I'm planning on buying the CDs for next year and just listen to them -- no AG. I'm hoping we can just listen (during school, during lunch, during car rides) and get through all 4 every year for the next several years. My boys like to quiz each other. After we listen they each have to ask the other 2 questions. That helps keep them engaged while listening.

I have a paper-sorter thing on my desk as the kids' "Inbox." When they are done with any work, they stick it in their inbox. At the end of each week (or two....or three), I glean out the very best work they did (about 1 math sheet, 1 copywork sheet, 1 map, and half their drawings) and throw away the rest. Each child has a notebook that I put their representative work in for the year. At the end of the year I'll scan the contents of the binders then toss the papers. I hate paper clutter. I was homeschooled and have none of my work saved. I never needed it and never wanted it. My mom kept our achievement test results until we graduated college. Of course, some people like the keepsake of having old work. That's ok. But if you don't, I don't think it's necessary to keep most of their work. So much paper!

I am due with #5 at the end of October (which means I'll have a Nov. baby). I'm contemplating just starting our holiday break when the baby is born. But I think that much time off will mean the kids will start to go wild, particularly since I won't be able to send them outside most of the day that time of year. I'm starting to order and plan now for next year, and I am making independent-work checklists for my then 4th & 2nd grader. So they'll at least have some things to do to keep them busy. I am also planning on relying quite a bit on audio books....so all I have to do is push play. :) I'll definitely take several weeks off after the baby is born to recover and enjoy the newborn, but I agree that homeschooling with a baby (I use a wrap and wear the baby a lot) is easy, it's the toddler stage (and I have one of those, too!) that is crazy-making! Unless, that is, the baby is a terrible sleeper (I've had two of those) or you end up having to work through baby blues (done that once). Then I just keep it cut back to math & my readers spending a couple hours a day reading good books. Right now it's keeping things moving during the first trimester that's hard!

My sons are both visual, and are doing well with Math-U-SEE. I love the program. You can search on YouTube "Steve Demme MUS" and it pulls up videos of him answering parent questions, so you can get a taste of his approach and style. I really enjoy it.

I'm transitioning all my home management binder and planning sorts of things to a digital set up, mostly on my iPad. School stuff, though, is still a hang-up. I would like to use Evernote, since it's a program I'm already using and I can use it on any computer/device, but I can't wrap my head around how to set it up. Does anyone already have an Evernote set up for school planning and records? Part of my problem is I like my documents to look pretty, but pretty isn't really something Evernote accommodates. :) Let me know, too, if you've blogged about a digital school organization or if there are online articles that helped you set one up! Thanks!

School time total is only a couple hours for us in second grade; math is typically 10-20 minutes. We use Math U See and I add in a 2-5 minute drill page most days.

I don't really keep track of anything. I know we're going through our math curriculum, and I keep track of what books my readers have read, but I don't keep any log. Sometimes I think I should, but it's not required by law in our state. So, I'll be looking through and seeing what you all do!

I use LibraryThing (borrowed my dad's cuecat scanner when I did our initial cataloging) to catalog the books we own. I love it! I paid for the $25 lifetime membership, but there it is also free up to 200 or so books. We also use GoodReads to keep tracks of books we've read. My reading children each get their own account when they start their first 100 books, and now they have a list of all the books they've read so far. Plus, you can have friends and such on it, and my dad and brother love seeing what the boys are reading. What I need is a better way to sort and organize books on the shelf....I don't really want to stick anything on the spine, but so far I seem to be the only one who understands the categories I have them shelved by. We're also on the smallish side -- I just broke 1,000 last year -- but the collection is growing, and I can easily foresee a time when I will no longer simply know what books I have and where I keep them.

Decluttering as much as possible helps. With baby #4 I minimalized the gear and only had a baby wrap, a Bumbo, and I finally caved and pulled out the exersaucer....it was huge, but a life-saver. Baby stuff can take up so much room! It won't be around forever, though. Just get rid of it as soon as babies outgrow it. I went through recently and cut back all the clothes the kids had. It has helped a lot. They each have about 3-4 outfits, and at the end of the day, I run a load of laundry with their clothes and pajamas from that day. With fewer clothes, there's less on the floor, the drawers can close easily, and I *have* to do laundry and get it back to the kids. I found the blog series on "Reasonably Clean House" at ourmothersdaughters.blogspot.com very helpful and yet funny and encouraging. If you go to the blog and scroll down the sidebar she has links to her housekeeping, menu planning, and laundry posts. I wrote about the series myself on my blog here: http://www.simplyconvivial.com/tag/reasonably-clean It's helped a lot, but decluttering and establishing those habits can take years! I'd say this is year 4 or 5 for me in trying to keep stuff "reasonably clean" -- and it's been hard, slow going! But it is quite worth it! Find a few blogs or books that acknowledge the difficulty but encourage you to stick to it anyway and keep persevering even when you feel like you'll go crazy. I've totally been there and still get there sometimes, but it's slowly, slowly, becoming less and less often. :grouphug:

