Just wanted to mention a few more options. We are using Lightning Literature and we do enjoy it but this next year we are going to try Smarr Literature and see how that works out. So wanted to mention Smarr. Another one that I remembered is Movies as Literature. I have never used it though.

There is also a free chemistry that we did in middle school. You can find it at http://www.middleschoolchemistry.com/lessonplans/ It didn't require any math and my daughter really enjoyed it. You will need to get the supplies for the labs but most of the items were things we already had. A few of the labs we had to go buy supplies and on some we ended up just watching a video on the lab but most of them can be done pretty easily at home.

For a 9th grader, I would start on IEW Student writing Intensive C.

I decided to sign up for it on the 26th but am not thrilled with the new format. Completely understandable that they want to keep people coming back every month so they are not releasing the entire course at one time and releasing them week by week but that doesn't work for those who already have core 1. We used core 1 a couple years ago so I was hoping to start on core 2 but it won't release until week 51 so the 1 year membership that I got isn't going to work on starting core 2. I called them to see if they could release it to me but they are going to call me back so we will see. Just a quick update: I am going to keep it. I just logged in because never got a call back but I tried the core 2 files and seems they did unlock them for me. So if any of you already own the Core 1 seems they can unlock the Core 2 for you.

My daughter is using this program right now. She is in module C and really enjoying it. She has had great retention so far with this program. I do want to state though that before she did this program, we used Systematic Mathematics Math Rescue. I am not sure if the reason she is understanding it so well is due to Systematic Mathematics or if it is just Videotext. I used Systematic Mathematics because although, I loved Teaching Textbooks, I ended up testing her to see if she was doing well with Teaching Textbooks. We had done up to grade 7 on TT but after testing her, she tested 6 grade level overall. So then we used Math Rescue and moved right into Videotext after that. I haven't officially tested her to see her level yet but I have given her random quizzes with material she has covered in the beginning of Videotext and she has been able to pass them all so far. She will be doing an official test in the next couple months to give me a better idea on her progress. I would just try the first Module like you originally planned and see how it goes. Everyone is different so best to try it out.

Both my dh and I work so we both contribute equally financially but I definitely am in charge of our homeschool. I choose, plan, and buy curriculum and implement the lesson plan. He, in turn takes care of any projects that I want or need for my homeschooling needs. I wanted a lab so he made me a lab. I needed a wall unit for my books so he took care of it. I am always moving my set up around and switching rooms so when I decide to redesign and move my giant whiteboard somewhere else, he takes care of it as well. He doesn't teach any academic courses but he does like to teach them about home maintenance, auto mechanics, and staying debt free.

We use this series. I do have the teacher's guides for some of the books. I have the 2nd edition teacher guides which are older from 1994. I recently got a newer one for 2004 and I definitely didn't like the format of the newer edition. They are really written for classroom settings and have a lot of group activities and aside from a list of additional resources of readings, the newer edition wasn't useful at all. The older edition ones have a study guide at the back of the guide that we use. Each study guide covers a few chapters and they are a mixture of multiple choice questions and discussion questions. I also use the Hewitt tests. Those have proven to be great. It is 1 test per book. So every time you finish a book, you can administer a test. The Hewitt syllabus also comes with some project ideas and writing ideas. The other resource that we are enjoying is, we are also using video resources. We have been watching America the Story of US. There are only 12 episodes so you can just match them up to the time period you are reading. The last resource we use is timelines. I purchased the American figures from History through the ages and just add figures to the timeline as we read through those time periods.

I am just like you, in that, I really do my research and really want my kids to get a good well rounded education so am very involved in curriculum selection and implementation. I didn't like the idea of joining co-op either but my daughters kept asking so I gave in but, instead of actually taking academic classes, I agreed they could take elective type classes like PE, Art, crafts or anything not really academic. We have been with a co-op for 2 years now and it has been fun for them and it has been working out ok for the most part. One of my daughters took a history topic type course last session but I didn't count it towards her transcript. I just considered it as extra learning because the course was geared on a very specific even in history so it really wasn't an in depth history course, other than that, they have been taking Drama, Choir, and PE type courses.

