No, I mean in a two (or up to three) hour time block, we do everything, start to finish (read, take notes, write rough draft, write final draft, do relevant map work, add to timeline.) And we do that three or four times per week. Last week we did a notebook page on the Canaanites, the Amorites, Hammurabi, and cuneiform. One a day / four days. This week, we did Stonehenge, the Indus Valley, and the Hittites. Again, three days of history this week; each session was about 2 hours, give or take 30 minutes. But, that also covered language arts. I think it will slow down next fall. I'm probably trying to cover too much right now... but, now we're almost finished, anyway! Still trying to think through the science thing, and the dinosaur notebook pages... maybe I'll just have to call it a wrap, and take note of the lessons learned (namely, that we can't be doing KWO on every subject!! and that DS doesn't like drawing or coloring).

Wait... wasn't that just a parallel story?! I mean, it was showing something Jin did BEFORE they were on the island, when he was still working for Sun's dad, while Sun giving birth happened AFTER they were off the island. In that episode, we see a PAST thread of Jin's at the same time we were seeing a FUTURE (or PRESENT?) thread of Sun's. OTOH... maybe time folds back on itself and overlaps...? Oh, that makes my brain hurt. :blink:

I am new to homeschooling (son is 10; we just started in March). I've tried both lapbooking and notebooking with him. I enjoy both concepts, but think that notebooking is more for us than lapbooking (although we will still do that occasionally). But, I'm struggling with making the notebooking meaningful and not too overwhelming. I think I need a tutor!! :blush: Right now, I'm trying notebooking for history and science. Here are some examples of what I'm trying to do. Someone please tell me how to improve on this! HISTORY Right now, I am using MOH and the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia as my spines. I am trying to cover Ancient Civilizations up to and coinciding with the Ancient Egyptians / Greeks, as that is where we are starting in the fall. Right now we are putting together a separate timeline book with Amy Pak's figures. (I kind of wish now that the timeline weren't separate, but I'm not changing direction now.) In the other History binder we have created, we are using MOH's recommended divisions (a tab for each continent; subtabs within each continent for each country/region). I downloaded SEVERAL notebooking templates (some free, some I paid for), and this is what we typically do: Read about Stonehenge from multiple sources. Have DS10 make a KWO (based on IEW's methodology). I will usually prepare a paragraph the night before that summarizes the important info (DS10 is just learning the IEW techniques, and multiple paragraphs or multiple sources still overwhelm him). DS writes rough draft from his KWO; we edit it together. DS writes final draft in cursive on the notebooking template. Depending on the template, we do a map activity on the same notebooking page (the templates from "Hold That Thought" are great for that), or the map activity might be it's own page. I trim the paper and mount it on fun colored cardstock, which we then hole-punch and put in the notebook.Now, here's my problem... we generally try to do all this in ONE DAY. It takes about 2 hours, start to finish. I'm probably trying to accomplish too much. OTOH, it covers both language arts (writing, reading comprehension) and history. (We supplement with a separate grammar curriculum.) One reason I'm trying to do so much in a day is that I have a lot I still want to cover before we wrap it up for the year. I didn't want to spend more than a day on Stonehenge, but maybe I should have. I only spent a day on the Indus Valley. I only spent a day on the Hittites. But... maybe I'm rushing it. Secondly, those of you who notebook extensively... is this what you do? Read, take notes, write a rough draft, write a final draft? Make maps? Just color in pre-made maps? How much time do you spend on a topic? Do you make a notebook page for every topic covered? How do you do that? Do you sometimes just make a list of questions for your child to answer? Do you let THEM decide what is important, or do you guide it? OK, let's move on to SCIENCE. For the rest of this year, I was letting DS read about dinosaurs. I looked for notebooking pages, didn't find anything I was thrilled with, so I made my own. We spent a couple days making charts classifying the dinos (saurischians vs. ornithischians). He enjoyed that. Then, I was going to let him choose some of the dinosaurs that most intrigued him, and let him do some notebooking pages on them. I created a fill-in-the-chart page, with space for writing a paragraph with more interesting facts. He didn't mind the chart, but when he saw the space for the paragraph, he broke down. Now, it wasn't "fun" anymore. So, then I was really struggling. This unit on dinosaurs was really just a fill-in. Was it really important for him to write a paragraph on each dinosaur? Would it have been better if I'd just made it like a list - "List five fun facts about your dinosaur"? Also, while reading about the dinosaurs is what he likes best, wouldn't I be remiss if I also didn't have him spend time learning about fossils, how they are formed, how scientists use them to recreate the dinosaurs, etc.? How scientists read the "clues" and all that? And how do we notebook that? And what about special vocabulary words? Should I have had him looking up some words, like fossil, paleontologist, excavation, etc.? If so, should I also be "testing" him to see if he knows what they mean? I'm feeling like a bit of a failure here, so I may as well admit that, after the major resistance I got to the notebook pages I'd created (particularly, the paragraph), we haven't gone back to it. This week, we've spent our science time watching the 6-part BBC series "Walking With the Dinosaurs." DRAWING PICTURES Lastly, I know a lot of notebooking moms have their kids draw pictures to supplement/complement the information. DS10 is having none of that. Not only will he not DRAW a picture, he hates even coloring IN a picture! The dinosaur notebook pages I made had a black-and-white, you-color-it image. He did NOT want to do that, not one bit. I could have used a color picture, but thought he would have more fun personalizing a black-and-white image with his own ideas about what each dinosaur looked like. Boy, was I wrong!!! That was another aspect of the "trauma." Help! :crying:

