I wholeheartedly agree with the bolded! Here is a day I wrote down a few months ago, with a 13yo and a 2yo: Curriculum used: Learning Adventures All In One, Vol. III Art of Problem Solving’s Introduction To Algebra Writing With Skill Ellen McHenry’s The Elements and Mr. Q’s Advanced Chemistry Supplements: Jackdaws Library books 5:30 AM – Wake up, start the coffee, throw in a load of laundry, do yoga with The Husband. Enjoy a little bit of quiet and help him get ready for work/do household chores before waking the kids. 7:00 AM – Throw a banana at the one, wait for the grumpy teen to eat breakfast and do his chores. Hop on SkedTrack to see what needs to be accomplished today. A bit alarmed at all the extra classes until I realize it’s usually a co-op day. Check email briefly. Compare online schedule to the books to get a better idea of what we’re doing and see if I need to make any copies or printouts. And I do. On the upside, we decided to skip social studies this time since we already eat enough Mexican/Tex-Mex without making it special for this. 8:00 AM – begin work. 13yo reads a chapter of Old Yeller and we discuss the story thus far before he settles into the corresponding grammar work. 2yo entertains himself by drawing his and my hands on the whiteboard. 8:45 AM – second breakfast. Mom grabbing a yogurt and handful of nuts is cue to stop working, wrinkle nose at mom’s dish, and grab a container of the plain with honey instead. Complain about the spelling activity and how it’s making him be creative. 2yo plays Mancala. 9:00 AM – check grammar and spelling work. Send 13yo back to actually finish the “so- EASY†grammar. 9:20 AM – Grammar ready to be checked. Finally. Checked quickly then sent the kid to grab the Jackdaw for history, along with Josefina’s World. Take a look at what Mexican territory may have looked like before and during the war while 2yo climbs on my back. Go over the 5 essay choices and assign 13yo to pick one, write a thesis statement, and outline his paper. 9:50 AM – 13yo gets to work, I take 2yo up for a shower and to fold the laundry left in the dryer the night before. Tidy up the 2yo’s bedroom and upstairs bathrooms before checking on the 13yo’s work, who announces he’s ready for lunch. During this time he has done quite a lot of reading on the couch, which is not conducive to notetaking and outlining 11:00 AM – send 13yo back to actually use the writing skills we just discussed, that he has been taught, and is currently working on in writing class. Make lunch for the 2yo. 11:15 AM – look at that! An outline! Reassure 2yo that his brother breathing and touching the table is NOT a national emergency. Time for lunch. 12:00 PM – take a few minutes to work on co-op’s schedule and respond to emails, plus start a draft of a longer one I need to send. Switch the laundry and call the 13yo back to work. Science. He’s had a similar lesson, so after completing the activity he needs to reread the other chapter. Quiz tomorrow. 12:30 – 2yo watches people do wii bowling on Youtube, 13yo makes chocolate chip cookies, I sweep up from lunch and get ready for an afternoon meeting at 1. 12:45 PM – 2yo announces he pooped his pants. Drop everything to get him cleaned up while 13yo continues making cookies. Make coffee and really hope house doesn’t smell like 2yo. 12:55 PM – Warn half-naked 2yo that if he doesn’t get out from under the little table and put pants on the next stop will be nap. 1:00 PM – I have meeting, 13yo finishes the cookies and does a section of math + his writing. 2yo pretends to be cute and adorable for company until big brother invites him down to play Wii. 2:40 PM – Meeting over. Time to pour another cup of coffee, check math (all good!) and writing (yay!). Relax for a few minutes and check email. Look at post-it note kept during the day and type this up. Update Skedtrack with the work finished and get everyone to clean up the books and toys from the day. -------------------------------------- Not a hugely typical day, but enough to see the dynamics and such in our house. Currently my day with a 3yo includes rotating through play-dough, reading him a book, working with the big kid while 3yo flips through the pages, do activity with 3yo, then snacktime for him while I do math with the big one......by 2pm we've started melt-down mode and it becomes quiet hour by any means possible. Different stages for different ages. Sometimes everything flows and you can get a lot done....other times, you just have to ride the wave. I forget sometimes that I come at it as a mom of 1/4 of what many have on this board. :)

We're using Art Of Problem Solving. They're difficult, but between the videos and the books they are quite good and teach very well. We've gotten into a pattern of every Friday doing the review/challenge from a previous chapter. It gives my kid a chance to see exactly how the math is building on itself. You also might want to look into something like Patty Paper Geometry, where the hands on combines with the higher math and gives them concrete proof of the abstract problems.

