm just trying to finish out the year and will have her do level 1 when we start year 2 next year. It would give you a headstart to implement the program to have a study year or two. christine

First of all the countries should work for all ages. They can do the passport thing and kid station at each country. Plus, we like to let one member pick out one thing to get like Schoolbread at Norway and we all eat it, then someone else picks out a French pastry and we all share, etc. There are tons of things to do at Epcot. We went when the boys were 2 and 4 and had a blast. I don't think it is too old.

May I ask why you don't want to go to any other park? I would probably do a day at MK, a day at Epcot and then the 3rd day to go back to whichever one was your favorite. We like Epcot. You could even divide and conquer and have part of your family do Epcot on the last day and the other do MK. I think 3 days at MK would be a bit much for me. I might even go to Animal Kingdom for the 3rd day. A Disney ticket is good at any of the parks...now without a park hopper you will have to choose just one to do. Christine

Yes, he is going to do the other half and the next page this afternoon. Like I said, his older brother did 6 or 7 pages a day. But then again, he went through Singapore 3A to 6 B in 18 months when we switched from Saxon so he probably isn't a good comparison. He just seems so lazy and slow in comparison.

First of all the 13yo has already done Apologia General Science and is almost finished with Physical Science. He does the labs at co-op and is doing it independently. He tells me the answers to the study guides and if it is wrong and he doesn't understand, I send him to his dad. He is ready and excited to do Biology next year for 8th grade. As far as the 5th grader...yes I make field guides for out trips and we used to notebook and he watched all of those videos when he was younger. We had fun when we did it all together. But there is no time for that anymore. Plus, I thought it was time to get serious and quit doing the fun stuff since he was entering junior high. I just don't think he is ready for General Science like my oldest was in 6th grade. If he was, they do that at co-op. But he has already done Zoo and I just don't know what to do on my own fitting in all of the other stuff... christine

Ok, middle son had a page of fractions to simplify: 18/20, 4/24, etc. There were 60 of them. He worked for 10 minutes and got half of them done. That just seems really slow and he wasn't procrastinating. I'm guessing I could have them all done in less than 5 minutes... MMM.. He's in 5th grade and I just started doing the Key to Fractions book2 just to help him review as we have covered everything in it in Horizons. I really wanted to do book 3 and 4 and thought we would do this book 2 in a week. My oldest would do 7 or 8 pages a day at least and easily finish one of those Key to books in a week. So...what is reasonable? Christine

I made straight A's in high school, nearly that in college. I can study and get an A. I like to do everything correctly. I want to know that I am doing it the right way. But with homeschooling, that seems impossible. I do not like ambiguity. Tell me the way you want it done and exactly how to do it so that you will be happy with me (or dh will be or college entrance people or whoever) . I feel like I am shooting at things I can never meet.

Well, when I did SL, I had to create my own tests, find more plain nonfiction books and completely redo the schedules not to be so piecemeal. On one page of TOG, I can pick books for all three of my kids instead of having suggestions for one and spending time on the computer or looking at other cores tosee which ones fit the time period and age level. The maps are there on my cd for me to print and they have assignments already made and not the just find them on your map...where of SL as you read...like we ever did it while reading our readaloud. The teacher's notes are MUCH more extensive. I thought the history notes for SL were worthless...just giving you a quick summary of the material. The discussion questions are PRICELESS!!! I love having the worksheets for the literature already there instead of plain old questions, to lit analysis for SL that I have to retype because there are answers on it. But they were just recall questions, not higher level thinking. They have links to websites to explore more and I no longer spend hours finding my own. I always tore up my SL schedule and completely redid it, so I could never just open it. If you can, then TOG is not for you. I will definitely be able to reuse this as I am only mining the surface of what is in there. Christine

I have my first negative reps, which I knew I would get before I posted on the science thread for being too emotional. But neither signed it and one doesn't even have a comment. But I used to have 5 positive reps and now it only shows 3, so what happened to the other 2 positive ones? Christine

Ah..the sense of exploration...the sense of wonder.. Yes, but when in the world do you find the time to do it?? If I could drop everything and JUST do science then I could. I live on 50 acres and it sounds like it would be perfect, but we are way to busy taking CARE of the 50 acres. We also go camping and go to lots of National Parks and the boys always do the Junior Ranger programs and we listen to lots of Ranger talks. However, my oldest is too old to do the actual program anymore. He just turned 13, so there may be things for those that are older..just don't know. It is like yesterday: I worked on fractions with my 5th grader, oldest did his Algebra, K girl and I worked on number bonds. I just made sure my boys practiced piano and actually sat down with my youngest and practiced her songs together (for prereading, they play and their is a teacher accomp.) While K did educational computer game, we discussed Julius Caesar and we watched half of the old black and white movie. Older boys did their TOG reading while I did handwriting and phonics with K and taught her about the sneaky e. She also did her copywork. I helped oldest work on his newspaper assignment and we narrowed it from Aneas to Dido commiting suicide. We looked at our newspaper articles from our local paper and saw how they were organized. Then I tore my hair out with my middle one to help him work on his Leonidas paper, but it is closer to being finished. The boys did Editor and Chief and middle one did vocabulary. K did her Explode the Code and she read me some simple books. Then my K goes to dance and I take boys to piano. My oldest takes his science to work on his study guide and I have middle one just pick an interesting book on a science topic to read while he is there. I don't know where exploration and joy take place. We leave early this afternoon as well. Oh, yes, my middle one did his vision therapy which takes 45 minutes a day and he detests. But last night he was talking about having to read with his finger or his eyes skip things. He loves to read and was one of the top readers in our homeschool co-op Book It program and constantly has a book in his hand, but our eye doctor can't figure out how he reads so well. When he saw him with Redwall, he said...oh it takes him a month to read that. No,,, a day or maybe two. (He would sit and read all day if I let him.) Anyway, that finally gave me the opening with him... Wouldn't it be nice to read and not have to use your finger and not get lost on the page? Well, your muscles have to be retrained. That is why you have to do vision therapy. You have to get your muscles in your eyes to work together and that is why it is hard and it gives you a headache. Yes, I know you can read but that isn't what this program does...it helps make it so you can physically read easier. So maybe we won't have the major meltdown when we have to do it today.. But I digress, where does the wonder and the exploration and such fit. We didn't even get to computer skills and foreign language today. I know it is bad, but I just want a science workbook I can throw at him and he can do and check it off. The bad thing is that since I have explored so much with him in the past, the curricululums like that I have tried he finds incredibly boring!!! Yesterday, he got out the microscope and I just let him play with looking at things. But he has practically no written work to prove we have done anything this year as far as science is concerned. Oh... the other big hurdle with science is the fact that I cannot do experiments. They NEVER work out the way they are supposed to. They pulled me from my history co-op class last year to help in a science class and I thoroughly confused the kids and had them doing the experiment completely incorrectly... the teacher would have been better by herself. And they have never had me sub in a science class again...imagine that. I am so grateful they are doing the labs for my oldest's Apologia classes. But my middle one has already done Zoo I at home..minus the experiments. So I'm not sure it should count as a full year of science. Christine

I started homeschooling when the boys were in 2nd and 4th. The first semester we studied the human body by checking out library books, doing the lyrical life science human body songs and utilizing my dh who is a doc as well as other doctor appointments to play with the models in the office and such. The 2nd semester we did Apologia Astronomy and had a blast and they impressed all of the people with their knowledge when we went to a star party at Davis Observatory. The next year we did Botany in the fall and Zoo I in the spring when the boys were 3rd and 5th. The next year my oldest did General Science and my son did magnets and electricity at the co0op. This year my oldest did Physical Science and my youngest who is a K did the human body at co-op. But the co-op for my middle one did Botony which as you see above he has already done. Next year they are doing Zoo I for his age group. I just didn't have time to get anything organized for him on top of helping my littlest to read and TOG. Next year my oldest will be doing Biology at the co-op. My middle son is just hard as it takes a lot of energy to keep him on task and accountable and he needs a lot of interaction and discussion which we were able to do when they were studying science together, but now that I have 3 kids on 3 different levels of science, I just cannot handle it.

Sigh...part of this is ID scientifically proven has made me realize why I probably have avoided science with my 5th grader this year, and why I am trying as much as possible to pawn off my older's science on hubby (Biology major). I just don't get it...don't want to get it...don't care to get it... I am enjoying preparing TOG. I can teach writing. Grammar is easy. Math is fine with my oldest, but I seem to be speaking a foreign language to my middle one I grew up in ps system and made a good enough score on my ACT to place out of Biology. As a music major then secondary education major, I did not have to have any other science. I just do not have the mental energy to keep up with the is it true...is it factual..am I old earth...young earth... I want to be able to hand it to them..have them fulfill the requirement and go on. And no..having dh teaching them isn't an option. He isn't home enough. Anyone else feel this way about science? I would have to do a lot more research and I'm not sure I would even understand it all to be able to articulate what is true and what is not. It is like the news that says...eat this it is good for you...nope another study says it causes cancer....nope another study says it prevents cancer.... Good grief. Christine

Oh, my goodness. Are you being this picky with a 6yo??? I would HATE<HATE, HATE music if someone did this to me. Actually, that is why I quit piano because my teacher was this picky. I was a music major and play just fine now. PLEASE do not make him hate music!!!! I am teaching my kindergartener how to play piano and the one thing rule is good. They have a lifetime to get better. Let him enjoy it!!! Christine

My son helps me in children's choir and has gotten quite proficient with the sound board and power point. He's only in 7th now, but the sound guy has talked to him about helping out on Sunday mornings when he gets to high school. I have friends whose children work at the library. Some help out to coach a team of some kind. Christine

I didn't/ would not add any Bible to year 1. You read through almost the entire Bible in one year. The other years you study church history as well as look at history Biblically. You also study philosopy and government biblically as well. However, there is no actual Bible reading, I don't think. So if you want them to actually read their Bible, then you need to schedule something yourself. However, I think a light devotion/Bible reading schedule would be good as you will be applying the way to think Biblically to the rest of your subjects. Christine

