We moved with the 16 foot Pods container two years ago. I had a houseful of stuff (we had a 3 bedroom ranch with a large basement). We had a huge garage sale before moving and filled a large garbage container (trailer sized). We got rid of our beds and much of our furniture. I did keep several large pieces of furniture (couch, love seat, 2 recliners, two dining tables, 10+ dining chairs, chest freezer, treadmill, 20+ boxes of books, a large trampoline, etc.). It's amazing what you can fit into a small space when needed. We also stacked it to the top! Many things like your bikes & dining tables can be disassembled to make more room. We ended up putting clothes & bedding in garbage bags and filling in empty spaces with them. We filled a cedar chest and freezer with strange shaped items like camera tripods and musical instruments for a bit more protection. We used about 20 ratchet ties to secure everything so it didn't shift too much. I tried to "budget" our space. I allowed half for boxes and half for furniture and other large items. It ended up being a large Jenga puzzle to get it loaded! The right person in charge of this makes all the difference! I'm terrible at packing things into small spaces, so I asked my FIL to help with it.

We are using it next year. It definitely looks like plenty! If he does want more, she lists several on-topic picture books for each week. We will just be adding the Biology 101 DVD (from the 101 series) because my family loves these. We are going through the Physics one now and everyone pays attention (ages 4 to 15)!

I'm using GftWTM with my soon-to-be 8th & 10th graders. I placed my grammar-struggling upcoming 6th grader with her sister in FLL 2. I am so glad I did! There is no way she could handle GftWTM right now. She struggled with Jr AG, which is a bit easier than GftWTM. I wanted to suggest if you take a break from WTM grammar and plan on coming back to GftWTM in the future, it might be best to continue to occasionally recite the grammar definitions they have learned. The definitions are the same in both FLL & GftWTM. I absolutely love that we are all on the same page with definitions & rules. My 13yo DS (who'd never used FLL) was chanting one of the FLL songs when we were covering state of being verbs (complete with hand clapping). He'd obviously overheard it during his younger sisters' grammar lesson. ?

MP goes this route, but they still include some English grammar. They have their EGR program already mentioned, plus I saw they recently added some Core Skills language arts workbooks. I imagine these are pretty light, but they wouldn't schedule it if they didn't see a need for more grammar/mechanics practice. They also have a year of R&S Grade 8 English before beginning high school. We will be using MP Latin, which is grammar heavy along with FLL/Grammar for the Well Trained Mind. I have learned more grammar as an adult by studying Latin, but I feel you need some English grammar to learn to apply it to our language. There are a few grammar programs that teach English grammar in a year, like Our Mother Tongue or Analytical Grammar. Mechanics would also be good since unedited Latin doesn't actually use periods to end sentences. ?

GftWTM is designed to jump in with any of the books. They build from the beginning each year and only the workbook exercises change. So you use the same teacher guide each year. So you need the purple student book & answer key, the teacher guide, and the grammar handbook. Next year you will reuse the teacher book & handbook and replace the workbook & answer key with the next color (red). My oldest two will be in 8th and 10th and are working through WWS 1 right now. It's totally appropriate for an 8th grader.

We love the SCM method too! We have used it for years with great results.

Mobi Max / Mobi Kids is on my wish list. It's like Bananagrams with math problems instead of words.

My DD is going into 10th and hasn't done any logic at this point. My high school plan is for her to do CAP's Art of Argument & Argument Builder, followed by MP's Traditional Logic I & II. I'm hoping we'll have time to get to the MP Rhetoric book before she graduates. So we'll be aiming for 1 book per semester, leaving us a full year to go through the Rhetoric book.

I've briefly combined my kids for math--for example, I had two learn their multiplication tables at the same time. Then I split them back up. My experience is that they do best at their own level for math and reading. As they've gotten older, we have used our Bible time for reading aloud practice with everyone taking a verse or two. We just started adding projects from the Family Math books on Fridays. In addition to our regular math lesson, I pick a project or two for them to work on as a group or in pairs. I think some people could make this work as their main curriculum, but I'm not organized enough.

The Complete Middle School Study Guide Everything You Need to Ace Math. It assumes the 4 basic operations are down and advances from there.

We switched to CLE LA this winter, and I found my oldest two had a very difficult time with it. I had placed them in levels 600 and 700, which was a grade level or two behind. We have since switched to Grammar for the Well Trained Mind and Writing With Skill. GftWTM isn't any lighter, but it builds from the beginning, which is what they need! I also find it easier to grade--I read the answers aloud and have them check as I go.

