I have a smallish living room and what I did was like pp suggested. I have the couch in the middle of the room, tv opposite of it. The love seat sits perpendicular to the couch. Behind the couch is a 4 foot rectangle card table set with the legs on the lowest setting. It nicely fits my 9 year old and 5 year old with plenty of room to spread out. I bought 2 student chairs at Sams and the card table at target. There is still room for my bookshelves and a chair for me between the kids' table and the wall. I like how we have our own space but are still in the heart of the home. The space was previously just a walkway to the hall so it uses unused "dead" space. Our house is less than 1300 square feet so our options are limited. I love our set up and it is tidy and pretty. The kids play school all the time now and use their table for all their crafty fun instead of messing up my dining room table. Win!

I did Adventures for second grade in one semester. We didn't intend to but my daughter always wanted to hear more of the read alouds so I would often double or triple up days. We also only did the history portion. We didn't stay with MFW because reading snippets of books wasn't working for us and I don't want to pay a lot for a curric that I have to modify so much. But it was a very sweet semester that we really enjoyed. I feel she gained a real feel for how different children lived not very long ago.

We are doing b+C right now for third grade and I know she would have enjoyed it last year as well. I am glad we chose it! You can buy just the reader schedule. We chose the third grade but the books are way too easy. My second grader niece easily reads the books. I bought the LA package so I went with third grade so retrospect i should have just bought the reader schedule (her reading level is higher than her LA level by several grades). Make sure you take the placement tests.

In our state you legally have to be a nonprofit with insurance so the one we are starting is being called a homeschool group to keep the cost down. It will still be $50/month per family just o cover the facility fee. We only have 10 families but that is on purpose. We are all friends and are getting together to do this.

I started hsing mid year of first grade and everyone on the forum (not this one) encouraged me to pick and choose and to stay away from the boxed curriculum. I felt so disjointed that semester but figured I was just finding our groove. For 2nd I did the same and hsing became less fun and more of us checking off of a list. I bought MFW mid year and while I found it to be very light (we competed the year in one semester and still schooled just a few hours per day) I did find that my daughter loves being read to and we finally found that cozy hs experience I was looking for. We settled on using Sonlight because I need books to be scheduled or I get off track. My daughter who would rather do anything but school was excited to show her daddy all the great books we will be reading together. I know not everyone on here likes Sonlight but I finally figured out that me listening to other people recommending for or against a curriculum is not always a good thing. I have heard rave reviews on Math Mammoth and that program was definitely not a good fit for either of us. And that is okay! And I definitely think us having a good year with Sonlight is better than a stressed year of using what I had been using. We are both so excited to start school back up again!!!

Wellness, Nature's Variety, Orijin, and Taste of the Wild are brands I will buy. I love the first three but my senior dog has done much better on TOTW. She has stomach issues. I also used California Natural with good results but I can't find it locally. My top pick would be Nature's Variety but as long as the old gal is around we will stick with what works for her for all three pups. The feed store is the way to go. Kennels are also good. I worked for one for years and the mark up was 10%.

Oh, and I found an overdue (by months!) library book so that is a huge relief. It was on my daughter's shelf in her room...probably right were I put it. Oh well, it is on her card, hehe.

Y'all inspired me to organize all our books!! I am very pleased with how they turned out. I made all the books perfect and my 3 year old messed up my straight line of book edges right away. But...since all the books in her interest level are in one central location she has been bringing me book after book to read to her. So I will have to chill since the purpose of books is to read them, ha!

My daughter is 8 & going into 3rd grade and can read at a 7th grade level. She doesn't read everything she gets her hands on like I did (and do). She reads Pokemon chapter books and stat books, Garfield comics, Shel Silverstein poetry books, animal books ( dog breed books, cat breed books, pet care/training), and that is about it. Books I think she will like are shot down. I am fine with her reading whatever interests her because it is still reading, as long as I do not object to the content. My parents did the same with me and I appreciate it. I take her to the used bookstore and let her pick out her own books. I only read the back to make sure it isn't inappropriate.

We liked Reading Eggs for my 1st grader to push her over her reading slump. My 3.5 year old uses Clickn Read. I use it on my iPad and she sits in my lap and we do it together. We do one lesson at a time and it is neat to see what she knows that I did not realize. She thinks it is fun to "do school" like her big sister. I got it cheap on the homebuyer co-op and used it with both kids. A great value and it is a lifetime membership. I paid under $40.

She gets it correct one hundred percent of the time while using a Rightstart abacus. She pretends to not know answers very frequently (or pretends not to see something) so it is quite frustrating. I don't want to do a reward system except one based on behavior-like if she does math with no complaining she can play a video game. She did it again today and she got the answer wrong and I had her do it on the abacus (flipped vertically so you have to manually borrow) and she got it correct. I suppose I will make her use the abacus for awhile and do daily problems and maybe after a month I can try one without the abacus and see what happens. Thanks everyone, it is great to hear other hs mom opinions.

