KISS grammar is always my favorite. We are converts from R&S:)

I attached mine, but I have no idea how to make it editable for someone else to use. If this is what you are looking for and you know how to do that I would be glad to try (FYI-I use OpenOffice and not Microsoft Word. Not sure if that makes a difference.). School check-off list.pdf

We love GSWL and my two oldest are learning so much (well, I am too!). My only concern is that I will never be able to find something as great when we are finished with it! And you really can't beat the price.

Thank you all for some wonderful suggestions! I am sure I will have to just try different things until we find something that works. One more question. Do you still enforce quiet time in the summer? We school year round so we will still be doing school, but I don't want to deprive them of outdoor play.

I really love the idea of everyone having a break in the afternoon to be on their own, but the problem is that we don't have enough bedrooms! So if you have a similar situation, how do you resolve this? We have 3 bedrooms and 4 kids, and ideally I would like the kids to stay out of our bedroom. So would it work if I put 2 in a room together, or does that defeat the purpose? Any suggestions would be helpful because I am really feeling the need for more of an afternoon break!!!

If you already love the ones you tried it would definitely be worth the purchase:) Every day we are finding more and more used for them: read aloud practice, narration practice, copywork, supplement to history and science, and just some great short stories to read with my younger kids. Now I only wish we had more devices to read them all since it seems like everyone wants to read at the same time:)

Janice VanCleave's "200 Gooey, Slippery, Slimy, Weird, and Fun Experiments" has what you are looking for. It is divided into Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, and Physics. You could also get her experiment books for the individual topics (like "Astronomy for Every Kid"). I just purchased 7 of these used from Better World Books when they were having a bargain book sale and only paid less than $20 for all of them!

I sent mine through the post office also and had no problems with getting it insured.

We are in your same situation and I am 95% sure we will not do Essentials for ds9, at least for the first half of the year. This is our 2nd year using IEW and I love how it gets the kids writing, but I fear year after year of it could put us in a rut. Our plan is to use WWS and I am not sure how well it would go using both together. Plus I am more lenient on the IEW assignments in not "forcing" them to do or not do what IEW says to do if it makes the sentence sound forced or awkward...I am not sure an Essentials tutor would be the same way. The grammar portion of Essentials does look good but I am not sure that for us it would make it worth doing the whole program.

IEW's philosophy is that you cannot help your kids too much, so sometimes for us that means scribing. They will begin with Key Word Outlines, which does not require very much writing, but after that if we get into issues where it is too much writing then I am the scribe for them. So far ds9 has been just fine but I have had to do some of the writing for dd7.

I guess I use them more in a spiral format. There is a suggested order of the Blue books here http://www.mathmammoth.com/study_order.php and for the most part I follow that. I break up books like time, money, measurements, fractions, and early geometry and do those in between the other books. For example, when ds finished multiplication 1, I had him work on measurements for a while before continuing on to division 1. If I ever wonder what is grade level appropriate I just pull up the table of contents on the MM light Blue series and see what needs to be done.

We actually use the dark Blue series as our main math curriculum and the kids are flourishing with it! They love the mastery style of it and I love that there is much more independence with it than there is with some other math choices.

Well, once you have the method down WRTR is short and sweet (I know some may disagree, but it really is open and go once you understand it). I really wish the manual didn't make it seem so complicated:( We do it four days a week (three days introducing ten or so new words and the fourth day for a test) and we never spend more than 10 minutes. The book can take you all the way through spelling without having to buy anything else!

Medieval Mom's book list is always my go-to. I have it printed and in my binder for easy reference:) http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/345347-medival-moms-book-list-in-pdf/

If you wanted to make your own you could use www.worksheetworks.com. That is what we use and it is easy to customize pages for what you need.

BJU has readers with workbooks, as does CLE. Pathway Readers also have workbooks you can use along with them. If you would rather they read "regular" books you could look into something like Progeny Press guides that go into more than just answering questions about the story.

There are plans in the MOH yahoo group to coordinate with Sonlight cores so you could go that way. I am sure SOTW has something too but I am just more familiar with MOH since that is what we use. The other thing we are doing is adding in Yesterday's Classics ePub books to MOH. They are already all downloaded to the iPad and we just read the books that go best with what we are currently studying. At least this would save you from having to collect as many books.

We usually get through about one trait a month. I made some notebooking pages for the kids to help them remember the highlights of each trait that you can find here under Character Quality http://wateronthefloor.wordpress.com/notebooking-pages/. I usually go through the website and type out some notes on the trait before we start. I tried to attach it (not sure if it worked) but it makes it much easier to get teach. We are getting ready to start the third trait soon and once I am done with all of them I will probably post them. I also printed off the Character Quality chart from the Duggars to make it easier to know what we are doing next and just to have a nice overview. For a free resource, the Character Journal website has an incredible amount of information! Character Quality notes.pdf Character Quality notes.pdf

I have a curriculum put together based on Magic School Bus DVDs. It is just general science and covers several topics. My kids that use it are 9,7, and 4 ( when he wants to sit still!). I have a supplement my ds9 uses with it and that is also posted. You can find it here http://wateronthefloor.wordpress.com/homemade-studies/.

For our character training we are using www.characterjournal.com and going through one trait every few weeks. It might not be exactly the same, but it is free:)

There is also a yahoo group for HOD buying and selling. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HeartofDakotaBuySell/?yguid=184275269

When I am looking for multi year references I take out my Kathryn Stout books. You have to put the actual resources together but the books give you an outline of what to teach and at what level. Another multi year reference I use and love is Rebecca Rupp's Home Learning Year By Year. I also reference my first edition of TWTM quite a bit too! ETA: All Through the Ages is a great resource for history!

Completely agree! We are using GSWL and the kids are doing great! It is easy to teach too:) My only concern is finding something as good after we are done with it!

I am currently working on making worksheets to go with Mystery of History volume 1. I realized that my kids are getting tired of all of the notebooking and wanted something different. It is probably going to take me a few weeks at least to finish them and they are nothing incredibly fancy (since we only have a b/w laser printer) but I will post them to my blog when I am finished:)

At 5.5 I wouldn't worry too much about comprehension. My oldest was a lot like that when he was younger and I thought I was wasting my time reading! But now at 9 I know a lot more was sinking in than I originally thought. If I were you I wouldn't worry about the Burgess books and I would just find some books he is interested in, even if they are just really great picture books. And from what I remember from the history book in Little Hearts it wasn't one of my favorites. Again, I would just sub in some picture books that have to do with the topic you are studying (Paula's Archives should have some good books suggestions). Does he comprehend what he is hearing when it is something he chooses? I would just change things up for a while and see how it goes:)