I am using this right now and we are just doing it for the summer. So far we are really enjoying it. The way we do is that we do it together. My daughters take turns reading paragraphs out loud from lesson one on the first day. Then they elaborate over discussion on what they learned. We then watch the videos together on a tablet. On day 2, this is repeated with lesson 2. Then they do the written activities on their own. Over the next 3 days, we play the games together. We are finishing up week 2 right now and we are having a lot of fun. We played the games twice already and we also purchased the Shanleya's Quest card game that was recommended in the Botany book and we have played the different card games every day several times already. I guess the book is open and go except for the games, which do take some time to put together but I work on them over the weekend so they are ready for us during the week.

I have been using it with my 14 year old this year. It is not difficult and only preparation it requires is to read a week ahead and get supplies needed. We have done most of the lab work, have only skipped a few but if we do skip due to not having the items, then she just looks at a video of it. This has been rare though since the experiments are fairly easy. It is suitable for a 5th grader, if they have a decent background in science. An average lesson for us takes about 20 minutes of discussion, then my daughter does the experiment that takes about 20 minutes. We have only been doing a lesson a week so taking it slow but I have also assigned additional reading. She is also reading the Basher books for Chemistry and the Periodic table. We are almost done with ACS and will complete chemistry by adding The Elements by Mchenry. Depending if we have time over the summer, I was also hoping to add Carbon Chemisty by Mchenry also but only time will tell. I didn't feel it was complete for her, although it covers a good amount of concepts, I felt I wanted to be thorough for my middleschooler and give her a good foundation since she loves Chemistry and is really into the subject. I think for a 5th grader, it is probably enough though as you will have plenty of time to build a foundation. It can last the entire year if you do a lesson a week like we did but if you do a few a week, then you can finish it off in a semester. If you think your 5th grader might need more, the Basher books are great and very thorough.

Here is a link to tutorials for specific functions but what might be most helpful is the menu maps on the link. Might help to print it out and keep it handy. Shows all the screens and what leads you to each screen. http://mathbits.com/MathBits/TISection/Openpage.htm

I don't have an ipad, I have an android tablet but they are used in the same way. The way I use mine for homeschooling, is I have the dropbox installed and any word or pdf files that I have on my desktop, I save to the dropbox. I have them saved in files by subject so I can access what I am looking for easily. I take answer keys and readings all over the house or if I have to go out, they can read aloud in the car. It is pretty handy. As far as apps go, I haven't downloaded many but I do use homeschool helper to plan out the weeks schedule.

I agree with everyone on thrift store buys. Curriculum, I mostly buy online used but everything else like reference materials and literature, I buy at goodwill stores. I used to buy a lot at the scholastic yearly sales but not so much anymore because I used to come out spending about $150 all at one time. Once I discovered goodwill stores, I never looked back. I can walk out of that store with 10 or more books and spending less than $10. I do sometimes find a single book that cost $2-$3 but compared to the cost anywhere else, they are worth the price. So far I have a book library of about 500 books on my shelves. I keep it categorized by subject and keep tabs on my books with an app on my tablet. I actually have more than 500 books but I am not counting old books that I boxed because they got too old for them. I have about 5 big boxes of those. Not sure what I am going to do with them yet. :crying: Oh another good place to find books is at library sales. They have some really good sales at those. I have bought books as low as 25 cents a book. You can go here to find library sales in your area.

I try not to overbook my family, but for me it is because I am exhausted most of the time. Keeping up with lesson planning, cleaning, cooking, one on one time with them on some subjects, budget planning, paper keeping and filing, and working 30 hours a week, makes it difficult for me to make our family available for friend time.I have a daughter in a drama class which is 1 day a week and then my two youngest daughter goes to co-op once a week. My oldest just works part time. That is about the best I can do for giving them socializing time. My oldest has a lot of friends and some deep friendships that she has formed during the years. My youngest daughter has friends from co-op but it is just not in her character to form deep friendships. She enjoys going to events and to co-op but she is very happy with that and never ask for more. My daughter, who is in drama, just started forming some deep friendships in her drama class. At first, it was just friends she made but then she got an ipod touch for Christmas and that is when she started really keeping in touch with friends. Although, it is a bit of a problem because it has interfered with her finishing her schoolwork and getting distracted, it has helped her keep in touch with close friends. This week, she is currently grounded from it due to her texting when she wasn't supposed to be on it. So, it isn't all that great. I will probably have to limit her to using it an hour a day or something like that from now on. She is sometimes asking me if she could meet up with her drama friend at the mall but so far, I haven't had enough time to take her. My oldest daughter has volunteered to go hang out with them at the mall and keep an eye on them. I wouldn't worry too much about them making long lasting friendships unless they are complaining about it. If it isn't bothering them, they might not be needing that yet. My daughters didn't start feeling like they wanted a deep friendship until they hit the teens, before that they were perfectly content with seeing friends at events or co-op.

