The issues our favorite co-op has faced in the past were its relatively small size and being multi-age. The kids love doing things together, but because of the wide range of ages, the differences between the their skills and maturity levels became glaring when we tried to do certain subjects. For arts & crafts, field trips, foreign language practice, fencing, or mini-sessions on basic geography or cooking, the co-op's been a blast. For science or other more "serious" subjects, the number of activities and topics the kids were able to engage in together eventually dwindled, even with some very creative planning and multi-level activities. At this age, the logic stage years, my dream co-op would be a small group of kids with similiar abilities and a few shared interests that would enjoy working on projects or taking an academic class or two together. On the other hand, I'm also finding that we need more time for studying, reading, and discussion at home at this age. So, as with most things, it's about finding the right balance. What do you think your daughter would like to do? Looking at the curriculum you have laid for the rest of this year and possibly next year, (I know hive members are an industrious bunch :D), how much time would she have for co-op actvities? For us, co-op means all day, even if actvitities are only scheduled for 3 hours. There's travel time back and forth, chatting with friends before and after, lunch, and hey-since-we're-already-out-might-as-well-stop-by-the_______. It's so hard finding/maintaining that balance:tongue_smilie:. Good luck!

Wow, thank you Lewelma! I have learned so much from your posts since joining the boards. You're awesome!

Ds is currently working through K12 Prehistory to Early Middle Ages. We use the online component along with the text. I also have the Student and Teacher Guides. He doesn't do all of the activites provided in the Student Guide, I pick out what I think is most important. I really like the variety of assignments, especially after doing things the WTM way for the Grammar years. I know for some, a lot of the assignments may seem like busy work or things one could come up with one their own, but I like it all laid out for me. If you're interested in the online component, you could sign up for a trial, or even try out the whole thing for a month for $30. You'd be able to print out the Student Guide pages from the website and not have to buy that book. If you really want to do things the WTM way, I would follow momof2cm and kalmia's suggestions. We did ancient times the WTM way with the Kingfisher History encyclopedia last year, and I found ds did not retain very much. What he did remember (still) were the things he'd learned using SOTW a few years ago. Maybe things might have turned out differently if we'd used K12 HO for outlining instead of KHE. Just want to add that one of the things that I appreciate most about K12 HO is that it really pares the topics down to the most important. Even with SOTW, which we loved, sometimes I felt like some of the content was more trivia than useful knowledge. I definitely felt that way about KHE by the end of last year. I think maybe the sheer number of topics we covered made it difficult for my ds to see the bigger themes.

:iagree: We have both of these. The DK Definitive Visual Encyclopedias are really great, we have both the science and history. I wish they'd been $16.47 when I bought them!

We started with the Island level a couple of months ago and I expect we'll complete it by the end of this month. We could have started with Town and been fine, but we had the time to start at the beginning of the series and for us it's been great. Grammar Island did a nice job of reinforcing grammar concepts, and even though I didn't ask ds to do the writing activities (other than the 4-level analysis) in Sentence Island, I see him using some of the things he's learned, such as alliteration and thoughtful positioning of words, more often in his writing. I'm always impressed when I read about dc starting this program in 3rd or 4th grade, it is a sophisticated program. We may be late to the party, but I'm glad we found it--better late than never! Ds has gotten so much out of it already and we're both looking forward moving on to Town. Just wanted to add that ds has done some diagramming here and there over the years, and although MCT's 4-level analysis is very different, I think it has helped ds see the beauty of good sentence structure in a way he hasn't in the past. After he's done with Practice Island, we're going to work on some traditional diagramming for a while and this time my ds will actually enjoy it.

Love it! Thanks for the laugh!

Looks great, thank you for sharing!

We've been making do with plastic ikea chairs for a while now, but I think the time has finally come for upgrades. Well, at least for ds, I'm noticing that he's really slouching in his seat. I'm looking for something that will encourage him to sit a little straighter. He's 5 ft tall and weighs in the low 90s. Does anyone love their school/craft chair?

If your dd loves biology and you already have a good sense of how you'd tweak BJU to work for her, then I think giving her the beefier biology course is the way to go. She's most likely past the material presented in ES's program. I don't know a lot about BJU, but it seems that lots of families like it. I hope it works out great for your dd, (and you ;)).

