We always love Jockeys Ridge. Kids adore playing on the dunes. Bring your kites. Ocracoke with the free ferry ride to and from is always fun. British cemetery there is neat. Nice shells, too. The "Wild horses" are all penned up...very disappointing. Shipwreck museum on Hattaras Island (right at ferry landing) is also a good find...think it might be free or donation to get in.. Was just in Avon in April...such a great vacation!

I vote for Quo Vadis. Find a translation that has more modern language.

We have used GrammarKey...mostly as a supplement. But I suspect it could stand alone for motivated 5-8th as a 2-3 days a week program. They read the lesson and then work sample sentences; labeling all the parts of speech in the sentence. I think the program even keeps track of each student's progress.

I am wondering this same thing. Trying to decide between TT (which has worked well for us) and Jacobs which I hear will teach the why of Algebra better.:bigear:

You might look at St. Thomas Aquinas Academy. We have been enrolled with them since K (8 years now!) You can enroll your child, they will do an assessment and determine the best cirriculum to fit your style and needs. They are devoutly Catholic but they do not publish their own materials so they recommed the best of all that is out there. Seton publishes most of their materials and in my experience it is very heavy on the Catholic content. I love the Catholic content in some subjects, but I don't necessisarily(sp?)think the kids need Catholic Math, Catholic spelling, Catholic english, ect. They way we live our life and celebrate our faith everyday is enough for us. STAA does not offer detailed lesson plans for most courses although they do have extensive notes to help you figure out how to plan the material. They are extremely flexible in cirriculum choices. You can choose to submit grades if you are looking for accountability but you do the grading and only submit work samples to support your grade. They have a beautiful High School program (I have not gotten to it yet...we are only in 8th but I am so excited to use it) I don't know about diplomas and accredidation. If you get a diploma you have given all the grades. But I do know they have gotten a ton of kids into college...some very good ones at that so they must be doing something right. I think their website is STAA-homeschool.com but I could be off with the domain name. Just google search St Thomas Aquinas Academy -Homeschool and you will find them. They advice and support they have given me over the years is a big reason why we are still homeschooling today. Good Luck

The other word lists are covered in additional levels. There are three levels total (A,B, C) and each level has a set of discs to go with it. Hope that helps :001_smile:

I have been reading this post for a few days now...and I have been so encouraged by all of you ladies. (Even cathmom and her struggles). This topic has been on my heart a lot lately as I have 6 kids from 13 down to 2. We have just finished our 9th week of school and I have ended almost every day in desperation and despair that I just can't seem to do this anymore. Last year was a breeze compared to this! I only had 4 grades to teach...I find it hard to believe that adding Kindergarten to the pile has caused this daily turmoil. And yet every door out (i.e. public or catholic school) seems closed to me right now. So I pray and pray aboout it and I found this post...and my wonderful dh keeps lifting me up everyday and encouraging and helping me...and I do feel encouraged to keep going. I think my prayers brought this old memory back to my mind and I wanted to post it in case it might help anyone reading. I remembered a talk I once heard at a homeschooling convention years ago when my oldest was only 5...the talk was about why homeschooling matters. And the speaker went on and on about how average he and his wife were at teaching math and writing to their kids since they certainly did not have PhD's and degrees in Education for each and every subject. He then went on to say that the most important reason to homeschool was to protect the child's inner eye. Here he started throwing in a lot of the Ancient's and it got hairy, but the gist was that this inner eye is able to see the truth that is written by God on the child's heart. That beyond the Algebra and Chemistry however successful we are at teaching academic subjects, our purpose in keeping our children at home is to shelter and nurture this inner knowledge of Truth. In school, and in our culture, children are taught over and over that they cannot know the truth...Which naturally leads them to think there is no truth, which leads them to be cynnical. The lens of their eye becomes clouded over by doubt and lies. If you cannot see Truth you cannot know God (who is Truth). This cynnicism pervades our society so profoundly and seems to eat at the natural goodnesss of people (weather they believe in God or not.) That was my ulitmate goal when we started down this road and it has not changed. So I am reminded why we started this thing and why we have to keep going. Weather I make it one more year or 18 years...their time at home is blessing not just to me but to their inner eye. It is so hard in the thick of it to remember the goal when all you can see is your failures. The constant self doubt..."Is this just hard because it's hard...or is this hard because it is not meant to be?" I hope and pray that your posts and a rededication to the bigger picture will help me when the 7 year old won't sit for school tomorrow! :lol:

FWIW I had one more thought about your daughter. It sounds like she wants to be a horse vet by her interest in riding lessons and horse genetics...and you also said she was still in her shell. I know money is tight, but perhaps the riding lessons should be a higher priority? I was very shy and unsure where I fit in school (what most would call a late bloomer) during high school. I rode at a barn during all those teen years. The time spent there was a life saver during those turbulent times. I can't tell you what a wonderful outlet horses are for a young girl's desire to nurture. Even though I didn't end up making it to vet school...I look back on that time at the barn as some of the best moments in my young life. I met friends, grew in confidence, strength and gentleness. Maybe you could work something out with the barn..she could work around the barn to help pay for lessons. I used to feed on weekends, clean stalls, turn out horses, hold horses for the vet and farrier...anything I could ! It was all wonderful expereince. The expereince around the horses in invaluable for your daughter to know that this is really what she wants to do.