We have the Cottage Press ones. I had no idea the books were religious at all, so I pulled one off our shelf. The first page is labeled "In the beginning", the second is "Man began to multiply" and the third is "A flood of water". After than it starts the dating with 5000 B.C. Can you put a blank stick (like an address label) over the first pages and re-label them somehow?

It seems like most families using CLE Reading are alternating it with free reading or assigned literature books. It needs to be completed every other day to be finished by the end of the year, so you have some additional reading time for "real books" if you want. Personally, I love the stories in CLE, and I'd rather they analyze CLE stories than destroy beautiful works of literature with too much literary analysis.

Has he done WWE? My upcoming 6th grader will be doing WWE 3 (and maybe something else for a year) before moving to WWS.

I didn't see their free program! I'm still on the fence with what to use. My oldest started her last light unit (he's on his next-to-last light unit), so I need to decide soon!

Beautiful Feet has an Around the World study for grades K-3. I would think it could be adapted for a young 5yo.

All of them. 3 of them are wrestling on the floor behind me as a type, so I guess some things never change.

We just do a read aloud and Bible reading at night. We do 3R's in the morning and alternate history & science in the afternoon. I'm exhausted by 4 too! lol We don't have TV (except streaming), so I don't mind reading in the evenings. It only takes 30 minutes tops. I think for next year we'll just use the Family Guide and Companion, so we'll lightly be using BP. I purchased a bunch of different BP books this winter because I wasn't sure what we'd like. We haven't used many of them so far, except the guide & textbook. I prefer the maps & coloring pages in the SOTW activity guide.

We also use Biblioplan. We schedule our family read aloud (usually from BP's Family Guide) at bedtime along with a daily Bible reading. We schedule history 3 days per week. We use SOTW audio CDs, SOTW Activity Guide for discussion & maps, and the Family Guide for independent book selections. My high schooler reads the Companion on her own. We end our lesson with quiet reading time from the "literature readings" section of the Family Guide. I have managed to fit in Memoria Press' Classical Studies in our scheduled literature time slot 1-2 days per week. Two of my kids are going through D'Aulaire's Greek Myths and two are using their Book of Ancient Greeks/Iliad/Odyssey study. It's not a full program like SL, but it's fitting into our day okay. My tentative plan for history next year is to use SOTW & maps on day 1, Kingfisher/Usborne with outline/summary on day 2 (or another writing assignment), and an activity or two on day 3 (timeline/video/project). We'll see how it goes!

No, I just glanced at the tests and placed my kids based on what they’d covered in MUS. ?

A bit of background on DS (7th grader): He completed MUS through Epsilon, then we switched to CLE 600 last January. He would have probably been better off in the 700 level, but I was hesitant to place him there since he hadn't officially covered decimals or very much geometry. I was amazed to discover how familiar he already was with decimals from computer programing. He's quickly picked everything else up as well. He is a bit bored with CLE 600, and I'm not sure where to go. He dislikes all the repetition of CLE and to be honest, he doesn't really need it. He doesn't want to spend a ton of time on his lessons and right now he dawdles for more than an hour on CLE--I'm sure he could finish it much faster if he wasn't so bored. Here are some options I'm considering (and I'm open to other suggestions): continue with CLE, but take a placement test to see if he places farther along switch to something more challenging like AOPS Move ahead to algebra. We have Jacobs and it includes lots of pre-algebra review. I think he could easily pick up the few pre-algebra concepts he hasn't covered. Also, for any AOPS users: how long do your children spend on it each day?

If you are following WTM for history/geography/literature, would you mind sharing how you structure your week? We've always gone with a more Charlotte Mason approach to history, and I'm trying to figure out how WTM's history methods could be carried out in the "real world".

Modli.co has great swimwear! I just ordered knee length shorts with a skirt. They have all sorts of different lengths for bottoms and sleeves. They also have the capri bottoms.

Telestrations, Apples to Apples, Snake Oil, and Speak Out are all hits with my kids!

Explode the Code is another program to consider. I've used all of these as a supplement over the years. IIRC, the Core Skills has less writing. There are lots of fill in the bubble or circle the answer questions. They have some where they write out the word. MCP had some sentence type composition exercises. We generally skipped these (or had them narrate the sentence to me) and it wasn't a big deal. We only used the K MCP book, so I don't know if they upper ones have more writing or not. MCP is in color. ETC & Core Skills are both black & white. ETC has lots of silly illustrations that my kids enjoyed. Really, they all get the job done, which is why I have no strong recommendation towards one over another. My older two used ETC, my younger two used MCP (one also used Core Skills). I have purchased the ETC primer books (A,B,C) for my youngest for the coming year.