I looked up all the threads I could find, but it is not quite what I want to know. 1. You still have to make your own lesson plans, is this more than a glorified reading list? It is so expensive I was just wondering what you actually get since you have to add in writing for $50, Maps for..... 2. How do you combine your kids, say 1st,3rd and 7th? I know the 1st and 3rd would use the same books, but does the 7th grader do everything alone? 3. Is the Free 3week Sample a good representitive of all the other units? What else besides math and phonics would I need to buy for my kids? Does this cover everything else? Thanks! Also, on a side note: I haven't been able to find a good history fit. Sonlight books are too mature, WinterPromise was too disjointed, HOD was in between my kids actual levels (either too easy or too hard,) AO is too British, and I could go on. I do not want something secular, and I do not want 1 book we just read from. I would like a bunch of books so we can skip around some. I just really don't want to make up my own curriculum, but feeling I may have to. My favorite thing so far was Beautiful Feet EArly American. Are the Queen history guides similar to BF?

I used the textbook alone one year. I added in living books. It took us slightly less than 1 semester. I did have the TM and the student worksheets, but I didn't end up wanting to use them. Instead of their CDs you could find any CD on African music and replace that. It is very missionary based, but those are in different sections. There is a geography section, an animal section, and review sections in addition to the missionary. We did an extensive animal study using the animal sections and some library books.

My oldest, ds11, was this way. He grew out of it. :D Hope that helps. Just stick to making him do the work everyday. I started holding off lunch til he finished Which some moms may say is cruel but he chose to waste that time, and 1 or 2 hours won't kill a kid. I also made plans for around 1pm once a week to go to something fun with friends. If he didn't finish, he brought his work with him and wasn't allowed to play. Practically try to switch around subjects. My ds took the longest to do math, so I moved it to last. He takes much less time to do math now that it only affects his own free time.

My oldest went when my middle child was 4wks-2 years old. My 4 week old would be up all night, of course, and we would all drive my oldest to Pre-K and drop him off. I would come home and nap. Around 11 I would get back up with the baby, take care of his needs, cook myself lunch, and do chores. I would pick up my oldest, come home, and play with him. We'd eat dinner, bathe and go to bed. It was very nice and easy. For Kindergarden my baby was 1. He was never a good sleeper, but he would sleep late in the mornings to about 9. I always had to wake him up to drive my older son to school, which made me cry. I got up at 6:30 to shower, woke my oldest up to feed him breakfast, and waited til 7:15 to get my baby up and throw everybody in the car. We drove to school and I usually stayed all day at school. I was the room mom, VP of the PTA, and a volunteer in the school library. My son's K teacher was great, and she let me stay in the room all day. My 1 year old really cooperated, he stayed in a stroller all day though. :glare: I brought toys, snacks, and kept him entertained while we ran about doing things at school. I would either eat lunch with my oldest son at school, or I would head home to let the baby out. My 1 year old took only 1 nap a day at most. Of course, it was usually around 2pm which is when I was in the car-pool lane. When we got home both kids were whiny and needy. My oldest played soccer on T/TH, Wed. nights we went to church, and every night we had homework and dinner. I bathed them, put my oldest to bed around 8pm, cleaned the house, and lay exhausted hoping the baby would go to sleep. For 1st grade my younger son was 2. This teacher did not allow me in the room because she felt my 2yo would be a distraction. My day still started early but I dropped my oldest off at 7:20 and just went home. I then entertained my middle son for hours. He was an extremely difficult toddler. If I turned my back for 2 minutes I would find him on top of the fridge or running free outside. He could climb anything, and none of the child-proof things kept him out. I would actually leave at 1:30 to pick my oldest up, even though school didn't get out until 2:20. I would just sit in the car pool lane, because my middle son was locked up for an hour in his carseat. I also went to Target a whole lot, because I could just push him around in the cart while we got a drink and ate popcorn. In the midst of all this I was still VP of the PTA, I kept the house spotless for meetings, I cooked, I baked for the school, and I wrote the school newspaper. When I picked my oldest up we still had sports, homework, dinner, and bedtime.

