I'd agree on getting phonics, math, and handwriting covered when you get to the point where you need handwriting. (I didn't really do handwriting until first--my son just didn't have the fine motor skills required.) Even math doesn't need to be much of anything--we used MUS's "Primer," which is a completely optional introduction to math concepts. What I did use for the rest of my "curriculum" was Five in a Row, in which you take one book and read it for five days, covering Social Studies one day, Literature another, Math another, Science yet another, and Art last. We also used Homeschool Share's free lapbooking pages for FiaR. If you want to do something similar, don't feel like you have to buy that curriculum (although it does nicely lay everything out for you): make up your own using your favorite books or search the 'net for free unit study resources. Homeschool Share has a whole page, for example! I wouldn't start a more formal study until first grade--he won't remember much of it anyhow, if you ask me. :p Make sure to have some fun!

For grammar, I would recommend Rod & Staff English, which I have heard recommended for kids with learning disabilities because the page isn't too busy--I don't know if that applies in ADHD or not, though. It is very, very easy to convert the work in R&S to oral versions (which I often do with my writing-hating son) and/or do less than all that are given. (I always figure they put a few extra problems in textbooks either as "makework" or to provide more for a child who is having trouble grasping a concept.) You could combine that with WWE, and you'd have what my son is doing this year. (Of course, you may be farther along than "2" with each of them. :p) The only problem with R&S is that it is very MENNONITE, which means that, culturally, a lot of the examples are what most city-dwellers would consider a little odd. Occasionally, the theology pops up, too, but it's never been much of a problem for me--and I'm definitely not Mennonite, though I do live in the country. (I'm Reformed Presbyterian, actually, which is pretty far away from Anabaptist.) By the way, the link above is to Heart of Dakota only because they give a good overview of the material. See the other current thread on where to buy Rod & Staff supplies.

Drawn Into the Heart of Reading works in part because it is fairly open-ended, allowing the student to choose what they want within genre restrictions. However, this does make it difficult to talk about literary techniques that may or may not be present in a particular work. The recommendation above to use something like Figuratively Speaking may be just what you need. Alternately, you could also choose to vary your reading occasionally with required reading that includes a literary concept you want your child to learn. HINT: There are very few literary techniques done in prose that are not also found (and usually more abundantly) in poetry. Poetry reading can be fairly short and simple and still cover a concept (such as imagery or metonymy). See here for a few resources that could help you supplement DITHOR, as well as checking out these two pages. For your high schoolers, have you considered challenging them with some college material? Essential Literary Terms: A Norton Guide with Exercises certainly looks interesting. In my AP English class, we had to memorize the entire glossary at the end of Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense. It was surprisingly useful to me as a lit major later. (The link is to the pricey new edition, but I have no idea why the version I used, which after all was printed in 1993, not 1903, wouldn't work just as well for a whole lot cheaper.) Of course, if your children aren't terribly interested in literature, this could very well be overkill. Finally, you could always check out what Rainbow Resources has to offer in their "TEACHING LITERARY ELEMENTS / GENRES" section.

If you don't mind Christian programs, have you checked out Meaningful Composition? It looks a lot less teacher-intensive than IEW, which sounds like half your problem. It does incorporate ideas, such as KWO, from IEW, as well as some other ideas from Writing for 100 Days and Understanding Writing. It still may be a little challenging for your children--check out the free samples to see what you think. Of course, if your children are absolutely bursting with ideas to write about and don't want to be constrained to the guided approach that MC uses, this program probably won't work for you, just as really artistic kids are a bad fit for "how to draw" books. However, that doesn't sound like it's your problem.

Wow. Where's the Spanish and Italian? I found French, British, Greek, Chinese, and American as flags on the little castle, but no Spanish. (In fact, I tried typing in "schoolofspanish/" at the end of the url to replace "schooloffrench/," but it didn't get me anywhere.)

I would recommend a genre-based study for lit comprehension, at least to start with. That'll help break you out of the purely history-based reading it sounds like you've been doing, and provide your son with some valuable skills for literature comprehension. I don't know if you are strictly secular, but if not, Drawn Into the Heart of Reading (DITHOR) looks like a fascinating, if expensive, example of what I mean.

