Thank you.

I just got back from a used curriculum fair and was able to get Mystery of History v. 1 and Apologia Land Animals of the Sixth Day. While I am excited, I am more than a little overwhelmed thinking about how to break them up into days. If you have done them before, how did you do it? A set amount of pages per day? Science one day, History the next? Science for one semester then History for the next? Thanks for any advice you might have :)

4th grade - Math - Saxon 5/4 Language Arts - Abeka History - Mystery of History Science - Apologia, Land Animals of the 6th Day Private Piano Lessons 2nd Grade Math - Abeka Language Arts - Abeka History and Science - Non fiction readers and listening in with Big sister Private piano lessons Preschool - Abeka K4

Yes.

I personally believe in option C. Nothing else makes sense to me. It also does not make sense to me that God would create a young looking earth when everything else He created looked as an adult. As for fossils, I believe that He wanted us to believe unseeing.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Pippi Long-stocking, Sarah Plain and Tall, Little House on the Prairie books, Winnie the Pooh, The Valentine Rabbit, abridged versions of Little Woman, The Little Princess, Heidi, and other classics, A Treasury of Bunny Stories by Beatrix Potter, and other collection books such as the Disney Story Book collections. ETA - Charlotte's web and Babe.

As for the question if Saxon has a workbook, the Saxon that I recently bought for 5/4 is a soft cover book that could be used as a workbook. You would probably need an extra sheet of paper to do some of the work, but It could easily be used as a workbook. Having used both Saxon and Abeka for lower grades, I do not believe Abeka is harder than Saxon. It may also depend on what type of person she is. Would she prefer plain Jane black and white text or colorful pages? I only have experience with those two, so I can not help with the other questions.

I am sorry, I do not know who Art Reed is. The Saxon that I bought was published in 2005, and is soft cover. We had been using Abeka, but I wanted something with a CD or video that could help explain as math for 4th grade is going to get harder for me to teach as math is not one of my strengths. I gave my daughter a placement test and I was very surprised to see she did not do as well because she was doing ok with Abeka. I spoke with a more experience homeschool mom and she told me that we would do fine, that it starts out with just addition and subtraction. I went to a used book store and looked at a Saxon 2nd edition book and it looked pretty straight forward and I felt that she would do fine with it. Then the newer Saxon came that I had ordered online and it looks completely different and confusing to me over the used Saxon book that I had looked at. I am not sure if I should try to make the newer Saxon work, or if I should sell it and just buy a used copy of an older Saxon book. Thank you.

Thank you!

I recently bought a newer edition of Saxon 5/4. I had previously looked at a used copy of Saxon 5/4 and it seemed a lot different than the newer edition. Which do you all like better and why? Thank you so much for all of your thoughts and opinions.

When working on reading with my girls, I try to not correct to the point that it kills the love of reading :) Practice and time will naturally improve reading and the guessing. I start out teaching phonics, but I have found that there is a time when they naturally look at the pictures and contexts and guess. If the word is really off or more than one word a line I correct, but I still want the story to flow so they are enjoying the experience. With both of my girls that are reading they naturally overcame this as they got more reading practice. They are both years ahead in reading and very strong readers, so I do not think it hurt them.

After reading all the commits and planing out just what I was going to say, I see that this is an old thread. If you all don't mind, I am going to say it anyway :) In my humble opinion, God created Adam and Eve as adults not babies. God created all of the animals as adults, not as babies. God created the trees and grass as mature trees and grass fully mature not as seedlings. Why does it not make sense that God could have created the earth fully mature, looking millions of years old even though it was just created? In the same way, I am sure the day after Adam was created he looked (I don't know, lets guess 30) like an adult not one day old. So it is possible (and I think likely), that the earth looks millions of years old when in actuality was not created that long ago. I also agree with the above thoughts that no one really knows for sure because we were not around at the time. It takes just as much faith to believe either way.

*Lurker* I hope you all do not mind if I chime in. Anything Old Earth (Against the grain of this thread I know) Anything that requires a lot of extra participation from me. I like for my girls to be able to work mostly independently. Yes, I like Abeka :)

I have had better luck finding levelled readers at the used book store than at the library. They are normally just a $1 or $1.75. There is also a very nice selection of non fiction readers at that level so it is a perfect way to combine subjects. Get a levelled reader about dolphins or snakes and learn about them at the same time that you are working on those reading skills.

When my girls were at that stage of reading, I just had them do more than one level 2 reader. I only had them read as long as they were interested though. So if they wanted to read for 5 minutes, they read for 5 minutes. If they wanted to read for an hour, then they read for an hour. Another thing I did was to have a time where they needed to go lie down in bed, but they could either read or go to sleep. My middle daughter will read for hours to keep from having to go to sleep.

Abeka academy does have a program where you can send them your work and they will grade if for you and send it back, but it will probably not work for someone who is not Protestant leaning.

I know I do not post here a lot, but I did want to give my two sense. SOTW is not for everyone. I tried it the first year, gave up after a few weeks. Went back to it again the next year thinking it must work, and gave up after a few weeks. Its just is not for everyone. No matter how you slice it, I am just not going to mummify a chicken. I am just not. I might build a moat out of dirt and grass in the first few weeks of the school year when we are all excited about the year, but come March when we are all so sick of school it is not going to happen. Its ok. There are some people that just love that kind of learning. I am not one of them. I am also not a fan of reading out loud to my kids (Terrible I know). I wish I loved reading out loud but I don't. The audio tapes might help with that, but I do think they would. It is ok if not every curriculum works for every family. For other suggestions, what I have found to work best for our family for grades k-2 is the Scolastic non fiction Step Into Reading leveled readers. They are written for a young child, at their reading level. We have done this for both science and history. My girls have learned so much from those leveled readers. They work on their reading at the same time that they are learning about Abe Lincoln or George Washington or about Pyramids or snakes or butterflies. I required 2 non fiction books per day. For this year for 3rd grade we did Abeka in addition to the non fiction readers, however I am not sure if I will do that for 4th grade next year or not. Good luck finding something that will work just right for your family.

Thank you.

Saxon Math question - I have been planning to use Saxon 5/4 next year with DIVE. Today I gave my daughter the middle grades placement test and she did not do so hot. She would hands down ace the K-3 placement test, but I am not sure she is quite ready for the 5/4. What should I do? The placement test the middle grades seemed to have skipped years from the K-3 test. Am I missing a placement test? We have used Abeka from K-3. Thanks.

*Lurker* If you like Abeka, there is not that much religion in the math curriculum. Other subjects yes, but not so much for math.

Math Bingo

*Lurker* I am curious if you all are talking about what age your child would read the books themselves or what age you would read the books out loud to them? Thanks :)

We are doing A Beka as well. With my daughter we used BOB BOOKS to go with it and it worked perfectly.

I did a quick Google search and came up with this. http://jimmiewriter.hubpages.com/hub/Curriculum-Spine