OK, I think I'm going to scale it waaaayyy back... choose the best of the minibooks from the ones we still have left to do (20 or more!!) and go from there. I really love looking at lapbooks, and I love the concept... but I'm having a hard time knowing if my child is really learning anything from doing them, or if we're just making them because I think they're cool. As far as quality... I think I was spoiled right out of the gate, because our first lapbook project (which, actually, is still ongoing for us, because it will take us a few months to cover all the material) was from Homeschool in the Woods - Amy Pak's lapbook on the Old Testament. I love it. But, again, we're probably doing it mainly because I think it's really nifty!

I'm wondering the same thing! Interested in seeing the replies... :)

I paid $24 for a lapbook on "The Magician's Nephew." I am REALLY disappointed in it. The artwork is cheesy and inconsistent. The number of minibooks to make is really overwhelming -- at least two per chapter, sometimes three (and there are 15 chapters in this book!), plus about eight more supplemental minibooks (overviews of the book, literary themes, author biography, etc.). Also, a lot of the minibooks are difficult to cut out and construct (odd shapes), and they have the book covers and the interior pages on the same printed page, so if you want the cover in cardstock and the pages on plain text paper, you have to print them TWICE, which wastes an enormous amount of paper. Well, my DS10 is about 1/3 of the way through. We did most of the overview books (except the biography), and we've done all the minibooks through Chapter 5. At this point... it just feels like busywork. He loves reading the book, but is growing weary of the minibooks. I do appreciate some of the supplemental activities that explore the hidden Christian themes and that have the child examine Scripture to see what God's Word says about certain actions, behaviors, and attitudes. That is the one plus to the program. But, even then, I think having ONE activity like that for ever THREE or FOUR chapters would suffice. I know I can pick and choose what I want to do, and I don't have to do them all. I've already dropped some of them. Of course, then I'll have to re-figure the final layout, since we'll be missing some of the minibooks. Ugh! I am really wondering WHY I spent so much money on this! :angry: What a waste. But I feel compelled now to finish it. Anyone else been in this situation before?

I finally let mine grow a bit longer -- a chin-length bob. Best, best, best product EVER for getting body into hair like ours: Redken's "Weightlifter." Expensive, but the ONLY thing that works for me. I'll try others, anytime I see something new... but always go back to the Weightlifter spray.

