Thank you so much for sharing! We have "Strawberry Girl" on our shelves and this looks like a wonderful unit study to go with it! Many thanks!! :001_smile:

I'm in a co-op with one family, we do Latin Minimus, World geography using Evan Moor's 7 Continents series, and Hands-On Equations (kids are 6 and 8 yrs old) and presentations. We've also shared in keeping silkworms together. Honestly, it's a lot of work but the kids are learning a lot and actually love "school days" because afterward, we eat pot-luck style and play. =) For the fall, we'll add CC memory work, and thinking about adding poem memorization ala IEW Linguistic Devpt. It's a pretty academic co-op but that's what we want if we're going to go to the effort of doing a co-op.

We are enrolled in this and LOVE it - it has made the difference between night and day in our homeschooling experiences. I've been able to purchase awesome, expensive curriculum with the school funds that I never would have otherwise - like RSO science plus all the science kits, the complete Hands-On Equations math system, all the levels of All About Spelling, top notch art supplies. etc... Beats trying to homeschool on a shoestring budget like before! I make all the curriculum choices, and the school purchases them for me. It's been amazing for our family. Our Education Specialist is a pastor's wife who homeschooled her own kids. I honestly don't know what all the controversy is about, there is no trojan horse here as far as I can see.

Yeah - and at the same time kinda big too, no? :001_smile:

My daughter and I were in awe checking out this website about the scale of the universe. As a Christian, made me positively worshipful of God. Hope it blesses someone here too. http://htwins.net/scale2/?bordercolor=white

Thanks for all your replies, everyone! Looks like "do the next thing" can mean different things to different people. I love "open and go" so I guess we've been doing "do the next thing" without knowing it! :lol:

Title says it all. Sorry for the dumb question :blush:, but I'm not sure what this means exactly (I'm still pretty new to homeschooling). My best guess is that this is a type of scheduling that applies to the child, where they have a list of things to do each day and after completing one subject, they just move independently to the next thing on their list to do? Or is it something entirely different? Thanks in advance!

We're currently living in San Jose, CA and thinking of moving to Portland metro area. We'd like to learn more about Christian homeschool support groups in the area (co-ops, get togethers, sports/activities, etc). Can you tell me any information? Websites, yahoo groups, anything? Much appreciated!

Oops, I think I misread the OP. Looks like the OP meant that the 4 for 3 deal is through Amazon, not Costco. Still a good deal at Costco! Now if only I could find them there...

The 4 for 3 package makes it an even better deal than before! I'll check it out next time I'm at Costco. Thanks for sharing!

I love this one! Very informative, a bit long but no matter, with enough practice the kids can do it. Thank you!

I like the BCP website for lesson plans on CKF, but noticed that there are a lot of book recommendations for each lesson. So on TOP of the Core Knowledge books, we're supposed to read other books to flesh it out further? I guess that would make it a full curriculum, rather than just a review, but gee, it seems like a lot of work tracking down other books. Do you do this, or just go with the CK book and the BCP lesson plans only?

Thank you Kinsa and Jann in Tx for your replies! The silkworm moths lasted a little over a week for us, but I must share that after leaving them in an open shoebox for a few days, they started crawling out! We lost 1 silkworm moth that way and couldn't find him!! The others we kept putting them back into the shoebox when we'd find them crawling around outside the box, and finally I covered the box with saran wrap and poked a dozen big holes on top. Don't know if we didn't get a good mix of males and females or what, but they didn't mate as far as we could tell and there haven't been eggs. It was an awesome experience for the kids though, feeding them and watching them go from worm to cocoon to moth. We're going to see if we can it again next year!

Do you have a favorite Presidents song? I'm looking for one for my kids to sing and memorize, preferably on Youtube or another free site, that includes an interesting point or two about the presidents, but isn't offensive. I like the ones on Youtube but something or another is offputting about each one - one song shows a gay Lincoln, one song's lyric is "(the president) told Congress to suck it" and other songs just list presidents' names without any interesting tidbits. Do you have one to recommend? I guess we could put on the song that depicts a gay Lincoln, but just turn off the screen, which is too bad because all the other images that go along with the song are really pretty cool and would aid in memorizing.

