To add to the list above: Zaner-Bloser lets you make your own worksheets. Along with choosing the year (for the widths of the lines) on the right hand side, you must remember to select "Cursive" in the drop-down box on the top left of the screen. (Actually, you can alternate between Manuscript and Cursive in this program, which is pretty neat.)

I see your thirteen-year-old is already doing Apologia Biology. Some people manage to do an Apologia Elementary book in one semester (or even less time!)--see this thread or this thread for confirmation. In particular, Apologia Botany seems to be short enough to get done in one semester. Here's a schedule to do exactly that from Core Foundations, for example. (WARNING: link is a Word document file). Just trying to provide another option!

:iagree:I, too, would recommend more review using your cards. Don't forget to review the key cards, too--those are the "rules," after all, and there are a lot fewer of them than word cards, so if you need to remind her of an old rule she's not applying, reminding her of the appropriate key card could really help. Also, I usually introduce the cards in the lesson they pertain to. Then I put them in the "review" category, mixing them up with those from previous lessons. When I'm several lessons ahead, I go ahead and do ten cards, which will hopefully be from different lessons. Any that are wrong go back in review. Any that are right go in mastered. This way, there's a little more application of the actual rule required before I can say my son has mastered his spelling. Also, as a previous poster pointed out, six is very young. Second-grade teachers at schools have to deal with the fact that most of what a kid learned in first grade is completely forgotten over the summer and needs to be retaught. Was there a long time between Level One and Level Two? Might you be dealing with something like this? (In support of this position, this review of the data points out that the summer-break effect is "most detrimental for math computation and spelling.")

Being a big fan of this board (the K-8 Curriculum one, that is), it should come as no surprise that one of my favorites is Cathy Duffy's 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum: Choosing the Right Curriculum and Approach for Your Child's Learning Style. At least, that's the only general homeschooling book I've been willing to buy new. (Even then, I got the cheaper Kindle version. :p)

For what it's worth, I'm with you on both of these issues, but these are murky areas where it comes down to preference or training in a particular tradition. First off: Ah, possessives of words ending in "s." This is one of those issues where, depending on what style manual you use, you could legitimately spell it either way. I've even seen some people claim that you can only leave the "s" off when indicating possession of archaic names! (Titus, Jesus, Flavius, etc.) Similarly, what you see as a missing comma--the last comma separating parts of a list, coming before an "and"--is known as the "Oxford comma" and is considered dispensable by many style manuals. Honestly, it seems to be like a fad: sometimes it's in, sometimes it's not.

I think second grade is a little early to worry about writing "paragraphs, intros, conclusions, etc." My son is in second grade, and he is by no means ready for that level of writing. I'm planning on working through WWE2 this ear, WWE3 next year, and then switching over to Meaningful Composition. I might also start using some story-writing prompts and so forth next year. For your older son: fourth grade is plenty old enough to talk about thesis statements, and have him find them in a paragraph, even if he's not up to actually writing them yet. Maybe you could start there? As for grammar, my son has no problems with Rod & Staff English 2. Many people don't start grammar until third grade or even later, though. Like you, I don't see much of a reason to put it off, though. I really want to get my son's grammar down so he can do a better job editing himself when he does start writing more prolifically. I don't know much about Winston, though! I do know that the oral method of First Language Lessons does not work for my son at all.

Well, my son's math program, Math-U-See, certainly fits that "expensive" profile. But you can preview it for free and see if you think it'd be worth the money to you. Warning: I got the "free DVD" and was watching it at about the same time my son was learning how to work the controls on the DVD player. By the time I realized that he'd figured that out, he was begging me to get the program. I never had that much choice on the matter! On the other hand, I'm certainly not regretting using it.

It's right here.

Well, Skating Shoes are probably usually known as "skates," so you may have a point... Except that that's the American title. The original (British) title was White Boots. Similarly, Movie Shoes was originally The Painted Garden. We Americans just kept giving her books funky "Shoe" names, presumably to brand them a bit better. The only ones with "Shoes" originally in the title are Ballet Shoes, Tennis Shoes, and Ballet Shoes for Anna, the latter of which isn't even really considered a "Shoe" book. See this link for more information.

