I think the memory work is enough for my six year old. He wants to learn Mandarin, so we will continue just latin memory work for now amd see how we do with another language. With the second cycle, I may add more Latin.

We are doing foundations at home. It is not the core of our curriculum as CC sets it up to be, it is supplementary. I started on cycle 1 this year even though all communities are doing 3. I chose this because we are doing Biology and Ancients. Our bio study has lined up pretty well with the memory work. I got the science flash cards to add context to what we had not learned yet. The history sentences are a challenge because they.move through history faster than SOTW. I am not 100% thrilled with those. The math has been so helpful! We made ot through akip counting before Christmas and are really working hard on multiplication now. Being able to do the skip counting is great. We look at all the locations for geography on the map. That helps put it in context. I don't know how much Latin he is absorbing. I do know that memorizing endings now will help later. That was what we did my first year of Spanish. We conjugated verbs. I still remember those. My favorite part is the history timeline. We memorize the order and go over the backs of a couple of cards a day. His recall on that is great. If it has no context, I don't push memorization as hard. We will go through it all again after a full history and science cycle. It will make more sense the second time around and some of it will hopefully he retained! We will pick up week 13 here in a week or two...I hope we can stay motivated!

Wow!:grouphug: If my family members did that, I would habe no family to spend time with! We don't write thank you notes for Christmas or birthdays and honestly half my wedding notes never made it in the mail because my mom had the addresses and I could not get them for six months after the wedding. I hope they change their mind, but you are right in what you said. If the relartionship is based on thank you notes, it was not much to begin with.

Oklahoma us the same. We had a week or two of below freezing weather, this week we hit the 70s! It is nice, but my kids want a little snow....enough for snow ice cream... We had tornado watches yesterday!! That is pretty early. It was a nice spring rainy day, wet but warm.

Apparently I stink at Googling....I know there are places to learn Chinese here...but I can't find one!! Thanks for the links. The Better Chinese looks like it might work well to start. I need something full laid out like that. After we see how he does, I might be able to find a student at the University who would come speak with him and tutor him.

We are doing pre-level one bio right now. I am spreading it out. We spend 2 days a week and we take two weeks per chapter. We read, then study and memorize, test and do some of the.labs. we skipped the sorting and classifying labs. We will do all the microscope and animal study labs. I think my son is learning a lot of good Info. We will do all the prelevel 1 and level 1 books, then we will switch to something else. We will probably do level one as two a year for 4th and 5th grade. They are coming out with a new set meant to be a full year course. I dont know when though.

My son learned to read at 4.5, he loved workbook pages and would do 30+ pages at a time. We started K 3 weeks before he turned 5 and started CC at home (no community) this uear just before he turned 6. He has a hard time with some of the.memory work. I know they list it for 4k, but I think you can hold off until first grade. We will complete two full cycles by tue time he is in 6th grade. He will also end up listening in as his younger siblings do it, just as they will listen to him. Last year, the memory work would not have made sense to him. This year he has an understanding of history. It makes a huge difference. If you really want to stick with it, don't pull out the guide. Just play the cd over and over. We play it three times a day, my three year old June the tunes and gets a few words and she is not trying. Just sing and dance and have fun. Also, boys tend to he more kinesthetic learners than girls. My son lays on the ground and rolls around, he dances, he plays with a toy, we got him thinking putty...this helps him focus. Don't make him sit or stand still and do it, it is against most boys natural tendencies. Wait a year to do any seat work, then slowly build time. I will always let my some move when he needs it, it refocuses him, and he has a LONG attention span for a 6 year old.

Something computer based or with computer games/practice would be great!! I also want some practice on the letters by hand, but computer based for this would be great! I don't want to spend the money on Rosetta Stone right now. I don't even know if that is a good program for a 6 year old...

I plan to start language studies with my son next year. I know enoughFrench and Spanish to at least get started and understand what is going on...but he wants to learn Mandarin....I have no idea where to start, what to get as far as curriculum...HELP! He has been saying this for a few months. I have asked several times and this is what he wants. Any suggestions?

