That's a clear helpful answer :)

My oldest two kids are gifted with ADHD - my 11 year old (2nd kid) much more so. I homeschooled them for 4 years, which corresponded to 1st-4th grade for him. They've been at our tiny STEM-based parish private school for the past year and a half and my oldest is flourishing. My second is drowning for lack of executive functioning. He muddled through fifth grade with one teacher. Moving between teachers and having a locker has been a struggle. We're at the point where I take pics of his homework and email it to teachers because 80% of the time it doesn't make it back to school. He has a school-assigned Chromebook where he does about half his work, so at least that doesn't get lost and theoretically, we can go through his to-do list. If the rest of this year is misery for our whole family, I'm considering what other schooling options we have. I burned out on homeschooling both boys fulltime with 2 younger kids but I could see potentially coordinating schooling for him if he did a combination of online classes and local coops for extras. We have a gifted coop here with some possibilities, but it wouldn't cover everything. Has anyone with a similar kid tried this? Would he be forever distracted by other websites if I expected him to learn online? I feel like I am being his executive functioning and we're all exhausted by it. I can probably push the school for more accommodations but I don't have a strong sense of how to go about it. If I'm going to have to stand behind him every minute of his school day, I'll need to find something else. A couple hours a day, we could manage.

We drove 500 miles each way to see totality. First road trip with 4 kids! As a bunch of science junkies, I'm glad we went and extra glad the weather in central Nebraska behaved relatively well for us. Driving back east across Nebraska was painful. I'm so glad we stayed overnight in Omaha before heading back to Minneapolis.

Can anyone recommend books at middle school level for the Civil War era? I also realized that here in Minnesota, the US-Dakota War more directly affected a lot of people and we could probably visit sites. If anyone has found good books or ways to learn about it, that would be appreciated.

My son left his PreAlgebra book at occupational therapy this morning. Can someone post of photo of the chapter 2 review challenge problems so he can do some math before we go back on Monday?

Libib looks perfect, thanks so much! edeemarie, I used Donna Young sheets my first year homeschooling but I wanted to find something where I could sort different ways and keep the title, author, and ISBN easily. The online programs that track those make that easier. I'm going to go back to Donna Young forms for my lesson planning though because I never kept up to date with my online planner and did it on paper instead.

Last year, I used HomeschoolTrackerOnline but ended up ignoring everything but the library and book list resource. I like being able to print out a list of all the library books we used for each course. Since I don't want the lesson planning parts, it doesn't make sense to keep paying for the program. What other ways can I track books by course? I have two kids to track - can I make categories on Goodreads maybe? I could just make an Excel list, but I'd prefer to have ISBNs listed so I can see cover photos and not need to write full title, author, and ISBN on a spreadsheet.

After hemming and hawing about this since January, I signed my barely 4 year old up for pre-k at our parish school. It's 11:30-2 M/W/F and he gets free bussing home. It's 5 min from my house and my older two will be able to stay home when I drop him off. This is my rule-following kid who will love circle time and doesn't mind sitting still. I've been nervous about him getting pushed aside during school time since the 5th and 3rd graders will have a lot to get through and aren't super-independent and we're adding a newborn to the mix this year. I plan to do some pre-reading and math when he's home. The class is small and taught by his Sunday school teacher that he knows and loves. I would not have been willing to do anything in the early morning or far away. I considered a free 5 day pre-k run by the district that we might have been low-enough income for, but decided that was too much and we'd rather pay for fewer hours in a program we trusted.

For 4th grade last year, my son did some of WWE 3 and all of MCT Practice Island. I assigned him lots of books to read, both literature and for history, and sometimes had him narrate them but usually just let him read them. For fifth grade, I feel like I should expect more. He'll be doing MCT Practice Town but not WWE 4. If he doesn't have much writing to do for MCT in a particular day, would it be reasonable to ask him to write up a paragraph summarizing a chapter he read for either literature or history or both? As Practice Town goes more in depth, I'd assume he'd be able to move from writing a collection of sentences to more of a functional paragraph. But how many of those is a good number over the course of a week? I believe this is the point where the WTM book starts suggesting a lot of outlining but that seems really dull to me and not as applicable to novels.

I hadn't thought to check ebay - thanks!

Thank you Cheryl! Color does sound nice but I'm glad to hear from someone who has both.