It follows the TWTM style. Each week's lesson is comprised of an experiment, defining vocabulary, reading and then outlining or summarizing from the appropriate science encyclopedia, labeling and coloring a sketch, adding important events or figures to date sheets. The program also includes discussion questions for each reading. We did these before ds wrote up his summaries, ala WWE. There are also tests at the end of each unit made up of true/false, matching definitions to vocabulary words, and long answer questions (a few sentences). What I liked: At the time I needed something ds could do mostly independently and this program fit the bill nicely. We got together for discussion and to gather materials for experiments, but otherwise ds was happily on his own. It is not very challenging, ds did not have to do any extra studying to prep for tests. However, I thought the tests were good practice, especially having to formulate answers. It's complete, as far as lesson planning goes. Student needs encyclopedias and stuff for experiments and s/he is good to go. I don't have high school dc to be able to tell you definitively whether this is a good prep for Honors level Bio in high school, but my gut reaction is to say no. If you look at the sample pages both on the Elental Science site and the Encyclopedia of Nature pages on amazon, I think you'll get a good sense of level. I hope you get responses from more experienced parents that can help answer this specific question for you. I'm curious too. My feeling is that we will revisit Bio, but maybe just through reading more in-depth materials. There's a super-knowledgeable poster, Lewelma, that has given great advice on tackling science. You might want to look over some of her past posts for something at a bit higher level than ES Biology. Honestly, I don't think this program is very challenging. There were many times ds completed a week's lesson in one day. The material is not difficult, just takes a bit of time to get it done. HTH

OK, sorry OP, I just realized that after writing all that below that I hadn't answered any of your questions! I would say, based on our experience last year, that Story of Science would be a good read-along activity for your 5th grader at the very least. If you think his math so far has prepared him for those topics I mentioned below, then he would probably be fine to do Story of Science side-by-side with his older bro. I think you'll have to spend time on going through the Quest Guide to figure out what would work for him and what won't. If he sits out a particular activity that your 7th grader is working on, maybe he could work on one of the Curriculum links instead? I think you could make it work for both of them. For the last third of 5th grade and through summer, ds worked through Elemental Science's Logic Stage Biology. It's a well-organized program. You can look through samples of this on their website. We are doing MPH Science 5-6 this year, in addition to Story of Science. It requires some planning as well, but I like the different approach. It's meant to be a two-year program, grades 5 & 6. HTH :) We tried to use Aristotle Leads the Way at the beginning of 5th grade last year, but it didn't work out for us. Ds did history and science the wtm way and it was just too much to consistently add another component. I thought it would be a nice bridge between the two subjects--and it is--just couldn't find a way to make it happen last year. This year we're approaching both science and history a little differently and making connections between all subjects is something I'm trying to keep in mind as we go. I agree with Deniseibase that an understanding of certain math concepts is needed to get the most out some of the Student Quest Guide activities. Topics such as pi, the Pythagorean Theorem, figuring out length on days based on the tilt of Earth's axis, Euclid's axioms, prime numbers, figuring out density, angles, absolute zero, Fibonacci's Numbers, and even a little bit on calculus are covered in the Quest Guide. As many others have said, the teacher's guide is set up for classroom use. It takes some time to go through and pick and choose good activites to do. Having said that, I'm glad that we have it. I like some of the offbeat suggestions offered in the Curriculum Links sections for further exploration. There are ideas for geography, art, language arts, history, science, and math activities. So, we started back up with Aristotle Leads the Way a couple of weeks ago and it feels totally different this time around. We have followed the 4-year history cycle up unil the end of last year, so ds is really enjoying making connections between what he's learned so far, and what he is now learning from a different perspective. The more time ds and I spend with this program, the more we like it. We also have the Milestones in Science kit, as well, and the plan was to work through it along with the book, but it doesn't look like a lot of the experiments/demos will fit in this year. Aristotle Leads the Way ends at 1500, and of course there have been many milestones since then. :lol: I'll definitely check out some of the other resources suggested, like Great Scientists and the Visual Science Guide. Marilyn

BOB books were a big hit at our house. We also liked the MCP (Modern Curriculum Press) phonics readers and had good luck finding most of these at our local library. You might enjoy playing Boggle Jr together, too.

Life of Fred is great. Ds works on it once a week. The 24 Game is fun, too. It's a card game, but there's also an iPad app for it too. Your dd might also like to watch Khan Academy videos or maybe some of the AoPS videos. We recently watched The Story of 1 on Netflix, hosted by Terry Jones and we all enjoyed it.

Wow, thank you for this! We're going to give MPH a try soon and this is great information to keep in mind.

We were part of a preschool co-op when my older ds was little. It was a lot of fun, but you're definitely investing time and money to prepare for it, mostly time. I would suggest your group invest in a couple preschool curriculum/activity books. We used Instant Curriculum by Pam Schiller. We assigned a theme to each month and did activities from the book at each meeting. We met twice a week, for 2 1/2 hrs each day. We set up arrival centers, which were basically quiet activities the kids could do while waiting for everyone to arrive, (legos, board books, puzzles). Then we had circle time: welcome songs, calendar time, introduce topic of the day, read a book or two related to topic that led into the first activity of the day, (craft, sorting,--this is where the curriculum book comes in handy). After activity #1, it was clean-up and break time. This included potty time and snack afterward. The next activities were outside activities, but if that's not possible where you are, you can still do a lot indoors, like play red-light, green-light, simon-says, make blocks out of brown paper bags and masking tape and build stuff, (another reason to get a curriculum book). After jumping around for a bit, the kids were ready to return to the circle and listen to some stories, poems, do fingerplays. Then, we'd move on to skills practice which would be worksheets we'd either make ourselves or print out. Think matching, drawing lines, cutting out shapes, etc. Then there was another round of wiggle time, clean up, and finally, the closing circle. During the closing circle we'd review what we learned, pass out stuff to take home, etc. Each kid brought their own backpack/tote bag and pencil box with basic supplies: crayons, safety scissors, and glue stick. Whoever was hosting provided snacks, but you guys do a longer day so I'm sure everyone is bringing their own lunches and snacks. It would be a great help to you if you could enlist a helper(s). Preschoolers, as you know, have such short attention spans that when you sit them down to work on a specific task, you need to start right away. It's a great thing to have someone prepping a craft or activity while you're reading books or leading the sing-a-long. Transitions will go much smoother. Hope you can find something useful in all of this. 6 hours is a long time for little peeps, but doing a couple hours of structured activities would be a nice way to add break up the day. Good luck!