And, whoops! I forgot about this completely free (albeit secular) approach: Classical House of Learning. Unfortunately, it only covers the first two cycle years in logic stage, and nothing in rhetoric.

I, too, absolutely adore Hillyer's A Child's History of the World. CHOW is great for reading a chapter or so every couple days to your six-year-old--the chapter are just about exactly the right length. Supplement it with whatever other age-appropriate books you can find. (My son loved Tut's Mummy: Lost and Found, even grabbing it to read himself, although he was close to seven by then; and Pompeii: Buried Alive! was also extraordinarily popular.) Following the program from Sonlight, we also got a few Usborne books. Sure, the pictures in them are pretty neat, but they were very hard to use with my son at six. (Actually, they're still kind of hard at seven!) So perhaps those coloring books would be better! I would also recommend a timeline, just to start getting a sense of the scale of history in your child's head. For TaraTheLiberator: And we had to skip the first chapter because it was too evolutionary for us! I guess you really can't please everyone. I enjoy the book despite it having a vague cultural monotheist perspective occasionally, definitely not because of it. But for the opposite reason from you, it sounds like.

If you don't mind paying for a history-through-literature curriculum, there are several programs available that use the Well-Trained Mind as a platform and give specific instructions for each stage and cycle. A secular option, for instance, is History Odyssey from Pandia Press. This one breaks it up by cycle year and stage, meaning that you might have to buy two for your first cycle year, to cover your two possible learning stages, logic and rhetoric. There are free samples available of this program. (Although I've never checked them out, as I am not interested in a secular program, I have done some of Pandia's R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey free samples with my son. Those were pretty hefty chunks of the program--a good quarter of a year or so. It was enough to let me know that the program didn't really fit our needs, at least.) Another (very popular) option, this time Christian, is Tapestry of Grace from Lampstand Press. This one breaks the cycle up by year, but includes all the stages for each year. If you get the online version, it gives you free updates for books that are out of print. It also offers a free sample of the first three weeks of the first year, which gives you more of a sense of how it works. Since ToG seems to have a very, very steep learning cycle, I would definitely recommend checking out the free sample before buying wholesale, particularly since it's a hefty $170.00 (for the digital edition) a year, although you can buy the four units that make up a year separately. (They're even more expensive that way, added up.) However, since each year covers all the ages from elementary to high school, you can lower the cost you paid per year if you stick with Tapestry of Grace for more than one four-year cycle. It's still way too much for me, though. Which is why Biblioplan appeals to me. While the total price can still add up quickly, Biblioplan splits its program up into pieces, so you only buy what interests you. If you don't want coloring pages, maps, etc., you can still get the core of the program, the Guide, for less than $30.00 a year for the e-book (less than $40.00 for the print). Even if you get the "bundles" for a specific age group, they're less than $90.00 a year (as opposed to ToG's $170.00, for instance). Like Tapestry of Grace, however, the Guide and Teacher's Companion are meant to cover all three stages. And it's easy to switch between levels--if you decide to do logic stage one week and rhetoric the next, that's fine. If you alternate logic and rhetoric for a few months, that's fine, too. (ToG is probably like that, too, but that program just confuses me.) Plus, Biblioplan gives free updates to resources you purchase from them (but not when you buy used, obviously). The downside to Biblioplan is that their literature selections are apparently sometimes controversial, and much more often hard to find. Unfortunately, while the new Well-Trained Mind does offer quite a few book lists, they aren't comprehensive enough to plan all your schooling around. The Story of the World's AGs may help some, but it sounds like your kids are aging out of the target range. Another possibility, if you just hate paying curriculum developers, is to look at the scopes and sequences of some of the above programs (or whatever you can find) and try to do the work yourself of developing a schedule and finding good literature to flesh it out. If you do that, may I recommend a resource? Christine Miller has compiled All Through the Ages, a bibliography culled from popular homeschooling catalogs and elsewhere, and separated them out by reading level and historical period (and/or geographical area). Annotations are included, which sometimes give appraisals of a book, sometimes inform about reasons the book may be contraindicated (such as evolutionary content or level of violence), and sometimes merely indicate what the book is about. I bought the e-book of this for $20.00, and have been very impressed so far. (I am planning to use it to make up for shortcomings of Biblioplan I listed above.) I hope this little tour of resources available to help you out is helpful and not just long-winded. Happy homeschooling!