We have used both. We started off with Hakim's books but my daughter was dragging on them and not really retaining. We tried notebooking with them but the reading is not well organized and very scatter brained, so my dd really struggled. We ended up using All American history and so far she is progressing fine, we are on volume 2 and she is keeping a timeline. I was using homeschooling in the woods Time Traveler's units with my younger dd so I ended up including her in the activities. I also ocassionally have her read some sections from Hakim as a supplement. I think just depends on you child. Mine likes structure and topics very organized so Hakim was not a good fit.

I grew up in a home where we never had to ask. We were a family of 5 kids and my parent's policy on food was, it belongs to everyone. So we just ate and there were never any fights in our house over what belongs to who. In fact, we would share more often with each other or when I thought about eating the last of something, I would think twice and think my younger brother would like it more than me. Now as a mom myself, our home is different and my kids have to ask on certain items. They can go snack on most everything except things like soda and junk food. I try not to keep it in the house but sometimes it does end up in my home like after parties. I buy soda for family gatherings because they drink soda and when we have leftover soda, my girls want to go drink them all up since we only have water and orange juice in the house. My dh though has set a rule on sodas. If they are in the fridge, they are not to be touched until we have a movie night. Then they are allowed to drink one. My girls do fight over snacks though. If there is only 1 left, they will fight over who gets it.

For this reason, I offer amazon payments. They do have a dispute department and you can also file a dispute with your bank, so there is some form of protection. I don' t like money orders either because even sellers can get sent a fake money order but I do offer it and just hope the person is honest . I am the buyer more often though because I do buy a lot of curriculum. I haven't' t been scammed yet but I usually take the number of post into consideration and look to see if there is any feedback. I also look up their email address on other sites like homeschoolclassifieds and vegsource before I buy. The feedback option here is great but not many buyers post. I have sold few things here but only 1 person has left me feedback.

I sometimes sell curriculum that I have already used or ones that I decided not to use and don't use PayPal. For me, I had a problem with PayPal pulling money from my bank account and leaving me almost penniless that month. Bills went unpaid, including my mortgage, due to my account having been hacked. Took PayPal a month to finish investigating and return my money. After that I closed the account and don't use it. When I sell, I ask for money orders or an Amazon payment. It is like PayPal but through Amazon. They do have protection for the buyer so it is a good option.

I have both Mapping the World with Art and Geography through Art. Mapping the World with Art is a wonderful program. The way it works is that each lesson has a reading with historical and geographical information relating to the map that will be drawn. Then you get to draw a map and everything is shown step by step. Finally, there are several activity ideas you can use to accompany the lesson. We did most of the activities as they were all great. I feel it can be stand alone program but we used it along with the Trail guide to the World Geography. Sounds to me like just adding the literature would be enough. Geography through Art is supplementary and it just contains art project ideas for some parts of the world. I personally didn't use it much as I found some better ideas online and the ones in Mapping the World with Art were far better.

Glad you found your title. Just wanted to add that my daughter just finished reading a book called The Giver by Lois Lowry and it is very similar to This Perfect Day. Really good book you might want to add to your reading.

So far we have done: Green Thumbs: radishes Green Thumbs:Corn & Beans Animal Survival Math Lab Lentils-primary, intermediate, and Get a grip We did do all of the lentils but I did buy the supplies set. Took me a few days to reorganize the information in my mind so that I could set it up but I did get it done. I would set a new unit at a time per week. Once I did the first unit the rest were easy to set up. In the beginning was information overload. I have a few other Tops books sitting on my shelves but waiting to integrate them into out lessons.

Yup, none of her beeswax. Your home, your rules, your children. Her opinion is just that, her opinion. We all have our own style of parenting depending on our unique household situation. She may think you give your children too many chores and you may think the opposite about hers. Tell her to just leave it at that, agree to disagree. My girls are pretty lazy. Wish they helped with more but they help only when I am up to my neck in stuff and I have to come tell them what to do. They load/unload dishwasher, do their own laundry, hang and fold clothes, take out trash, clean their own rooms and they have at times when I am too busy, cut the lawn and weed. We used to have a chore chart to keep up but was hard to keep up with that and schedule planning so I gave up on it. Now, I just call them to help when it gets to be too much for me.

