We didn't get into AAS until this year, although my son is loving it. BUT, for my next son, who starts kindergarten next year, this is what I have planned for first grade, assuming he's at about where my first son was last year: --AAS (of course) --SL Readers 2 (IF he's finished 100EZ and whatever other phonics stuff I throw at him. Our local library has Bob Books, for example.) Believe it or not, these were pitched just perfectly for my oldest son, although he got a little sick of the Bible story book by the end. --WWE 1 --HWT (Although my oldest used ARfH, my second is a lefty.) --Occasional showing (and singing!) of Schoolhouse Rock's Grammar Rock video, for a fun introduction to the parts of speech. (We're using R&S grammar, which doesn't begin until the second grade.) My oldest liked the Explode the Code books 4-6 in first grade. I'm not sure about using those when we're doing AAS, too. I might switch off with them, trying to find the lessons that reinforce what we're already doing, or I might just skip it, since those are expensive consumables. I just don't know yet.

Well, as the Greathall Production site puts it, "Most Greathall recordings are now available from your favorite digital supplier. This service is also available from Peace Hill Press and can be purchased at: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/store/greathall.html." But they tend to be a lot cheaper at Amazon than at Peace Hill, as the previous poster pointed out. (The link takes you to the Jim Weiss MP3 page, although there are more available from Amazon than are listed there, for some reason. The Galileo and the Stargazers album listed above isn't included, for instance, although it's available from Amazon here.)

Wow, this is like a recurring nightmare I've had. (Interspersed with the ones where I'm the student and have forgotten to take the class until test time, of course.)

I don't really have advice for you, but I can give you my experience so far: My son did WWE in the first grade, but I put grammar off until second. (Well, we did a little grammar with Sonlight LA, which is what I started with, but pretty soon moved away from that and ended up with WWE and no grammar beyond what we talked about with the WWE work.) This year I started him on R&S English 2 (the lowest level they have) for his grammar, while continuing on to WWE2. (R&S English 2 is very grammar-heavy, and very "composition" light, particularly when you do most of the homework orally, as we do.) It's worked well for us so far. I think in part it's because my son has to listen to enough reading during the day, and really loved getting his own stuff to read with R&S. (I did "try" FLL with him, with a copy checked out from the library, but it was a total flop.)

I said both, but really, I used the textbook last year and the workbook this year. So it's not like I'm using them simultaneously... But they're both wonderful!

Biblioplan fills some of that criteria as well. In particular, it tries to be a "-History highly literature intensive learning about the west and the east, integrating missions, and cultures, art/artist, musicians" (except maybe for theeastern culture; I know it does the rest). It doesn't include science, memory work, writing, etc., however. If you get the crafts book, it has some of those hands-on activities. For "IG, Commentary, with Socratic questioning," have you considered Truthquest? A lot of people seem to like it, although I personally think that it's a little too full of breathless narration, judging by the samples. (It seems like every sentence that isn't a question ends in an exclamation point! Ouch!!!) Both of these programs are set up to have multiple ages work together.

I'll say "Wow!" too! (Now, how do I save threads, again? Oh, yeah, that's right...)

We're going to try Meet the Great Composers for music appreciation next year. It's a workbook/CD approach to composer study. It looks interesting, anyway.

My oldest son, who turns eight in a few more months, started his piano lessons two and a halfish years ago, when he was about five and a quarter. He loves his piano, and he's so good at it. (I'd love to say he gets it from his father's side, or that it skips a generation on mine, but the truth appears to be that I am the most unmusical person on either side, here. So very sad.) So in our case, it was definitely not too young! I highly recommend Faber & Faber's Piano Adventures series, if your piano teacher lets you choose or offers it as an option. It's awesome--and it's awesome to listen to right from the start. (When I had piano lessons as a child, we were using the Schaum series. The first book was both boring and painful. That's never an issue with PA, in my experience.)

We almost never do the dictation... because *I* hate it. My son loves showing off how well he can remember the passage, but we really only do three days a week, and guess which day is usually dropped as being less valuable. That said, we're only in WWE2, so my son has usually gotten a good long look at his dictation sentences the day before, when doing his copywork. (The weeks we get around to it, that is.)

Am I the only person in the world who really can't stand T. H. White? Wow. How depressing. But I really can't stand T. H. White. That said, The Sword in the Stone was fairly fun, if preachy. (And, of course, I didn't even agree with the preaching!) Trying to read further in that series was just painful and gruesome, though. (Albeit less preachy, I think.) I would recommend Bulla's Sword in the Tree for your older two to read themselves, as well. My son was reading it by the end of first grade, although it was a bit of a stretch for him! It's very fun, and available at many local libraries.

Well, I love Cathy Duffy's 100 Top Picks. It's not free, though, if that's what you're requesting.