They are pricy, but IMO well worth it for the logic stage. We have a stack here that we used this year to supplement and build our studies with and they have been the highlight of our history year. Not only do they pull together various resources, but the teacher's guide includes several thought provoking activities and essay prompts. Yes, I could pull them together myself, but not nearly as well. (Their customer service is outstanding, too) At your kids' ages, I'd wait a bit, or maybe buy one of the clearance or secondhand ones to look through, but put aside for at least a few more years.

Many homeschoolers are sexist themselves. The sexism in literature is simply not seen outside of a representation of culture. I think we shouldn't look to shield children from either, but use the written language as a jumping off point for discussion on everything from the author's own way of thinking to cultural understandings.

Our days in the early years were often 6 hours long, and I used to feel sorry for those done in 2-3! :) Look at it from my POV. A 6 hour day allowed us to have a day like below: HISTORY: Read a chapter of SOTW. Make clay soldier figurines to dry and bury in our 'tomb'. While waiting for them to dry, watch a youtube clip and build booby traps around the soldier area. (1.5 hours). MATH: Watch MUS clip, pausing to allow 4th grader to work out the problems with his own manipulatives. Build more on our own, then send him off to do the 15 problems. Have him teach me while I play stupid. (30-45min) LANGUAGE ARTS: Read passage. Have him retell in his own words. Rearrange the sentence strips. Play a quick grammar game. (30min) SCIENCE : Do the reading in the science encyclopedia. Head outside with the pocket microscope to look at different leaves and plant cells. Draw and caption. If time, go to the link provided in the encyclopedia and learn more online. (1.5 hour) READING: take turns reading aloud to each other. Discuss the chapter (30 min) ELECTIVE: drawing lesson. Easily 30-45 min, or foreign language class, 1 hour. And that would be a nice short day of under 5 hours. Yes, I absolutely could have gotten everything done in 2-3 hours, but look at what we would have missed: projects, hands on learning, multisensory lessons.....why on earth would I want to have given that up to be "done"? All that leaves time for is the bare bones, and why? So my kid can go play legos for 6 hours? The early years are about building skills so that real hobbies can develop.

We do Reading/Grammar History (ties into the reading) Lite science (unit study) Duolingo Math LUNCH Writing Science Online elective Piano Personal study time

I think relying on Apologia to accurately interpret other cultures might leave a worse taste in your mouth than Winter Promise. Have you looked at the unit studies by Amanda Bennett? Or Creek Edge Press's geography and culture task cards?

You might try this one - http://www.amazon.com/OKO-Advanced-Filtration-Water-Bottle/dp/B005GXO7Z0/ref=pd_sim_sbs_sg_1 There are filters for it designed for either tap water or unsafe water. A video of it in action is here - http://boingboing.net/2013/04/20/filter-can-separate-water-from.html

Most lit guides suck the joy out. The only ones we had success with (as in, my kid loved doing them, loved the work in them), was Moving Beyond The Page. Don't go to their website, the samples are terrible. Go to Rainbow Resource to view samples. Seriously, they were fun. And my kid learned a TON. He ended up doing a project on falcons for My Side Of The Mountain and still remembers a lot. He played games, he wrote poems, he learned grammar and writing skills. He followed recipes and did art projects. If the wee'un gets homeschooled I'll buy at least one unit a year for him to do - or I'll get off my duff and continue making ones like I started doing this year.

Classical without being too classical, but yes, it's doable. I find inspiration from Montessori materials for my visual/kinetic learner. We also rearranged many things and rewrote curriculum in the younger years. For example, using SOTW, I read the passage aloud while he worked on the map or an activity that showed him what I was talking about. Or we did history in a place where the setting matched so that he had a sense of being there. Noeo and Intellego were hits in science because they incorporated video and game links. Writing Tales, thankfully, naturally had games and hands on work for him to manipulate, and we ended up using Montessori parts-of-speech symbols to begin diagramming sentences. You will find yourself staring at a teacher's guide and making notes in the margin about how to present the work to your kid in a way that makes sense. Often. But it's absolutely doable.