We got How to Report on Books, Grades 1-2, by Jill Norris. So far, I've just been doing the recommended books and filling the sheets out with my son, making him write some things (like character names) and writing longer bits myself. (He enjoys drawing, where that's included.) I do plan on eventually making him do reports completely by himself for books he's reading. That's how I'm "bridging that gap." She also has a 3rd-4th grade version, as well as Pre-K to K and 5th-6th.

EVERY child is a "Wiggly Willy" at four and a half. (Except my sister's. She's got eight kids, and another on the way, her husband's the pastor, and yet they still sit still every Sunday. It's kind of disgusting, to be honest.) Anyhow, my son loved Math-U-See Primer. Don't worry about retention, with Primer--it'll all be covered again, in Alpha and Beta. Primer is much more about having fun with blocks and beginning to get some of the concepts covered. I wrote all the answers my son gave through Primer and partway through Alpha--the coordination required for writing the numbers can be a bit much, at that age. And if your son ends up hating it, you can feel free to switch to another math program. The blocks are the big expense, and it's not like you can't use them with another program, right? I don't know much about Oak Meadow, but all we did for my son in kindergarten was math, phonics, and Five in a Row, and it worked out fine. Really, kindergarten is a year for relaxing and having fun while easing into lessons--if you feel like Oak Meadow will allow you to do that, go for it! I'm going to end up being one of those strident preachers here, but let me tell you something you've probably already figured out: DO NOT PUSH YOUR KINDERGARTENER. Yes, learning to sit still and listen to Mommy is something he needs to learn, just as a general life skill, but if a particular lesson seems to be too much, back off. Try it again the next day, a little at a time. Give yourself ten or fifteen minutes on an egg timer for phonics lessons, and then stop when you get there, no matter how little you've covered. If you reach the end of the year and your son has learned absolutely nothing, take a deep breath, roll your shoulders, and remember that many parents hold their kids back a year, and your son hasn't lost his eligibility for college scholarships, all right? Compared to loads of kids on these boards, my oldest son is S-L-O-W. He didn't really start reading (by which I mean decoding words) until the end of kindergarten, and he's only really getting into chapter books now, at the beginning of second grade. But he's a year ahead of where Sonlight would put him in his reading, actually, and I think he's right on track. All of which is really meant to say: Welcome to the wonderful world of homeschooling. It looks like you've got a pretty good idea of what you want for your son, and I hope you enjoy the ride! P.S. for later on: For loads of titles to use in a "real books" kind of classroom for history, geography, and even a little bit of other subjects, consider Christine Miller's All Through the Ages, particularly if you don't have a problem with a very Christian perspective. It's a little pricey at $20.00 for an e-book, but it takes a lot of books from various homeschool catalogs, such as Veritas Press, Sonlight, and Beautiful Feet Books, as well as Newbery winners and a boatload of "none of the above," and breaks them down by historical period, reader (or listener) ages, and genre, such as "Biography," "Culture," "Overview," etc. Brief annotations are included to indicate strengths or weaknesses of many of the books (including warnings against potential problems parents may have, such as an evolutionary background for a science or ancient history book, or a high level of violence). The author's inclusion of historical timelines is somewhat helpful, but most of her additional information, particularly in the beginning (ancient history), is less helpful (by which I mean often a little nutty).

Well, I absolutely love the Ten Days in _________ series. It's really helped me with my geography--I play it with my husband occasionally. And my oldest son has certainly enjoyed playing with us, too. Ten Days in the U.S.A. costs about $20.00 from Amazon. Of course, this is more to help learn geographical location than anything, although the cards do include capitals. It doesn't help learn any of those extras you were talking about, though. NOTE: I have not actually played Ten Days in the U.S.A. yet, although my husband did purchase a copy. We've only played the Africa version. My understanding is that they're all very similar, though.

