Does the grade 4-6 matter much? Has anyone tried them and the grade 1-3 ones and found their kids unable to handle the 4-6 ones? Thanks! Also, how do they compare with the time traveler cd's from homeschool in the woods? Thanks so much!

If you don't mind my asking, what are memory boxes? Do you just mean index card boxes with your work in them? Do you use the SCM system? I'd love to be able to visualize your system a bit. thanks.

I have both SOTW3 and TQ young people's american guides here. I'm not using either as our primary resource, but pull from both almost daily for add-ons. I think the main resource used in TQ by many is The Light & the Glory, as well as Sea to Shining Sea. Also, Stories of the Pilgrims is a fabulous choice. You'd get a heavy biblical perspective from those. I've really preferred this year over last, when we only use SOTW as our spine, because of the Christian worldview perspective of our studies this year. We use BF as our main resource. I have friends that love using TQ as theirs; I just didn't have it and was able to borrow all of the BF resources for free. Then I decided it was worth purchasing a used but new version of the TQ guide to pull ideas from for our book basket time. HTH! Enjoy your year! I think the young kids version would be fine btw. SL core 3 choices would be a helpful addition for your 10 y.o. to read. That what I have my 10 y.o. doing.

We like to read, read, read - especially choices from the Sonlight preK lists and the free ambleside online lists. And at about age 4 my kids loved Kumon workbooks and Rod & Staff workbooks - cutting and pasting and such.

I don't know that I like it better. They are different. Bookmooch has a really slow search engine and also doesn't let you easily pick different versions of the same book. I don't prefer those features. And, the inequity of the points system means there will never be enough books to choose from, because you can get more than one point per book and get more than 1 book therefore by listing just one. This is very obvious when you go searching for books to get! I put about 500 on my wish list, and only found 29 we needed, which even included some Nancy Drews. But this also means that I got many more books per book I listed and swapped, and so my actual cost per book was very low on Bookmooch -- I like bargains! PBS on the other hand has a plethora of books I want but not as many people wanting the books I have listed. And I can only get 1 book per book I list no matter what. I really like that you can print your mailing label right then and there and stick it in your mailbox. Yet, usually people only order 1 book at a time from me on PBS. Shipping is usually about $3 then. On bookmooch, many people ordered more than 1 (but likely bc/ I listed so many at once) and I saved a lot on shipping costs! Oh, I also don't prefer that PBS limits your wishlist to 200. I haven't tried the paypal idea of choosing multiple items to ship and then printing labels through it. So, I listed all of my books on both and will just quickly remove them from one as soon as they are taken on the other. I think that will work fine and I'll get the best of both systems. For me, they both work. I think I'll stick with both.

I think it is a really personal thing according to your learning type and his. We do both and I greatly prefer MM. I love not having a TM and just following the instructions she provides in the SM. I love that a mathy kid can do it almost alone. I have 4 kids all doing different levels of math... so it is great for us. MEP is good and is a great complement to MM, but I would never have time to follow the TM! I just teach them what they need to know for each lesson myself and get them going. If I had only 1 child, we might do both plus RS. RS has been my son's favorite - the games are fabulous. But I can't manage 4 levels of it! Edited to say - I say this and then realize my ds5 is only doing MEP1. Ok, so now that I think about it, the reason for this is that I think MEP1 is much easier than MM1. I don't know if this is true at all levels, but even MEP2 is a breeze for my son who is doing MM2. Maybe at some point it levels out and MEP and MM seem the same difficulty at the same levels. And maybe no one agrees with me. But for us, MEP1 is a perfect start for a 5 year old with little previous math instruction.

That is great! Thanks! So much info!

We follow the BF Guide and I just scheduled the SL3 for the older kids. America's Providential History has been the one BF selection we didn't care for either. I added in the Veritas Press history early readers package for American http://www.veritaspress.com/prodinfo.asp?number=255276 for book basket time, plus tons of extras I gleaned from other sources that looked good. I bought Time Travelers cd's from Homeschool in the Woods but we haven't made time for much of those. I need to schedule that time into our day! But it has been a great history year - our best so far!

