Ohhh! Thanks! At Christmastime, I ordered several things from the "boys adventure store". We were quite pleased with our order. My boys are still playing with the military and dectective themed things they received. I'll look forward to looking at some of their sale books.

Sonlight is unique in their books-based literature approach! I'm not sure that there is anything else out there exactly like Sonlight. :001_smile: You may want to consider working your way through SOTW and the Acitivity Guide. It really is open and go! Read a section of SOTW, do a coloring page or map or activity once or twice a week (for young ages) then you're done. The Activity Guide has comprehension questions and sample narrations, too. In adidition, each chapter has a terrific list of literature and other history books that you can get from your library for deeper reading. Here are a few things you could take a look at: Five in a Row: This does not schedule SOTW, but I wanted to mention it since you have young kids. It is a wonderful literature / unit study curriculum for young kids. But this is not history-centered. This program pulls lessons from other subject areas (math, science, social studies) into the rich fiction you read. You could just read SOTW and use the activity guide for history. A few lesson plan schedules that use SOTW are: Biblioplan - Biblioplan schedules read aloud and literature 3 times per week. You can also buy a parent companion, maps, coloring pages, timeline, etc. Easy Classical - They have schedules for any subject. The history lesson plans use the Veritas Press History Cards as the core. SOTW is coordinated with the VP cards. They also schedule read alouds, activities, map work, etc. History Odyssey - They schedule SOTW, activities, mapwork and include weekly vocab words. I think they have read-alouds, too. Good luck!

I'm not using the Complete book of animals. I have found that our book basket books and the encyclopedia that comes with the MFW package have been more than enough for us. I think the Complete Book of Animals comes with coloring pages (but not sure?). We have not needed it.

I have never purchased the Stech Vaughn spelling books, but wanted to share something you may find interesting. Last year, I chose a book called "Flashkids Spelling" -- which is available at Barnes and Noble Bookstores. I believe Flashkids Spelling is published by the same company who prints Stech Vaughn. They are identical, except there the Flashkids Spelling had one less activity page per week for the kids to complete. The word lists were exactly the same and so were all of the other activities. One major difference: PRICE! The Flashkids Spelling is about $8!! If you live near a Barnes and Noble, I recommend you take a peek at Flashkids Spelling. I've use R&S Spelling workbooks, Spelling Workout, and Flashkids. I like Flashkids the best.

Yes. I think this is right. :iagree:

The student sheet packet contains maps, history notebooking pages, science worksheets (for the animal unit), and several things for the state studies, includeing: coloring & fact pages for each state you study, state bird and flower flashcards, and state flag stickers (to put on the fact pages). Each student really needs their own set so they can make their own history and science notebooks. I'm using Exp. to 1850 for my 3rd & 5th grader, and I'm glad that I ordered a set of student pages for each of them. One set of student pages comes with the TM, so you will want to purchase one addiitonal set. The MFW TM includes the questions and answers for the science discussion AND the worksheets/activity pages that are normally part of the God's Design for Life science curriculum. In the long run, you save money by not having to by the TM for God's Design for Science.

