My DD draws a picture and writes two to three things she remembers from the episode (or more if she can). She's 5. We just use the Youtube episodes right now.

I second this suggestion. My other advice is to keep math FUN. No drill. Do it via games. Rightstart Math has tons of games that practice the drill, but in a fun way. It's how DD learned all her how-to-make ten facts quickly - just by playing memory but having to flip over two cards that added to 10 as opposed to two matching cards. That was her favorite game, but not the only one we played. I can bring it to CC for you to look at if you want. "War" (we called it something less brutal but I can't remember) was a popular game with my 3rd graders. The two players both flip two cards and add/subtract/multiply them. Whoever has the highest/lowest wins all four cards.

The song is on the new Cycle 1 set of CDs. There is a whole CD in the set dedicated to Timeline, presidents, prepositions, books of the Bible). The VP cards do have a song if you do them in the VP order (I noticed this when we tried out the Self-paced history program last month). With regards to what other said, I didn't like the fact that there were fewer Biblical events/people, (the events are there all lumped together - Creation AND the Fall, the Flood AND the Tower of Babel, later on in the timeline, you see/hear Israel Exodus AND Desert Wandering, Israel Conquest AND Judges - but the people of the Bible are all taken out; these could easily be added back in as you are studying the timeline cards) but I do love the inclusion of other non Western events in the modern era. We also LOVE LOVE LOVE the song! It's catchy. It gives me goose bumps at the Jesus the Messiah part too! The kids ask for it in the car every day, over and over. I get tired of it before they do.

I love our flashcards! Lots of people say they were not a necessary purchase, but we use ours daily at breakfast (or lunch, or dinner). I made this box to organize the flashcards and we work through the memory work each day. Ideally at breakfast. I also like to listen to the CD in the car, but you don't need the CD, you can just burn the mp3s onto a CD for the car. Last year, I only focused on us memorizing math and history, but our tutor-trainer this year said that if you can focus on just memorizing parts, the best to really commit to memory are English and Latin (and math) as these will be very beneficial once the child moves up to Essentials. Just a thought.

Sonlight sells it too and they have free shipping over $25.

If you got the CD, which would be useful because of the songs for history sentences, timeline, prepositions, Latin chants of declensions, math skip counting, presidents and a few other things, you would basically just have to ignore all the Science. The CDs (it is a set of 3) would still be useful. I love the flashcards because they work well for a memory box system. I would say, go for the CD as opposed to the timeline cards as the song will make the timeline super easy to memorize. My kids beg to hear it in the car all the time. CC has done a great job of the song for timeline. So, my opinion is to go with the CDs and the flashcards. You won't have flashcards for the science unless you get a second set of Cycle 2, but you could always make your own since it would just be twelve things to write out. Some people photocopy the pages in the Guide and cut them up to make their own flashcards, but I like having the answer separate from the question so my DD can quiz herself. That's worth the money to me.

My DD loves creative writing, so she always ends up writing a story. She also does WWE. WWE doesn't discourage kids who love creative writing to do so, she only says not to force them to do it. Consequently, I let my DD write stories with the Writing Station. It's her favorite part of AAS. However, I love the challenge to use the words in as few sentences as possible and definitely want to pose that challenge to DD:)

Thanks for sharing about this. I am going to go read the post later, but it sounds intriguing and something I might want to try with DD.

I like the five days of mastery too and I may change our box a bit to reflect that. My daughter is an auditory/visual learner and so reviewing the cards with me aloud works just fine. She traces or points to the places on the map, does the actions to go with the words, etc. It's very much like going through the new grammar in class and takes hardly any time out of our day. She usually has it memorized by day 3. I can see though how it may not work for all styles of learners. We also do the lapbooks from Wisdom and Righteousness one day a week for copywork /writing of the memory work. Generally we do this on Thursday as a review to see how much she remembers of the week's work. The box is more for me, in a way, to make sure we do review and do work on memory every day. The question about the 24 days is a good one. When we reviewed in the summer, I would move the cards. So on June 1st we reviewed week 1, but then I put them in the 25th slot. This however, got confusing, so I am not sure what we will do. Perhaps a six to seven day break from memory work (review of other cycles) per month? I actually don't know that we will review Cycle 3 this year (we haven't done Cycle 2 yet) since my kids are 5 and 3. I already have too many things on our plate! It is only the start of our second year in CC so I am still figuring it all out!

We love it here. I usually tweak the projects a bit (I am using the lowest age range set) but it is so nice to have the slide show and art history component all researched and done for me. We do an artist per week.

I did the two week trial of VP self paced and found it a bit edutainment-y. My DD did retain quite a bit from it. I haven't used the other.

