Depends on your background in lit. I learned a lot, but I also didn't know much to begin with. Adam Andrews walks you through the process using The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and you can then apply it to most any other story. I purchased the DVD set and watched it weekly with another homeschool friend, who also liked it a lot. If your pretty comfortable with your lit skills, then maybe the guide is enough.

So, level one purchases: math curriculum, grammar, vocab/word study Rod & Staff's English courses are very inexpensive and cover both grammar and basic composition. You could add in your own copywork/dictation from whatever you're reading (and it's free). The reason I'd set these apart from the subjects below is I'd want to make sure my history expenditures weren't forcing me to scrimp on math, which is easy to do with all those fun history books! Level two purchases, with money leftover after level one purchases: literature, history, science For literature, use as many library books as possible. For lit guides, either make up your own questions or use sparknotes.com, etc. History doesn't need to be expensive at all. Since you like the whole books/living books approach of MFW, try to find most of the MFW books at the library or used. You can still have an awesome history course with only 75% of the MFW books and then some other non-MFW books from the library. Another fun booklist is Sonlight's. Science might be pricier than history and lit, especially if you get experiment kits or other hands-on materials. Although not my personal preference, Christian Liberty Press's science courses seem quite inexpensive compared to most other science curricula (6th grade science is under $30). It's probably fine for just one year. And you can still check out fun science topic books from the library, too! HTH!

Wordly Wise 2 of the original series (WW 3000, 2nd Ed. Book 5 is the same level) Spelling Workout F, and maybe a little of SWO-G about the first two-thirds of R&S-5 for ds, who did R&S-5 and -6 for 5th through 7th grades; about the last two-thirds of FLL-4 for dd, who went on to do R&S-5 starting in 6th some handwriting some copywork Instruction in composition has been quite light for us, mainly because I don't get around to it. But we've done some narration-type lessons in history, the writing lessons in R&S, and some copywork of passages from their lit. I have WWE-4 to use with dd, but just haven't gotten to it yet. HTH!

FSI Language Courses (free): These are what US diplomats used before Rosetta Stone came along. Here's the French Course. They advance very quickly, and they also speak quickly (I think Parisian French). In one of my upper division oral French courses at U.T., we used Volume 2 of the Basic Course. These are the same audio recordings we used in language lab. I'm sure these were very expensive at one time. Start with "Intro to French Phonology" to develop an ear for the correct pronunciation. The one that comes next is the "Basic Course." I'm not familiar with the French FAST Courses. With the phonology course and basic course, you listen to the audio while reading along in the text and sometimes speaking out loud. In the language labs, the headphones had an attached microphone so you could hear how you pronounced things. Your student may want to occasionally record herself so she can hear her pronunciation and compare it to the one in the recording. HTH!

I love the list of socratic-style questions in the appendix...a ton of questions that are quite specific. They can be used on most anything from picture books to Shakespeare, and more. Having a very weak background in literature, I learned a lot from the DVD sessions. HTH!

Lindafay's site is great!! Others I've used in varying capacities over the years: Ambleside Online, Teaching Children (K-6th curriculum guide by D. Lopez). I don't know that these are marketed as CM, but they are definitely whole books, living books approach: Sonlight, Beautiful Feet. And then there are some resources for specific subjects like grammar: PLL (I used it for a little while), FLL. Another option that I haven't used: Karen Andreola's Simply Grammar HTH!

