I am planning on reading all of them before he does. :)

I formed the list from the WTM recommendations for fifth grade reading. Well, technically, they recommended the first two books in the series, Eagle of the Ninth, and The Silver Branch. It's a trilogy, so I figured they'd all be on the same level.

SOTW vol. 1 for both of them, and lots of nature journalling. :)

My oldest will begin 5th grade in July and will be cycling back into the ancients for history. His assigned reading will go hand-in-hand with our history study and, so far, I've settled on: Tales of Ancient Egypt The Golden Goblet One Thousand and One Arabian Nights The Golden Fleece Heroes & Monsters of Greek Myth The Odyssey The Eagle of the Ninth The Silver Branch The Lantern Bearers WTM recommends that he read the book, verbally retell the story, discuss, construct a summary, and record his own narration, including his evaluation of the books. For books that have multiple tales in them, like Tales of Ancient Egypt, should I have him focus on a couple of stories to retell, or aim for him to discuss every single one? I would love to see some examples of what other students have done for their 5th grade reading notebooks.

I looked at CAP, but wasn't really sure where to start since we'll be jumping in- Maybe Narrative I? Writing Strands appeals to me because it seems to build very simply and Level 3 is directed at the student

My oldest will be 4th grade next school year and hasn't done much in the way of a formal writing program. We tried WWE in 2nd grade, but felt like it was too much repetition with our regular history/science narrations and grammar work. Currently, for 3rd grade, he has been keeping a reading journal where he summarizes a chapter of his assigned reading every day. He usually writes 3-4 sentences and they seem good to me. Moving into 4th grade, I'm wondering if we should start something more formal. Any suggestions other than WWE? I don't like the look of IEW. So far, I think I'm considering Michael Clay Thompson or Writing Strands. I think we could easily start level 3 in Writing Strands and it seems like it won't break the bank! I'd love to hear about people's experience with these!

I will be starting SOTW vol 3 with my 3rd and 1st grader this fall. My 3rd grader is a great narrator, but my 1st grader will be just starting out. Does anyone have any tips on how to do the reading together but allow them to narrate separately? I'm afraid that my 1st grader will just copy my 3rd grader, or my 3rd grader will take the easy way out and just copy what my 1st grader says. My 3rd grader will start writing his own narrations by himself this year but he still needs to stay close by me for some spelling, etc.

Yikes, I'm not ready to think about those questions yet! :scared:

I like that. I might give it a try instead of 6 weeks on, 1-2 weeks off. Usually, but week 4 we are in need of a break. It's so nice to have a light at the end of the tunnel every so often. ;)

That's so crazy. I never realized that. Thanks for sharing.

So glad you clarified "owl raking"! I was thinking that I must be missing out on some amazing, inspirational style of learning. :lol:

My 8 year old does love to read. Left to himself, he reads well over an hour a day (probably closer to 2 hours if we count the reading we let him do in bed before he goes to sleep). My kids tend to retain math very well. We do Saxon math and they are both about half a year ahead in that right now. I have no idea about what unschooling would look like, so I can't speak to that. They like to build (blocks, clay, cardboard castles, etc) and if a topic catches their fancy, we usually read books about it or watch documentaries. Is that how unschooling would work?

I love the audiobook idea, but they're expensive. Do you buy them or borrow them?

I'm brainstorming for our next school year, which will hopefully start at the end of August. I have an 8 year old, 6 year old, 3 year old, and a 6 month old baby who's not a terrific napper and loves to be held all. the. time. I normally like planning out every lesson in a planner but last year, probably right before the baby was born, that went out the window. Instead of squishing SOTW into a 36 week timeframe, we just took it as it came: we might read one section one day and a chapter the next. If the kids were interested in a project, we did it. If not, we just moved on. And this was like a breath of fresh air to us all. Has anyone here thrown the heavy lesson planning out the door and lived to tell about it? The down side was that SOTW and our grammar book didn't get finished when we finally fizzled out in June. Since the birth of the baby, I switched us to 6 weeks on, 1-2 weeks off. We all like this, but we still didn't end up finishing out the full 36 weeks I had planned. We live in Texas, so there is no state regulation as to number of days we "do" school. I simply adopted 36 weeks from other school systems. Does anyone do 30 weeks of school a year? It sounds nice to me, but I know we wouldn't be able to actually fully complete any book, so we'd be skipping a few lessons here and there.

We do a one hour quiet time where the kids play quietly in their rooms by themselves. Any suggestions on the Lego building challenge? I'm not creative enough to think of anything. I was thinking of restarting history this year with the audio of SOTW instead of the book so I can be more hands free.

My dad has been taking the kids out to swing and play soccer everyday. Nothing I would call vigorous exercise though, so that's something I could try. We have tons of toys- legos, imaginext, blocks, books, craft and drawing supplies, cars, etc.

I have tried that, without much luck. I allowed him an hour of Minecraft for a while if his assignments were complete, but video games tend to foster bad attitudes in our house for some reason.

I have a 7 year old son, 5 year old daughter, a 3 year old son, and just had a baby the beginning of this month. We have been off of our regular homeschool schedule since Christmas. My oldest thrives on schedules and lists and has had some behavior problems ever since we began our break. I plan on trying to start our regular lessons back in about a week but in the meantime we've been working through a checklist of worksheets and simple activities every morning. My 7 year old is sensitive anyway, but he has begun having meltdowns over the smallest things. He has trouble occupying himself when his list is done as well. He has also had some attitude problems. He does great with the baby, though I know the change in routine upsets him. The other children really don't seem to be having any difficulties adjusting. Is this just par for the course for 7 year olds, or does anyone have any suggestions for something I could do differently for him?

Thanks so much, everyone!

Ha! I love that she read to the cat! Too cute! Thanks for the suggestions.

I started OPGTR with my daughter last year, when she was 4. She sailed through the beginning section that goes over letter sounds. The beginning of this year, I reviewed letter sounds with her and then we picked up where we left off in the book. She is great at sounding out small words, but has trouble remembering the words she's just read by the end of a long sentence. I am teaching her to go back to the beginning after she sounds out each word and read what she knows so far just to help her remember, but with longer sentences it's still a struggle. She can read the first Bob books with short sentences very easily. Does anyone have any other suggestions of ways to help her move along or activities we could use to build on? I have lots of easy readers, but she still isn't quite read for anything beyond a Bob Book. I don't want to move forward in the book when she's still struggling with the longer sentences. She is 5.

My son loves to build with Legos and other materials. If he didn't like any of the suggested activities, we would just build something out of the lesson like a boat, a building, etc. I always let him take a photo of it and print it out to put in his notebook.

I used OPGTR with my son and he is a great reader now (he'll be starting 2nd this year). I started it with my daughter last year while she was pre-k and she's turning into a good reader, too. I have loved the results we've gotten.

I had not heard of Living Memory! I looked it up and it sure does look promising. The price might be a little too steep for me though.

What kind of memory work do you have your second grader working on? The only memory work I required for 1st was the poems we learned in First Language Lessons. I was thinking about requiring my son to learn the "timeline song" from the Classical Conversations CD (we are not in CC, however- I received the CD from a friend), but I really think it's going to be like pulling teeth.