TGITh. :) Tomorrow is co-op, so we are just getting through our homework wrap up for their classes for tomorrow: latin and science homework, plus of course math and read alouds. Next week is spring break, so we are really having trouble getting anything else done. We have put in a good 10 weeks and are ready for a week off! So today: DD12 definitions and one more science activity and write up. dd14 finish chp. 3 Chemistry review questions dd14 write pen pal letter dd12 finish latin. dd14 do SOME latin dd12 and dd14, finish today's math Both girls: pack backpacks for co-op. pack suitcases and gear for scout campout this weekend. All of us: an hour of read alouds. make pizza crust in breadmaker for dinner make muffins for breakfast tomorrow. pack lunches for tomorrow clean dd2's room. load dishes and clean kitchen. Work on opening for co-op this month. We have the opening prayers and songs this month. ETA FALL Break, not spring, lol.

Well, that makes sense. I never thought about it. :)

I just slowed down R&S. We used it maybe 3 days a week, so my 7th grader is halfway through the 5th grade book, and my 9th grader just started the 8th grade book (after skipping the last half of the 7th grade book, lol.) She will read through grades 9-10 over 10-12th grades. I buy the worksheets, and on days that have the worksheets we do those instead of the assigned work in the book. If someone is having a problem with that, I can always assign the lesson out of the book instead of moving on. I often only assign the odds, so that leaves the evens for more practice the next day. Plus, all lessons have a review section and oral drill in the TM to go over to constantly go over past lessons to keep it fresh. I don't worry about the grade level on the books. The grammar is very good and thorough.

We never did the General Science, but my dd used an older edition for both Apologia Biology and for the Physical Science in a classroom where some kids had the newer book. They tested together with the same tests, etc. So I don't think the changes are anything more than cosmetic. The pictures and art are much nicer in the newer ones, but not enough for me to pay full price when I can buy used.

Totally agree here. The TM is the lesson. You should make the flannel board for the lessons. We did everyday in R&S (and I did 1st in K with one of mine) as laid out in the book with the flannel board and the flashcard games, and there are other little games in various lessons. It explains in the teaching instructions that kids need to move, and for a classroom it has instructions to the teacher to make sure that kids get up and move to the math center for some movement to get their brains going instead of just sitting in one place all day as part of the lesson time each day to do the flannel board and flashcards. We don't have to worry about that with homeschooling. For movement before math we spent a few minutes acting out as different animals before math time everyday. :) The 2nd grade book has two learning posters that you need to make for the hands on portions that have you make the manipulatives- little boats and little clover flowers and bees. I still have the ones that I made and laminated years ago tucked away to use again when my toddler is old enough. The only thing we added besides games and books was a daily calendar time.

I can't wait to be the homeschooling grandma that gets to help do this kind of stuff! That's so cool that you are doing that for them.

Sorry, I didn't see you don't like Apologia til after I typed. But you can still do all of the activities, without using that notebook. It was just another good resource for us that year. :)

Hatch chicken or quail eggs. Our county extension office hands out eggs and incubators and instructions to schools and homeschools every spring. We've done both. We went to Audubon Society meetings and joined them for the Christmas Bird Count one December. There is the Backyard Bird Count in February, I think too. I love the Peterson Field Guide Coloring Books on Amazon. We each have one in our house, so that we can all work in our own. And we enjoyed the Apologia Flying Creatures notebook. We never used the textbook. The notebook had plenty of activities and book lists to keep us busy, and we had the Memoria Press Bird Unit that we worked through too. It had us looking up and learning bird calls online. Then we learned to go outside and identify them by sound in our own yard. That was fun. We took lots of walks around lakes and such looking at birds and for nests and learned from the Audubon Society man who was patient enough to take us around for the bird count where to see them in places we never noticed before. It amazed me how many large and kind of exotic birds live in the middle of a city and neighborhoods when you know where to look. That was a great science year for us. We built birdhouses from kits from Home Depot I think. ?? Is that where they do the Sat. workshops. I think it is. Anyway, we eventually did the insect chapters from Apologia that year too, but we really mostly did birds all year, and it was a great year.