My mother's days usually don't go too well and this year, as it approached, I sat dreading it but then I started thinking that maybe I shouldn't expect anything and just be glad my family is ok. I realized that maybe for me, atleast they don't go well because I expect too much and get a feeling of entitlement as the day approaches. So the kids started asking me what I wanted for Mother's Day and this year I told them, I really didn't want anything that I was content with my life and that I was happy with what I had. They continued asking as the weeks came by and I would tell them the same every time. Well this year, was the best Mother's Day. I didn't sit expecting anything and the kids and my hubby really worked hard to make it a special day for me. In the morning, they woke me up with breakfast in bed. My oldest daughter, who doesn't live with us anymore, came by and gave me a beautiful snowglobe with A Happy Mother's Day engraving. Then my youngest daughter made me a very difficult to make, Best Mom bracelet along with a card and my middle daughter made me some very tasty Rose cupcakes. And as if that wasn't enough, my hubby cooked me a mother's day meal for diner. I love seafood so he made me King Crab, grilled shrimp on skewers, a new york strip steak with a baked potato and garlic bread. It was the best meal ever. It was truly a special day. They rented movies that I would like and we stayed in and watched them during diner. It was a peaceful day and it went really well. Going to try to stay with the same mindset.

Sounds like it is going to be a blast. My daughter isn't very artsy so the stickers worked ok but the timeline sounds great. During out study, we did go off on a rabbit trail and I incorporated a rock/mineral study into ours when we got to talking about fossils. I ended up using Tops Science unit on Rocks and doing the experiments. We read the Basher book for rocks/minerals. I bought a rock tumbler and tumbled rocks and broke some Geodes. Also purchased a nice rock collection that we used to do some experiments on rock and mineral identification. We also made a lapbook from Hands of a Child on rocks and minerals and ended up reading a few books from the library including one called Salt which covered the history of Salt. Thought I would add some of the items we used for rocks because we almost always end up branching our unit studies when we run into something interesting and I always come here to get ideas.

Don't know if you have gotten your unit study together but here are a few resources we used for ours.study of Prehistory. We used the 10 book set of Prehistoric Zoobooks that I found on ebay for $15 and we also used a sticker timeline called Our Amazing Time chart of Earth History. It had stickers and a poster timeline. As you read about the different times, you add stickers to the chart for visuals. I actually found the sticker timeline at a yard sale. I haven't seen it online but maybe can find something similar. We also incorporated a few Walking with Dinosaurs episodes from Netflix. If you want a more in depth study, you can add notebooking pages like those found here http://awakeningwonder.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/prehistory-notebook-pages-intermediate-advanced/ or if you want to actually study with a spine, you can look at these lesson plans http://awakeningwonder.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/prehistory-study-recommended-books-2/

If she likes animals and bugs, I would put some sort of Life Science together. I would sneak in the Ellen McHenry Botany unit somewhere in the middle. My daughter loves animals and bugs as well. She has read every Zoobook out there as well as about 50 Ranger Rick magazines and a ton of animals books. She is a walking encyclopedia of animal facts. We just finished Physical Science but she wasn't crazy about it. She will be doing Biology this year. I settled on Classiquest for now and will see how that goes because it has a lot of writing and she likes more hands on activities. I am adding some Top Science units to enhance the hands on activities. There are some unit activity books that you might find of interest and may be able to incorporate into a life science study. They are the AIMS activity books. They are titled Concerning Critters and Field Detectives. They concern animals and bugs. I think you can probably pick and choose activities that wouldn't involve evolution. Since you are already familiar with Hands of a Child, you know they have many animal lapbooks. I have used many of their lapbooks as well and they are wonderful.

I also loved all of the Ellen Mchenry units. They were awesome. We did the Botany unit and it did not disappoint. A suggestion to go with the Botany is to also use Shanleya's Quest Game cards. Those card games were great. My daughters still play with them to this date. The Shanleya's Quest book was not a hit though for us. As far as Physics goes, I would have loved to have one by Mchenry but that not being the case, the next best thing that I found was TOPS science. Those unit books are great. They have Magnetism, Electricity, Light and a bunch of others you can use to help teach Physics concepts. I would also invest in a snap circuits set to combine with this. As for a spine, I would probably use something like Science Jim's Byte Size Physics. I like the way he explains the concepts but I suppose you can look into any Physics spine and match the concepts up with the TOPS experiments. We tried Noeo but hated the Thames Physics set it came with for the experiments.

