Thank you all! I do have this book and I love it! Maybe I just need to start a list of books I would like to read from each time period and narrow it down from there. :-)

You might want to check out some of the American history packages from Beautiful Feet. They are very affordable, especially if you have a good library. The programs are all based on living history books and the guides have all of the planning work done for you!

I'm looking into putting together a literature-based two-year American History for my kids. There are SO many books I want to include and I'm having a hard time narrowing them down! The first year will be either to or through the Civil War, and the second year will go up to the present. I have already chosen the spines I will use. I'm probably going to base our history, literature, and family read alouds all on American History. This will be for a 7th grade boy, a 5th grade girl, a 2nd grade boy, and a Kindergarten boy. So if you could suggest maybe 3-5 books for us to make sure we read, what would they be?

We are currently using pretty much every piece of curriculum available from Barefoot Ragamuffins. :-) I'll go through each one individually. RLTL- Oh, do I wish I had used this for my older two! My younger two boys are thriving with it. My 7 year old is flourishing as a reader and his spelling skills surprise me just about every day. Spelling could just be a skill he has so I can't necessarily credit RLTL for that until my 5 year old gets a little bit further in to the program. I love the flexibility of the program. My 5 year old is not ready to be writing words yet, so I am able to use the phonogram tiles (a free download on Lulu) and then I write the words for him after he spells it out. All of my kids are also memorizing the spelling rules so that when they do make mistakes I can make sure they understand why the spelling isn't correct. Our family originally started using WRTR, but by the time I figured it out my older two were already having issues with spelling. I recommend RLTL to everyone I know. ELTL- We have loved this program from the beginning. It is so gentle, but it is also very thorough. Memorizing the grammar definitions has been a huge help for my older kids. As I wrote in another thread, my older kids use ELTL below grade level so we have supplemented the writing portion. We are, however, getting to the point that all of the writing is overwhelming, so this summer I need to make some decisions about writing. I'll probably just stick with the ELTL writing and maybe supplement some creative writing on Fridays. We have no intention of ever using anything else for language arts. Wayfarers- We are currently using year 1 and are having a great year with it. We have read so many wonderful and memorable books this year. Because we also have a homeschool co-op we attend, we do tweak some things as far as the "extras". But the main parts we are using as-is. The Quark Chronicles science books are so good! Not only are they educational, but the vocabulary is rich. We read one chapter a week, a few pages each day during our together time. I'm pretty sure we will be using it next year, but I am a constant suffered of "grass is greener syndrome". Since my oldest will be in junior high next year, I feel like I may need some handholding when it comes to literature discussions. I have been looking into Beautiful Feet as a possibility, at least for history. But, I have also purchased Teaching the Classics, so I'm hoping it makes me more confident in discussing literature and we can stick with Wayfarers because I would hate to leave something that is working so well for us. I love that all of my kids can work on the same time period and we can all read some of the books together.

We have used it now for a couple of years, and I can't imagine us ever using anything else. I will say that this is the first year we have remembered to do the memory work and it has made a huge difference in retention. I made flash cards of all of the grammar terms and we go over those on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, which is also when we do ELTL lessons. On Friday we read through the "Common Usage" passages. We started ELTL toward the beginning of when it first came out so my kids use it behind grade level (6th grade using level 4 and 4th grade using level 3). Because of this, we have added writing to it, but I probably didn't need to do that. We have had to cut assignments in either ELTL or IEW to not overwhelm them, so I'm pretty sure for next year we will just use ELTL, and maybe add some creative writing of some sort. Now that I am a few years in, I can see the beauty in the simplicity of this program. Each year repeats the previous year's concepts, moves through them a little bit faster, and adds in some new material too. So if they don't fully understand some things, you know they will go over it again in the next level. I'm so glad I can start from the beginning of this program with my two younger boys.

We follow the schedule in Wayfarers for the Quark Chronicles books and read one chapter per week. I break up the reading throughout the week and we just read a few pages each day during our together time. My kids have independent science reading they do, which are, again, the books scheduled in Wayfarers. Our homeschool co-op does science experiments each week so we don't worry about those at home. If we weren't doing the co-op, I would probably do some sort of science experiments.

We are using Wayfarers this year and have had an absolutely fantastic year! Her book choices have been great for us and we have read many books that I never would have otherwise considered reading (mostly because I didn't know about them). There are a few things we have tweaked, but not many. We are using the Ancient History book this year and I'm debating on which year to do next since I really want to do American History for the election year. Our family also uses and loves ELTL and RLTL. Kathy Jo is so wonderfully approachable when it comes to questions, so feel free join the Barefoot Ragamuffins yahoo group if you think of any questions you would like to ask her.

Here is what we are using, and so far (half-way through the year) it seems to be a good fit for my pre-teen. For spelling, we use prepared dictation. I pick a passage from either a book we are reading or a Bible passage, and he copies it through the week. On Friday, we use the passage as a dictation exercise. For writing, we are using IEW Ancient History. He enjoys the structure of it. For grammar (and some writing) we use English Lessons through Literature. We don't do all of the writing parts since we are using IEW, but we use the grammar and exercises, along with the literature selections. Sometimes though, I think boys this age are just determined to not like school no matter how many things we change. 😋

We are using the rules from Reading Lessons through Literature since that is what I am using to teach my younger boys to read. I'm thinking they may be available with the free sample of RLTL on Lulu.com. If not, they are very similar to the Logic of English spelling rules.