Along the same lines as Visualize World Geography, have you considered Audio Memory's Geography Songs? (I assume it's along the same lines; I've never heard of VWG, let alone seen it.) You can buy the CD kit or just the mp3 tracks through Amazon; the kit contains a book with a map for each song, but it's not like you can't use other good maps for that, along with a description of famous places complete with clipart. (Honestly, Wikipedia would probably serve you better there.) The songs are useful with or without the book, in any case.

We went another direction and got this, except that ours only had two chairs, not four. It's worked very well for two years now. Sure, my kids will outgrow it, but by then they'll probably be ready for the adult-sized table. And sure, it's not quite as durable as some of the other tables, but since it only costs $50.00 in the first place, that isn't really as big a problem as you may think. I love how you can use dry-erase markers, wet-erase markers, and crayons on the table surface. Plus, you can fold it up easily when you really want to get the floor clean, or to move it into the dining room for a "kids table" when there's company.

One author that has been recommended several times on threads like this, particularly for young readers--and that was not reviewed by Ms. Williams--is Edward Eggleston. Particularly, A First Book in American History and Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans are recommended. Like Mara Pratt's books, these were written over a century ago; like The American Story, they consist mainly of biographical sketches, particularly the latter. (I must say that a series of biographies does seem like the best way to teach history to young children.) Since these are in the public domain, you can peruse them for yourself and see if you think they are too antiquated, folkloric, or biased for you to use. Google Books has a version of The New Century History of the United States (now in print as A First Book in American History) complete with pictures, for example. Also left off Ms. Williams' review is All American History by Bright Idea Press, the makers of Mystery of History. (The author of the former, however, is Celeste W. Rakes, who definitely did not write the latter.) If you're willing to buy their textbook and teacher's guide, you can also buy the recently produced "Junior" supplement as a download (for almost fifty dollars) to make the books work for younger-than-middle-school students. Wow, I'm beginning to see why this resource wasn't reviewed by Ms. Williams. :p

Honestly, this seems like the kind of situation that Life of Fred was made for. On the other hand, I've never used Life of Fred myself, so I don't really know. Sorry, I'm not really much help. :p

:iagree: This is what I use, too, and it sounds exactly like what you want. The level I use doesn't cover "the moral of a story," but since the knotty issue of theme can be difficult for college lit majors to tangle with, that may be just as well. (I was a college lit major, and I know whereof I speak.) I just wrote a really long list of what it does cover, and then realized that you can, in fact, see the table of contents from the link I gave you. The book is made up of perforated pages you are meant to tear out and copy. To help keep my pages neat despite my small children, I went ahead and bought a binder and use page protectors for my torn-out pages, and that's worked perfectly well.

Why not just buy card covers (like for recipe cards) or card sleeves (like for baseball cards)? Check your local kitchen goods, game, or sports paraphernalia store; I have a feeling they're probably cheaper when you don't have to worry about shipping. Don't bother getting them for the Word Cards, I completely agree on that. Then, in a few years, you can use them for your recipe cards! (Or your baseball cards, whatever.) Just a thought.

Well, I would definitely not go with Sonlight, since coordinating four kids through that would be haywire. I'm planning on switching to Biblioplan next year. It's much like ToG in ways which mean that it's supposed to be good for multiple kids. (ToG is way too confusing for me, what with the sixty million things you have to coordinate per week. Biblioplan seems much more streamlined. Not to mention cheaper.) There are loads of add-ons, too; for instance, they have maps for your students to fill in every week that seem pretty neat. (But which also make it much less cheap. :p) On the other hand, the program doesn't lay things out quite as thoroughly as Sonlight does. However, Biblioplan lets you choose what history "spine" you would prefer to use. Two of those are The Mystery of History and Story of the World, and I know both of those are available in audiobook format. It may be helpful to get those, so you can focus on corraling the littles while their older siblings are "doing" history. (I'm assuming the three you aren't teaching are younger.) Plus, a little reinforcement of a lesson in the car or at bedtime never hurt, right? So, yeah, audiobooks are good things in general with multiple kids. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Speaking of audio versions of things, have you considered Geography Songs for your geography learning? The page I linked to has a general weekly plan for the 33 songs that makes a lot of sense, but it might also be overkill. Just having your children listen to the song multiple times will help with general name recognition, though, and then you can just pick a song for the week and pull out the book of maps as you listen. (And hey, this resource comes from Sonlight! This is part of what my son is doing for his second grade, Core C.)