I usually order from Amazon (and I try to remember to click through the affiliate links on my favorite homeschool blogs to support them) and my **favorite** homeschool bookstore: Exodus Books (http://www.exodusbooks.com). Exodus Books is about 4 hours from us, but in the same town as a friend I sometimes visit, so I've been there IRL. The owners are also acquaintance/friends who are second-generation homeschoolers themselves. They have new and used books and they have *great* reviews and descriptions on almost everything. Plus, they are in Oregon, so there's no tax -- that's a bonus for me in WA, where the sales tax is high ($4 shipping is way cheaper than the tax I'd pay for an in-state store w/ free shipping -- and media mail from them gets to me in 1-2 days anyway)

Hello fellow homeschoolers, I am a second-generation-homeschool mom, schooling my 4 at home. I have recently launched a website and eBook on simplifying menu planning and all that that entails. I created the system for myself, and then realized other people might find it useful as well. It is a 30-page book of guideline-style recipes that all rely on very basic, real-food, normal-food pantry staples. I created it for myself as I found that with babies plus homeschooling, I no longer had the brain power or energy for menu planning. This takes the thinking out of not only menu planning, but also grocery shopping. If you are interested, you can find more information at http://www.simplifiedpantry.com/ I have also started a related family-cooking blog found at http://www.simplifiedpantry.com/blog Right now I am running a giveaway on my homemaking/homeschooling blog, offering 3 copies to random winners: http://www.simplyconvivial.com/announcing-simplified-pantry/ Please stop by and enter! For my fellow homeschoolers, I also wanted to offer a discount code if the eBook does seem like something you would enjoy. At checkout, enter the code WTMF to get $3 off the listed price of $9.99. That code will work through the month of March.

The Hobbit E. Nesbit's books The Princess and the Goblin Redwall Leepdike Ridge Charlatan's Boy

I think analysis should wait for the logic and rhetoric years. The best introduction is .... Introduction. Just read poetry. We love Tasha Tudor's illustrated Child's Garden of Verses and Gyo's Poetry for Children collection. Learning to love it will come in familiarly and by sharing it.

Whew. Are you sure that's your simplified list? Still seems like a lot to me! Math, independent reading + narration, copywork, and Latin would be perfectly adequate, particularly if their independent reading is varied. Having a house on the market is tough! I did it twice with all littles, and we did pretty much *no* academics for those months. But I took them away from the house to the parks a lot. :)

I use Google Calendar for Appointments, etc. Menu Plan Birthdays & Anniversaries School Schedule Garden Journal Actually, I just posted about how I use Calendar on my blog: Digital Household Notebook: Calendar & Contacts

:lurk5:

My blog -- soon to be plural -- is in my signature. For something like 7 years now I had blogged at A Healer's Geste, but I just did a "rebranding" and renamed myself The Convivial Home. :) It's about all things home, but mostly homemaking, home organization, and home schooling, with lots of my posts being riffs off of books I'm reading. In another week or so I'll also be blogging at our new site, Simplified Pantry, about everyday family meals, food, and cooking.

Hi, I'm starting to compile my list of resources I'd like for next school year, and one thing I think I'd like is poetry read aloud on audio (online, mp3, cd). We've really enjoyed getting our read-alouds in with audio books this year, and I think poetry might happen more often and with better quality if we got some audio versions. Anyone use poetry on audio? Anyone have favorites?

Resetting sentences on their own line is common. My son did that and so I pulled out the book he was reading for fun and showed him how all the sentences about the same thing (same paragraph), go one right after the other until they crash into the side of the page and have to bump down. :)

Right. I'm not doing their memory work (though I'm thinking about it; probably won't, though). I do like the way they divide up the years in the cycle. Plus, we wouldn't be doing activities from SOTW, either. We'd be using it as a read-aloud primarily.

We will start our first history cycle next year, but I would really prefer to do a three-year cycle. Anyone blended SOTW with the CC divisions? I'm not going to do CC, but I like their cycle outline. We're memorizing all 160 Veritas timeline cards this year ala CC, and I want to keep that up and keep history at an overview, big-picture level for elementary. Plus, I know more people IRL who never finished even one full four-year cycle, much less two, than I know people who did. So if I plan for 3 years and it takes 4, we'd still be doing alright. :) Ah, I love the planning time of year!

I haven't looked at MCP, but I love MUS Primer. It isn't colorful, but for counting there are various interesting shapes (after finishing the page, I let my son color them). I'd say it's not quite as bare as Alpha, but it's not snazzy either. However, there are blocks and there is a video. My second son was thrilled to get to watch his own "real" math lesson on the computer, too. And Primer is a fabulous foundation for Alpha.

I use WP and like the plug-in options and having my own domain, but my husband is a web developer, so he takes care of that side of it for me, and he does the customization of the themes (though there are some good free ones, too). I think blogger is easier to use for those without technical expertise or help, though.

I will start planning 4th grade for my oldest this week! I'll be going over this list for ideas, though I'm more of a diy type and don't do curriculums and scripts much. Time for spreadsheets!

I would simplify school -- history and science are bonus and non essential at this point of the game. Reading, phonics or spelling, math, and memory work are the essentials. I've also started getting audio books from the library and we all listen during lunch -- it doubles up what gets done, it's one less thing I have to do, and it really calmed everyone down during what was a crazy-making time for me. Plus, I think I've decided homeschooling with a toddler in the house is just going to be crazy; there is no solution, only growth in patience.