We are making the OT lapbook. It's a lot of coloring and fill-in-the-blank stuff, plus several more everything-is-complete-you-just-assemble-it minibooks. Most of the artwork is provided (and corresponds with Amy Pak's timeline artwork, which is just magnificent), but you could easily replace it with your child's own handiwork. For example, there are places where you can cut and paste in the Scripture verse, or have your child write the verse out. There are places where you are to cut and paste the provided artwork, but you could have your child draw their own picture. Other mini projects within the larger lapbook project aren't as adaptable -- you pretty much have to use them as-is, or use it as a template to create your own minibook in the same size/shape (so that it will all fit together in the end). We are doing these minibooks as we go through the OT. It's going to take us a while to get it all done! :) As we read through a Bible story, we complete any relevant minibooks for that story. For example, a layered book on Creation, a spin-the-dial-for-info minibook on the Flood, a genealogy chart from Adam to Abraham, etc. Since our Bible study corresponds to the History we are covering this year and next, it will be some time before we are through the Old Testament; therefore, it will be some time before our lapbook is complete. I love Amy Pak's artwork, and this will be an attractive lapbook when we've finished everything. Most minibooks could easily be adapted in a way to allow more individual creativity shine through, if your child is wired that way. My DS10 is not (unbelievably, would rather scrub toilets than have to draw a picture!), but he can handle cutting and pasting, etc. He likes all the minibooks we've made so far, and they do help reinforce what he learns. Overall, worth the money, IMHO. But, then again, we are new to lapbooking and notebooking, and trying to come up with something on my own was completely overwhelming to me right now, on top of everything else I was trying to figure out! :) And, yes, I own the Dinah Zike and Ultimate Laptop books! Having Amy put it all together for me, where she has already figured out the different styles of minibooks and how they should be arranged in the lapbook, etc., made it worth it for me. BTW... I think we could easily stop right now and create a simple lapbook with just the projects from the Genesis portion! The lapbook assembly directions assume you've done ALL the minibooks on the CD, and show you how to lay those out accordingly. But, if you're experienced at lapbooking (and, if you've already made ONE, you're more experienced than me!), you could probably create 3-5 simpler lapbooks as you go along as opposed to one granddaddy lapbook at the end. BONUS SECTION: It also comes with pages for creating your own ancient Bible times "newspaper" (Bible stories). We printed those sheets on parchment paper to give it an "aged" look. They make great writing prompts, and there's not too much space to fill, so it's not overwhelming to the reluctant writer. When you've filled in all the pages of the Old Testament Tribune, you can assemble it like a scroll (directions provided). For now, we keep ours in sheet protectors, so DS can share them with his dad and others. This activity (which is NOT part of the lapbook, but comes as a "bonus" project on the disk/download), offers many opportunities for your child to be creative. There are places to draw pictures, make "advertisements," etc., plus space to write short articles which could be funny and silly, or serious and fact-filled. Again, overall, I believe this product is well worth the money! :thumbup1:

That's how I read it, too. I agree, thanks OP for this link!! :thumbup:

DS10 will be in 5th grade in the fall. This will be our first full year of homeschooling. I've read so many fabulous reviews of the Apologia science curriculum ... I'd love to use it. But, we only have 2 years of elementary-level science left before he begins the General Science class (for middle schoolers). So... with five Apologia Young Explorer books to choose from (at present), and only two years left... is it possible or completely unrealistic to try to get through two Apologia young explorers' books per year (which would allow us to get through four books before middle school)? If we can only do two (as in, one/year), which two would you recommend? Lastly, do you have to do the zoology books in order? That is, are concepts introduced in Zoo 1 that are expanded upon in Zoo 2 and Zoo 3? Or does each one stand alone? TIA for your feedback!

Huh. You can pre-order this only, as it has not been released... I wonder if it really won't be released until February 2009! Seems like a long time to have it available as a pre-order.

Here's a link: http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/index.php?q=catalog/1/writing If your budget is tight, then just purchase "Teaching Writing: Structure and Style" (TWSS) (DVDs and notebook all part of the package, I think). You can watch a sample video there. That, alone, will get you started. I also purchased the Student Writing Intensive (SIW), which DS10 and I will go through over the summer, but I am already employing the TWSS techniques with him, with our history source texts. You can watch the first DVD (about 100 minutes long) on your own, and then START that very week with your child!! We're new to it, ourselves, but it is already changing the way my ds looks at writing!

Has anyone used La Francais Facile (The Easy French)? What was your opinion? DS10 is very interested in learning French. I took French in college, but can recall very little. (Hey, gimme a break! It was 20 years ago! :blink:) I think (hope) much of it will come back to me. Anyway, I liked the looks of The Easy French, but wondered if anyone out there has tried it and can give me their feedback. Also... can a 10yo learn from the Rosetta Stone program, or is it more for teens and adults? Thanks!