Oh, I would LOVE to use Cadron Creek's Where the Brook and River Meet, a unit study using the Anne of Green Gables series. Unfortunately, not only are my children all too young for it (which will change), they're all the wrong gender. Pooh. I'm still looking at that Narnian Chronicles unit study, though...

It all depends which style guide you're using, sadly. Check out this article, which is a good intro. I like the "five-letter guide," myself.

Why in particular is it any better than the Sonlight microscope, which includes the mechanical stage in its price, and so is about $10 cheaper, not considering the shipping. (Also, you can get the 100xr lens for the Sonlight microscope for an additional $100.00. Can you do something like that for the National Optical 131-CLED?) I'm not really trying to defend Sonlight, here; I just want to know what is superior about the brand you prefer. Is it just that it has LED lighting, and why would you consider that a better choice?

I really, really like All Through the Ages, from Nothing New Press, as a supplement. (I'm planning on using it to supplement Biblioplan next year, actually.) It doesn't have as many resources for the youngest age group (1st through 3rd) as it does for the older ones on many topics, though. There probably just isn't as much available for the littles, to be honest. I like how it breaks things down for me, though, so that I don't have to do all the legwork myself to find a good resource when the one I want is unavailable.

Here's an example from HomeschoolShare.com of a lapbook for Ping, the first book "rowed" in Volume One of Five in a Row.

We're doing Sonlight Core 2/C (after doing 1/B last year), and they do Child's History of the World (which I LOVE) supplemented with Usborne Encyclopedia and Usborne Time Traveller. The writing in the latter is pretty deadly dull, usually, (although Time Traveller is a lot better than the Encyclopedia--then again, it only covers four time periods,) but there are no pictures with the former. The combination seems to work pretty well for my son. I do supplement by occasionally making him draw and write History Scribe pages, though...

I'm drooling over the Sonlight Ultra Microscope. I don't own it (yet), so I can't really tell you much about it. The page is really informative about all the "extra" features it has, though, so at least you can learn a little more about microscopes. It's very pricey, though--$230.00. Just a heads up.

We're using Rod and Staff, and I really like it. It's fairly quick, gentle, and you can easily skip the non-grammar lessons. I do stick with going over the assignment orally, often, just because my son does enough writing elsewhere in his day. (Plus, I sometimes do odds or evens, or only the questions that make sense considering our homeschool setting, or only one of the two exercises given, etc.) But if you decided to fall on the "not enough time" side of things instead of the "my child has been writing too much today," then you can certainly assign them the assignments. I've done that a time or two--there's no better way to pound some kinds of rules into a child's head then making them spend the time needed to sweat them out in ink. As caveats to some things I said in the last paragraph: we are in the first book, R&S English 2. Apparently they get more difficult later on. (Of course, later on, your children will presumably be literate enough to read and write things on their own.) Also, the last section of the book is on dictionary usage, and so forth, and I'm going to do that even though it isn't strictly "grammar," because that content isn't really covered elsewhere in our school lessons. If you do decide on using R&S English 2, don't worry too much about the instructor's manual. It's one of those where the lessons are so easy that you really don't need it. (I have it, because I bought used at the local homeschool resale shop, but I only use it when my son has had enough of sitting next to me on the couch, and would rather sit across from me on the other couch.) I am never going to be using R&S English as my composition component--there's just not enough there. Right now, we're sticking with WWE, which is working just fine for my son, much though he's beginning to resent "summarizing."

THIS. I used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which a lot of people don't like. It worked great for my son, though, because he was eager to GET READING. It does something similar. I would recommend teaching some of the common words (like "the" and "a") by sight, so that they can head towards reading full sentences sooner rather than later. (Is there some phonics rule that fits "a"? "When a word is made up of one letter, a vowel, that vowel is long. 'I,' 'a,' and the archaic 'O' are three words that fit this 'rule.'" That's because they're the only one-letter words in the English language!) If you want to teach sight words "in context," by telling your child that the word is "the," "a," "I," or whatever when you run across it instead of giving them a little heads up before the reading part, that's fine, too. Also, when you teach the lesson on phonics that covers that word, use the word that they already know as an example. ("Remember, the 'th' in 'the' says 'th' just like that!) I think it helps the lesson "stick" a little better. But then again, I've never been tempted to flashcard sight words. In fact, I hate flash cards so much that I bought my son a Flashmaster so he could drill himself on basic math facts. For me, sight words shouldn't be emphasized above the phonics--they should just be "gotten over" so that kids can use their phonics to start decoding all the new words on the page.