First off, for an easier workbook approach to logic, have you considered the [/url]Blast Off with Logic series from Prufrock Press? I've had good experiences with Prufrock Press so far, so I don't hesitate to recommend it! It looks like Orbiting with Logic ends about where your trouble began with Critical Thinking Level 1, so you could then move back to that. Or, here's Nathaniel Bluedorn's recommendations for learning logic. (Not all of them are even his books!) If you're interested in just learning this stuff for yourself and then using what you've paid good money for, Blue Storm, a "mostly free introduction to critical thinking and elementary sentential logic," might help. (By mostly free, they mean they'll take donations, in the form of buying from Amazon through them.) Or maybe you'll prefer this free logic textbook written by Waner and Costanoble to supplement their math texts; it seems fairly clear and straightforward. Here's a free course on symbolic logic from the philosophy department of Lander University, although, sadly, it's using slightly different symbols. All of the links in this paragraph were written for adults, though, not children. Good luck!

Better quality books from/putatively about the nineties: Holes by Louis Sachar, Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli. Both of these deal in large part with racial issues, but that's where my brain headed with the first part of your question. Both also have fairy tale/tall tale aspects to them, but are meant to be set in "contemporary" America. Holes is probably a little heavy for your daughter, but I thought I'd throw it out there, since it's such an excellent book; Maniac Magee is just plain wonderful. Oddly, Amazon recommends Holes for 10 and up, and Maniac Magee for 11 and up, although I'd put it the other way around. Not read by me, but recommended elsewhere: The Empty Schoolhouse by Natalie Carlson. It's set in the early seventies and deals with desegregation and "white flight." Along the same lines, The Story of Ruby Bridges is a picture book that seems popular on Amazon. Of course, it's a biography, not a story, but I thought it might work for that read-aloud. Personally, I think Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is not meant for a ten-year-old. Then again, I hated it when I read it in junior high English, and even more when I read it in college for my kiddy lit class, so maybe I'm just extremely biased against it. Still, I think the writing and story would be pretty hard for me to understand at ten years old.

Check out the stuff available at Homeschool Share. Your son is probably at Level One. Note that many of the books should be available at even a "cruddy" library (or maybe your friendly local yard sale/thrift store), such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?; Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom; and The Poky Little Puppy. I hope this helps you get started, at least! If you do decide to go with Before Five in a Row or Five in a Row, Homeschool Share has many wonderful resource to supplement those programs, as well, particularly if your son enjoys making lapbooks. (Mine did!)

Specific tip for Core B: Definitely drop Peoples of the World. That was an excruciating read. Maybe you could put it on your bookshelf for your daughter to flip through herself, but otherwise, I'd just skip it. Start with Archaeologists Dig for Clues instead, and you'll be off to a great start. As others have said, the LA was lacking. I assume you'll be doing something like Grade 3 or 4+ Readers for your oldest daughter; don't do the associated LA. (Although actually, our LA--Grade 2, actually--was exactly where my son needed to be for copywork and grammar; it was just the composition half of the week that stank.) Feel free to "skim" the Usborne books, reading the main paragraphs and asking questions about the pictures, or letting your daughter find what interests her there. Mountain Born is a lovely book, but is probably a little too difficult for your kindergarteners to understand. Ditto for Understood Betsy. (On the plus side, since Understood Betsy is in the public domain, you can easily choose a version of it recorded for Librivox and let your older daughter enjoy it all on her own!) I hope this helped a little.

My kids aren't near that old yet, so I don't know anything about how kids are in 4th and 5th grades, but that's probably when what they have to say really starts getting interesting, but you have to cut them off to deal with the third toilet-dunking session of the day. Hey, I struggle with only three kids, only one of which is actually in school, so I can sympathize. Here's a couple of tips: --For read-alouds for the older kids: are any of the books available on CD or MP3? (Librivox, if they're in public domain?) I wouldn't do this for all of them, but an occasional break from the grind to have someone else read has worked wonders for me. Just the week before last my son finished up listening to The Cricket in Times Square read by Rene Auberjonois, which we'd checked out from the library. He loved it! (He listened to it at bedtime--several times through, in fact--so his four-year-old brother was regaling me with the story of how Chester ate the money, which was a nice little bonus.) As a bonus, this could even be done as "carschooling," assuming you have a player in the car, and maybe those Tuesday/Thursday afternoons could contribute to your homeschooling after all! --I've heard that Sonlight K can be kind of strange, if done as scheduled. Maybe you should try reading through each book, instead of across all of them (if you aren't already)? Definitely drop anything you don't like; kindergarteners have far more important things to do than listen to stories even Mommy thinks are stupid! --As for art: I hear you. I totally drop the ball with art every year. It's just such a pain to keep the younger kids out of the mess. I have enough marks on the wall and floors to not want any more!

Have you considered going all out and getting him a calligraphy set? Or what about Getty-Dubay, which is apparently a somewhat similar concept? He might take pride in his letter formation, then. Just a thought!