Cool! Thanks for letting me know what direction you went. I'm leaning towards Lingua Latina either by itself or with Visual Latin (which looks too easy to start but will be usable with my second son in a few years anyway). I almost went with Lingua Latina before Latin for Children but didn't... ah well, maybe we'll get it right this next year.

My 11 year old son went from LL1 to LL2. It worked great for the first 8 or so chapters but then the grammar got super confusing, perhaps because I was learning it alongside him. There were more translations in LL2 including full page ones and he THRIVED on those. We moved over to Latin for Children as I was at a loss how to proceed. Honestly, I'm just not that pleased. I was coming online to see what else might work now for us instead! We flew through A as a review and have been doing B this year. The grammar is explained well but boring my son to death. There isn't nearly the translation that we had in Lively Latin at all. Also, this is just us, but each week of vocabulary doesn't have much theme. We did so much better with Lively Latin and how it was grouped with similar words. They helped "hang" together in our heads somehow. This seems more disjointed. And this is totally my son, but he cannot stand how Dr. Perrin says "adjective". LOL I'm not sure exactly what I'm looking for but I think it's a more translation-heavy program. We did Minimus and Secundus and he loved them and learned a ton. So obviously something more along that line would fit this particular child and his learning style better. Curious to know what direction you end up going in...

My 11 year old doesn't have his facts down. Seriously. We've spent, oh, six years on them. He has zero interest in learning them and has come up with his own way of counting to get there (in his head now). My 7 year old has them down cold and learns them the first time he hears them. Totally different thinkers. My 11 year old gets the concepts great, just can't stand math facts. Why? Who knows. I've decided it's up to him now. He remembers what he wants to (which is just about everything else). Go figure!

Math: Saxon 6/5; Life of Fred Decimals and Percents English: Rod and Staff English 5; Rod and Staff Spelling 5; an undecided writing program Latin: Latin for Children C History: Biblioplan Middle Ages Science: Apologia Botany (first half of year); focus on earth science (second half of year) Art: God and the History of Art Music: continue with recorder and learning to read music; he'd like to add in trumpet lessons but we'll see how finances allow Religion: Rod and Staff Bible 5; Who Am I? (Apologia); Practical Happiness by Bob Schultz Logic: undecided logic puzzles

LOVED the book as a read-aloud just recently! It's one of our top five, ever. We just ercently finished "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" recently which of course is fairly standard. We're more than halfway done with "Mountain Born" and it's just a really sweet story so far. Also read "Understood Betsy" a few weeks ago and that was a huge favorite; my husband especially loved it! (Go figure!) I need something new... we'll be done by Thanksgiving! Ack!

We read "Odd and the Frost Giants" by Neil Gaiman to our son this last year when we did the Norse Myths. He was 9.5 however but it we loved it. He's read it twice on his own since then.

Absolutely literature here... so I put "other".

Looks like you're sending it back already but I also thought to mention we also do one step over our four-day week. We spread the dictation sentences out; on Monday we'll do 2 or 3 from the previous lesson and then we do them from the current lesson each day. And we definitely space out the new learning! We're finishing level four this week and I don't think we've spent more than 10 minutes on it a day all year. We haven't used the tiles since somewhere around the beginning of level three; and we could have dropped them sooner for him I think. We're moving next year to JUST dictation and dropping spelling as a separate thing; he's learned more from the dictation sentences than the lessons as it turns out.

That's awesome!! We are doing R&S English the last two years and my eldest *loves* the program. It makes me wonder what else they have that would be a good fit for us. What subjects do you use? :)

Thanks for the prayers. I realize I'm sort of blurting out too much information these days! Things are weighing a bit heavy. The whole point to my ramble was that we'd be continuing with HOD for sure next year if we can just because of how easy and well this year has gone. The least stress for me and the most growth for the boys since we started homeschooling five years ago. We've done MFW (K and ECC), Cantering the Country, FIAR, KONOS, and TruthQuest (Am History 1, 2 and 3) in the past and by far this year was the best for us. What I'd love to hear is how well the kids who have done Preparing do with CTC. Do they continue to show improvement and growth? Is Write with the Best helpful/challenging/interesting/overkill? Does it feel like too much language arts in a given week? I'd like to see my son continue to be challenged but not frustrated (which is exactly what Preparing did for him). I think CTC would give that to us based on what I've seen of the samples. And it's so easy to just open the guide up and go... so low stress! Which is probably worth a fair amount to us these days. No stress is good!!

