Have you seen DK's "The Story of Painting" by Sister Wendy Beckett? It follows art history from cave paintings through modern times with lots of beautiful images and lots of historical context. I think it would make a good substitute for the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia in doing history as recommended in WTM.

I have used Voyages in English, the older Catholic edition. It is very charming in the illustrations, stories, etc., but the writing lessons are very much geared towards a classroom situation and I much prefer Writing Strands, so I have used it just for grammar. Up through the 4th grade book, the writing and grammar lessons are interspersed with each other throughout the book making it somewhat cumbersome to use as a grammar program. The fifth grade book on up has a separate grammar section which is just straightforward grammar and is very thorough. I think it would be well suited where teacher has a good handle on grammar, but I ended up getting lost as the lessons progressed. I needed something more teacher-friendly. As for the Kolbe Guides, I think for the price, it is a great value. It gives a good list of books to read with some saint biographies in the mix. There are vocabulary words for all the books and the comprehension questions for each chapter give me a good handle on how my kids are understanding what they are reading. We do the questions and answers verbally, I get my teacher guide with the answers and there is a copy of questions for the student.

I plan to use sentence strips taped together - it's sturdier than paper. If you want more room up and down you can tape on a file folder hanging down at the appropriate place.

I was using Seton for our language arts, but I have gotten burned out with the piles of workbooks now that I have four officially in school. I love the Kolbe Literature Guides for Elementary and Middle School and Catholic National Readers as well as CHC's Rare Catholic Stories. We will do phonics/spelling instruction with the Writing Road to Reading for the little one and spelling with Sound Beginnings for the oldest three. The middle two will be combined with Winston Grammar Basic Level and are each doing Writing Strands at their own level. I plan to start FLL and WWE this year with my K/1st grader when he is ready and my oldest will be doing Total Language Plus which is non-Catholic christian, but I have found that I can make it work with some tweaking.

My 5 yo ds will be officially in Kindergarten this year, though we started with a lot of Kindergarten stuff last year after he turned 5 in Nov. Phonics/Spelling - WRTR mastering the phonograms and writing words in the A-G list. Handwriting - Italic Handwriting (Getty-Dubay) Book A - I am using Penny Gardner's italics book for my older dc, and I plan to move him into that after he finishes this book. Reading - Bob Books and Catholic National Readers Primer (sort of a Catholic McGuffey's) Math - Miquon Math Orange/Red Science - TWTM method (First Grade-Life Science) - my 3rd and 6th graders are doing Life Science as well at their own levels. History - He will follow along with his older sisters doing "The Story of America" from the Catholic Textbook project. I am making him a timeline out of sentence strips taped together and he will add events as they come up. He loves to draw so I expect this to work well for him. Art - Drawing With Children with his older sisters. Latin - Getting Started With Latin as a family read aloud. I may add FLL and WWE if I think he is ready.

It seems as though the Frank Schaffer Note Taking and Outlining book recommended in WTM is not in print. Should I go with the outlining book published by Remedia or is there something else?

I have a ds with a Nov. birthday as well and although I have him enrolled officially with the school board according to his age, he is working at home at his own pace. I expect that he will spend the last few years of high school doing AP and dual enrollment classes. It is pretty standard for students applying to selective admissions colleges to have a whole bunch of college-level courses under their belt. My 9th grader plans to start taking AP courses starting in 10th grade. IMO, having a late birthday puts kids at an advantage: they have more time to work through advanced courses before going to college.

I am wondering the same thing. I want to start my rising 3rd grader on this in the fall, but I am worried that the other books won't be ready for her to continue on.

Bugs, Have you looked at "Starting a Spelling Notebook: A Nuts and Bolts Guide to the Writing Road to Reading?" It may be what you are looking for. It breaks WRTR down into daily lesson plans and is inexpensive - $12 on amazon.

After several years of looking through the Writing Road to Reading, I have finally decided to implement it in our homeschool for all the same reasons as you. Here is how I did it: 1. I made up the phonogram cards according to the directions in the book. 2. I made up letter tiles AAS- style. 3. I made up rule cards. 4. I typed out the word lists on www.spellingcity.com and labeled them according to the grade levels found in the back of WRTR. 5. We do oral and written phonogram practice as needed and then I print out the word list from spelling city and we go over the spelling according to the notes in WRTR. I take out any corresponding rule cards (the notes list the applicable rule(s) by number) and we go over that. 6. The student spells each word with the letter tiles and writes the word according to the syllabication marks. 7. Student practices the words with print-outs from spelling city. There are free activities available to print out with the words you put in. 8. Test. We do not move on until the student has achieved mastery of the list. HTH

Florida Virtual School http://www.flvs.net I am very happy with the quality of their courses. Florida students take classes for free, but you can pay to sign up if you are out of state.

It really all depends on where you live. Here in Florida, all public university have a 2 + 2 = 4 agreement with the community colleges, so a student can begin a degree at the local community college and finish at the state school and all credits will transfer. On top of that, all dual enrollment classes are tuition free for Florida high school students, and so it ends up being a fantastic deal which can save half the cost of college.