The Intensive Practice series contains more challenging, complex problems, like gifted/talented stuff, IMO. The IP table of contents is nearly the same as the one for the PM-U.S. Ed. series, and maybe about half of the problems within each topic of IP is at a similar level of difficulty as the ones in the corresponding PM; but then the rest of the problems are at a higher level of difficulty. The student already knows enough to solve the problems, but he will need to first think about the steps to take, as many of them are multi-step, and more so than the ones in PM. You may need to work a few problems together so your student can get an idea of how to do them before letting him do it alone. The Home Instructor Guides (HIGs) are excellent. Pacing of the lessons is laid out in a table for you. Lesson objectives are described at the beginning of each lesson. Furthermore, at the beginning of many major topics, you're told what the student should already know by now, in case you need to do some review with them. I've appreciated the numerous hands-on activities provided (we did about 2/3 of them in PM-1), and especially how the base-ten system is taught in various ways. The Challenging Word Problems series is really great, too. But if you're on a tight budget, I'd get the other items above and skip this. We do about half of the problems in here. What I love about these are the worked examples (maybe 4 to 6 per topic), which I use to teach myself the bar diagrams. CWP-1 is okay to skip, IMO. But you'll probably not want to skip CWP-2. The Standards Edition will contain pretty much the same stuff as the U.S. Edition plus some extra topics, like probability. I chose to teach probability later...just a bunch in 7th grade. And I like how the IP table of contents pretty nearly mirrors the US Edition of PM. Also, the Standards Edition seems pricier. So my personal preference is the U.S. Edition. HTH!

Ds really enjoyed the color fairy books by Andrew Lang, too! He started with the Blue Fairy Book, in late 4th or early 5th grade. BTW, they're available online for free in several places. I put some on the kindle and also on iBooks for the iPhone/iPod Touch. HTH!

Saxon 8/7 is an optional level for some students, who after finishing 7/6 are not ready to do Algebra 1/2 (prealgebra). Many accelerated students will do prealgebra in 7th grade instead of 8th. But it's hard to know if a student is ready for prealgebra til you actually try it out. So you might go ahead and try Algebra 1/2, and if it ends up not working, shelve it for awhile and then do 8/7. Math 8/7 is pretty much more of the same topics that are in 7/6, maybe a little harder. I haven't actually used Saxon, though. I got all that info from a homeschool dad who uses Saxon with his kids (Alg 1/2 & up) and sells it at his store. I used Chalkdust Basic Math 6 program and the Chalkdust prealgebra textbook only with ds. We both enjoyed the videos. The one drawback with Chalkdust is that you'll have to figure out how many problems to assign each day. That was fine with me, but Saxon will have it completely done for you....you're told exactly how much should be done per day. HTH!

Also, Horizons Math K is like most other publishers' 1st grade math. Horizons numbers their levels that way, perphaps to appear more accelerated. But I think students will end up covering pretty much the same topics whether they use Horizons, Saxon, BJU, SM, etc. (except SM won't have probability til much later and will cover some topics at a deeper/more complex level). HTH!

She has tons of helpful info re. CM, including scheduling and organizing at her site, http://www.charlottemasonhelp.com/. Her blog is Higher Up and Further In. Here's her page on organization, and here's her sample schedule for their Year One. The way you set up your schedule will depend a lot on which books and curricula you're using. Like for math, I need to specify which pages and exercises to do, but some other programs are simpler where you'd only need to say, do Lesson 32. Would you be setting up schedules for each child?

I follow the WTM recommendations on language arts pretty closely, except for the copywork/dictation/narration, which I've not done as thoroughly or consistently as I would've liked. I rely on the book lists for reading/literature and history, but we don't necessarily use them in the same order. With a student who's a strong reader, I try to have him do most items on the literature lists through 8th grade. I've been very pleased with the results of following the suggestions for grammar, too (FLL, R&S for us so far). I especially appreciate the WTM recommendations for specific versions or retellings of things like Greek myths, Iliad/Odyssey, Beowulf, Shakespeare, Don Quixote, which have many versions and translations to choose from. HTH!

The additions/changes are listed here. I believe the main difference is that the Standards series introduces a few topics at earlier levels compared to the US Edition, which is helpful for some standardized tests (Stanford Achievement Test, Iowa Test of Basic Skills, et al). I've used the US Edition for PM-1 through 6, along with CWP and the IP (Intensive Practice) series. I actually prefer that the statistics/probability topics are slightly delayed compared to the Standards Edition and other American math curricula because we can work on each topic more in-depth. My kids usually took either the Stanford Achievement or ITBS most years, and the did really well on the math sections. We used a basic test prep book (e.g., Spectrum) for a couple weeks before the tests to go over the extra topics like probability. If you don't already have them, I recommend getting CWP and IP to go along with your PM. They provide problems that are at a higher level of difficulty than the ones in the PM textbook and workbook. HTH!