www.yourfirstvisit.net You CAN get the free dvd - email them and ask. We did and got ours about 2 years ago. A Park Hopper ticket lets you go to more than one park in a day. I wouldn't recommend it for a first visit. You won't use it often (or at all) as you try to soak in the different parks. Sign up for the Mousesavers newsletter to see what promotions and discounts available. Start with a budget. How much do you want to spend? Take out ticket costs work backward. If you are military I highly suggest calling when you make your reservations. Between the military discount and the promotion they were running during our first visit, we saved quite a bit. Even not, I suggest calling. The reps have a way of guiding you through and helping you find the magic. When I took dh to Disney for the first time the rep found me a theme room at the DLResort - and surprised us with a suite for the same cost per night.

What kind of games, first? You might want to check out Ellen McHenry's Basement downloads, and Teaching Mathematics With Art. We've used ideas from both with success. If you live in the states, you can access Ko's Journey as well. I find different games/projects by googling what we're studying + "activities". Sometimes I get no hits, others I find a goldmine, like right now we're making polyhedra after doing the first units of Patty Paper Geometry.

I think you have to temper your trust. Accuracy is a hard achievement. But if I'm shelling out 'hundreds' for an IG, I first ask myself where they're getting the information. Is it a WAHM who published something she used for her kids? Is it a well known company who uses a historian (or more than one) to edit and proofread? How forthcoming are they with the company info? If I email them, will I get an answer to that question? Balance, which I think Sonlight is going for, can please some, but not others. Sonlight's main draw is the historical lit. If the IG is pretending to be the be-all and end-all, that's a problem they'll have to confront (or parents will have to accept its shortcomings).

That is the big reason we switched to using Jackdaws and internet-found primary sources for history. I don't WANT to feed my kid someone else's interpretation of someone's point of view! I don't want history to be a spoonfed subject. I want my child to consider many interpretations and acknowledge that we cannot ever know exactly, but how to look at the data and make an informed conclusion. I have Hakim's History of US sitting nearly untouched on my shelf. Same with several other books. I want him to *do* history, not sit through it. The only subjects I prefer to use textbooks for are math and science - and I have to even push through the crud there. Apologia just got crossed off my list forever - if they are such a company that they would post misinformation/lies and call it truth, how can I trust them to understand basic scientific fact and write it down in a clear text?

I've used my activity guides almost more than the books. Yes, there are hands on activities and directions for creative play - along with maps, book lists, worksheets, outline prompts (for book 4), discussion questions...My copies are nearly worn out. I wish the format was a little different - spiral bound, printables mixed into the chapter guides instead of in the back - but the wealth in there is invaluable. And no, we never used the coloring pages, but the rest of it was well used. I think, though, it would depend on how you do history. If you aren't the type to use the things inside, then it's not for you. If you are, then you may want to consider it.

icivics.org - not exactly curriculum, but enough there to make it yourself.

We have, but each one we've tried has had its own strengths. My son loved the Intellego units. I could buy them one at a time and they incorporated every learning style: Visual and Auditory, with video links to watch and articles to read. Hands on, with projects scattered in as well as a few online games/projects. Along with a smaller chunk of written work to complete the lesson each day. We both liked Moving Beyond The Page, with the ability to customize the daily work to him. Each worksheet had two levels and there were plenty of hands on projects and open-ended creativity. Cons - expensive, and I had to copy a lot. We ended up rewriting the comprehension questions and had him practice his typing rather than copying that page, too. And now we're doing Learning Adventures, which comes in a full year, 10 unit chronological study. It's fun, there are enough crafts and making sure there is parent interaction but it's a little light on history and science, preferring lectures and letting the kid read books on the topic for quite a bit. We beef it up some to match it up to a 14yo's needs because it sits around a 6th grade level. On the upside, no printing/copying for me to do each day! 6th and 7th grade were space cadet years here. The more I stayed on top of him and gave him the attention of a 3yo, the better he did. The more I expected him to do something by himself, the worse. 8th has been so much better - still working on a few issues, but nowhere near as bad as the previous two years!

Can you do unit studies with the boys? Or combine them more? We finally gave into unit studies last year and it was so very nice. We started with Moving Beyond The Page and loved them except for a few drawbacks (lots of printing, non-chronological history/social studies), but they offer a range of activities for different abilities. This year we're using Learning Adventures - chronological history wrapping every other subject together except math, and it's good for a wide range, too. Maybe look into something like Intellego, too, where they still get to watch videos for science and look at cool links, but there are hands on projects for them to do, also.