I have daughters with learning disabilities. I have a daughter who is awesome in spelling and needs no help but I have another daughter who has struggled greatly through spelling. We have tried Spelling Power, AAS, and Sequential Spelling all to no avail. She is currently using Phonetic Zoo and although, I am not saying it is the answer, I have seen improvements and she has gained some confidence in her spelling. I will describe the program to the best of my knowledge. It comes with a set of small cards called zoo cards. They contain the jingle that is used for the lesson and pictures of some of the words for the lesson. You also get a large set of cards for you to go over with them. The large set also has the words being tested in case you want to give them the test. You also get a set of Personal spelling cards. These are cards with blank lines on them so you can gather words that trouble your child. Every 5th lesson, you give them a test based on the personal spelling cards. I think the reason it has worked for my daughter is because we went ahead and made the zoo board. This is board you put together for them where they add the small zoo cards to as they master a lesson. So they see their progress and success in the program. The way the program is administered is that on the first day, you go over the jingle with them and give them some examples of words that go with the jingle being learned. Then you use the audio cd's to give them the test. The cd will say the word aloud to them and use it in a sentence for them. They will take the 15 word test this way then they listen to the corrections and write them down next to their test answer. After they have written the corrections, they compare and see where they missed problems. The take the same test the next day again until they score a 100% twice in a row. Once they master a set of words, you give them their new zoo card to place on their board and again go over the next jingle with them and the process repeats. I didn't think this would work but was desperate and so far has been a pretty good program. The other day my daughter asked me if I knew of any other words that followed the chant " When 2 vowels go walking, the first one often does the talking. Either shouting out its name as in goat, leaf, and pain or making its sound as in leather." She told me how she has been thinking of so many. She had thought of oak, float, gain, plain, leopard and a bunch of others. Now this was outside of our school time because we were sitting eating at a restaurant so it made me happy to see that she was putting effort and thought into her learning. You can check the sample on the iew site. If you do buy a set make sure it comes with the Spelling and the Brain CD because that one has lesson tips and instructions on setting up the board.

My daughters are not elementary anymore but one of my teen daughters has a kindle fire HD and we use it for all kinds of stuff. She uses Mr Q science and I use the dropbox app and the google drive app on it and I pretty much save all her schoolwork books that are in pdf or doc format in there so she can read them. The workbook type pages I print out for her. She also uses IEW phonetic zoo B and I saved all the audio files to the dropbox so she uses it to do her spelling test on it. I also saved all the Learnables Spanish files on it so she can do her Spanish on it as well. They are very good for audio and video type stuff. Now as far as the websites you will be accessing, not sure all of them will work on it. This is basically because of flash. I don't think Flash works on them so if any of your websites need flash, they won't work. An older tablet like an asus transformer TF101 would be able to play flash and would probably work fine for what you need. I have one of those for myself and it can access any site just as a laptop would. I also added a keyboard to it but I dont use the keyboard much, although might be helpful to kids doing schoolwork on it. I also have the new version of the Asus Transformer but that one doesnt acess flash sites and I find myself constantly going back to my older tablet. Hope some of this info was helpful.

I have also been looking into this. I haven't purchased the student guide yet but will probably order it in the next week. I have the snap circuit 300 set, the 100 set, and snaptricity. I had bought them just because the girls enjoyed playing with them but now I want to create a good unit for them. As soon as I get the student guide, then will probably go from there. I did see a lapbook type of unit that is supposed to go along with the project guide. It is here, if you are interested. My younger daughter likes lapbooks so will work for her but my older one doesn't so have to find something else for her. I am not sure how the student guide is set up yet but will probably match up the project lessons with readings from Usborne encyclopedia or Kingfisher encyclopedia. I also have a few electricity books to read alongside as they do the projects.

Just FYI, I too had been waiting for Classiquest Astronomy and just found a couple days ago that it is finally out. I just ordered it today at amazon.