This series of Core Knowledge books (CK), "What Your (first, second, etc) Grader Needs to Know" looks amazing to me. I have all the books from K-6, and looking through the content, I think that if my kids finished 6th grade knowing all the material in these books, I'd consider them extremely well educated. Everything from art, science, history/geography, literature, music, world civilizations, it's so thorough. As a spin-off from another thread about Baltimore Curriculum Project, I wondered how people are using these books. I'd love to use it as a full curriculum (I would add 3R's), but how do you think multiple grades could be taught together with this? My kids are ages 6 and 8, so 1st and 3rd grade technically.

Thanks for letting us know. I never would've discovered it otherwise.

Thank you so much Ellie, Writerdaddy and Kalanamak! Your replies are very helpful. You guys are awesome, I knew this was the place to come with my questions. I just wish I'd asked sooner. I'm off to view some youtube videos and read the lulu book.

I've had SWR on my shelf for 1.5 years and haven't been able to figure it out. Needless to say, spelling hasn't been getting done here. I keep picking it up, reading the manual, get confused as to how to implement it, and put it back down. I can't figure this out! I'm also on the yahoo board, but since it's moderated by Sanseri and certified trainers, I feel like my questions are too elementary (dumb!) to ask there. Can someone please explain to me what exactly is "think to spell"? I hear that term used sometimes to apply to specific words, but I'm confused - aren't all words "think to spell"? And what is "finger spelling"? - putting up my fingers to show how many total phonograms are in the word, and then counting down as the correct phonograms are spelled? :001_huh: Please help! Many thanks in advance! I'd love to get started on this program with my kids, it seems very powerful, IF I could ever figure it out!

What are "enrichments" mentioned above? They sound like they add more fun into SWR for the kids.

I'm on the lookout for a set of Children's Encyclopedias too so I can celebrate your find! They look super!

A silkworm expert from M.I.T. gave me an answer and I wanted to share it here for the benefit of anyone who might have the same question later on: Open shoe box is fine. No cover is necessary. They cant fly and are too lazy to walk. If outdoors, you need to cover so predators dont eat them. Our experience confirms this is true - the moths have been in an open shoebox for 2 days now and apart from moving a few centimeters here and there, they've stayed put pretty much. How they'll ever move enough to mate with one another is a mystery to my kids. They're barely 6 and 8 years old, and I've never told them about the birds and bees, but they keep peeking in the box and say while pumping their fists in the air, "MATE!"

A silkworm expert from M.I.T. gave me an answer and I wanted to share it here for the benefit of anyone who might have the same question later on: Open shoe box is fine. No cover is necessary. They cant fly and are too lazy to walk. If outdoors, you need to cover so predators dont eat them. Our experience confirms this is true - the moths have been in an open shoebox for 2 days now and apart from moving a few centimeters here and there, they've stayed put pretty much. How they'll ever move enough to mate with one another is a mystery to my kids. They're barely 6 and 8 years old, and I've never told them about the birds and bees, but they keep peeking in the box and say while pumping their fists in the air, "MATE!"

Thanks OhElizabeth for bumping the thread and checking your books! Thanks Sharon in Austin for the very good points you made. History was my worst subject in school so I'm afraid I won't know enough to correct the errors that we might read in these books. Despite being a book hoarder, I might have to pass on this set because of that. You provided me with valuable input to make a decision after hemming and hawing on this sale for a couple days - thank you! And my overly stuffed bookcases thank you too. :001_smile: You ladies rock!

What would you do? I have the opportunity to buy a fair condition set of A Picturesque Tale of Progress for $30 without the index volume. Would you consider this set a "must have", a "nice to have", "take it or leave it" or something in between? Also, is there any overtly racist commentary in there? We have SOTW and CHOW at home already. Does this set add something really special?

The silkworms that we've raised and have been in their chrysalis the past 2 weeks are emerging out of their cocoons this morning! Kinda cool but freaked me out when I looked in the box to find all the cocoons broken out of and huge white moths in their place. Does anybody know how far the moths can travel? The book on silkworms we've read says they don't travel far, and silkworm moths are so domesticated after all these centuries that they don't fly anymore, so we were thinking of keeping them in an open shoebox with paper down the bottom for their eggs. Would we risk losing the moths if we do that (ie. will they walk out of the box)? Also, the book says people can handle the moths but I'm a bit freaked out by the thought of touching them. Is it really ok to do that? Please advise if you have experience with silkworm moths! I'm a bit freaked out here.:w00t: