I like how you think ;)

Yes, it's very confusing and it drives my type-A personality crazy. And I think my district has decided that it means that US History has to be taught every year. We have a new superintendant this year and he sent out a new packet of info with a list of things to be included on the IHIP. Previously the paperwork they sent out had just listed "History" and it has now been changed to "US History" - which I can't fault them for, they're just copying the regs. But I'm guessing that it means they're expecting to see US History taught every year. :unsure: It hasn't been an issue for me yet, as this year we covered New York State history. Next year we'll be doing HOD's Preparing so I plan on saying something about US History being cover as we study an overview of world history. The year after that will be HOD's CTC and that won't be covering any US history, so we'll see how that goes. Since that's two years away, I plan on not thinking about it until then. :tongue_smilie: My district has always been great to work with, I'm hoping this doesn't stir up an issue when the time comes. As far as what the public schools cover, up through 3rd grade it's just holidays and community helpers and such. 4th is state history and 5th is US history. I believe 6th grade is ancient history. So yes, the homeschooling regs have different requirements.

We usually start sliding back into some school work a couple weeks before the public schools around here begin, but since dh is a public school teacher, we have our official "Back to School" day on his first day of school with his students. We have first day of school pictures with Daddy and then with our new school books. After he leaves, we head out for bagels and then the boys get a back to school gift of new supplies and usually a book or DVD that's a topic of interest to them before we dive into our official new year. It's hard to believe this will be our 4th year of this tradition. I still feel like a newbie!

:bigear: I don't have any advice, but I'm feeling the same way! Interested to hear what others have to say...

We are using it this year for my K'er and love it. He asks for it every day. I started out the year trying to use what I used for his older brother and it just did not work. Older ds is a "let's sit down and get this done" kind of kid, and we used a program where we just read through the book everyday and he was fine with that. Younger ds needs the poetry and games (LOVES the games!) and the more interactive style of PAL. It was a great choice for him. And lately his reading has really taken off.

That's the same reaction I had when I read this book. Actually, I think it's time to read it again... :001_smile:

:bigear: I was wondering this same thing last night. Only I'm afraid I have three years of books planned! :lol:

We attended the LEAH conference two years ago and I don't think that we looked in the vendor hall on Thursday night, but we were in there on Friday and Saturday and the vendors were all the same those two days. I'm guessing that everyone is there on Thursday night too, but I can't be positive on that. Have you checked out the admission pricing and the exhibit hall hours? That may help you in making your decision too. http://www.leah.org/conventions/upstate-conference-exhibit-hall http://www.leah.org/conventions/upstate-conference-registration It will be great if you can go. It really does help to able to see it in person! :thumbup: (If you can find a used curriculum fair near you, that's another good place to be able to take a look.)

For LA for 1st grade, my older son was done with our phonics program so he ended up doing HOD's Emerging Readers and ETC 5&6 for reading, along with a journal-type workbook (Write About Me) and then whatever fell under LA from HOD's BLHFHG - which was spelling, storytime, poetry and grammer (the grammer was once a week, very light - perfect for that age). My younger son is doing IEW PAL Reading this year and will probably finish about half of it before we break for the summer, so in the fall for 1st grade we will finish up the reading portion, along with adding in the PAL Writing. So for him, most of his LA will be covered by IEW PAL. He's also working through the ETC books and PAL writing uses AAS 1, so we'll be doing that as well - along with read-alouds and poetry that I'm going to choose myself. Because I have Beyond already, I'll probably pull out the grammer lesson every week and do that with him, but I'm not sure I would worry about any kind of formal grammer at this stage if I didn't already have that on hand. I'd say to continue with spelling and then add in something to give reading and writing practice. You don't need a formal reading program necessarily, you could just take a look at HOD's emerging reader list or something similar and use that as a jumping off point. And I really liked the Write About Me workbook as an introduction to writing through simple journaling. As far as social studies, we ended up starting with American History for first and second grade only because that's how HOD did it, and my son has really ended up enjoying it. If you want to go that route, you might want to take a look at BF's Early American History Primary Study Guide. And if you end up doing American history - my boys both love the video series Liberty's Kids for when you get to the Revolutionary War. I don't have much experience yet with covering world history, but maybe start by looking into CHOW, SOTW or MOH. I just purchased the resource All Through The Ages to help me in planning for next year. It lists all kinds of books by time period and grade, along with timelines - good if you'd like to put together your own lit-based history. :001_smile:

