Thank you Nicholas mom, Chrysalis Academy, and Harriet Vane. More great thoughts! I appreciate all that you have shared. :hurray:

Thank you all for sharing! We have a lot to think about. :huh:

Thank you Lori, for your detailed post! Your suggestions and encouragement are very helpful. We have the Well Educated Mind, and Invitation to the Classics was ordered yesterday. It sounds like those, plus TWTM will give us a good starting point. PS - Gilgamesh is one book that I have some familiarity with, so now I'm going to have to find "Darmok" :lol:

Looking ahead to start planning for high school - We hope to follow the WTM plan for combining History and Literature. In TWTM (2009), it says to make a realistic assessment of how many books the student will be able to cover, and then choose 8, or 12, or 18. Of course this will vary depending on the student's reading skills and length/difficulty of the books read. But how to choose which will make up the book list? The shortest, so you can read more? Whatever looks interesting? A sampling from different time periods? Without being familiar with many of these books, we are not sure what to use as a deciding factor. Also, anyone who has followed this plan - any thoughts, suggestions, things you wish you'd done differently or that worked well? Thanks for your help!

I have 2 dds ages 6 & 4. As my younger is getting ready to start hs, I'm wondering if it is better/easier to combine the girls for History & Science (basically following WTM) or would it be just as easy and more age appropriate to keep them separate? Has anyone been in a similar situation? What have you done and how did it work? TIA! Kara

:lurk5:

I'm hoping someone can help. I purchased the Lester series at a really great price, but there is a page missing from Book 2. I'm sure I can find the art online and print it out, but I need the text. If anyone can send me the text , I would really appreciate it. My dd loves these books! Book 2 page 85/86 TIA, Kara

I have 2 girls that are both allergic to wheat, barley, dairy, nuts, eggs, shellfish, many fruits and meats, and 1 is allergic to soy. The other posters had some great ideas and substitutions. We do a lot of "plain" foods, very little processed. One of the "fortunate" things for me was that my girls were both diagnosed with allergies very early on (my oldest was allergic to apples, bananas, all meats, etc from the start and has outgrown a few of these) so they have never missed having any foods, I've never had to take something away that they had gotten used to. You might want to look at tapioca/rice bread at your local health food store as well. My girls also enjoy Ancient Harvest Quinoa (elbow noodles), and Tinkyada Pasta Joy Brown rice pasta vegetable spirals. It was strange to me for a long time, but they enjoy eating it plain. I'm hoping I can help with a couple of recipes. Check out Bob's Red Mill online and go to their recipe section. They have a recipe for Eggless, Milkless, Butterless and Moist cake. It makes two little loaf cakes, or I make cupcakes by changing the baking time to 30 minutes. It is like a spice cake and my girls love it. This is what they have for birthday cake and/or when we go to other children's birthday parties. We also make buckwheat pancakes (see Bob's Red Mill for recipe), although my husband adds 2 Tbls sugar and replaces 1+ of the cups of water with applesauce. I also found some recipes on viveleveganrecipes.blogspot.com and shmooedfood.blogspot.com. I combined their recipes for Banana Oat Bundles and Banana Oatmeal Cookies to get some oatmeal cookies that my girls really like: 2 c oats 3/4 tsp baking soda 1 tsp cinnamon 4 medium overripe bananas raisins 1/4 c sugar (I use a little less) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spray with nonstick spray. Use a good blender to blend the oats into a fine flour. Put the oat flour into a bowl and add baking soda and cinnamon. Put the peeled bananas into the blender and blend until smooth. Add to the oat mixture along with raisins (or you can use sunflower seeds or dates) and mix until well combined. Place spoonfuls of cookie dough on baking sheet. Bake for 12 minutes. Cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight container in the fridge. I hope this helps. It is overwhelming at first, but as you can see from the posts you are not alone!