We are doing copywork and studied dictation (one longer passage per week), but we are also memorizing the spelling rules this year. Like you, I wanted my kids to know rules as to why things are spelled the way they are instead of just guessing. We pick one rule a week to memorize and this approach seems to be working very well for my kids.

We have been through so many spelling programs at our house...I think it is our most frustrating subject! We have finally come up with a system that seems to work pretty well for my struggling spellers. First, we are memorizing the spelling rules, which has really helped all of us figure out why words are spelled the way they are. Secondly, I pick one longer passage for them to use as copywork for the week. I try to pick passages they will enjoy from poems and literature selections we are reading for our other school work. Usually there are a few words that are new to them, but not too many. Then on Friday we use the passage they worked on throughout the week as prepared dictation. I have seen the most progress in spelling by doing it this way.

I know there is much debate on this, but I'm going to say yes, you could do a theme book without TWSS. I would try to follow along with the SWI lessons as much as possible so you know about all of the units. If you have any gaps you feel you need to filled or just need some clarification, IEW has great webinars on each individual unit. I would suggest trying to pick a theme book written by Lori V. since hers are the most teacher-friendly. We have successfully used three different theme books without ever using TWSS, so that is why I am pretty confident you could do it too. 😀

Was this it (Home Ed Expert) https://www.homeedexpert.com/Home?It appears as if it is no longer free and the website is much different than what I remember.

Virtual Homeschool Group has an "At Your Own Pace" biology class that looks pretty decent. We are just getting started with General Science.

We are using Wayfarers from Barefoot Ragamuffins and are really enjoying the living books she has selected to use. You can view the book selections on the sample pages at the bottom of this page: http://barefootmeandering.com/site/wayfarers/. Her husband is currently writing a series all about science called Quark Chronicles. Unfortunately it isn't finished yet, but the Botany book we are reading now is fantastic and I am confident the rest of the books will be just as wonderful (I believe either 2 or 3 volumes are finished as of this point).

We purchased it to use along with ELTL, but it ended up being too similar to use with ELTL and I much prefer ELTL since it includes other language arts aspects. Currently we are using ELTL with IEW Ancient History.

I was going to suggest Wayfarers too. We all have really enjoyed it (we're about 10 weeks in).

Honestly, I worry about this too (although I'm not sure I have any reason to be worried...I'm just a little too obsessive compulsive 😉). Currently I am having my kids do parts of CLE LA to make sure what they learn is practiced. I'm not sure that I will continue doing both after this year though since is seems like too much some times. My plan is to re-evaluate things either at Christmas or at the end of the year. I will say that I think one of the best ways to ensure retention is to memorize the definitions of the grammar terms as Kathy Jo suggests. I have already seen this help my kids tremendously when it comes to grammar. Between the memorization and the practice in sentence diagramming I'm sure ELTL would be fine on its own, and I'm sure my kids would appreciate a slightly lighter work load if I would quit my worrying and just trust the program. 😀

I have levels 1-4 of the ELTL workbooks and from what I have seen it appears that only the level 1 workbook is missing the top line. The versions I have of levels 2-4 all have regular 3 lines with the middle line dashed (unless maybe I have older versions and they have been updated since).

Maybe the TumTum and Nutmeg books?

I love using the Mardel Simple Plan planner. I don't use all of the sections for school and it is working out very well for me to keep our days organized. The first two "subject" rows I use for our together school. The other rows I use for chores (everyone has one chore each day and we all work together on one room), outings (any events/appointments that we have to leave the house for), random things than need to be done that day, and meals. I use the side "note" section for weekend plans and also odd jobs that can be done any time I have extra time during any day that week.

My youngest is just about to turn 5 and we just did a board book purge. We kept a few favorites and a couple that have writing in them from relatives (nothing breaks my heart more than to buy a used book that has a sweet message in it addressed to the previous owner).

We seem to have found our groove this year, and don't have any misses yet. Hits: *Wayfarers Ancient History (love, love, love it!) *Our mish-mash of ELTL, CLE, and IEW for all of our language arts *RLTL (I only wish I had used this for all of my kids) *CLE math (no tears about math is a great feeling!), but I still love, and use, Miquon for the younger crowd *Using the Mensa reading list as our free-choice literature readings (I'm "competing" with the kids while they work through their list and I work through the high school list) *Our together time-we all love this time together for recitations, songs, and read-alouds My older two don't love Latin for Children (especially the DVDs) but they are learning so much so I'll call it a mostly hit. We're on week 8 and I'd say we are off to a great start...I hope it continues!

I am using Wayfarers Ancient History this year and am able to teach all of my kids together with it. Wayfarers does also include geography, science, art, and a few other extras since it is a full curriculum. (Wayfarers is a program that uses the 4-year cycle and she is currently finishing it, but I believe the year you are looking for is at least partially done, if not already fully written.) There aren't many hands-on activities for history (it is more of a literature-based program) but several of the other subject include suggestions for optional hands-on activities. I love that these are optional because we are free to either do them if we have time or skip them if we don't.

If it doesn't have to be digital, the Donna Young website has some great printable pages that you could put into a binder and use for each subject.