We use a memory box too. Here's the link to how ours is set up for CC. I only have one memorizing right now, but I think next year when my son is memorizing also, they would just take turns repeating it, or say it at the same time (the way they do in class at CC).

We just watched the 1973 one last night and will be watching the Dakota Fanning version tomorrow. The kids got to pick which to watch first and they chose the animated version. I don't care for the singing parts, but of course my children loved it. It will be interesting to see tomorrow evening which one they prefer. The 1973 one does deviate a bit from the book. It's fun to catch those though. My DD enjoyed saying, "That wasn't in the book!"

I've read this somewhere. Maybe here on the forum. Anyway, for trilingual families, they say that the second language must then become proficient before they become fluent in the third language. My daughter just turned 5 and is just now picking up the fluency in Spanish. My niece, who is with her Spanish speaking grandparents all day, has just hit fluency this summer at 4.5 yrs. She's hit the fluency faster than DD b/c she's there all day with the grandparents while DD only hears DH after work or before work, not all day. And for us, French is our third language and the one she hears least. Persistence is key and insisting they repeat back has helped here, along with some TV shows in the target language (Salsa for Spanish and I'm still looking for the right thing in French).

I bought it used and so don't have the worksheets. We have B. This is what I like: if I have a bad week, Science still gets done. It might just be reading the Science books scheduled and watching the videos of the experiments, but at least the kids (3 and 5) have been exposed to some scientific thinking and science topics. I also use other science resources, but I like knowing that at the minimum we have done the SL science (w/o worksheets). So far (and we are only on week 4) the science experiments on the DVD have lined up perfectly with the readings. It moves quickly, but at least is all the same subject and correlates to the reading. The kids really enjoy it.

All I can say is that the SL Science is the one that gets done at our house. None of the other programs do. So even though people here don't seem to like it, I do.

I found most, but not all the books for P4/5 at my library. Others I borrowed from a friend, and others I decided we would just miss.

I have the K IG and we don't end up using it. I would just get the books and read through them:) And if you want to add a bit of fun you can do a few activities to go with the books. I found a lapbook to go with Milly Molly Mandy (sorry, I don't have the link right now) and we acted out some of the Uncle Wiggily stories, as an example. Mostly we just read though. My kids think its enough.

If you don't mind going to her individual posts to download the LOTW stuff, it's all there free. The $10 download allows you to get it all at once. She has a lot of free printables. You may want to look around and see what she has available before spending the money. I like the free printables (themed) from 1+1+1=1 and Homeschool Creations. They go with books we read and that is more fun for the (my) kids.

I've been debating doing that! I didn't want to set DD back as she has almost finished all of the grade 2 stuff.

I didn't notice that because DD answered all the questions in the first lesson correctly (I did assist a bit for the one about day 4 and 5:-P). She did make a mistake in the second lesson, but maybe it wasn't a quiz? I was cooking dinner and not paying too much attention. It doesn't seem developmentally appropriate at that age to do that (the big red failed). It certainly doesn't seem kind.

I would follow her lead. If AO is what you think you want to do, try it and see how it goes. If she enjoys it, continue. If she doesn't, stop and wait a bit and just read literature she enjoys. It sounds like she has a great start and that you provide her with lots of enriching literature already! :) My daughter will turn 5 on Saturday and your description of your DD sounds like my DD:) She's read Charlotte's Web twice to herself in the past week and I chose to skip right to Sonlight Core B with her because she loves History that much. AO seemed too complicated for me!

Thanks:) I'll need this next year.

I've used both and my personal preference is Meet the Masters. Lots more art appreciation (ie, you get to see more of the artist's work and get to know an artist in greater depth) and better projects (I find Artistic Pursuits - I have Book 1 - to have very open ended projects - which is great, but I wanted something that taught a bit more about the elements of art). However, if you want chronological art history, Artistic Pursuits is better. My kids like both. Another option might be Home Art Studio. It's only $24.95 per video. My kids love that one the best.

You couldn't use it as a stand alone. It doesn't cover measurement, time, money. However, it is great for building up mental math. I love how it has helped my DD understand things and in conjunction with SM and RS has increased her rapidity in mental math. She enjoys it. We had an IXL subscription but she never wanted to play it because it was too much like worksheets and not enough like a game. Dreambox is very much gamelike. I like that it parallels the way RS and SM explain how to do math, but also adds it's own little flavor (like unpacking and packing boxes for place value and understanding how 14 tens and 3 ones is the same thing as 1 hundred, 4 tens and 3 ones, or the same as 12 tens and 23 ones). I would love to extend our subscription through HSBC but I believe the special is only for a new subscription:(