I agree with this. I use homeschool helper on my tablet and a feature like that would be very useful. A bumping option is always necessary. I use that feature on homeschool helper. Ability to sync to other devices would be great also. At the moment, I do a backup and then my daughter restores on hers to see what I have updated. Would be nice if she could mark her items complete and I could see that on my tablet.

Nope, not me. I am done and will definitely need time to pursue hobbies and enjoy myself stress free. I would love to see the grand kids but only to spoil them and give them cookies, perhaps do fun things with them like bake and take them for ice cream It will definitely be my kids turn to know what it is like to be an adult and to take responsibility for their own lives. I have done enough, I would say. It will be my turn to sit back and relax while they have the roller coaster ride called life.

I buy mostly used online and at used bookstores. The packages that come in the mail, I open so they don't get to open anything. I am the one who gets to be excited. The only curriculum that I buy new are consumable workbooks and even those, I open and stick on my curriculum shelf. If they want to be excited, they can go stare at the curriculum shelf but something tells me that they avoid that area like the plague. They see new books on the shelf and they cringe and whisper among-st each other "Do you think she added those for me or for you".

My youngest dd loves them. They are great study guides to look back at. I keep the ones she has completed in the bookshelf for her to use as reference. She used to have a difficult time with history so that is when we first began using them. They helped her see topics and subtopics in a more organized manner. She can section off bits of information by main topics and list subtopics in the mini books. They do help her retain more of the information we study because she doesn't have to process the entire chapter of reading in her head. Instead we take the main points and organize them in the lap books. Right now we are using one for literature. As she reads the assigned book, we add small minibooks, vocabulary, setting information, and character descriptions. She also works on one for History. The prep work can be time consuming but usually a few hours during a weekend, she will cut the lapbooks and paste everything with glue dots and have it ready to go so during the lessons, she just has to add the writing. The literature lapbook study is usually a months long so she just makes one at the start of a new book. For History, we make a new one every few months. So making them isn't that bad in the prep time. The only thing I dislike is the cost of printing them. The card stock and ink prices are the only downside for us. Each child is different though because my other daughters never liked them.

We do a lot of discussions on pretty much everything. I am a talker so sometimes I can lead the conversation. Funny though, because I am an introvert when it comes to other people, but with my family, I speak very freely. When I start a discussion, I usually start by asking them about what they thought. Other times, when I think they aren't listening and we are reading something together, I chime in and ask them to tell me what just happened. I try to get them to sort of summarize and then give me their opinion. If it is the way something was handled, I ask them if that is what they would do or would they have handled it differently and why? We tend to do this after movies also. We talk about who our favorite character was and why. What we each thought about the movie. What their favorite part was. How would they handle the situations that caused conflict in the movie. It pretty much comes natural after a movie. My hubby just listens and he doesn't give too much input but us girls really get into the conversation. We even talk about how the movie could have been better and what we would have added to it.

Times Tales and Timez Attack is what we used.

I have one about 45 minutes from where I live. It is in San Antonio. I like the store but way overpriced. Wish I could support the little man and spend money there but really, I just go and browse and take a closer look at the curriculum that I am eyeing at the moment. Then I come home and find it used online. I do spend some money there occasionally but only on deals. They don't have everything though, not much secular curriculum but still a nice store to visit. I do envy those who have a good priced Home school store near them with a huge selection. Glad to hear you got to visit one!

At least you don't look like bozo the clown. Unfortunately, I can't say that for myself.

I think Winning with Writing does a good job of this. For a young adult, the level 8 would probably be best. Goes from sentence structure to how to complete a paragraph with topic sentences, detail sentences, and an ending sentence. Then shows you how to outline your essay and complete paragraphs to go with your outline. Then moves on to completing a rough draft, editing the rough draft and finally completing the final draft. Goes through this process for different types of essays each week.

I made my own tiles and laminated them then I bought a magnetic adhesive sheet from our hobby store. The sheet is adhesive so just stuck it on to each tile and mine have held up pretty well. None have fallen off. The tiles I made are the same as the ones sold by AAS because I have a set I bought from them but wanted an extra. They look and feel the same since I printed them on photo paper then laminated them. So I think any strong magnetic adhesive sheet should hold up for the AAS tiles.

Time4learning comes to mind for online schooling. I think for grade 7, they cover all subjects except science. For extra practice aside from the school work, they do have printable worksheets. For the science part she can look into Exploration Education They have physical science available for that grade level and comes with a small kit to do the projects. The program is accessed on a computer and they get a student log book for the inquiry part.