My family and I have been a part of our local CC group for 4 years. Honestly, each year, I weigh whether or not we want to participate again, and so far we keep coming back to CC! For us, Classical Conversations is not the centerpiece of our homeschool. CC supplements other things we do at home. Even though we participate in CC, I am still in charge of what curricula we do in all subjects-- I have the flexibility to use CC to benefit OUR homeschool. CC provides us with a community of like-minded Christian homeschoolers who desire to provide a Classical education for their kids at home. I KNOW that I would not do anywhere near the same level/amount of memory work if I didn't participate in CC. CC has taught me how to do memory work, how to make it fun, and how to cover material efficiently. On average we spend about 15-20 minutes per day on CC memory work, then we get down to business with our regular studies. Some years, my kids have memorized everything, and have made Memory Master. Other years, I choose to focus on the pieces of CC that work for us. When CC is not the core of your curriculum, you really CAN use the pieces that work for you and let things that you don't like go by the wayside. Isn't that what we do with textbooks and other curricula? We homeschoolers use the pieces that will help us and throw out the rest! We have found HUGE value in memorizing 160 historical events on a timeline. Again, and again, my boys have made meaningful connections in their history studies because they KNOW a historical timeline. We have greatly appreciated memorizing large portions of scripture in a group setting. Learning to skip count from 1x1 to 15x15 was a big deal for us--very helpful. When the kids turn 10, they memorizing the math facts and drop the skip counting. Learning math facts like the back of their hands was extremely helpful for my boys. In addition, I can't say enough good about the mapwork we do in CC. My kids know where more countries, capitals, mountain ranges, etc. are than most adults. Love that! Also: CC does a 3 year cycle -- not my favorite thing. But, I appreciate the stories the history songs tell through music. I have tucked my kids into bed many a night only to hear them singing history songs before drifting off to sleep. CC has provided us with a consistent rhythm and fun memorization methods (especially in a group setting) that we would not have if we were doing the memory work at home alone. I love the community of parents and the family feel of our group. The support and encouragement I have received from CC has been invaluable. We love the science experiments, weekly presentations, and the fine arts exposure. --more things that often get thrown to the curb in order to cover the "academic subjects" sufficiently. Classical Conversations certainly has faults. I'm pretty sure co-ops, online programs, and textbooks do, too! I wish moms on the C3 forum could be more real and share criticism more freely. But, on the flip-side, I have been able to download (FREE!) documents that fellow CC'ers chose to share that would have taken me weeks to complete. I'd rather take advantage of the free-sharing of ideas. I'll share my concerns with my hubby or dear friends! :D I wish some of the content of the memory work was different, but I didn't write it, so I don't get to choose it. I could probably list improvements for most curricula/text books sitting on my shelf! I also wish there were time to provide contextual meaning to the material in class -- even just a little bit. But, I also understand that CC REALLY wants parents to do that at home. That gives families control of how (or if) the material is introduced/discussed/researched, etc. For us, the pros HEAVILY outweigh the CONS. I'm thankful for the way CC has blessed our family.

It is too bad that your ds was bored in his Essentials class. I'm sure some of the quality of the Essentials program comes from the tutor, but parents have the guide book and can make it as easy or challenging as they'd like. I must respectfully disagree with you about your list of things Essentials does not cover. Lessons from the text "Our Mother Tongue" are built into the lessons. Parents work through those with their children at home in addition to completing the memory charts, editing exercises and task sentences. Unit 4 of "Our Mother Tongue" covers most of these things with nice detail. Also, there is an extensive list of irregular verbs that kids study/discuss in the Essential course. Students who go through the Foundations program even memorize many irregular verbs. Essentials is not simply a class that teaches how to diagram and parse. It teaches much more! The program helps to establish language structure understanding, partly by using things other than typical grammar worksheets. Kids learn the basics about the parts of speech, they learn new vocabulary words, learn/memorize punctuation and capitalization rules, learn how to analyze sentences & word uses. And don't forget about the writing part of the class, which uses Institute for Excellence in Writing materials.

Essentials recommends Spelling Plus as the spelling program, but you can use whatever you want. Spelling is not discussed at all in class. However, they do include the Spelling Plus list and some very helpful notes about spelling rules in the Essentials Guide. We use Spelling Plus along with the Dictation Resource book that CC recommends. Here's a link to a blog post that I wrote about it. I've never compared Essentials to R&S or any other program, but there are things that Essentials does not teach. Here are some things that come to mind: Letter Writing Abbreviations Addressing Envelopes Dictionary Usage Noting things in a Bibliography Note: Punctuation rules are included in the EEL guide and editing paragraphs are given each week, but I don't think this component is well planned. The editing paragraphs come from the the book of John in the Bible. You just look for errors. This is just too much for us! I have had my son write out the punctuation and capitalization rules that are part of the guide. (We do two rules per week). Then . . . we write example sentences for each rule. This gives him time to think about each rule, process it, think of an example, and put the rule into practice as he writes. Of course, he gets plenty of editing practice with his own essay writing. I do know some people that use workbooks to fill in the gaps that Essentials doesn't cover. The class is only 24 weeks, so it is easy to cover other things during the other 12 weeks of the year.