We just bought IEW, too, and DS10 has already gone from being a reluctant writer to loving the fact that he has paragraphs to read every night to his dad! Right now we are just incorporating Unit 1 and 2 activities -- key word outlines of paragraphs, then rewriting it in his own words using his outline. Right now, I actually write the paragraphs for him that he ends up rewriting. We're using this writing technique in history, so I will put together a fairly simple paragraph that provides a summary of what we've read that day (on, say, King Sargon of the Akkadians, or on the Canaanites), and he uses that to make his outline, etc. After he makes and edits his rough draft, he writes his final draft in cursive on fun notebooking paper (templates we purchased from The Notebooking Pages and Hold That Thought), and then we glue it onto colored paper for his history notebook. (We add in maps and timelines, too.) I am AMAZED at how quickly he has learned to do outlines, and that he actually seems to ENJOY it! Before now, I'd ask him to write five facts he learned from the day's reading, and always got push back, complaints, whines, "I dont know what to write!", etc. Now, we will read from our various source texts, then I'll give him the paragraph I've written (usually the night before!) that sums it all up, from which he'll create an outline. Because he has read many different source texts before making the outline, he is usually able to incorporate into his final paper something he read that day that wasn't in my paragraph. It's been wonderful watching him progress! This curriculum is WORTH EVERY PENNY, imho.

This was a great thread for me, being new to homeschooling! DS10 was in ps until March of this year. I've been buying curriculum here and there... but I guess it's time to really lay it out and make a decision! So, this is what I think we'll be doing: HISTORY & LITERATURE: Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, The Middle Ages, The Renaissance and Reformation, and The Age of Exploration, using A World of Adventure (AWOA) from Learning Adventures as our guideline, and supplementing with lots of real books and notebooking. This unit study also incorporates geography. We might find that this span of history is too much for one year. We've spent nearly six weeks this year just on the Ancient Mesopotamians and the other ancient cultures leading up to and coinciding with Ancient Egypt & Greece, and there's not nearly the amount of information to absorb as there will be in the Middle Ages and beyond. So, we'll play it by ear. SCIENCE: Six 6-week units on biomes (and, specifically, the desert and desert animals), the human body, geology (including earthquakes and volcanoes), astronomy, botany, and oceanography, again using AWOA as our guide, and supplementing with CGC (because I already own it). However, I'm beginning to wonder... while I like the multiple facets being studied, I also like the Apologia approach of just one subject all year long... so, I don't know. I might change my mind! LANGUAGE ARTS: AWOA also includes writing, spelling, grammar, and literature units. However, I will supplement with IEW, Easy Grammar 5, English From the Roots Up, and Natural Speller. MATH: At this point, Saxon 65, but still exploring other options. FOREIGN LANGUAGE: We're covering Greek and Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes in Language Arts, but DS has expressed a strong desire to learn French. I took several semesters in college, but can only remember a bit, so I'd love to review it, as well; I can, at least manage most of the pronunciations, so will be able to help DS in that way. But, I'm still looking for the best program. I was going to use The Easy French, but now I'm wondering if I should investigate other options. Any suggestions? ART: Lamb's Book of Art ! MUSIC: Piano lessons, drum lessons PE: Baseball, plus a weekly PE class at our homeschool cover I think I've covered everything... :001_smile:

Well, it's hard to say. He struggles with computation, for sure. Goodness, we are still working on those basic multiplication and division skills! Ugh. At times, he seems to do very well; for example, he always seems to ace his multiplication or division fact speed tests. We've reviewed multiplication (up to 3-digit x 3-digit) and long division, both of which he seems to be able to master when I have him work them on the whiteboard. Then, like today, we'll throw some long division review problems on a worksheet (i.e., something he has to work on independently), and it's like he's seeing it for the first time!! ??? Right now I'm working on metric measurements with him, because he acted like he'd never even studied them before, when I gave him a pretest on the subject. While working through one of the problems this morning, I asked him what we'd multiply 50 by to get 500, something I thought he'd have no trouble figuring out. Well, I got every answer from him except the answer 10. Each time it was clearly as if he were guessing. Five....? Six...? This was both surprising to me and frustrating for me, because I really thought he grasped the idea of multiplying by 10s, 100s, 1000s, etc., and would just be able to figure this out in his head! Whew. Can you tell I'm frustrated right now? :) (But trying so hard not to be!!!) Another question for you veterans (especially if you have a "reluctant mathematician" like my DS!): How much time do you allot every day for math? How much of that is instruction? How much of it is seat work (for lack of a better term)?

I guess I need to find the post on abbreviations... what is CLE?