Skating Shoes was definitely my favorite. I think I liked the incursion of the random business-man brother, but the A-plot is definitely a winner. Ballet Shoes has its own charm, as well, and many of the other "Shoes" books tie into the characters of Ballet Shoes, so your kids can enjoy thinking, "Oh, there's a Fossil! Neat!" Theater Shoes is wonderful, too. Dancing Shoes--the one you already own--was actually a disappointment to me; there are too many selfish and vain people, and the main character, while not terribly vain, is selfish in a different way, although she doesn't realize it. She gets straightened out by the end, but meanwhile, that book just draaaags. So, if you loved it, take my advice with a grain of salt! Similarly, Movie Shoes has the "difficult" (read: obnoxious) child as the main character--she's typecast as Mary Lennox because she's so surly. Also, it doesn't really seem to have much of a plot; it reads more like a short story or novella. And those are all the Shoes books I've read. I want to buy Skating Shoes for myself, though--forget not having any daughters! Why should I be deprived of my Streatfield, simply because no one else wants her? :p By the way, I found this great site for information on Streatfield's books. I second the recommendation to check out some of her other books, as well.

And I'd recommend Homeschool Skedtrack. It's a free online planner that you can print out by week at the end of the year, to show the homeschool organization what you've covered. This approach has a couple advantages: Rescheduling something won't make a big mess of the planner; and losing the planner isn't really a concern. Plus, even if you get sloppy handwriting on a bad day, the people who review your planner will never know! My son has enjoyed having a daily checklist of classes that he's able to mark up, too. I appreciate that I can make one for him without any extra work.

Following Sonlight Core B, we used Leading Little Ones to God in first grade. This is a very gentle but clear systematic theology, and I feel Schoolland has a light and deft touch with potentially divisive topics--I did not have any problems with her statements about baptism, and I'm Reformed; I feel that Baptists would find her statements about baptism equally acceptable. (Sonlight has you read a chapter of the book, and then often read the Bible passage it gives the next day in order to fit it more neatly into a year.) Also following Sonlight Core B, we read through parts of the Bible, particularly the books of Mark and Genesis, but I don't know that he actually got as much from that, sadly. He's got a longer attention span now than he did then, that's for sure!

The program I use for putting my schedule together is Homeschool Skedtrack (free online here), and this is exactly how it operates. I love that the calendar only comes in when you say you're completing something. It has honestly helped me SO MUCH. That said, I need something planned, or at least the bare bones, to help keep me accountable. But that doesn't mean I like "boxed" terribly much. Yes, I'm using Sonlight for my history, read-alouds, and readers, but I'm doing WWE for my composition and R&S for my grammar and MUS for my math... And, actually, Sonlight itself is built so that you piece together different parts for the different subjects. Their (not-terribly-good) LA is tied into the readers somewhat, but the rest of it--science, Bible, etc.--certainly isn't attached to anything. (Although, actually, Bible is included in the core. It just doesn't have anything to do with what you study in history, and you aren't required to buy those resources when buying a Core.) To do your own, here's an idea for history: find a spine you like (good luck with American history!), and add in some read-alouds of your own. All Through the Ages is the resource I personally like best for this, since it organizes possibilities so well for you, but there are loads of historically-themed lists floating around. God bless whatever you do!

And remember, when they hit college, even the bigger classes may only be three days a week... but there's way more homework! Also, my five-day-a-week classes were forty-five minutes long (at the most) in high school. If you do an hour and a half three days a week for a particular class, you're still ahead of that. (In fact, many of my teachers were never quite able to finish their lessons in one session. I remember a science teacher complaining about it.)

Also, the "y" in "shy" is pronounced "hard i," not "hard e," if you will. So obviously it's already working differently than the "y" in "happy" or "steady."