We used Preparing this year and there was definitely a lot of writing; but it was so good and stretched my son so much. But I also land on the SWB side of writing and definitely don't think that we need to give formal instruction in creative writing this young. (DS does a ton of it on his own; I hate to take the joy of that from him by making it a more formal school lesson!) In Preparing, there were weekly written narrations from the history (from CHOW) each week on day 4. They have them writing only 3-5 sentences on a section of the book that was usually about 2 pages long. (Each CHOW story runs about 3-5 pages). There were questions to help them focus down on what was talked about and what was important. So really, it felt a lot more like a summarizing narration then a CM narration with all the details. I have no idea how we're going to proceed next year at this point. My DH had a stroke 5 weeks ago and was laid off last week (!) as his whole company is closing business. So we're sort of out of money from the medical emergency and now out of income. Not sure we can afford HOD! (Not sure we can afford our mortgage come July either, so it's sort of a moot point.) DS has learned so much from the writing this year; at times it felt like too much so I dropped things that particular week. He did fabulous on his required testing this spring, however, and DH is so urgent that he continue with HOD as it's obvious he has learned a ton and grown so much in his skills this year. But then, maybe that's what happens around 9-10 years old anyway? They are over the hump of learning to read and are solidly in reading for information now; over the hump of forming the letters and just jot off words; etc. We use our own math (Saxon) since Singapore confuses him. We don't use DITHOR since it confuses me. So I can see not using Write With the Best and using something else if we get to do CTC next year, but so far Carrie's suggestions in the guide have been right on. And my boys love doing things together; they also love having their "own guide". So who knows... I'm having a very bad month. LOL

We do add things in and we also exchanged a few things. We do Saxon instead of Singapore; Phonics Pathways for the little guy instead of whatever is scheduled; and we're doing bible altogether as a family this year and not doing the memory work from Preparing. For my eldest, we add in Latin, Greek and Spanish all done daily; guitar practice; extra handwriting practice (he's needing it); and All About Spelling. He's in the Preparing guide and doing the extension pack as well. For my youngest, doing Little Hearts, we add in a ton of science readings and endless picture book read-alouds. For both, we also have a family chapter book going every evening. Also, they both get that news magazine "God's World News" and we do stuff with that, although it only comes once a month. We're done by midday right now so tons of time for outside play, errands, park trips, etc.

We're in the middle of level 4 with my 10 year old. He loves the program although hate hates the tiles; we don't use them now. His spelling has improved by leaps and bounds! I wince at the price but his younger brother is also going to benefit from the program, so that's a help. We'll be doing level 5 next year for sure.

We did all of Lively Latin 1 and loved it and half of Lively Latin 2 and just really bogged down. There were full page stories in Latin to translate in the second book, btw. My son *loved* those and did awesome with the translating. We were finding a lot of the chants from early in LL2 weren't being applied right away so he was losing them... he's all about using the words and chants. (Just memorizing something that he won't use has never worked for him.) We thought about switching to Latin Prep but actually went with Latin for Children A. It seemed like it would be a "step back" but the review has been awesome and there have been new vocabulary words (not many but some so far). We're 8 chapters in already and he's very pleased with it. I thought he'd find it boring but he hasn't. It's gone quickly enough that he's making all sorts of connections with what he's previously learned. I'm amazingly glad we made the switch. I was worried it would be a total waste of money. It's worked wonderfully for us though. Latin is by far his favorite subject and I hated to lose that good attitude! My son is only 10 so that may make a difference in what you decide to do... we have some time to kill in here.

Thanks so much! That helps enormously. Sounds perfect in fact.