There is a group of churches here in East Texas that have partnered with Buckner and the leader of Ethiopia has given us an open door. There is an orphanage that we will be working with, groups do VBS, and then we collected shoes last year and took them. There is also a medical component and they are setting up a clinic and surgery. Eye doctors went last year and worked. There are about 6 trips a year and a different church in the group sponsors each one. I'm starting to get excited. We went to Honduras as a family to do medical missions last spring. You have to be 12 to go with Buckner, so only our oldest can go this year,but our other son can go next year. I haven't seen information for the week long ones. I agree that would be a good transition. We did get something in the mail for e classes and he thought those looked cool, but we will be gone in the middle of them to Ethiopia. Christine

Actually getting him to go may be a challenge.. it is really my idea. He doesn't like to leave home at all. He has only been to church camp a few times and went grudgingly but had a pretty good time. It would be better if he had a buddy to go with him. So this idea may be mute, but I really like the idea of his being with other kids. I chose TT and then I did have NEM to supplement but NEM was a disaster. Neither one of us could tell what it was doing? I got the workbook and the textbook but just the answers were in the back and the whole layout was confusing to both of us, so we dropped it. Although he is really good at math, I guess I just wasn't sure that a regular Algebra textbook was something he could teach himself just reading it. TT sounds perfect for my other boy, so I could reuse it...my plan to supplement it just fell through because we both hated it. That said, I will probably discuss what has been discussed on the board about TT and whether or not it is heavy enough and get his input on what he thinks he should do. He is pretty mature and honest. Christine

I would probably save Huck Finn for when they are dialectic and rhetoric. I read it aloud to my 11th graders, leaving out the N word. The posters are right there is A LOT to discuss in Huck Finn and I would not leave that book to be read by themselves. It has been a long time, but one thing I remember is the climax of the book. Huck Finn decided that he will not turn Jim in and says, "All right then, I'll go to he--." The church teaching of his time period told him that if he did not turn in a slave, then he would burn in he--. Many people did not even consider a black person to be a human being. We talked A LOT in class about how people can twist things in the Bible. One of his aunts wants Huck to act a certain way as well and it is tied to church (It has been too long and I cannot remember details!) Huck's father is also an alcoholic and abusive. Lots of serious issues that need to be discussed. Christine

Ok.. take a deep breath. Ok..go to the Bookshelf. Click on Power Search, it is by special offers. It looks like you would be doing dialectic and upper grammar. So click on the year, the unit, the level and if you do it by bookshelf code, then it will do it by units alphabetically. The other option is to go through the Bookshelf by hand and click on each unit and each level and print the page. I like that because I can see a picture of what the book looks like. All of this said, I STRONGLY recommend not buying everything at one time. The author suggests and I agree that you need to order the year plan first and REALLY look at it. She has suggestions all along the way about how to combine materials and save money at the preview of each week. You really have to look at the week, then look at what is on your shelf and then your library if you have a good system. I had a 7th, 5th, and K this year. I bought all of the dialectic books and a few of the upper grammar as I knew my daughter would use them, but just did a few of the lower grammar with my daughter from the library. It is topic not book specific with the exception of the literature books and even then they have some alternates suggested so if you chose those, you just wouldn't have a worksheet to go with them. You could probably come up with something similar. I'm not sure whether you are thinking redesigned year 1, 2, or 3. For 1 there were not scheduled readalouds, so sometimes I read the dialectic book aloud and had them do the upper grammar as a reader or things from the alternate list. I would buy the muliti-year and multi-unit books, but then really look at what you have. I am planning on doing year 2 and I am not buying nearly as much as I did last year because I have it in hand and am perusing it rather than ordering everything up front. So how much more... it just depends on what you already own. It may not be in your budget but we LOVE Pop Quiz. It is a CD that Mr. Summerville made that summarizes the unit and then each week as well as each level that week with suggestions of questions the dads can ask. I cheat and listen to it before the unit starts and then give it to my dh to listen to in the car so he knows what we are doing. He finds him to be very interesting. Let me know if you have any other questions. It just REALLY helps to look at the two page spread and then your books and think about what you can use rather than trying to figure it out online. Christine

No one has had a student attend one of the Duke camps? Christine

I started homeschooling my son in 4th grade and they had used Saxon, so we did Saxon 54 and then Saxon 65 in 5th grade. He finished it in February of his 5th grade year and really HATED Saxon. So, I switched to Singapore. His geometry concepts were the weakest and I gave him the test and he failed part of the test for 3A, so that is where I started him. Certain sections of the books, he knew so I would give him the end of the section review and if he aced it then we skipped that section. But their were other sections...mostly the geometry ones that we did every single problem. From Feb of his 5th grade year to the end of his 6th grade year we did 3A all the way to 6 B. This year he is doing TT Algebra. It worked well for him. Christine