My kids are 1st and 4th and we're doing Biblioplan.net, which will include Story of the World (that the pp mentioned) and we'll add in suggested readings, mapwork, Mystery of History, etc. I'm excited about it! My kids have had the same history teachings...nada. My 4th grader had a small "community" social studies book and maybe 1/4 of it was completed. Just so sad :(. I'm also adding in some state history for my 4th grader, because she would be studying that next year in the ps.

My MIL has the same stories! She now writes right-handed, but does everything else left-handed. I can't imagine forcing a child to write and eat with her less dominant hand. That's just asking for troubles. The particular hand they favor is favored for a reason - their brain was MADE that way. Let her keep it. Besides, I always WANTED to be left-handed for the attention, when I was growing up LOL. Even my 9 yr old likes pretending like she's left-handed now. It's a fun little unique thing about left-handers that not many people get to enjoy. IF she truly is left-handed (I agree about not knowing for sure at this age), celebrate it and teach her how cool and special it is :)

Kind of a bummer that someone wouldn't take my money because I was a newbie. So glad the seller of the MUS goodies I got didn't feel that way :) Thanks to her!

We were just there a few weeks ago and it took much longer than I was expecting. Even once you get to the tomb, if they're doing the changing off the guards, that's a long process in and of itself. When we were there, it was almost 30 minutes long because they did 2 different wreath ceremonies (not sure what they're called) also. I found the whole thing fascinating and would hate to get there and not be able to fully experience it.

I'm about 2 hours away from santa maria, but am opening up a children's consignment sale event there, so if she had kids, that could help her save money ;) lol. Seriously though, santa barbara is expensive, but beautiful, so just like the rest of life...it's a trade off.

:bigear:

What about using Biblioplan so you can do SOTW with the youngers, and have MOH for the older one (my understanding is that MOH is geared toward older children) and then Biblioplan has materials geared toward the different ages. Might be an option :)

I just sent off my first paperback swap order! Such a fun way to exchange books :)

I ADORE YNAB.com!! They have a fabulous philosophy, especially if you get varied amounts of income (dh gets hourly, overtime, salary, bonuses, etc). It gets you to living off of LAST month's income so you always know exactly how much income you have to work with. I'd been trying to do this same thing myself for years and I just never got it exactly how I wanted it. YNAB did it for me :). Plus, it's pretty darn cheap!

Awww man!! I LOVE it!

Okay, take this with a grain of salt since I haven't actually started yet LOL. I desperately want history and science together for my girls 1st and 4th grade. We're doing SOTW Ancients, but doing it through Bibliplan so that there's books and questions that cater to each age. I'm no pro, and it might crash and burn, but this was the best. We're also doing the same Apologia science, but the older will do notebooking and the younger will do lapbooks. Same basic info, but more detailed for the older than the younger. This is just the way we're trying to work it out :)

Soooo true!! This is our first year of HSing. There's ALWAYS work that the ps doesn't finish. For example...my 4th grader brought home her history work book at the end of the year (MAYBE 1/2" thick - and that's seriously pushing it). When I looked in the book, there's MAYBE 1/4 of that tiny little workbook done. I suspect that whatever you leave unfinished will be much less than they would have left unfinished in the ps.

Yeah, I don't plan on going by the clock. I do plan on scheduling out (tentatively of course) our year so that we know how much of each we need to accomplish each day. I was kind of aiming for 30 minutes each subject and just figured it would average out, but I didn't know if that was really a good average or not :) Thanks!

Off-shoot of the How many hours in a day you spend on school. I'm just looking to set up a VERY TENTATIVE schedule for my 1st and 4th grader. I don't even have all of the curriculum in yet so obviously I'm sure it varies on what type of curriculum you use, but, I'm just trying to get an idea...more so for the 4th grader than the 1st grader. Do you spend 30 min on math? More? Less? What about LA (MCT specifically if you use it LOL). Just trying to get a feel for time frames of subjects :)

I would have LOVED something like that when I was first starting my curriculum search. The way I had to find out about everything was simply reading, reading and more reading. It was exhaustive LOL

We just started it but are loving it so far! We started with Gamma for my dd who just finished 3rd grade. I just felt like she wasn't "getting" everything they did with multiplication in ps (we're homeschooling now...in fact, MUS is what helped get us to this point). We really are loving it and I'm seeing lightbulbs click on, all over the place for my dd, who has always had a struggle with math :)

Awesome! We just started also :). We're easing into it for the summer, but slowly working on a good routine and such. Congrats for having such a good day!

We have something similar here. It's through the school district, but it's an entire school dedicated to homeschooling. They have once a week enrichment classes, where the kids can sew, do woodshop, crafts, etc, etc, etc. They have a school farm and garden that the kids run, and more and more. I just can't say enough good things about our charter school. They do cover curriculum for the main subjects (english, math, history, science, etc), but they will NOT pay for any curriculum that has any religious aspect to it whatsoever. They won't even cover SOTW. So, be prepared for that. If we want religious curriculum, we are welcome to purchase it ourselves and use it...they have NO problem with that, they just aren't responsible for buying it.

I can't seem to find my book this very second. If I remember right, she suggests Biology to go with Ancients, but I don't remember which curriculum she recommended. Just wanting to research it before I make my final decision. ETA: 1st & 4th grade