I joined bookmooch on the 17th in hopes to get books for book basket time since we already own SL3 and BF primary in full so just wanted to add some fun extras. I sent 40 books already! I searched on there for every book I don't already own from the Guesthollow American history list and the TOG list. I found 29 and mooched them. And I still have 37 points to use for 37 more books! It cost me $70 to get the credits by mailing those 40 books in a combo of overseas and US. So it averaged me a little over $1 per credit and I sent books that I bought at yard sales for $.25 each mostly. Even if I didn't have 37 more books to pick, I'd be happy at getting 29 for my $70 expenditure. (BTW, I got a bunch of books to be sent to me from China, so I could have received more than 29. Those cost me more than 1 point each and ate up some of my points.) It did take a fair amount of time, but I sat here and hit search in between helping one of my kids with some math problems as she had questions. So, it wasn't so bad. She didn't need my full attention as she worked. Now we have 29 books coming for book basket time! Yippee! You should join and we can swap more books! I'm loving bookmooch. Overall, I have less invested per book than on paperbackswap. Yeah!

That is what we are doing this year. We all, even my older 2, love the BF book choices! SL3 is a great addition for them at their ages. it has been a super combo. I just bought (I'm a curriculum addict I guess) Paths of Exploration and hope to integrate it too. That are aspects of it I thought we'd enjoy, but mostly I want to get into the flow of it and possibly use it as my primary curriculum for history next year with Paths of Settlement. This year I'd say BF is my main one.

perfect! Thanks.

Just to see where they are placing and what gaps they have? I would prefer not to wait till I have to pay for the testing my state requires. Is there a freebie around that is of any real value?

I have a differing opinion, so I thought you might find it helpful. FWIW - First, the kids I used HWOT with still struggle with letter height. I think it is because the HWOT paper has no upper line. When I was using HWOT, I loved it. I thought it was the cat's meow. Later I looked back and realized that those kids still struggle with this. Also, I don't prefer the look of the lettering. So, we switched to Getty Dubay italic and regular paper with the dashed line and we love the resulting style! We've been using it for years. My oldest still do it. We are on book F. I really want them to continue with good handwriting, and it is so quick to do, so we still practice. All of that to say, I did learn a lot from the HWOT teacher guide and I would suggest that you refer to it, even if you don't use that method. Also, HWOT is super for kids with real fine motor skill issues! I'm not knocking it in totality, just preferred a different style when it wasn't needed. The helping hand and the finger space are 2 things I gleaned from it that we stuck with. Also, we still sing, "Where do you start your letters? At the TOP!" with our little one!

We joined bookmooch this week. We listed tons of books to trade there and said we'd trade internationally. That means we get 3 book credits for each one we ship out of the country. So we are game! We had ones already mooched to ship to France, Canada, South Africa (hi to HannahW!) and all over the US. So we looked up each place on google earth. But we are also going to hang a world map on the wall near my computer and put a push pin in it on each spot. What fun! We've been memorizing the countries and the US states using Kathy Troxel cd's. Now we get to talk even more about all we are studying! And bonus-- my daughters got to pick books on bookmooch too!

I'd say WWE3, but actually some might think WWE2 would work. Definitely not 4! I started my then 9 year old in 3 last year, and it was no piece of cake. The youtube of SWB doing it with her son is helpful!

So, would anyone who want to be friends on bookmooch to get first dibs on each others' listings please let us know your bookmooch name? Mine is walkermamaof4, same as on here. Thanks!

Murmer-I sent you a friend link. I have this same user name too. thanks!

Hannah, Are you HannahW? I think you ordered one of mine. :) So fun! So, if 100 people from WTM all join and post all of theirs, we'd have an awesome trade going on and would all find books we want! We just need to get it to grow! It was easier than PBS!

I'm so excited that I saw this thread! I use PBS but never heard of Bookmooch. I joined, listed all of the books I have on PBS, and tons were on people's wish lists! 3 got snagged immediately. I already have 15 credits. Yeah for almost free books! Thanks for telling us all about this!

4 days a week we read a couple of pages a day. on fridays we do the Try This and Experiments, taking 2 weeks total per chapter. we printed bookmark style schedules from a yahoo group.

bump

When my kids were tested last year, the tester brought to my attention that my 9 y.o. was skipping the middle syllables of very long words when reading out loud to her. We hadn't been reading out loud because she was a strong reader. I was so surprised. So, this year she reads her WWE4 out loud before we narrate, and now the whole family does a round robin style reading for all subjects we do together that have any large amounts of reading -- Bible, Science... It has been great. They really love it. And I was reading so much before; I love reading less! I also learned that the same daughter comprehends better when she reads out loud versus reading to herself!

:iagree: We bought everything - the red, green, and purple recommendations. It was so above my girls' heads that they really began to hate history. This year we are using BF Primary with all of the kids, and added in tons of books from lots of other sources for our 30' a day book basket time. We are all loving it! I won't go back to VP.

the schoolhouse rock version isn't complete.

Someone mentioned it in another thread and I thought it deserves its own thread bc/ it is so informative!