To the Original OP: You said she is loving it but you are not. I struggle with that issue myself. My older 2 have different learning styles than me. What I would love, they hate. I would not change your curriculum if she loves it. I agree with backing off a little to help you get adjusted. You are right, as homeschoolers we do not have any free time. Instead of thinking of it as free time, I started counting how lucky I am to homeschool. I want my children home with me, so why am I complaining about it. My kids have strict bed times so my dh and I can be alone at night. I 2nd MOTH, it is a great resource for becoming more disciplined. When we are structured, there is time for me and everything else that needs to be done.

I agree, I wouldn't like to be told to make a map and not given directions. I am glad you shared that with me. I have MapTrek Ancients and it does include all the people from the Bible. Another thought I had was books by Dorothy Mills. Memoria Press has reformatted a couple of them and added student texts. They look good, not sure how much geography. You could ask.

I have found that if I stay on track I can get school done on co-op days. We leave for co-op at 12:45. If we have a fieldtrip early I cannot get work done, and I used to not worry about it. This year I have written out my weekly plan. If the boys do not finish during the week I do make them finish on Sunday after church. School kids have homework on weekends, so I don't feel like it is too much to ask.

I also really like the MP packages, but if you ask on their Forum they recommend starting with Greek Myths. You could use D'Aulaires Greek Myths with Famous Men of Greece for History and follow the rest of their plans for the other subjects. Another great choice I keep looking at is Veritas Press self-paced History. It looks awesome for auditory children especially. My son adores books on tape period. Get whatever you can with audio.

I keep looking at Trail Guides by Geo Matter. They have a Bible one.

I am using MP K with my youngest. Their phonics is First Start in REading. At the back of the Parent manual it has bed - the letters are big and they drew a bed on top of the e. They also put the sign language letters b and d on a page for your child to look at and do on their own hands. I am trying this to see if it takes care of the problem!

Is this a sure sign of dyslexia or this is just partly developmental? Somedays my ds7 is reading well and flying through phonics, other days he can't answer any questions. He has a lot of add and ADHD qualities. He is also very sensitive, and he is advanced in math and logical thinking. I keep telling myself names of all the geniuses who couldn't read or pass school subjects: Newton, Mozart.... Today I wrote out a sequence of B,d, and Ps all mixed up. He got them wrong several times. When I stopped him and pointed individually he would figure it out. He also didn't sound out dad today, but last week he knew that word. We took off yesterday because I was very ill, and neither boy wanted to do work today.

Your daughter is going to do so awesome in college! She needs a field that requires Calculus based Physics. A good read for her would be John Hudson Tiner's book on Exploring Mathematics. It gives the history behind it.

:iagree: My ds is 7 and he is still not fluent in reading. He does get phonics, but it is a chore sounding out every word. I was encouraged today when he did 4 pages of ETC book3, usually it is extremely difficult to get 2 done. Difficult for me, I can't stand how slow this process is. One thing we changed was letting him read the same book over and over until he knows if perfectly and fluently. I thought this was cheating, but friends with early education degrees told me this is what it takes to become fluent. He will pick up Little Bear on his own now and read it just because he can. We still use Bob books too.

Thank you, this is good to know.

Thank you, I checked out the middle grades lecture on writing. I did try outlining with him last year. I will try to instill some of those things at a slower pace this time.

Oh, and about Veritas Press.... I looked at that online self-paced towards the end of last year. It looks so fun, and he would like it based on the sample of the OET. That is a great idea to sign up for Middles and use some fun books.

I actually bought LOF at the beginning of 5th grade, and he was so not ready to learn by reading. I stuck with Saxon instead. I brought it out Monday, hoping to make school a little more interesting. Plus, I have been doing the Elementary Series with my middle child. My middle child is a math wiz. We use MM, Living Books, and Fred. He would do more if I put it in front of him. Well, my oldest thought his brother's math looked lke fun, so I told him I had it on the shelf. It has only been 3 days, but he really enjoyed the first 3 lessons. Today we had a bit of a snag with double-digit multiplication. He forgot how, so I changed up his drill sheet to doubles. He has been doing Fraction reductions for drill. He has always done drill sheets, so this wasn't that big of a change. As soon as I reminded him what to do he remembered, so he threw a fit about having to do drills. You sure are right about ornery. Last week he got a pimple on his nose, and I know a lot of it is hormones. Thanks again for more ideas for LA.