I love your business current events study. I want to add some current events to our study, I may start with that this summer with everything leading up to the elections. I am bad at languages too! I took 3 years of French and 3 of Spanish, I can read and pronounce, I can interpret some, but I have no conversation skills. I think that 3 years of high school Spanish should have taken me farther, but I had awful teachers. It gives me no confidence to teach my kids. I like the CC Latin memory work because it is pronounced and repetitive. I plan to start actual Spanish next year along with the Cc Latin. I just need a good program.

If you are putting together your own memory work lessons and working in a group to memoroze them, I don't see a problem. You could even do it to match up with TWTM more. CC Foundations is a three year cycle rather than four, this means my science and hiatory dont match up well every year.

It does not bother me. Chewing with your mouth open, however, that is gross :)

Oh, forgot....for the strawberry I grizzled it with chocolate and filled the bundt pan hole with Choc covered strawberries....it was a big hit and it was beautiful!

My grandma always made them into Yummy moist poundcakes! Take your favorite boxed mix, add two small instant puddings, 4 eggs, 3/4 cups water, 1/4 cup oil. Ignore all box directions! Mix in chocolate chips. The recipie says one cup....I use one small bag ;) Combs we love: Duncan hines extra moist devils food or fudge cake mix With fudge devils food pudding and ghiredelli (sp?) Dark chocolate chips. The fudge option is super dark, the devil's food is less so. Strawberry cake mix, vanilla pudding, same chips. DO NOT use white chocolate chips.....they sink and melt weird, it was a disaster amd tasted weird. I have iced with buttercream and whipped icing. It is really good in iced with whipped cream or cool whip. For a fun addition to the chocolate, add crushed pepermints to the cool whip. You can make it with white cake, vanilla pudding, and chocolate chips. I have never tried butterscotch chips. You can also leave the chips out all together. Cook time is one hour at 350 for a bundt pan, 20-30 for cupcake size. Layer cakes I habe done at 45 minutes.

Your travels will be good, but you do need some other things. Volunteer hours are great. There are always places to volunteer. Sort food at a food bank Serve food at a shelter Visit and read to people in a nursing home Read at story time at the library Library book.sales always.need volunteers Make up your own service project. I set up a program to teach dance at a special needs elementary school, they loved it. Any nonprofit will find something for a volunteer to do....just give them your name Meals o. Wheels and other such services. Need help with prep and delivery, they might even connect you to a group in your next town. Do you like to paint? Contact a local community theatre. They always need help. Habitat for Humanity is always building There are groups that help the elderly living alone with housework. There is no way the public school kids have taken all the volunteer jobs, maybe the more fun ones....but not all.

This is another perk I see in homeschooling, I see kids have to pick activities at 6 because they are too tired and have too much homework to do more than one activity a week. I want my kids to try lots of things to see what they like. We do dance, theater, gymnastics, and will stary piano again next year. When DS is 7, I will sign him up for baseball or basketball in our community. We also swim and go to the zoo and science museum. I want them to try as much as they can now, so they really know what they like when they get older.

Math comes very easy to my son. He completed first and second grade math work in kindergarten. I need math to challenge him and reinforce without being too repetitious. I did not want him completing two levels a year and having nowhere to go but algebra in 3rd or 4th grade. I wanted to be sure he had a thourough understanding of the topics, I don't feel that can happen by rushing into higher math, I also want to be sure he has matured enough to get what he needs from higher math. We do SM with IP and CWP on level. This pushes him. The text and wkbk are easy, we finish all that in 6-8 weeks. Then we spend the rest of the semester working through the other books a few pages a day. I follow the Charlotte Mason idea of short lessons, so we generally spend 20-30 minutes a day, but have had a few more challenging days go as long as an hour (generally challenging because DS is not focused!) For spelling I am slowly accelerating. I want to be sure he knows spelling rules, we have worked through K, first, and now the second grade lists in Spelling Plus. We will stop there for the year and pick up with third grade lists next year. We will also do the writing Road to Reading spelling notebook pages over the next few years. I want him to have what I never got, a solid u.understanding of the rules so he can spell anything. Eventually we will add Spelling from the Roots Up, it is sitting on my shelf but as with math, I am more interested in a strong base and understanding before moving on, when we know the riles from English, we will move to words rooted in other languages. For history we do the very minimum of SOTW, listen to the audios, do the maps and color pages. We are doing the CC history timeline as well. Memorizing the timeline is a lot for a 6 year old, the ancients are easier because w are are studying that, the timeline is helping him recall what we have atudied better because of the daily review of topics. He is working on R&S grammar, level 2. I think the program is rigorous without doing any extra. Science is our only non-rigorous study, we are doing biology and the first five labs were well below his ability level, just sorting and classifying house hold objects. The next five are much better, but we are taking and extra month off and will finish in the summer. I want a challenge because we are thorough, not because we are moving at a super accelerated pace.