FYI -- The Essentials Guide went under a MAJOR revision and a new version has just been released. Take a look at it HERE! It is beautiful and it looks like it will be easy to use. Hallelujah! Because the old guide was difficult to use. We're finishing up our 3rd year of Essentials. My ds began as a 3rd grader. I think 4th grade is the best time to begin Essentials. My younger ds will begin as a 4th grader and we're just finishing FLL3 -- like you! FLL 1 -3 certainly provides a great foundation for kids entering Essentials. The idea behind Essentials is that the student takes 3 passes through the class. The first year, the goal is to continue laying the foundations: memorizing parts of speech, learning (or continuing to learn) about diagramming sentences, etc. During the second and third years, the child develops a dn increasingly deeper understanding of sentence structure. They spend a little more time analyzing sentences and diagramming gets more complex. By the end of the third year (usually 6th grade), the student should be quite comfortable with all of the parts of speech, how to diagram compound-complex sentences of any kind, how to analyze word usage (very helpful in Lain), and how to edit papers for correct subject/verb agreement, punctuation, etc. The Essentials program also uses IEW for the writing. Each year, students work through one of the Theme Based writing books. Next year, they'll use U.S. History Based Writing Lessons. The tutor does ask that the papers are typed, but parents can certainly do that! (My 5th grader will do a typing course this summer.) If you're a decant typer, it should only take a few minutes to type. Essentials is very flexible. The most important for first year moms to know is that you don't --and shouldn't-- do it all!! You, the parent, will need to decide how deep you want your child to go with the grammar. You'll do this with the IEW lessons as well. Younger students will not write essays that are as long or involved as the older students. If you feel you'd enjoy having a trained tutor guide you and your child through writing and grammar lessons, then Essentials might be for you! Usually, students who finish Essentials are comfortable writing essays and are well grounded in Grammar. If you are able, I highly recommend that you visit a local class! They'd love to have you there. Also: take a look at the guide. HTH!

Thanks for sharing these links! I'm looking forward to a cup of Tea and some good readin'. :)

I just posted about how we do our Classical Conversations memory work. HERE is my post!

Glad to be of help. :001_smile: MFW certainly makes homeschooling easier for me. That's part of why I like it so much! We started with RtoR only because that's what we were ready to study next in history. Our first year with MFW, I cut out their science so we could study the same topics with CC. This went just fine and we really liked the overlap of our science at home and CC. This year, however, I chose not to change much with MFW. We're doing history and science as written and it's going very well, too!

FLL Horizons Math Classical Conversations IEW Story of the World Veritas Press History Cards

It is not possible for MFW and CC to truly coordinate with one another. MFW uses a 5 year cycle (4 chronological years of history plus ECC) and CC uses a 3 year history cycle. Here's what you study in CC: Cycle 1: A very broad tour of ancient history through modern times, focusing on historical empires. Cycle 2: The first semester (12 weeks) focuses on historical events from the middle ages. The second semester (12 weeks) focuses on modern world events that had effects on the U.S. -- primarily WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, Cold War & Gulf War. Cycle 3: This is a U.S. history year. The first semester begins with Columbus in 1492 and ends with modern times -- U.S. events only We use CC as memory work only. We've been part of CC for 4 years and have studied history chronologically, regardless of where CC is in their cycle. This really works just fine for us. It is actually easier to study the same science topics with CC, because they usually only cover 2 - 3 subjects each cycyle (year). Cycle 1: Biology & earth science Cycle 2: Ecology, astronomy, and physical science Cycle 3: Anatomy and chemistry FWIW -- if you REALLY wanted to line history up using MFW and CC you could do this: Fall 2011: MFW 1850 - Modern and Cycle 3 Fall 2012: ECC and Cycle 1 Fall 2013: Rome to the Reformation and Cycle 2 To me, that would seem disjointed and out of sync. Certainly, not everything will jive, but there will be overlap and similarities. Usually when people want things to flow with CC, they use the weekly memory work as the focal point of your studies each week. They do provide very nice resource lists for those who do this (and there are many!) You just have to decide if you want CC to the the core part of your homeschool or if you want CC to be an "added extra".

Just FYI -- A "Spelling Plus Dictation" book is available with the "Spelling Plus" program. It contains sentences for dictation 5 days a week (if you want to do it that often). The sentences contain ONLY words that that have been included in previous lessons.

I used Phonetic Zoo with my 3rd grader. We liked it, but I felt the words were too difficult for him. He didn't need phonic instruction, but he needed to understand spelling rules, homonymns, etc. I couldn't justify tough spelling words when ds didn't understand the difference between there, they're and their. KWIM? I looked at Spelling Power, and like you, felt that it would frustrate on of my kids. So . . . after a good bit of researching programs, I tried Spelling Plus: 1000 Words Towards Spelling Success. I modified the program to fit our needs. Here is a link to my blog explaining what I did. We've been using Spelling Plus with great success. I feel that we are covering words that are used frequently and commonly mispelled. Our program is not time consuming and the activity cards we use make it fun for my kids. The weekly quiz and dictation sentences enable me to verify that my kids are learning. If my boys miss words from dictation OR the quiz, we carry words to the next week.