I'd smile, decline the offer, and tell her that sitting through history passively is not learning. By 8th grade she should be using those lovely argument skills to debate the different positions and do multi-source research to create pieces that show understanding and significance of different events. Sorry, but no dice. It wouldn't fly here. Maybe in 5th, but certainly not 8th.

I'd agree wholeheartedly, but dh and I have always had an "after 5pm" arrangement. We each do a job during the day but at night it's 50/50. He cooks, I do dishes. He gives the bath, I tell the story. He folds laundry, I get the recycling out to the street. If he couldn't manage to be alone for 2 weeks we'd have serious problems. And I know that he'd probably eat off paper plates and find the shortest books to read to the 3yo, and that he probably wouldn't think to change the sheets until the day I got home... :laugh: but they'd manage just fine. Of course, in the reverse, the kids would be eating a lot of pasta and take-out if he was gone. :lol: Now, riddle me this....why is it that historically chefs are usually men, but we treat them as imbeciles in the home kitchen and expect them to NOT understand how to make basic foods?

I say this gently, because it was the best change ever for our household, but......stop giving her her opinion. Stop telling her why things are the way they are, stop justifying decisions, stop arguing. She is too old and you have better things to do. Change your thought. Start ASKING her to problem solve within guidelines: "That is interesting. I would love to be able to do that. Right now, the balance of education, activities, etc. make that difficult, but if you could find another way I'd be grateful to listen." "Hmmm....you have schoolwork on Friday. When do you propose to schedule a time to do it before Monday morning? Come up with a schedule for your weekend and we'll discuss this further." Find time to talk about volunteering and helping for the sake of helping, and helping for the sake of credit. Have her volunteer her time secretly, without showing it off. And when all else is exhausted, put your foot down. How you use your time is not to be justified or demanded upon. "Our family" is not "mom". There are many others, and call her on her bull. "So if I understand correctly, you're upset that I don't volunteer as much as Mrs. Smith. How I use my personal time is none of your business and I'm insulted you would think it is."

Perhaps it would have been better to use American propaganda, then? Perhaps focus on the use of eugenics and how they shaped thought and law? Add in the history of anti-Judaism laws from the Venitian Ghetto to the 1924 anti-immigration act meant to keep out Eastern European Jews? The U.S. turning away shiploads of immigrants during the war based on this law and public distaste for the Jewish population? A 10th grader should certainly have the capability to not only be shocked by the assignment, but to comprehend why it is shocking and use that IN the assignment. Shocking or emotional is not a bad thing. Sometimes it takes something out of the ordinary to get through to teens.

I think it's a good assignment. It is very easy to paint a society as villainous, but without understanding the WHY behind their actions it is meaningless. Absolutely and truly. A good teacher makes students think, not tells them what to think. We do similar writing assignments here. Why should we have used slaves? Why did the southern states defend their position while northern states were okay with dropping slavery? Choose a side and convince me you're right. Now the other side... Understanding goes much farther in giving a student tolerance and compassion than simply handing them a book that has all the "right" answers and proper spin. Even if a kid doesn't agree, he/she learns to listen and formulate a response that puts their own thoughts in equal weight with what they have heard.

I blog about my kids. They can read it any time, they know what I say (just like dh does) because I'm never intending to hurt them. I just celebrate and enjoy them, weaknesses and all.

Sometimes, it just isn't being used for its purpose. We have about 5 bottles of olive oil in our kitchen: 1 for sauteeing, 1 for adding to hot foods, 1 that is buttery for salads, 1 that is a first press (new oil, made in the last few months) that is full bodied for bread dipping, and 1 second year full bodied taste for multi-use. Italians like their olive oil. LOL and the stuff that is sold mostly in the states is second year or mild, so the occassional bitterness comes through. It has nothing to do with how expensive it is (even that $15 bottle has been known to have a bitter aftertaste. When we get a bottle like that we pair it in a salad with a cheese like shaved pecchorino or Parmesan, something that will help absorb the oil and add its own flavor to the mix. We just found out our favorite company here imports on a mail order basis, so we'll be getting our fix of the good stuff after we leave. :)