This really looks great- I think you just saved me a bunch of work for after we finish Middle Ages! Thanks for sharing!

Here is my daughter's Easter dress. Can you believe I didn't even get a picture of her wearing it?! Sometimes getting all of the kids ready for church just takes way too much time! This was the free pattern I used http://thecottagehome.blogspot.com/2011/01/party-dress-printable-pattern-and.html?m=1.

Check out www.betterworldbooks.com. I buy many of our books from them and have always been happy with them. If you sign up for emails they occasionally have specials (ex. Just recently they had an extra 40% off any 4 or more sale books- I bought most of our science next year for under $20!).

We are using a loving Teach Me Joy cursive http://teachmejoy.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=5&zenid=6a3a85cc8993161e549f13c8a6cee558 for ds4. When we need extra practice we use baggies filled with colored hair gel to practice and worksheets from www.worksheetworks.com. This is my first experience with teaching cursive first and it is going very well!

Thank you so much! Looks like we will do CAT this year:)

I just want to make sure the CAT is an accepted test in Ohio. When I looked it up in the homeschooling law it said it is "usually" accepted and I don't want to put my kids through one test only to have to administer another one. I know it doesn't test science and social studies but since all they ask for on the form is a composite score does it matter? Thanks!

I always start by choosing a spine. For our history next year (middle ages), I am going to be using Usborne World History and 100 Most Important Events in Church History and will just line them up chronologically. For science next year (earth science/ astronomy) I chose Visual Factfinders for our spine. As far as finding books to go along with the subject, science is pretty easy to just look up in our library's catalog. For history, I find the best resource to be All Through the Ages- it is priceless! In fact, if you wanted to just use literature and no spine you could easily do it using this book. I will post what I have put together to my blog when I am finished- I am getting close with science:)

This was my fear for purchasing it for my 4th and 2nd graders. I am putting my own together using Visual Factfinders for everyone, Kingfisher for older, Usborne for younger, and library books for both ages.

AMEN (a million times)!!!!!! Those new art cards for the lower grades look pretty nice!

Many of my Pinterest food boards (link in siggy) are GF. I also have a board of food blogs I use recipes from. As far as soy sauce, we use coconut aminos. It can be hard to find In a store, but I order mine from Azure Standard (and I think Amazon sells it too). To keep your sanity with these new food changes, I would recommend not worrying about replacing old foods with a new version- that can get costly and frustrating! One of my kids' favorite snacks is popcorn popped in the air popper. Also, for my PB & J loving son, we just put it on a rice cake instead of bread. For breakfast, I usually make 2 days worth of breakfast in the evening and that way I don't have to make it in the morning and I am not cooking every day either.

Are there samples to look at anywhere online? I am having trouble locating any. Also, what exactly do you need for the program? I see readers, teacher's manual, and student pages. Do you need and use all of these?

Science Scope from Kathryn Stout sounds exactly like what you are describing. It even goes into detail on which age group should know which topic.

Welcome! If you are looking for mastery, Saxon is not the way to go. My kids learn best with mastery and only lasted about a month with Saxon. Math Mammoth has worked great for us. It is mastery. We are using the Blue series, which may work well for you since it would not be tied to a grade level. There are a few other things that have worked well for us to mix things up a bit (or help them better understand a concept). 1) Videos from Education Unboxed. They have not only helped my kids, but they have helped me better understand and teach math. And best of all, they are free! 2) Right Start math games. My kids learn so much from these games and they don't even know they are "learning"- to them it is just playing! Hope that helps! Math can certainly be a tricky thing and sometimes it takes a while to figure out what will actually work:)

I am putting ours together using Visual Factfinders (Planet Earth and Stars & Planets) as the base and adding in Kingfisher science for older and Usborne 1st Encyclopedias for younger. Here is the tentative schedule of our weeks. Earth Science 1- Earth in Space, Gravity 2- Structure of the Earth/ Land,Water,Air 3- Earthquakes/Volcanoes 4- Mountains/Bending & Breaking 5- Rocks 6- Minerals and Gems 7- Shaping the Earth/Work of Ice 8- Oceans and Seas 9- Rivers, Lakes, and Swamps 10- Atmosphere/Weather Forecasting 11- Wind, Storms, Clouds 12- Rain and Snow 13- Climate Weeks 14-18 will go through the different biomes Astronomy 1- The Solar System 2- The Sun 3- Mercury/ Venus 4- Earth 5- Moon 6- Mars/ Jupiter 7- Saturn/ Venus 8- Neptune/ Pluto and Beyond 9- Minor Planets/ Meteoroids 10- Comets 11- Milky Way 12- Stars 13- Constellations 14- Birth of Astronomy 15- Telescopes 16- Rockets and Satellites 17- Life in Space/ Space Shuttles 18- Future in Space I will also be adding in some scientists ot study, some vocabulary words, interactive notebooking, memory work, experiments from Janice VanCleave's books, and books to read.

Thank you all for your kind words:) It was driving me crazy knowing that I put in all that work and couldn't even share them. I have benefited greatly from this forum and I am always happy to give back any way I can (especially since I had already put them together anyway!).

No problem at all:) We have been very happy using the MM blue series!

I follow this schedule http://www.mathmammoth.com/study_order.php. When it comes to the books that are multi grade level (like time, money, measurements, etc.) I refer to the Table of Contents in the graded light blue series to see what should be covered in which grade.

*I have revised the pages according to what BIP told me to do and here they are. To use them for MOH you can just look up the page titles using the MOH table of contents and put them together that way. I know it may be a pain but this is the only way I could figure out how to do it without being asked to take them down again. The pages can now probably work with other history curricula as well, or at least most of them. Hope these pages have a better outcome:) Ancient History Worksheets.pdf

The overview DVD is all I watched (although we did go through PAL writing). If you haven't joined the yahoo group I would highly recommend it- there are so many helpful files on there. There are also some great webinars that are specific to the units. We are using All Things Fun and Fascinating and I have not watched TWSS. But the author, who I believe also wrote Bible Heroes (Lori V.), is very easy to follow and her instructions are great. We are also combining IEW with WWE. So far it has worked to do one unit of IEW and then do a few weeks of WWE. I know it will take us more than a year to do it this way, but I am fine with that. I find that mixing them up helps prevent writing burnout with my ds9, who doesn't really enjoy it:)

Thank you for the suggestions and links! I am adding them to the list. No particular reason they are all from long ago. I found most of the suggestions in "Scientists Through the Ages" and there were only a few modern scientists. Thank you for the suggestions!

We use the McGuffey Primer, Sonlight's "Fun Tales", and these free I See Sam readers.

I am putting together our next science curriculum and I want to have some focus on famous scientists in the area we are studying. I will have 8 total for the year, 4 for earth science and 4 for astronomy. Here is what I have so far: Earth Science Sir Charles Lyell James Cook Mary Anning Benjamin Franklin (?- not sure about this one) Astronomy Galileo Galilei William Herschel Nicolaus Copernicus Johannes Kepler Are there others you think would be better? I am especially wondering about Earth Science and I am not sure that Ben Franklin would fit best into this category. Any suggestions? Also, if you have read any good biographies about any of these people would you let me know which ones are good. Thanks!

I really keep going back and forth on how I feel about this whole situation. I wish I knew a MOH user that could help me sort through what really needed to be changed. It is going to be really difficult to change the TOC and titles when their titles are things like "Adam and Eve" and "The Epic of Gilgamesh". So do I have to change those to "Eve and Adam" and "Gilgamesh's Epic"? I know that sounds ridiculous but I really don't know how far I need to take this. It was never meant to be a text replacement, just an enhancement. I highly doubt someone could download these worksheets and say "oh good, now I don't have to buy the actual book". But at the same time I really don't want to get into any legal issues if there truly are any. As far as copying the text, I am going to go look though it again, but I really don't remember copying any sentences. There were phrases of key ideas that I used, but no huge portions of text. Hmm, maybe I will just send them to one of you and you can post it on your blog:)

Here is what was included in the email as to what needed to be changed: -Remove specific references to MOH, including the title, page numbers, lesson/unit names & numbers, etc. Quotes from the text would also need to be replaced. -Because your pages follow the Table of Contents of MOH exactly, you would need to add some additional figures scattered throughout so that it's not an exact MOH takeoff. You might also want to change some of the figure titles so they're not exactly the same as MOH lesson titles. If I make the pages generic enough to follow these guidelines I am not sure it will be worth it. The whole point was to make sure my son was learning what was in the MOH lesson, not just about that general time period. I think too many of the pages would need to be changed. We'll see how ambitious I get:)

I thought about that but I figured if they were interested in doing that they would have offered it. I know what you mean. If I hadn't spent so much time completing the worksheets I would probably drop it now. It just makes me sad that I company with such a Christian friendly product would be more concerned about what money they might lose instead of helping others use their product more efficiently.