DS10 just came out of 4th grade in the public school (we started HS in March of this year). He was/is struggling in math. For the rest of this year, we've been using an Abeka math book, mainly because I got it as a loan from a friend, so I wouldn't have to invest in math curriculum for just a quarter of a year. I do not particularly like the Abeka math program, but it helped us get started. Another friend generously gave me a complete Saxon 65 math set that she'd bought for afterschooling her DD, but never used. However, I had my DS10 take the Saxon placement test, and he hit squarely in the middle of 4th grade math, so I didn't start using the Saxon 65 books, yet. DS10 seems to do better when I teach the concept, allow him lots of guided practice on the whiteboard, and then minimal seatwork. I've definitely seen improvements over the past six weeks! And, we just received his SAT scores... he ranked "high" in math! Sixth grade level, according to the test, but that isn't evident in his daily work. Right now, every subject we study is 1-to-1... math, LA, science, history... I need him to be able work independently on some stuff next year!! Now, maybe math isn't the place for that, considering that he's had a hard time in it. OTOH, I think he's got the aptitude for it (especially considering his standardized test scores), but just never found it enjoyable before because of the way it was taught. :confused: Not sure about that, just guessing. I'd be interested in hearing your opinion about the four main math curricula among which I'm trying to decide: Saxon Math 65 Horizons Math Math U See Teaching Textbooks Any other programs you think would work well, considering our situation?

This has been an interesting thread to read. I have a similar problem, except that it's my DS10's manuscript writing which is nearly illegible; his cursive writing is much neater. However, because it takes him so much longer to write in cursive, we save that for copywork, special notebooking pages, etc. I allow him to use print when doing other things, but half the time he can't even read his own writing later! Not to mention the fact that it looks like a beginning writer wrote it. He's going into 5th grade... but if you saw his written work you'd think he was a second grader, just by his handwriting. It's puzzling.

I really love the idea of notebooking. It appeals to the artist and the writer in me. DS10, on the other hand, is convinced he is a "terrible" artist and it's always a battle to have him draw a picture for me, any kind of picture. We really have to work on this. I hate that he is so self-critical already!! And, as far as writing goes... well, let's just say he'd rather scrub all the toilets in the house than have to write a single paragraph about anything. However, I am going through the teacher portion of IEW's TWSS, and have tried some simple key word outlines with history. Again, I am using a couple of different spine books (Usborne, Kingfisher encyclopedias of history) plus MH (covering the ancient civilizations up to and coinciding with the Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Greeks, as we will be studying those people groups more in depth next year). So, what I do is write a simple paragraph myself the day before to capture the highlights, then have him outline it and rewrite it (after he has already read through all the original sources and other books we have here on the topic). Does that make sense? I think it has helped... he's learning great writing skills, and we 're knocking out history at the same time. But today, when he saw me bring out a paragraph I'd already typed up, he almost started crying. I guess doing this every day was a bit much!! So, I just had him rewrite this one (no outlining or anything), and called it copywork. So, for those of you who use notebooking regularly, did you have any push back from your boys (or girls) over having to draw and/or write? How did you get them past that? I want notebooking to be enjoyable, not drudgery!!

And feeling completely overwhelmed! We just started in March. DS10 is in 4th grade. We will continue this through middle school, possibly beyond, but taking it one year at a time, for now. I read through many posts, and wow. I thought I was figuring this out, but... clearly, I have a lot to learn. Here's a situation I struggle with: transitioning from one subject to another. Sometimes I feel like our day is so stilted. It's math. OK, put that away, now it's time for grammar. Now it's time for spelling. Now it's time for science. Some days it feels so disjointed. How do you handle it? Another issue: How do you incorporate notebooking? OK, that is a really broad question, so let me be more specific. Right now, for science, we are wanting to read about dinosaurs. DS has never gotten to do a dinosaur unit in school, so I thought I'd finish our year by reading real books and notebooking. But, oh my, how do I do this? How do I know he is really learning anything of significance? How do you read through real books? Do you just sit together and look through it? Do you plan ahead what he is going to learn and, therefore, look through the books first, without him, to determine the week's reading schedule? Ack! Help!

Hi everyone, I am new -- really new!! -- to homeschooling. I pulled my DS10 out of school right before spring break of this year, and we are planning to stick with this through middle school, possibly beyond... but, right now, I'm just taking it one year at a time. :001_smile: I am under the Wall Highway Christian Academy cover. My son is a 4th grader. I also have a child in college already, and one in high school, who does not want to have anything to do with homeschooling, although I would LOVE to homeschool her, as well. Oh, well ... Maybe I'll win her over this summer. (Not likely, but hope springs eternal.)