:iagree: FLL was great for us, too!

I'ts been a long time since I've used the K level, but I vaguely remember the books telling the parent to get crayons out and count them. It also instructed the parent to make number cards and have the child put them in order. There were color cards and lots of counting activities. I remember the book instructing the parent to have the child come to the white board to practice writing numbers. Also, kids were to find things in the room that were the "same shape". Dominoes were used a fair amount. Simple things like that. This is the year when kids focus on learning to write ordinal numbers, recognize colors, shapes, counting, seasons, months, etc. Right? There are suggestions about how to teach concepts in Horizons K. Here is a sample: http://media.glnsrv.com/pdf/products/sample_pages/sample_JKT030.pdf

:lol::lol::lol: Somewhere I read that SWB recommends Wikipedia for book summaries. I turn to it often when I'm looking for good info on the meat of a novel. I hope you enjoy this series as much as we did. It's a page turner! Emotional, lots of action, and wonderful historical fiction.

I've read the 2nd book, too! It's just as good as the first -- if not better! We're looking forward to reading the 3rd sometime soon.

For some reason I guess I do care because most of my things do match. Our daily silverware matches and I like that. When I buy kitchen utensils, I usually buy white (large spoons, cutting boards, measuring cups, etc.) My our guest towels and kid towels are all white. Easy peasy. I can bleach them clean. Master bath towels match the decor. I buy sheets in sets, so yes everyone's bed has matching sheets. I must say that I wasn't raised this way! I'm not sure why all of this stuff is so uniorm in my house! When I go to my moms, I ALWAYS find my guest bed SO INVITING. She put various sheets and blankets on the bed that gives it ashabby chic/old fashioned feel. It just feels comfortable, inviting, and cozy. All of my mom's towels are different, but they are soft and fluffy. I don't mind that they don't match at all, but I'm just not a " buy whatever towel color is on sale" kind of gal. :lol: Hospitality comes from the heart, not from the patterns or matching colors in your home. Use what you like and what you can afford. Welcome others with open arms and the "look" won't matter.

I read this book aloud to my 3rd and 5th grade ds when we were studying the Middle Ages. It was a perfect read aloud for that time period. All of us absolutely LOVED this book. It is one of our favorites! The book takes place in 14th century England, a dark, dangerous time. Readers become intimately acquainted with the culture and people of Medieval England: serfs, pesants, priests, Lords, Stewards, and even Jesters. Crispin is a lowly peasant who's mother dies at the opening of the story. He was accused of stealing and was therefore declared a wolf's head, which permits anyone to lawfully kill him for his supposed crimes. Crispin flees from his village to save his own life and while he is on the run, he encounters many things: trials and triumphs, hardships and sweet life lessons. Note: There is some violence in the story, but nothing gruesome. If you have a child who is sensitive, then this book might not be a good idea. There are threads of Christianity woven into the story, but they are also colored by the superstition that existed during that time. IMO, this doesn't distort Christianity, but just brings to light how people believed during those times. It is a beautifully written story that will provide much insight to the Middle ages. Here is a link that will give you more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispin:_The_Cross_of_Lead

:iagree: The costco protectors are a nice heavy weight, too. I like them very much.

I really like Horizons. We're on level 5 now and I've used all previous levels. Horizons provides lots of suggestions for hands-on learning with manipulatives. There are extra worksheets in every level that provide extra, concentrated practice on new concepts that are introduced. Almost every lesson gives instructions on how to drill math facts and help students master math facts. If you do this regularly, your kids WILL master their facts. Both of mine did, anyway. The TM does not instruct the parent to time the drill worksheets, but we do. The drill worksheets are ALL scheduled as part of a lesson, and we usually do these as well. There are tests every 10 lessons. Level 4 - 6 also has quarterly tests and a final, year-end test to ensure that concepts are learned. This is elementary math! Should we really NEED lots of explanaton on math problems at this level? I certainly don't think so! The instruction in the TM does assume that the parent understands the concepts. But . . . they are also filled with suggestions about how to introduce new material. IMO, Horizons is well rounded. I've been very happy that we've kept with it.