Thank you, Oh E! I promise I was laughing while I read your post because you made me see what my choices must look like to him. We listened to Greathall Productions King Arthur at the beginning of the year and he did beg to hear more about King Arthur. I planned to do Middle Ages, but got mucked down by it all. I have tons of books on knights and crusades. I also put together a bunch of books on dragons. I will have to drag them all back out and plan a few weeks out. I also have a Middle Ages resource guide with activities like making duct tape weapons, and we could play Risk. I have enough reading books to go through all the ages. Once a month the boys have a Nature Class at a local nature preserve. Last night they went and looked at the stars, he came home begging for a high powered telescope. He saw Jupiter and 2 of it's moons. When we did Venus a month ago, we did make paper mache volcanoes. They of course loved that. The books he has read for reading are actually his choices. He has enjoyed all those books. He was supposed to read Bronze Bow for LLATL, but he hated it. We also tried to read Lantern Bearers at the beginning of the year and neither one of us liked it. Thanks again!

your children are really learning? I mean, really. My husband feels that my 6th grade son should be able to write a page report on any topic. I spent all last year teaching him to write a paragraph. He doesn't get or refuses to do it correctly, not sure which one. He has no desire to learn at all. He simply does it so he can have free time. He still never capitalizes the first letter in a sentence, though I have been correcting him since 1st grade. How strict do I need to become? How much work is appropriate? Here is what he has: Math- Fred Fractions, I add drill sheets everyday- we were using Saxon 7/6 but he failed the first 4 tests. He got over 90% on all of Saxon 6/5 so I am not sure what the problem is. Maybe like I mentioned he just doesn't care.. History- Notgrass Exploring Georgia(3X week) and A History of our World Vol1 from Queen (3X week). Should I add in readers for History, how much do they read at this age? Bible- Jashub's Journal from SCM Science- Apologia Astronomy Independent with Journal (2X a week), 2nd half of year Queen's guide to Pagoo and a study on The Barrens. LA- Gum Drops 6, LLATL Tan, Write with the Best, Spelling through Copywork C, and Wordly Wise 6. He does Writing only 2X a week. So far he has read: Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Around the World in 80 Days, and the Borrowers. I have been making him read about 20 pages a day. Should he read more? Thank you! He doesn't get video or computer until 3 even if he is done early. My boys stay outside all day if I let them this time of year though.

They are set up really similar to Beautiful feet's guides. There are research options for every chapter. They are quite simple. I do like them though. I have Oakie and Pagoo. I like their new Discovering Nature Series much better, it is full. It feels like more work, more info.

Christian Cottage Unit Studies rotate between science and history units. The oceanography is science of course. You could easily pull out from it what you like or don't like. Each section seems somewhat independent from the others. You can also purchase individual units on Currclick. There is a good size book list you could choose from to read. We did a few of them last year and really enjoyed the hands on learning. I did a whole unit on Advent and used part of the section from the Ancient Civ. I liked that the activities used things I had at home. One of the things I remember is Orienteering. We used a compass to go on an expedition around the house.

MFW is way too easy if your kid was bored in public school K. Maybe you could look at Memoria Press K. I am liking it with my dd, and she prefers workbooks too. Can he read? If he can read you might look at 1st grade material instead. I wouldn't pick HOD because there are lots of crafts.

I have the opposite problem with girls throwing themselves at my ds11. I promise you it doesn't feel any better just because he's a boy. He's too young!! Why do girls do this nowadays? I want to parent those girls and let them know that boys prefer to do the chasing, and that they just look desperate.

I like Julian for a boy. How about Juliet if she's a girl?

http://www.cornerstonecurriculum.com/Curriculum/Heart4You/Heart.htm#Complet A Heart 4 You China is aimed at missions. Is he interested in China?