Hey, we're in our second year of SL here as well, and here's what we did: We continued with the SL readers. They're part of the core, so if you get the history and read-alouds schedule, you should also get the readers schedule, with its questions for each chapter. It comes in its own packet (since reading levels are wisely divorced from the subject matter at these levels), but it's included. Since you aren't getting SL's LA, you won't get the chart telling you when to do workbooks (Explode the Code, Plaid Phonics, or whatever), the instructions for creative writing that was waaaay above my son's head anyhow, or the instructions on copywork and related grammar associated with the readers. If you still want to do the workbooks, most of them are made to divvy up into the 36-week year anyhow, so you can easily figure out how to do it. (You could also check the sample weeks from Sonlight, and see: oh, they do two pages a day for four days a week, or whatever.) For composition, we switched from SL's LA (only the copywork and grammar discussion part of which ever got done anyhow) to WWE, and are now doing R&S English 2 for grammar. (My son does much better when reading things himself, and enough of our lessons are oral already that I really couldn't see adding FLL to that.) The switch away from SL's LA worked really well for us. I'd say, Go for it!

Yeah, I was being a little less strenuous than that ended up sounding, sorry. I didn't mean that you should teach that it was "half again," just that it (hopefully) might look something like that in her head. Though I completely agree with you on the making-them-gender-neutral thing. I'm still trying to figure out why the example ratio is two girls to three boys. (For one thing, the girls always outnumbered the boys at my school. :p) It's really hard to figure out how this would ever matter to a kid, except in that the girls are outnumbered. (You should take computer science as a minor in college--the classes there have three boys for every two girls, most of them extremely intelligent and socially stunted enough that you expressing interest in them will make their year! I mean, really, when does this exact ratio come into play as being important to ANYBODY? Except maybe for statisticians, who find all sorts of weird numbers interesting. Are there any statisticians around who can find a reason to make this exact ratio interesting to me?) By the way, I'm still singing, "Two girls for every (three!) BOOOOOOOOOY(s)!" here, so you can tell I'm not the person with the most to contribute to this thread.

Back to two girls for every three boys, since I'm determined to make this work: Due to it being scheduled at the same time as cheerleading and gymnastics practice, there are two girls for every three boys in the dance class. How many of the boys are going to be able to practice with the correct-gendered partner for each dance? You have to make the terms in the ratio mean something to each other, particularly when teaching ratios to kids. Here's another way to do it: There are two girls to every three boys in the class. They decide to play tug-of-war, girls against boys. Which team do YOU want to be on, so you don't get dragged through the dirt? If your daughter has 2/3 of the class confused with 2/3 of the number of boys, she'll say she wants to be on the girl's team, because it's bigger. (Well, plus because she's a girl, but I digress...) If she understands that there are half again as many boys as girls, she'll hopefully understand that the boys are probably going to win, because they have numbers going for them as well as machismo.

Maybe we could change the ratio to something a little more intuitive for a kid who doesn't even have large classes--the "two girls to every three boys in class" thing is already pretty abstract for her, isn't it? (Off-topic: does anyone else have the Beach Boys running through his head reading this thread?) How about this, since pies have gone over so well: You have two tarts, and three people eating dessert. That's a ratio of 2 tarts to 3 people, or 2:3, or 2/3. Your child is probably going to try to divide the tarts among the people to see how much each person can get so that it's "fair," and she'll easily see how the 2/3 fraction fits the rest of it. But it's still a 2:3 ratio. Dividing girls among the boys doesn't make as much sense at this (or any) stage, I'll admit. (Even the Beach Boys preferred a very different ratio, right?) As for how to increase and decrease fractions... They introduce that as the same time as the concept of ratios? Really? Wow, how mind-bending for a kid! I'd try to teach that concept separately, myself. Or you could point out that you'd actually figured out that 2/3 of a tart was about a perfect amount of dessert. Now you're having a Christmas party, and there will be fifteen people there, and you want to have 2/3 of a tart for all of them: How many tarts will you need? Edited because: Wow, I misspelled dessert? Really?