Do you guys use the 5-day/week or 2-day/week schedule? We followed the 2-day/week schedule, as it's outlined in the teacher's guide. The experiment and vocabulary one day, then the reading, writing assignment, and sketch on the 2nd day. I didn't spend much time formally introducing the week's lesson, although you could by starting with the reading or a dvd instead of the experiment. The things we tended to skip were the memory work and the dates. I still like that they're there, we just had other things to do and I rather ds spend time understanding a concept than memorizing trivia. I don't hate all memory work, but most of what I saw in bio didn't seem to me as worth the time to memorize. Ds was pretty independent with this program though, which is what I needed at the time. We really only got together if he needed help finding something or when it was time for discussion. Otherwise, I went through his notebook pages and looked at his summaries, fact lists, lab sheets, and sketches once a week. I wish I could be more help.

We started ES Biology last year, we still have the Human Body unit to complete this year, but had to move on to other things temporarily. I think you're wise to wait on doing outlines if you feel that the support you'll get in WWS is going to help you guys do them well. What I found with using the Encyclopedia of Nature, is the same problem I found with using the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia (the newer ed., not the 1993 white ed.). Which is, that the information is already so concise it's difficult to outline from. You feel like you have to write everything down. Instead, ds did a lot of summaries and fact lists. They got a little longer as we went along. For the summaries, I used the discussion questions provided in the teacher's guide to help ds organize his thoughts before beginning to write, ala WWE. That made things run a bit smoother. Overall, we liked Elemental Science. I like that the lessons are ready-to-go, that the program includes experiments, sketches, discussion questions, memory work, dates, and tests. Ds liked the experiments. He usually set them up and did them on his own. I wish I had supplemented more with dvd's and additional reading, like you're doing. Unfortunately, I was worried that we started Bio so late in the year, and I wanted to "catch up" so we could start Earth & Astronomy "on time" this fall. Ugh. In the end, we didn't catch up, (still have that human body unit floating around), but that's OK. I'm really trying to embrace the "Make the curriculum work for you and not the other way around" mindset. Hope this helps a bit. Good luck!

My regret is signing up for the online portion of K12 History Odyssey. It's neat, but slow-paced. Ds doesn't like the pattern of reading a few pages at a time and then doing a written activity. We talked about it and decided that he could read the chapters in full and then I'll choose a mix of K12 & WTM assignments for him to do. I think it'll work out fine. Thankfully, everything else is going well.

This is all so good to hear! Our AAS materials arrived last week. I was prepping the letter tiles the other day hoping that I'd made the right decision in ordering this program. I'm looking forward to getting started on Monday!

I'm really interested in learning more about the way the classes run too. We just ordered Pre-Algebra last week, but won't be able to start for a few more weeks. I was debating on whether to sign ds up for the Nov class(if it's not already full by now:tongue_smilie:), or let him just work through the book to get used to the new-to-us program and leave the class component for next year's intro to algebra.

That is my understanding too. They're both very popular books and there's a good chance you may find them both at your local library and be able to compare them IRL. I have the Trelease book myself, but honestly it's been a few years since I've looked at it so I don't feel that I can give a good run-down on it right now. Satori Smiles has a book list on her beautiful blog. I'm sure you'll be able to find good stuff there too.

We've used the Science in a Nutshell and Young Scientists Club kits. I can't say we've LOVED any of them, but liked most of them well enough. I have Milestones in Science waiting in the wings right now. We'll use it in conjunction with The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way starting in December. One thing ds does love to do is build models or robot kits. He's spent a lot of time with his Mindstorms kit and Snap Circuit kits. He's also put together a few of the Robotikits and enjoyed those too.

:iagree: We used the Living Things Cluster kit last year and everything we needed was there. Granted we didn't do every single experiment, but we did share out kit with friends when we were done with it and they had plenty materials to do the experiments they wanted to do too. I want to say that the kits come with enough materials to do each activity up to 5 times---but you'll have to check their website for that exact info. It may vary kit to kit. They're nice kits, have fun!

We haven't used this program, but I've heard good things. http://www.YouthDigitalArts.com/ Good luck on your search!

:bigear: Bump