I really like the notebooks, but any student who still needs the jr. notebook may be too young for the Apologia series or for the notebooking aspect of it. We started with a regular notebook for my 3rd grader. It was a bit much in the definition department, so I cut some of the writing for her. It didn't have the coloring pages, so maybe the jr. one may have been best for her first year in 3rd grade. But it had great book lists and activity ideas. The first year, I confess we did Flying Creatures most of the year with just the notebook and other bird books we had on hand and the library lists and activities from the notebook and library books instead of buying the text. For what order, we have tried to stick with WTM science cycles, so the we have used the Flying Creatures one in a biology year, the astronomy one in the space/earth year, the chemistry/physics one in our chemistry year. We did the anatomy one in 6th grade which was another biology year for us, and have done animals and plants and Earth science not using Apologia, but using other materials. And like I said, we didn't use it before 3rd grade, and didn't use the text before 4th grade. My dd really really gets a lot of use out of the notebooking journals, so we have used one every year that we did Apologia. This year we are using a different science, so we are notebooking on our own with some different resources.

I like the idea of this in writing. The co-ops I have always been in just discuss what we want to teach the next year. It can be hard to get everyone together to discuss needs because someone is always with the kids. I will suggest that for ours this year.

This timed method, "homework" later is the only thing has ever worked for us to get school done with my ADHD (argumentative) child. She doesn't mind finishing up later on her own. And if she is really motivated for the free time because she has somewhere to be or wants to get on the phone with a friend or something she magically gets it done much more quickly than usual.

Will do. Thank you.

Good enough for me. Thanks! Just added to my cart.

Title says it all. I just went on Amazon to order our first book of the year for 14 yr old (after reading some of the Old Testament) for Ancients, and there are so many. Which is best?

Our homeschool looked a lot like WTM lays out the logic stage though we were never consistent with WWS. I do the outlining and writing assignments across the curriculum and from R&S, doing weeks from WWS when we can. We do musuems and plays like Shakespeare when possible. We have a great art museum that gets some fantastic exhibits. We recently saw a Matisse exhibit. We do lots of field trips to ancient ruins, natural parks, etc. We listen to books on CDs in the car. We read aloud from books from the WTM lists alongside doing the history, art, and silent reading. We actually enter a lot of contests. My dds won a big state competition at a history center, 1st and 2nd places last year, for an art/essay contest. They won really good prize money and additional prizes for that. We enter photography and art into our state fair competitions (and baking and fun stuff too!) They are both scouts, and I am a leader, so we do a lot of camping, nature, and art and badges using their steps that tie into what they are interested in or with our school. For instance, one dd is really getting into photography, so we did a photography badge last year. They took pictures from multiple states over the course of the year for that. (and entered in some contests.) We create notebooks and scrapbooks for different purposes, and art and nature journals. We do co-op classes that enrich our studies. One of mine takes a lot of art and music and does art at home constantly. Both are dancers and spend a lot of hours a week at classes and helping teach younger students. I taught Latin club at co-op for several years and we did our own play of Julius Caesar 2 separate times and we attended Shakespeare's as a group after. We learned all kinds of Roman culture and history and have taken the ELE's and NLE's as a group with many of the kids from our co-op.

Interesting, but I am no help. I would keep searching for similarities in things that you read. I in my research for things I deal with in teaching my kids have not come across this particular type of thing in anything.