I am in the same boat as you are with my ds in the 8th grade. :grouphug: He will not push himself and I cannot tell if I should keep bumping him up. Any time I ask for some new level of work it is soooo much work to make sure it gets done correctly. ( At least your daughter has the long term goal of vet school to motivate her.) I panic on occasion when I see friends getting their kids in to excellent 4 year colleges with lots of scholarship money. They really hustle around with their kids and do sooo many activities and outside calsses that we cannot afford that I worry we are short-changing our kids by keeping them home. Your schedule does look very similar to mine in intensity. So I am all ears to see if someone who has "been there done that" has to say. FWIW I was aiming for vet school all thru High school and college and you might want to bump up her math. Calculus and Physics is (or was 20 years ago) a requirement for admission to any vet school. I did not get past Trig in high school and trying to pick it up later was near impossible.

I loved your post most especially about how Memoria Press materials "Soothe" you. They have the EXACT same effect on me! I get starry eyed about them and imagine they will solve all my heretofore unsolveable homeschool problems...and yet when I bring them home they are a bit dry and uninspiring...(although WE are loving Intro to Classical Studues this year.) Until your post I had never stopped to ponder why they are so appealing to me despite my experience. It must be as you say the ordrliness or professionalism. And yet, I think it must be the pure ideal they represent. The ideal Education they represent, as it was done for centuries. I am not trained in Logic, but to my mind if it worked for St. Augustine, et al, it must be the best. And I do so long for that ideal! Even after all these years (8 for me) I loooong for that pie in the sky. I have accepted reality and the reality is I am a middle of the road Latin wanna-be, with too many distractions and interruptions to do any more than we are currently doing. And when life gets hard, the first subject we drop is Latin and it kills me every time. As to Latin.. I am giving it my all here with Ecce Romani and we love the translating but I am still drawn to the orderliness of the Memoria formal grammar and always feel like we are cheating by jumping right into the translating. When you read the "Classical Teacher" magazine sent out by Memoria every so often, they have articles written by emminent Latin scholars supporting their method... their wonderfully clear but dry manner. So I pour over the First Form books and even contemplate doing both Ecce and FF1 this year! But the reality is I enjoy the translating and the Roman History in Ecce and the group translating with my boys. They will not be taking the National Latin Exam but we have learned alot about English and grammar and vocabulary and history and maybe logic :001_unsure:? Why do I feel like a cheater? That seems like your question too...and I have not answered it..only affirmed that it is a true condition worthy of pondering over one (or more glasses) of wine. And when the morning comes and the kiddos are ready for Latin, we do the best we can with the tools God gave us.

I have 4 boys (12,11,9, 7) and a dd 5 who all really love Atelier. I did a lot of art classes in High School and College and have been trying desperately over the years to incorporate an art program that would feel like the art classes I loved so much in school. I tried Artistic Pursuits, Drawing Textbook, Drawing with Children, ect. Ateleir has been the answer. We started with level 4 last year and everyone was able to work at their own level. I had to help the youngest two a bit so they would not get frustrated at the drawing skill required. We set aside every Tuesday for "Art" day since that was one day that we never had go anywhere. Starting at 2pm we would watch the lesson, (they especially enjoyed seeing the other kids working and their final works) and then do the lesson for however long it would take. Every 3 weeks we pull out their most recent projects and talk about them. There are questions to prompt the discussion. You can even pull out a famous art print and use the same questions to talk about their art and the famous art :thumbup:. Sometimes my boys get a bit silly (giggling at the kids on the video :glare:...and their artwork suffers. But after a few days of looking at their "silly " art they realize that they enjoy the work that is made with a more serious apporach. It has become a great family time..and soemtimes I even get to do the project which makes the artist in me happy. My daughter loves art and begs to do it everyday. If only we had the time and Atelier had more lessons per level.

Yes, there are "seasons" to homeschooling. You have the educational background to see what needs to be done and what is to be expected for the age of your children...but you don't have the expereince of managing a multi age classroom...of your own kids ...yet. You will get the hang of it. It is very chaotic and I often wonder how my kids managed to learn a thing! But they always did (and do!) We had good days and bad days, noisy days and messy days. (Especially when my ds#4 was 2 and I would teach the others and he would stick his whole arm in the peanutbutter while I was otherwise occupied...everyday it was some new disaster.) My oldest is a rising 8th grader so I am in a new "season" of trying to cover all the bases and step him up in his workload and responsibility... Your post makes me long for the crazy days of peanutbutter messes. ;) It was physically more demanding to stay calm, but as a teacher it was much easier because the content wasn't so demanding.

:bigear: I was wondering this too. Any ideas?