My husband thinks I need to let her fail a test and she will try harder the next time. He remembers comparing grades in private school and if you got an A you got two stars and Bs got you one star. They had contests boys against girls with winners getting a pizza party or something. I told him that is certainly motivating for kids who gets high grades but how awful for struggling kids who let down their team. I feel that if I hand her a test without going over the instructions she would not read the instructions herself and just do what she wants. I need to work on pointing out the instructions so that she begins paying more attention.

Thank you, good to be reassured it isn't a learning issue and I will just keep plugging along :) I plan to have her do two or three on the whiteboard each day, even if they are not part of the lesson until she becomes less careless. Thanks again :)

My daughter is 8 and math comes easily to her. She doesn't really enjoy it and will just rush to get it done. Normally this isn't an issue but lately when I give her a set of subtraction with borrowing involved she will get all of them incorrect. What she is doing is, for example, 50-27 she will subtract 7-0 instead of 0-7 and borrowing. Her answer will be 37. If I point to the problem and ask her what is incorrect she can do the problem correctly. Then she can go do a whole set correctly. Is this something that I should worry about or is she just rushing? My gut says to keep doing this sort of problem daily until she quits manipulating the problem to make it the easiest but I want to make sure I am overlooking something. My other thought is to reteach it to her another method. We learned using Righstart on the abacus. She can do it correctly on the abacus no problem. Thanks for any advice!

Structured PE would be a lot of fun.

Thank you! I think I will go ahead and buy it and hopefully she finds math not so dreadful.

Pen, you are awesome. I have read countless reviews but people either are not detailed or think it is not enough due to the lack of explanation. We are going to try it out and see what we think. I just not want her behind or lacking in mathematical knowledge. We consider math, reading, and science the most important subjects for this child. I just wished she didn't detest math. Do you use it by itself or is it a supplement?

What about Critical Thinking Co Core Mathematical Reasoning? I am trying to find more info on it for upper elementary and if it can be used as a stand alone curric. My daughter who loves science hates MM and doesn't like RightStart or Dreambox. We are choosing Horizons or CTC with Horizons. My daughter frustrates me because math comes so easily for her (she intuitively knows concepts without being taught except for telling time) but she fights me every day to get it done. So I feel for you!

My oldest is BFF with her cousin and I make an effort to cultivate that relationship. She s also buddies with my BFF's children. Beyond that, my children have met their buddies through church. I know you specified no church but my kids are friends with kids at church and they picked these friends out themselves. The homeschoolers and moms of preschoolers there have made an effort to do play dates and field trips so they have friends from that as well. We also do family days with one another after church (homeschooled or not) We are blessed to have a church home full of loving friends.

I feel your pain. My 2nd grader hates math even though it comes naturally for her. I tried MM based on recommendations at it was awful. She tolerates RightStart but is in tears when I try to get her to do a worksheet. She is fine with all other subjects. I don't know what to do with her but I think I will take her to the homeschool store and let her pick from a few programs, including Horizons and Singapore.

We are doing NOEO Chem I (2nd grader). I like it but it is much too easy. Some days we will be assigned to read 3 pages and then notebook (or narrate) about it. I always combine 2 days and more if there are no experiments (she likes science so I try to do at least 2 experiments a week, even if it isn't related to NOEO). This week there were no assigned experiments (there is a book that comes with it and you are supposed to pick out 1 per week in addition to what is assigned) so we also did a Magic Schoolbus Kit I got off Amazon. I think we will get through the entire year by December. I do think it is well put together and she is learning a lot. It just isn't enough for her on it's own. She also goes to a science academy 1x week. I do not make her notebook each combined day, just one per actual school day. When we finish we will likely just buy more Magic Schoolbus kits and other science kits and let her watch videos online/netflix & read books. Next school year I'll probably use NOEO physics, again accelerated. It costs a lot to do that but for my science-loving kid I am willing to spend it.

I bought both HTTS & the workbook and I could not figure it out, even after reading all of the posts on here (including links in this thread). We used it for a few weeks and ditched it after my daughter not learning anything and me wanting to pull my hair out. I seriously was starting to think something was wrong with me for not being able to figure it out! Even the workbooks confused me. I didn't see any correlation between the TM & the workbook. It seemed like it was 2 different curriculums, lol. I bought Sequential Spelling (not rule based) and we are loving it. She is finally learning how to spell. I looked into AAS but I really didn't like the idea of all those parts, nor was I a fan of the cost. I realize that isn't what you asked.

Good post!! I'm excited to find more games!! We like the Scrambled States (geography) game and Money Bags is also a hit over here. We did Sight Word Bingo when she was enrolled in private school and she like that too.

I don't thinking ever got a tracking number from them any of the times I used them. They ship quicker than rainbow resource. I want to say a week?

We have watched the older version probably 100 times since I bought it 6 years ago for my now 7 year old. I have seen the new version a few times (we own it too). The original is more magical to this nostalgic mom.