Hi there. This is our second year having to report in NYS and I remember the confusion when I first started out, so I'll try to help as much as I can. We've used HOD both years that I've been reporting (actually on our 4th HOD year overall) so that covered our history and science. I just list the HOD manual as the curriculum on the IHIP, and then list the books used by HOD underneath as "supplemental resources". Then on my quarterly reports, I simply list which units in HOD we've completed for that quarter. So for my son's first grade year, the history section of the IHIP looked like this: GEOGRAPHY & HISTORY: Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory, Heart of Dakota Publishing, Dell Rapids, SD - Reading About History, History Activity, Geography Supplemental Resources: American Pioneers and Patriots, Christian Liberty Press, Arlington Heights, IL Stories of the Pilgrims, Christian Liberty Press, Arlington Heights, IL Boys and Girls of Colonial Days, Christian Liberty Press, Arlington Heights, IL This coming year we're taking a break from HOD because I want to spend a year on NYS History with both boys together. I'll be reporting both of my boys next year (1st and 3rd) and it's a good breaking point in HOD for us. For our history spine I ended up buying a used NYS textbook on Amazon and that is what I will list for our history curriculum, but I will also end up supplementing with biographies/picture books/dvds, etc. For science next year, I'm planning on studying animals, plants and weather of NYS, along with an in-depth study of birds using Apologia flying creatures - because my little guys LOVE birds. For science I will list the Apologia book, the weather unit from Janice VanCleave's Earth Science book, DK EyeWonder Weather book, a weather workbook that I've picked up, One Small Square: Backyard book and a "Critters of New York" pocket guide. I will also end up adding other picture books and story books (Burgess) to that, but I won't list all of them in the IHIP - probably will just mention them on the quarterlies, that way I have flexibility to add what I want as we go. I've never done purely interest-led after K, so I'm not sure exactly how I would report that, although I know I've definitely heard of people who do it, so there must be a way. ;) I did ask my boys what they wanted to study next year for science, which is how we came up with Apologia Flying Creatures and weather. So it is interest-led, just decided in advance. There is a yahoo group for New York state (NYHEN-Support) and they have examples of IHIPs and quarterlies on there, so you may want to join that if you're not already a member. If I were doing FIAR for SS, I would just list the FIAR manual as my curriculum. As far as grade level, I don't worry about what level they're working in, I just report the grade they would be in according to their date of birth. For LA we are using (or have used): First Reader (for my 1st son), IEW PAL (for my 2nd son), ETC, AAS, HWT, R&S English (2nd+), HOD's emerging readers, HOD's DITHOR (loosely for 2nd), HOD's Poetry and Storytime, Write About Me(1st)/Write About My World(2nd)/Just Write(3rd), and BJU Reading. I've been pleased with all these choices except DITHOR - which is why we've switched over to BJU reading. It's not that I don't like DITHOR, it was just too much for the younger years. I will probably give it a try again in upper elementary. My son really enjoys the BJU reading so we're going to do that next year for third, along with the DITHOR book list for silent reading. BJU is pricey, so I've just bought everything used except the workboook. Anyway, that's really long but I hope that helps you somewhat! :001_smile:

Would you mind sharing how you signed up without fb or twitter? I would love to get my sis addicted too. :hurray: thanks! :001_smile:

Just curious, do you have to join through Facebook or twitter, or can you just sign up with an email account? I'd love to share this with my sister, but she only has email. When I got my invite, it appeared that there were no options without fb or twitter. :confused:

Love this one too!

My younger ds will start this September. He'll turn 6 in January. He's been doing preschool/preK for the last few years at home - while older brother was doing K and 1st.

Do I need 2 sets of the worksheets if I'm using this with 2 kids, or can it be copied for use within the purchaser's family. Also, did anyone just order the appendices printed out instead of doing it yourself and was it worth it? Tx!