Not at all! I'm switching (as my .sig tries to suggest, but there's only so much space there, y'know?) because I've got two more coming along, and I really don't feel like dealing with the hassle of having to deal with multiple Sonlight cores, or modify them to fit two (and eventually three!) students. Also, I feel like Sonlight has given me a really good grounding in a good method of doing history with living books (at least for grammar stage), so I feel confident enough to go on with the more skeletal nature of Biblioplan. Plus, I didn't even discover Biblioplan until I was just about ready to order for this year, and I didn't want to switch programs last minute. (I am one of those people who feels much better about a decision when I have had a long time to think about it. I hate buyer's remorse even worse than the feeling that I get when I see something I bought last week go on a great sale... or, more likely, decide to buy something only to discover that I've missed a great sale.) I had heard of Tapestry of Grace and was considering it, but, well... It's expensive, and headache-inducing, and I'd rather not deal with it. I'll see how well I do with Biblioplan. (I have purchased All Through the Ages, by Christine Miller, and highly recommend it. It's a great resource for figuring out what materials are available covering particular historical periods/geographical locations for particular ages.)

I'm doing 100EZ for the second time with my second son, who just turned four. I agree with the time limits, with not repeating things, etc. I did buy my son the Wikki Stix alphabet cards so that he could have practice making the shapes. I'm not giving him those until Christmas, though--until then, he's practicing by tracing the shape of the letter on an index card with his pointer finger. (I got that idea from Teach Your Child to Read in Just Ten Minutes a Day.) As a previous poster suggested, we did some Explode the Code (books 4-6) after 100EZ (because it was suggested by SL LA, actually,) but although he enjoyed doing the workbooks, I'm not sure he actually learned anything from them. Now we're doing All About Spelling, so I'm not too worried about him "missing out" on phonics.

My son is doing Sonlight Core C this year for his second grade, and I am planning to switch to Biblioplan next year, so I understand how you can feel torn between two potentially great programs. I do recommend CHOW over SOTW whatever you pick, particularly for a child who is having comprehension issues. Yes, the illustrations are minimal, but the writing is so well-done and simple to understand that it almost doesn't matter. I can always find plenty of pictures online for my son, if the information isn't in Usborne's World History. (Frankly, I'm really not crazy about the Usborne products. Still, they do have a lot of pictures.) My son had far more trouble with Understood Betsy than with anything we have read this year. Then again, I think he had trouble caring, because that one is more of a girl's book. Your daughter may have the opposite problem with The Door in the Wall or Castle Diary, those being more boy-centric books. An issue that hasn't been raised yet is that Core C actually carries you from after the fall of Rome to the modern day. Then you're supposed to do two years of U.S.-only history, and then their geography thing. In other words, C would take you farther than you need to go in history for a four-year cycle. I just wanted to point that out.

I learned Aunt Sally, but I also understood WHY Aunt Sally, although not to as great a degree as letsplaymath, above. (Actually, I think they might have mentioned something like that in class, now that I think about it, but it was back in junior high, so I'm not too clear, all right?) But, yes, parentheses first because... that's what they're for. Exponents next, because an exponent clearly only relates to the number it's next to. (Unless it's there for a quantity in parentheses, of course.) Multiplication and division next because they're higher-order operations, (which is another way of saying that whole "shortcut" thing talked about above) and that's just how mathematicians decided to do it. (Plus, that distribution thing letsplaymath was talking about, I guess.) And good old addition and subtraction last, because they're what's left. So, Aunt Sally didn't really cripple ME. (Now, the fact that my very educated mother kept insisting on just serving us nine pizzas, and yet Pluto's not a planet anymore... That has caused me some problems, or at least sorrow over Pluto. Please excuse my very educated yet misguided mother. Suddenly vaguely Oriental caricature of a poster says, Going to bed sooner is wise.)

I'm sure you've heard it before, but my sons really have loved Jim Weiss.

I had no idea what a "digital sum" or a "digital root" were. Then you explained, and lo! I did indeed learn this concept as part of "casting out nines." I found it very useful. (Particularly since I was always losing my calculator. And if you have a calculator, why are you working out the problem in the first place?) They'd better move onto the application here pretty quickly, though. I can't imagine teaching digital roots without explaining all the work you'll be saving in the future when it comes to checking your work! Edited to say: Note that you can check addition, subtraction, multiplication, AND division by casting out nines. Just as long as you're working with integers, you're peachy. In fact, my first-grade son learned casting out nines for addition and subtraction this year.