Bump

My husband and I were trying to plan ahead and buy some "classic" reading books for 3rd/4th grade. WTM recommends the Bullseye series for many titles, but some reviews of Knights of the Round Table by Gwen Gross were very bad, and even went so far as to say to avoid the entire series. (It didn't say whether or not they had actually read any of the other books) Has anyone else found this to be a problem? With just a book or two, or the entire series. Or, what series would you recommend for books like Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, Knights of the Round Table? TIA! -Kara

I think your last statement sums it up best. You should place her according to her ability, not necessarily her grade level. With that in mind, I wouldn't look at what lesson she will finish (105 out of 135) and if that's enough, but rather has she mastered all the concepts in the book. I believe the lower Saxon levels have weekly and chapter tests does Saxon 7/8? Can you give her an end of the year "test" to see if she is weak in any areas and then go back and cover those lessons rather than just going to the next lesson? Then, you may be able to "finish" the book without necessarily doing each lesson, but at least you can have some confidence that your dd has covered and mastered all the concepts. I don't know about Alg 1/2 vs Alg other than to suggest the same type of thing - give her some tests and see how she does. If it seems like she has most/all the concepts needed to go straight to Algebra then do that, but if she needs some review, start with Alg 1/2. HTH!

There was a previous post about Ray's (I noticed at the bottom of the page under similar posts) from Luanne on 2-14, I think. I will try to copy the link here, but not really sure how to do this, so it may not work, but maybe do a search or look below? http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6621

We have 2 dd's (4 and 2). We purchased the Ray's cds online ($59, I think?). Can't beat the price since that should take us through high school. Since my girls are so young, we haven't really started in depth - just doing the first few lessons - which are basically recognizing numbers, counting to 100, etc. What drew us to it is that it is a lot of word problems/problem solving, and mental math. It is very "old school" - like the McGuffy Readers (which we also bought) and is supposed to progress systematically from simple to complex and emphasize mental arithmetic to precede written arithmetic to assure understanding. From the looks of it, it does seem to do this. We also purchased the Parent-Teacher Guide for Ray's New Arithmetics by Ruth Beechick (Mott Media) which gives some background on Ray's, a Scope and Sequence, and some Teaching tips. Then for each grade 1st-8th, it also gives a sample day, a sample week schedule, some tips, unit tests with answers, a planning guide, etc. The last chapter of the book is project and game ideas. The possible drawbacks (depending on what you are looking for) are that it does not come with a manipulative kit to purchase or teacher's manual. There are not a lot of fancy pictures or color - just simple black and white. And, the print may seem a little small depending on the curriculum books/workbooks you may be used to using. With the cd's, we can print it out bigger if we choose. I have lurked a little at the Ray's yahoo group and they seem to be nice and helpful, although not as active as this board! I am hoping you get more responses - I am still interested to hear from some who may have used Ray's for several years and how it's working for them. I hope I've been slightly helpful!

You might try: The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book by Hartman. It has stories from Greece, England, Scotland, North America, Puerto Rico, Finland, Africa, Java, India, Wales, Germany, Australia, Japan, Ireland, Spain, Norway, Brazil, Russia, and Egypt. Usborne Stories from Around the World. This one has stories from Australia, Persia, Greece, France, South America, New Zealand, Germany, Mexico, India, Scandanavia, Italy, Holland, Morocco, China, Czech Republic, Spain, Africa, Russian, Britain, North America, Japan and Cambodia. The Empty Pot by Demi (China) The Egyptian Cinderella by Climo Rechenka's Eggs (Ukraine) My daughter (4) has LOVED the above books. As a resource, try Books to Build On: A Grade-By-Grade Resource Guide for Parents and Teachers by Hirsch. You may be able to find this at your library. We have this and have used for book ideas. The books below I have not read - but might give you some ideas.... The Golden Slipper by Lum (Vietnam) Five Chinese Brothers Fisherman and His Wife Favorite Fairy Tales from ..... by Haviland Count Your Way Through ..... by Haskins (although several of these got bad reviews on Amazon) Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile by DePaola Lon Po Po: A Red Riding Hood Story from China Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters by Steptoe Hope this helps!

Here is one that I found: http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=18826 Sorry I couldn't be more help. It's hard to find free ones!

What is SWO?

I'm Kara and I live in NW FL with my dh and our two dd's (ages 4 & 2). Both girls have multiple allergies - so with that consideration and the hopes that we can give them a better, individually-tailored education than they would get in ps we decided to hs. We just happened to find TWTM and both dh and I read it and completely agreed that this was the way to go. I have been reading the boards for quite a while now, even though we're just in pre-school, and have found so many great ideas and suggestions! We are enjoying pre-school and I'm looking forward to teaching (and learning) so much over the next years!