I work full time from home and homeschool. Been doing this for 13 years and somehow have made it work. My work is not scheduled and as long as I have my work completed by the next morning, then everything is good with work. So I work throughout the day and stop to help with coursework or to lecture at different times during the day. It is tough but doable. Dinners have to be simple during the week or if nothing is planned, I end up having to go pick up fast food but that can quickly add up so planning a weekly menu is a must. I also combine some of the kids on history and science and lecture on those twice a week. They do their own labs, unless it is something really difficult. The kids do have activities with a local homeschool group but only a few times a month. We also do co-op, which is once a week, but the session hasn't started yet this year. Somehow we manage. We are very sporadic though but everything always gets done. It is stressful but that is the only way I get things done, if I am under pressure. I find that when there is no pressure to get something done, I end up sitting around procrastinating until last minute.

Thanks SilverMoon. Will check my library to see if they have it. Sounds like it has some great project ideas.

I got the Tops kit but only comes with a few rocks which I think she will be using to perform some rock hardness test but other than that no other samples. Thanks for the suggestion on the rocks and mineral set, going to go ahead and order one. She is a visual learner so great suggestion.

I can't give you success stories because I will barely be starting it this next year with my daughters but I have been going through the TWSS and seems like it can definitely help kids who are reluctant writers. My daughters are pretty scatter brained when it comes to writing so we had been using Winning with Writing because it is very structured and helps them learn to write in small pieces at a time but they only go up to 8th grade and they are almost done with that level so I bought IEW. I can see how it makes writing simpler and helps them learn where to start when writing. For example, you might tell your child to write a paragraph about what he/she read, they might sit and sit and sit trying hard to figure our where to even start. With IEW, there is a process to follow with an outline that guides them through this type of paragraph quickly. So now, they can sit and look at the outline and rules for this type of writing and know exactly where to begin. Once that is mastered, the program takes you through other rules to add as they progress through the program in order to make their writing more creative and interesting.

My youngest daughter wants to study Geology over the summer. We are wrapping up McHenry Botany next week and she is now interested in Geology. So far I have the following: Tops Rocks & Minerals Hands of a Child Rocks & Minerals Lapbook Basher Rocks & Minerals Book A rock tumber my husband found at the Goodwill, it was complete and a good find Geodes to crack A 2 day class in July called Rocks, Gems, and Minerals at a local Science Institute I want her to have enough material for about 6 weeks. I was looking at a game on Amazon called Rock On that comes with a bunch of rocks. It looks neat but after reading reviews sounds for a much younger audience. Anyone have any fun games to add or any other suggestions to add to the reading.

I would love a housekeeper like the rest of you all but, unfortunately, I am very particular on how I do things so probably wouldn't work out. A bit of OCD, I guess. The next big thing on my list would have to be a large enough room to house our library and everything else for homeschooling so I don't have to go around the house gathering stuff like I do now. Would also buy every item we need for science in a kit, this would simplify my life much more. I would get a new computer with a huge monitor screen to put in the homeschool room, solely for use when we need to pull up videos that accompany lessons. At the moment, I pull them up on my small tablet and my 2 girls have to share the small screen. I have computers but never in the room I end up doing the lesson in, so I carry my tablet around the house for the videos. As for curriculum, I would love Hands on English Linking blocks and Visualize World Geography.

Anyone ever use the Molecular Gastronomy kits to teach Chemistry lessons? We are wrapping up our Chemistry for the year but wanted to top it off with one of these kits. My daughter loves cooking so this will be a treat but just wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions to get some learning out of it as well. Really wanted it for the fun factor but demonstrating some chemistry concepts would be a plus.

ClassiQuest is one that I didn't see mentioned. I think they only have biology right now. We tend to mix it up because we are big on science. Noeo, I am not crazy about. I like the resources used but feel it just skims the surface on topics. We love McHenry's unit studies and have done several of them. We use Tops for experimentation and have a lot of resource books just laying around on experiments. Next year my youngest is going to try ClassiQuest but we will probably be adding to it. Another one that I really like but doesnt take the classical approach is Mr Q's science. Easy to implement and really love the approach on lab write ups. My daughters entered the science fair this year and one of my daughters took home 1st place in her grade level. I like to think that the Mr Q science labs helped in that since the lab write ups on some of the labs take the scientific method approach.