FLL-2, skipping all the poetry memorization and narrations, if you want to stick mainly with the grammar only. It should take about 5-12 min. per day, 2-3 days a week. IMO, it delivers advanced content in a very kid-friendly way. Most of the lesson time is done orally, and there will be no papers for you to grade! HTH!

Since she already has great spelling skills and is an older student, you might consider using a vocabulary/word roots curriculum instead (e.g., Vocabulary from Classical Roots). And then whenever she misspells words in her writing, assign extra copywork for those words.

Have you seen More Charlotte Mason Education: A Home Schooling How-To Manual by Catherine Levison? In the appendix, there are sample weekly schedules based on grade levels as suggested by Charlotte Mason and then Catherine's own schedules that she used. I liked seeing how much time Mason's 6th graders spent on each subject, etc. Then you could create your own schedule using whatever books and curricula you have. I made a weekly chart using MS Excel....if you're interested, I can email a blank one and/or a sample one to you. It's really an assignment chart with the subjects and the schoolwork for each child. The times are not designated. HTH!

Cool! Glad to hear it's going well for y'all! :)

Black Ships Before Troy is a retelling of The Iliad, while The Children's Homer is a retelling of both The Iliad and The Odyssey. Black Ships Before Troy is a little easier to follow, since The Children's Homer uses flashbacks and its sentence structure is a bit more complex. I have my kids read both, but I prefer The Children's Homer. Black Ships had more details about the battles than I cared for. I believe The Children's Homer is available online for free (under its previous title). HTH!

Dd got a 75-specimen set for Christmas, which was purchased from Home Science Tools. She loved it!!

We used 1-cm graph paper pads from Miller Pads & Paper. It's a little on the larger side, but it worked well for us for 3rd-5th grades. At the beginning, I copied the problems onto the paper, but eventually, they did.

Do you think he's struggling with understanding the math concepts? Or, do you think he understands the concept in most lessons and can work most of the problems correctly, but then he forgets after a week or month or so?

The CWP series had the most variety of worked examples, so I studied those. I recommend starting with CWP-3 or even CWP-2 for yourself. The more you practice, the easier it gets!

As it was back before FLL-3 or FLL-4 had come out, ds had done only a little grammar before he started R&S-5 at the beginning of 5th grade. We took our time on the new stuff, and he ended up doing R&S-5 and R&S-6 over his 5th through 7th grade years. This was great with me, since it was still accelerated compared to what's being done in the schools, both public and private. Dd did FLL-3 and FLL-4 over her 3rd-5th grade years and is nearly halfway through R&S-5 now (she's in 6th). She is able to go through R&S-5 much faster than ds did. I expect her to finish R&S-5 by the end of this year and then finish R&S-6 in 7th grade. I think either way, you'll be in good shape! HTH!

I'd be inclined to allow it for a responsible 15-year-old with a very structured and trustworthy chaperone situation. Ds went on an 8th grade school trip to D.C./NYC/Pennsylvania for a week with about 40 kids and 6 chaperones I knew (his school coaches & teachers). They hired a security guard to sit in the hall of Embassy Suites each night to make sure no kids snuck out of their rooms. And parents were given details of how things would run (e.g., walking around NYC, taking the subways, bedtime/wakeup stuff). But if I didn't know much about the chaperones and how they run things, then no.

Sure! There's more than one way to work those kinds of problems. Singapore math uses the bar diagrams as a concrete representation (less abstract) of what the students will eventually do with variables, which is introduced in the PM-6 levels. Also, the diagrams enable students to solve more complex problems in a fairly simple way -- they can easily see what the unknown is and then solve for the unknown. From what I've seen, this is a way for students to work on more complex problems at an earlier stage, compared to most math programs, since they don't have to wait to be taught algebraic stuff first. HTH!