We have never found a way for my oldest to not argue. It is just in her blood. We do better some days. She takes fish oil and avoids red food dye. We did some therapy for behaviours related to ADHD at one point. But she am what she am. :) OK, so better day today though. We just had one of those amazing homeschooling moments that I have to sing from the rooftops. You know how when you are starting out hsing and all of the books say how you don't have to know everything for high school, that you just have to know how to help them find the answers? Well, we just had our first moment like that, and it feels amazing. DD14 is in chemistry. I took one semester of chemistry in high school and dropped it. In college I took all computer sciences and economics for my degree, never had to take regular sciences. So I have been counting on the fact that she is a good student to get through this. But she had a problem today that was shutting her down. So we sat together, read through it and realized first she needed to know how to do negative exponents on her calculator- another thing I have no clue about, lol. So I began googling for calculator tutorials, and we both learned several functions. Then we began working through the problem until she could do it on paper and on her calculator. To be honest, I still couldn't do it on my own without some more studying, but I was able to find the information she needed for her to get through it! She then did the next one, and was then able to carry on to her lab which will then require the same type of problem to complete. I feel like I've got this homeschooling thing down today. YAY Now, starting next week I have to start learning how to effectively teach spelling and reading to a child that is probably dyslexic. I have been doing it on my own all of this time. She can read quite well despite the difficulties. But now I get to learn how to teach her much better. I have been stressing it a lot, but feel a big relief now that we finally got her evaluated and are going to spring for the therapy. Even just trying to figure out the online stuff they asked to download to her Kindle Fire for immersion reading with Whispersync and how to use Audible is really difficult for me and dh so far. We aren't very tech savvy these days, so I have been worried about trying to learn so much new stuff. I am feeling confident now, that I will be able to do her therapies at home and teach her better. If I can do Chemistry I can do anything!

I bought one from Home Science Tools for around $200. It looks like it is called the Home Microscope on their site now. I am not sure that is what is was called when I bought it 5 years ago. We took it to co-op to use when she did Apologia Biology last year. It was better than the one the teacher brought on loan from the high school science classes that her husband teaches. So it was definitely enough for our needs. We've used it at home some, and have two more kids to get through Biology in the future with it.

Today I am overwhelmed. Girls have steps to finish for girl scout badges they have to do before a weekend camping trip. Plus they have homework due for co-op in two days. Plus, we started some new therapy for dd12's reading issues which is going to change the way we do school with her. I am a bit overwhelmed with just the little bit I have learned so far. Plus regular out of the house activities, driving, and a 2 yr old that loves to not nap and be cranky for me and a dh that is working crazy hours lately. I need to cry tonight. Or drink more coffee, but it's too late at night. So tomorrow, Thursday, we absolutely have to: Finish science and experiments from two different curricula for their two separate classes. Both have to do some math. Both need to do some Latin. And we need to finish packing for scout trip and make sure all badge requirements are finished and ready to be displayed. If all of that gets done tomorrow, it will be a good day. I would like to get some read aloud time in too, but I don't want to overshoot. We will be taking a fall break in another week. I am hitting that October burnout mentioned in WTM for sure. But we have put in a good 9 weeks. It is time for a break. And I need to look at my lesson plans for my Friday co-op classes.

I am a little concerned because my youngest has a huge gap in there too and will be like an only for a lot of her hsing years too. We have 9.5 yrs between her and the olders. I know I will just have to be diligent with staying active and engaged with her. I also know the olders will be in college and having families of their own. We will stay involved and helping them. She will have more time for volunteering and doing her activities and groups. I don't foresee it as a problem really. I see it as some rest time for us compared to the busyness of now. Of course at that time I will probably want to work part time out of the house to help with college and our days will be just as crazy as now balancing it all.

I am not being condensending. But we never had that problem. We went to 1-2 storytimes a week at the library. We did a morning walk to the park almost daily. We watched Sesame Street daily. We went to community events. I read about events in newspapers, library calendars, etc. Then there was some school, lunch, reading and rest time, then cooking dinner together, playing outside, daily evening walks around the neighborhood, arts and crafts in the afternoons before dinner. We did more reading at night after bath before bed. We were in a scout troop, a field trip group, dance classes or gymnastics depending on the year, soccer in the fall, swim lessons in the summer, 2 library storytimes at different libraries that we attended regulary just off the top of my head for things that met regularly. Then we added park days and playdates.

