My dd's best friend (and neighbor) wanted to "do school" with us before she goes to PS (4th). We did some Mindbenders, Grammar (fragment, runon and complete sentences) and watched School House Rock conjunction junction. We did a math game with dice, and a Science activity which was lab skills & measuring. After she left, we finished up the day with Paul's Missionary Journies by watching What's in the Bible vol 11b, mapped his journeys, and wrote some summaries. One week down of our condensed version as we gear up :)

Yesterday I proclicked about 600 pages! I was in a mood :).

I bought it and decided against it. I spent the summer reading TWTM, the writers jungle, looking at partnership, arrow, WWE, WWS and decided to stick with one philosophy and that SWB is for us. I do think partnership/bravewriter is inspiring but I'm just too pragmatic and wanted the kids to learn specific skills ala TWTM so that is what I'm focusing on. Bummed I bought partnership since I won't be using it. Oh well, combining two different philosophies just isn't going to work with us given the goals I have for them this year

I get my proclick supplies from mybinding.com They occassionally have sales. I love the frost covers - I either print out cute covers or use the original book on the inside of a frost cover like these: http://www.mybinding.com/.sc/ms/dd/ee/95506/Clear-Matte-Frost-12mil-Sand-Poly-Plastic-Binding-Covers (unpunched - the proclick can punch them for you) I watch for deals here: http://www.mybinding.com/.sc/ms/cat/Binding%20Supplies--Clearance%20Supplies

I liked R&S but the scope and sequence for grade 5 looked similar and I steered toward spending this year doing less grammar. I bought Hake 6 and plan to do half this year and half next year. The reason I chose Hake is that it is spiral so will constantly review previous concepts. To be honest (2 lessons in) I already miss R&S! But I will see how it plays out after several weeks :). The biggest thing for my kiddos is that we talk through the concepts together and then they do the exercises and review. Handing them the book to do on their own has not been successful :)

Oh yes you must be a quilter! I take my rotary cutter and 6" x 24" ruler and cut just inside the paper so that I'm not cutting the glue. The proclick doesn't use as much width as a 3 hole puncher (for comparison). I just keep rolling it at the ruler and take away some free pages and keep going. Of course, this is tough on blades so have replacements for fabric cutting ;)

I cut bindings off with my sewing rotary cutter and proclick.

Not in our experience. My children would have been in tears rewriting that many sentences per day. they fully grasped the concepts and got A's on all of the tests. SWB has a Q&a video where she states that kids need to ramp up how many sentences they can write in a day. For us, we used those fine motor opportunities for writing, history and science. Not grammar :)

The books aren't THAT expensive ya know! You could pay that for a workbook ;). I would do it since she will be writing a lot with science, history etc. or do most of it orally.

I did it but didn't know there was a term (which somehow sounds disgraceful?) My son was a May 28 birthday. He had some early speech delays and has always been on a different time clock which was younger than his actual age. I didn't regret it in school, and now that we homeschool, I sometimes regret having done it, but all in all I was making a decision on MY son and what I thought was best for him. The fact that he will be an 18 year old senior really won't be a problem (I figure).

Did you not care for WWE? For rod and staff (we did level 4 last year) consider letting her mark up the pages of the student text! No need to copy all those sentences out. Have a notebook just for diagramming and writing assignments. I agree with the pp to just use the writing from Rod and staff. I personally subscribe to the well trained mind, so I would also throw some WWE in there too ;)

I would guess that spelling workout might be a good equivalent. It apparently teaches word study at the higher levels (I think I remember hearing/reading that in TWTM or on the forums). I love R&S. Even if some of the words are goofy (pulpit for instance LOL), my kids are getting a solid spelling education with word study (especially at the higher levels)

I agree with R&S :)

Thanks so much!!

No it can't be printed! You can only view it in the app.

I lost track of this thread but wanted to thank each of you! Our little sabbatical has been approved. DH wants to travel through Auckland for better airfare. I definitely don't like travelling and stopping at many places. Our most relaxing sabbaticals are where we just stay at 3 or 4 locations so we have time to settle in, relax and get a good feel for the culture. I'm now thinking of just sticking with the North Island (or for the majority). I need to get researching again. I think the children would love Hobbiton, beaches and animals.

I'm knitting my 4th chunky cabledmAidez. First one I gave away, next one was ok, third one ... The fit was very good. Fourth one should fit perfect!

Yeah the roads are so very narrow!

skip Leeds Castle! It is pretty on the outside but very modernized inside. We enjoyed the city of Bath :) I wish we had seen more quaint villages. Strattsford upon Avon is neat. I'm pretty sure I got a nasty stomach bug from Mary Arden's Farm.

Another nice feature is that you can add notes to the event so that when you click on it, there is more detail. On the negative side, be careful! When you are creating the timeline, if you touch outside the creating box, you lose everything you entered. Also, my son was fooling around with his and "threw" an event above the viewing pane and it got stuck up there! Oy> Either way, they think it is fun (at least on day 1)

note that they are skinny. I already had the biggest they make (5/8")and wanted some skinny ones too.

oh hi! I forgot to update this! It works fine. It takes a bit of time to slip off the little plastic connectors. You just slide them off! Then you can use them with the manual proclick process :)

oh boy!

My plan didn't exactly work out like I thought it would. Everything took extra time. They aren't real focused so I explained that it is understandable but as we continue, I will expect more focus in the future. Oy! I keep telling myself (in a calm voice) that we are going "light" and that things don't have to go perfectly. They are enjoying their day and I believe there is general enthusiasm for this year's curriculum which is really all I can ask for! We did: Spelling (Rod and Staff 6... which is significantly more challenging than year 5.... I wasn't planning on it taking much time, but I think it is more deliberate in the word study which will be useful) Bible (should have been doing this devotional through the summer but I was lazy) - finishing up Long Story Short (taught at church, devotionals and bible reading is done daily at home) History - did MOH2 lesson 1 and a HITW New Testament lapbook page. This took a LONG time. Oy! Science- just a Unit 1 Chp 1 overview. It will interesting to see how BJU5 plays out this year Math Mammoth Writing With Ease We also made Trader Joes coffee cake for breakfast and mini refrig biscuit pizzas which they built for lunch. Plan on cracking open their grammar after lunch and that will be all. We won't do latin, art, art/music appreciation, logic puzzles or Caesar's English until after Labor Day. Trying to keep the school days short so they can still have time to play with friends who are still on summer break. Mama wishes she knew if she is planning too much! I will have to be patient.

I really didn't want to spend a lot of money on a fancy notebook timeline and we don't have the decor for a wall timeline (not in my kitchen thank you!). I had purchased the Knowledge Quest Timeline Builder App when it was first released but wasn't sure I would like it. The children, however, loved entering the timeline info, searching the web for their favorite image, and entering the info. In fact, they decided to start timelines for their stuffed animals as well! We will see how well we enjoy it when it gets crowded, but so far, they loved doing it and it was very inexpensive to boot! http://www.knowledgequestmaps.com/KQ-TimelineBuilder.html ETA that this link shows price of 2.99 and future price of 6.99. I believe this was for the initial release. The store shows a price of 4.99 now. Still very inexpensive compared to purchasing binder, notebook pages, timeline figures, etc.