We use Spelling Plus with Dictation. We spend a week on a word list, the next week we do dictation from that list. You don't have to switch programs, but you could add dictation that includes the words. I found that doing workbook pages did not help my son, it was just busy work. Studying the words and spellibg them each day followed by a week of dictation helps him retain. I like Spelling plus because the dictation book HSed all the work done, each lesson builds and uses old words again as well as the new ones. It also includes punctuation rules.

My son played on this software. It has a bean counting game that taught regrouping, I like thos term much better than borrowing or moving over, he had to add beans and regrouping them when there were more than 10 in the last jar, withheld subtraction he had to move the beans the other way. He loved it! When it came time to teach the topic on paper, he already knew what he was doing, O just taught him to write it out. You can use manipulatives the same way. Just make bas of tens and a bowl for ones and start adding. I just Luke the computer because there was no mess to clean up ;)

We did not do coop last year, and we may not do it every year, but right now, my kids love it. It is where we do PE, and arts and crafts.....two things I eoyld not do at home. I would not go to an all day co-op, ours is three hours, there is one around here that is 9-5 every Monday. I would also not do an academic co-op where we would be expected to follow a certain curriculum at home amd keep up with a whole group. I just want enrichment and field trips. You have to know what you want out of it and find one that fills that need. If you don't do one, no big deal.

If he is reluctant to write, wait. Just read aloud. Make a list of history and science topics or get What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know to use as a guide. Get books he can read and that you can read to him on each topic. Get a globe and learn the continents. Do puzzles, teach him Yatzee and let him add his own score. There are so many educational games that will teach him basic math. Color, especially with colored pencils. Keep a book with letter practice out, but don't make him do It. When he wants to start writing, give him the book.

Check out the Johnson O'Connor testing center vocabulary books found here. They have a placement test and a great system. They are cheap too! I have used them as an adult to build my vocabulary. For lit, I know you wanted a guide, but if you go with a lit study as outlined in TWTM, get tue Folger Library Shakespeare series when you are reading Shakespeare. They are great! They include intro information, good notes, sample essays, and definitions of strange terms amd phrases. There are illustrations of some things as well. I think they are.great for encouraging a love of the language because they don't give you everything, just enough to help you get it.

I skipped 1a and b and started on 2a with my son at five. I did the placement tests with him. Of you are concerned, take the placement test for 1a and b. Of he gets 90% or higher, practice what he missed and then move on to the next test until he scores below 90%. It took us a few days to get through all of the tests, but it was worth it.

I have been so sick in my first trimester that we have cut way back. We are doing math and grammar because he can sit in my lap and do those. We recently added our Comprehensive Curriculum workbook. It has some grammar, phonics, reading comprehension and other fun stuff. He can do that on his own. We are moving faster, we do extra lessons in each, my goal is to finish those programs early, we can spend April finishing math and the summer finishing SOTW if we need to. Our CC memory work is the only thing that will really get left, but we had finished all the skip counting, all of the Latin (it repeats in the last 12 weeks) and we will finish the timeline. All of that is repeated another year, I am not worried. Take some time amd work the basics, then add the fun stuff back when you can.

There are Johnson O'Connor testing centers around the country. It is not free, but it is an excellent aptitude and career assessment. I went with a college professor doing research. She had a grant that paid for the testing. I would highly recommend it! It was two days of in house testing. There were fine motor and gross motor tests, number concentration tests, interest evaluations and aptitude testing in multiple areas. They also test your vocabulary and lots of other things. We had a meeting to discuss the results in the end.