:iagree: I loved, loved, loved this curriculum for kindergarten. (It may have been okay to go on to first grade with, although the available books get scarcer in Volumes 3 and 4.) But I found it a great balance to do phonics and math separately, and then have this for our "other" lesson of the day. There are loads of programs that do what seems to me to be WAY TOO MUCH for kindergarten, and I'm really, really glad I went with this one, instead. That said, I really can't imagine doing just this much past kindergarten. (Skimpy is the word, here.) On the other hand, having done this unit studies for kindergarten really helped me by giving me a slightly different way of thinking about the books we read for my oldest son's classes now. (Whoops, I'm supposed to be talking about downsides, here. Well, then: SKIMPY.)

Well, I bought the first two volumes of Five in a Row used. I think one was from E-bay and one was from Amazon. The only thing that was missing was that one of the story circles (I think Ping, the first one) had been cut out of the first book. I may go ahead and pay the extra money for the colored, laminated story circles from FIAR themselves for when my next son gets to kindergarten, though--it was way too much trouble for me to do them myself. (I'm so lazy.) I loved this curriculum for my son's kindergarten, but I think it would be way too puny for elementary. I know, I know, there's "Beyond Five in a Row" for that...but still! In my strange mind, unit studies work great for kindergarten and maybe for junior high/high school, but in elementary they should be getting more of a comprehensive grounding and understanding of things like the timeline. I would second the recommendation for homeschoolshare.com's folders. I found TheHomeSchoolMom a better place to start, though, as it gave links to lots of places, including each homeschoolshare.com page. I also went to Google Images each week and searched for pretty pictures to print out on a color printer. My son had fun cutting those out and arranging them with the various minibooks, wheels, etc., from Homeschool Share to be glued into his lapbooks. As for availability--the only book I had trouble getting hold of was the Babar one, which, truth to tell, was not the best book in the world, anyhow. I may buy one of their one-off books to replace it next time I go through. Though if you feel like skipping books for movies one week, the Babar episode it is based on is available for free on youtube. And that way you get to hear the music, which is a large part of the story, anyhow. I skipped The Clown of God entirely because, much though I may love DePaola's Strega Nona and The Cloud Book, that story is just way, way, way too Catholic for me. I didn't want to try explaining it to my five-year-old, so I just skipped it. (Oddly enough, I wasn't trying to keep it secular at all. We're reformed Christians. So, in this case, by Catholic I apparently mean idolatrous. Wow. Let's just say, this is apparently a sticky subject for me, and move on.)

This is what we do. I mean, I'm not sure my seven-year-old son is quite up to fourth- and fifth-grade reading level yet, but he's doing fine with Sonlight's third-grade readers, and is given unlimited "free reading" time reading whatever children's books he wants, whether from our library or the public one. I've also been known to have directed reading time of about half an hour a day, where I'll check out nonfiction books whose content matches what we've been studying in history or science. Some of these are way too hard for him to read, since I've really gotten them for the pictures (particularly science diagrams). I always try to have a mix of selections available in his basket to choose from and/or flip through, so he doesn't feel intimidated or bored by the hard books.

I'm not really a help. But Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse has free clipart of famous people. It also may have some of the places/landmarks you're interested in, scattered through Architecture and Countries & Regions, or in color in one of the categories over at ClipPix ETC. Or, of course, just pick up one of those glossy full-colored tourist guides or coffee-table books from the library on the country in which you're interested. If you want a little more guidance, you could go with the Fandex series. There's Explorers, Composers, Painters, and Presidents, for example. Or there's the Picture History series by Gillian Clements, which covers Explorers, Inventors, and Buildings that she has deemed "Great." Then, of course, there's Usborne Illustrated EVERYTHING, that'll probably have what you want, as well. Really, you'll probably have to narrow down what you want a little more, and you'll find plenty of books available to give it to you. Or you can look it up yourself, whether at the ETC site linked above or on Google Images.