I want to know what you are working to complete now that WWS3 is out? WWStyle?

No doubt!

A big part of my job is to challenge them without asking them to do more than they can handle. When we find that balance, homeschooling is really great. This year, during week 6, I decided to change up both grammar and spelling! One was just too much work each day and the other wasn't really teaching my kids anything. It had become busywork. I is not always fun, and I have a son who does grumble, but when things are working, it is beyond fulfilling! This type of adjusting and assessment is something your kid would rarely get in a brick and mortar school.

A writing the Classical Way looks awesome!

We listen to some of them in the car. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Peter Pan, Black Beauty, are just a small sampling of great audiobooks we have listened to. We also read aloud, and I assign books. It is amazing how many books one can listen to, just from day to day driving

I received Analytical Grammar today (used). I really think this is going to be great for us. I agree, clementine, that grammar is useful! I just don't think the R&S approach is going to work for us. AG appears to be extremely straight forward. Our whole family enjoys diagramming sentences, and I'm glad that will be covered & practiced in AG. I also purchased AGJr Mechanics. I think we will use that this year for 5th(dd)and 6th(ds). This will give us some dedicated work on punctuation and usage since that isn't covered until the last unit (year) of AG. Hopefully we can use it without having gone through AG. I have AG as a reference in case we need to learn a new term or method. Then next year we can start AG season one and use the review and reinforcement books, followed by season two the next year. I also would want to use the review HS books too.

what books are you using? My dd has 5 books (Alfred's) and goes through a LOT of material each lesson. It doesn't leave much time for the teacher to explain but dd seems to be natural with piano and so it works for them. I can see how 45min might be more useful, but this teacher always does 30min increments which seems to work for her. She is very efficient IMO.

Or what about doing a writing/grammar combo. We are loving treasured conversations. Excellence in writing also does a combo.

Sounds great to me too! You might want to add in more writing once you get into a good routine. Have fun!

Thank you for the encouragement! We are specifically focusing on writing skills this year (older is doing WWS and younger is doing treasured conversations and the rest of WWE3), but I also want to make time for literature, vocab and logic. The grammar was just too much!

My kids did FLL3 for 2nd and 3rd (they do it together) Then they did R&S4 for 3rd and 4th (no problem) At that point I decided I didn't want to spend quite so much time doing grammar again in 5th. Therefore, I switched to HAKE 6 to do it at half speed. I picked HAKE because it was Spiral. The kids hated it and we quit about mid year last year. They asked for R&S again. So this year, we went to R&S6. While they understand the topic, I just don't want to spend 30-50min per day on grammar. I realize we could shorten the lessons, but it just seems too nitty gritty. Now, I've decided upon Analytical Grammar. JAG probably would be best, but they seem to do well with grammar concepts and I really don't want to spend an extra year and $100+ on JAG. So my plan is to first cover the mechanics chapter in R&S 6 (since mechanics isn't covered for a long time in AG) and then move onto season 1 of AG. I love the idea of only doing grammar daily for 13 weeks. I really hope this is a good fit for them. The idea of slogging through several more years of daily R&S lessons gives me a rock in my stomach! I really did love R&S4, but enough is enough! Has anyone BTDT? I do hope AG will work for them! I might spread out season one of AG over the remaining of the year instead of daily for 13 weeks. Has anyone done that? Thanks for listening. I will update this thread when we get further along this rocky grammar journey!

Listen to SWB's writing lecture for elementary. I would focus on reading skills and let her write stories if she wants to. Is she doing handwriting/penmanship? Maybe a little of that if she tolerates it. She is very small. Let her learn to love to learn before making her sweat

My experience is that we tried it twice and both times, it started too easy but progressed without much understanding. Yes we tried the workbook. I thought it would work for ds' learning style but it just didn't. The up side is resale is great with TT, so you aren't out too much $ if it doesn't work.

That's what I was thinking!

Cool!

Treasured conversations would be great, except that there is grammar. Personally, I would drop EG if I did treasured, especially because you need to simplify. There is plenty of grammar for third grade in TC. They do get a chance to finish stories, so there is some free writing in it.

Not sure the best place to ask this.... What will SWB be working on after WWS3? wWStyle?

I agree drop life of Fred and make sure you have a solid math program for older dd. I love math mammoth and it only requires occasional help from me. As far as younger dd, require 30 min of her reading per day before she can finish her school day. my kids get 30 min of screen time per day after they read at least 30min per day. Best wishes

We loved FLL3, R&S4 and then decided to do Hake6 at half pace because I wanted to spend less time on grammar. The kids hated it and we bailed mid year. This year, they asked for R&S6 but we are getting lost in the forest. I hate changing AGAIN but there is far too much to wade through, and the thought of doing that for several more years was too much to bear. I'm leaning toward Analytical Grammar but did look at ctge samples. Couldn't tell enough from the samples. Looks like an awful lot of writing. But seeing that there are fewer lessons than R&S at the higher grades, maybe that's ok. Ds is doing WWS1 and dd is doing TC plus WWE so we really don't need more writing.

Here is where we are with 6th grade. We are at week 5. Spelling - R&S 7 Grammar - R&S 6 Math mammoth 6 and then into MM pre algebra Writing - WWS1 (probably won't finish it all this year but staying on schedule for as long as possible) Science - BJU 6 without the videos History - mystery of History vol 3 just reading, doing ipad timeline summaries and some mapping Bible - old story new devotions and scripture reading Literature - some assigned reading, lit guides and read alouds to go with his age and the history cycle Co-OP does (light) Spanish, music, art & phy ed. Boy Scouts & tennis Plus some logic liftoff and vocabulit it we have time. For some reason, this feels like a very full schedule

My writing-hating 12 year old is doing quite well with writing with skill on week 5. I think this parts to whole work is definitely the way to go with him. The small incremental skill building is done very eell

I am in a few if my fav yarn store and designers (Joji, Mr. yarn, baby cocktails, madeline tosh) Top down sweaters is nice - the easiest way to knit a sweater and try on as you go.

I enjoyed the documentary.

We are using Mystery of History. Love it

We did BJU Science 5 last year and 6 this year. I was going to do the online version, but ended up using the money toward our homeschool co-op instead. It can be somewhat independent even without the videos, but I agree you need the TM. I read the science lesson to them some times, and let them do it on their own other times. We use the activity book, which IMO is important unless you were going to do some detailed outlines or note taking.