I do have both of mine check a lot of their daily work. I have a conversation with them about it like if they understood what they did wrong, etc. Even my 12 yr old will tell me when she feels she needs to re do a full lesson and have me work with her some more on it before moving on in math. I do check up on everything at least once a week, but I stagger it that way. Like today I went over a week's worth of dd14's English with her. Another day I will go over all of the writing assignments. Math is done with me 1-2 times a week in our 4 day schoolweek, and every assignment is checked by one of us before moving on to a new one. My dd12 could never do writing on her own. Anything that requires reading/writing I do with her daily, so she never checks English or spelling or writing or outlining or Latin. For her the extent is math. For dd14, she can check Science and Math and Logic (just about anything with concrete answers in a workbook) on her own. I will also have her check her first Latin translations before finishing a page to make sure she is on the right track instead of doing an entire page wrong. It is just easier for her to do that on her own at the beginning of each translation page. Then at least once a week, I sit and go over every translation sentence together, working them out with her. So it works for us, but they aren't completely on their own with anything.

I am doing extra reading separately from history time. So each child has their own reading time scheduled into the day with a book from the time period, mostly literature, but occasionally a non fiction. Then we have history time. This is when we use the encyclopedia, timeline, mapbooks, and do writing/outlining a couple of times a week. (If we were still using SOTW this is when we would do it. My kids are logic stage/rhetoric stage and have been through SOTW series twice already.) Then I have a read aloud time. In our current read alouds, I have a stack of books I read a chapter from or a few pages from. They do not all match the exact current page spread they are in from the encyclopedia. Translation, you can move on in SOTW, but still continue your read alouds from Egypt or whatever. Then you just switch to your next read aloud when you finish one. Example of read alouds: Today I read a missionary tale from Hero Tales (completely unrelated to our history. It is just a good book I want my kids to hear.) Then I read a chapter from Maia of Thebes, a fiction book set in Ancient Egypt. I read a myth from Tales from Egypt. And I read a few pages from Ancient Israelites and Their Neighbors. My Odd is currently reading the Old Testament for her Literature time on her own and from History of the Ancient World for her History Text. Mdd is reading a Children's Bible for one of her lit books and some of the Egyptian mythology on her own. We are also reading from an encyclopedia on Ancient Egypt together, but didn't get to a page in it today. And I read aloud from Du'Laire's Book of Ancient Greek Mythology and from MP's Astronomy book. Girls are working on a Girl Scout Badge which required some Astronomy/Mythology review and we are in the Ancients this year anyway. So we did some of it. I will actually read the book in full once we finish with our Egypt read alouds, but I jumped ahead because they needed it for this badge. And my mdd's actual history reading and timelining and mapwork during her history time had nothing to do with any of these cultures. Today she read about and did work around Ancient Africa. :) But she has already done some history pages on the Hebrews and Egyptians. They are cultures I am emphasizing more in my read alouds. I do have a book from Africa. We will get to it at some point this year. We just aren't there yet. (I made a master list for the year.) So my point is, we are reading several books from Ancient times from different strands of history. That is all during our assigned read aloud time which is separate from their history time and separate from their silent reading time. I just make sure I schedule time in the week for each of the above. If they keep moving forward at the rate I assign in their own reading and history work, and I keep moving forward in a stack of books for read aloud/discussion each week, we cover a lot over the year. Projects, anymore, I do one a month or every couple of months. One dd did research and made a travel poster of Egypt so far this year. A lot of our projects in learning come from other sources. Both do science projects. Both entered art and photography into our state fair. Both take co-op classes which assign different projects throughout the year. They are both scouts and can pick badges that enhance what we are learning at home. Sometimes I can help mold assigned projects from other places around things I want to emphasize from our at home studies including history. Some years we have heavier history years. Other years may be more heavily focused on science or art as far as outside classes and projects.

Oh, I remember her blog! I am no help with the download. But I had a lot in common with her, and enjoyed her blog a lot. I hadn't thought of it in a long time.

I feel this way too! I took off the board for a couple years after last baby was born, but came back this year, and was so happy to see so many of the old faces! I am so sorry to see Halcyon going through such a tough time. We had to make the decision whether to stick with what we were are doing or to enroll in a high school somewhere this year, and decided to stay with hsing. But THIS is it. I am it as far as what she gets for a counselor and college help. Which is really scary, lol. I have panic from that side of it. No advice. I have no clue what I am doing. I do hope peace is found.