I think the Complete Homeschool Package with Caesar's English I Color edition is the only one including the new color student book on the list. That package includes: Both Grammar Town books Caesar's English color (student books) and implementation manual Both Building Poems books Both Paragraph Town books Both Practice Town books For a package price of $230, which is $40 less than the cost of buying each book individually at the internet price I think that the books I NEED would be: Grammar Town teacher manual Caesar's English color (student books) and implementation manual Building Poems TM Paragraph Town TM Practice Town (student workbook and TM) Purchased individually, those cost $195. I have 3 more kids coming after this one and I do appreciate MCT's non-consumable approach. I could cut out $25 by buying the black and white CEI. I mostly had both the student and teacher books for the Island level and that was nice, but didn't seem super-necessary. Can anyone weigh in on the color vs black and white new Caesar's English books? Is paying more for color worth it? Is $35 little enough to make it worth getting the full package with all the student books?

I've about given up on finding used copies of MCT Town level books. I'd like to get the new classical education edition, probably the fancy color one but I'd be fine with the b/w one. This lists the package options: http://www.rfwp.com/browse/package As far as I can tell, there are 7 level 2 packages but I don't think any of them include the teacher manuals, skip the extraneous student books, but still include the new CE classical books. I thought most homeschoolers just got the teacher manuals. Do I need to buy them all separately or am I missing something?

Did anyone do this lapbook celebrating the canonization of the Popes? Does it have any writing or just cutting/pasting? Any reviews? I can only print black and white - is it worth having my husband print all/part of it in color at work? http://www.holylearning.net/The-Canonization-of-Two-Popes-Faith-Folder-two-popes.htm

We're required to test annually starting when the child is 7 by Oct 1st and I have someone come to our house for $60/kid to administer the Peabody test. I like the way that the child answers questions orally, no bubbles, it takes 90 minutes maximum including the explanation of results (immediately), and it gives a grade level for which the child is average, in addition to saying how he/she compares to other children his/her age. The tester keeps asking questions until a bunch are answered wrong. My now 8 year old was bummed that he didn't get to take the test last year. I have some friends who start in kindy or first grade, but I didn't bother until it was required. It's worth it to me to pay an extra $25 or so to not waste a week with bubble-filling and for the results to mean something to me.

We went 2 years ago with 8, 6, and 1.5 year old boys and my parents. We had a 6 day pass, no park hopper, and didn't miss it. We spent 2 days each at MK and Epcot, and one day at AK and HS. Generally, we got there pretty early in the morning, left after lunch, and came back for the evening. We didn't return to AK but appreciated a quieter evening. We were staying at a condo offsite with a short drive. Only Magic Kingdom was annoying to come and go because of crossing the lake.

I've been struggling to deal with meal planning lately and on Monday, I made 7 recipes from this site http://whoneedsacape.com/2012/11/crockpot-freezer-cooking/ , all of which involve putting together bags of food for the freezer and dumping them in the crockpot when it's time to eat. There aren't many veggies since those turn to mush in either the freezer or crockpot. I also made the beef half of these recipes over the past 2 days http://www.theshabbycreekcottage.com/2013/10/freezer-meals.html which made 4 lasagnas, 2 batches chili, and 3 cheeseburger casseroles. For the chicken recipes, I plan to keep track of the ones we like the most and make them in May doubled before the baby comes in June. My husband is on spring break (and I take off homeschooling when he's home) so I finally had time to do this, but you could shop on Saturday and cook/prep for a few hours on Sunday and easily get 2 weeks of suppers.

Thanks for telling me what I needed to hear :) Getting started with Latin looks like a good way for us to start. My SIL took lots of Latin in college, so if I have questions I have somewhere to go, but having a gentle introduction would make more sense.

I think I want to use Lingua Latina with my then-5th-grader in the fall. A friend showed me samples and it seems like it'll be a good fit for my son. I don't have any background in Latin (unlike my friend) so I'll be learning along with him, but I tried to figure out the supplemental books and I can't figure out which ones I'd want/need. Anyone have suggestions?

I started BFSU vol 1 with my 3rd and 1st graders, who did a lot of science during their free time and have a lot of science-loving relatives. The suggested books were often simpler than was useful and I would do a library search for that topic, checking out harder books. I expected to go through volume 1 in 2 years, bringing us to volume 2 when they started 5th and 3rd grades. As it turns out, this year I've been pregnant and have let them do a lot of science reading on their own and not progressed much with BFSU, so I suspect it'll take most of 5th/3rd grades before we finish. Some of the lessons I can do as written (we just covered bones and muscles and they learned a lot from the demos but I found more difficult library books). I think if I was starting from the beginning with 5th/2nd/k, I'd use volume 1, accelerate it a bit, and focus on the two older kids and not worry too much if some things went over the kindergartner's head. I'd get him the library books listed as suggestions and find harder versions on the topic especially for the 5th grader, maybe requiring some writing only for her.

Any boxed sets requiring my kid to be at the same level for spelling, writing, and reading. Anything with a strong Young Earth basis. Most black and white workbooks.

Phonetic zoo has a placement test. I've liked using it for more independent spelling with my kids after AAS 3.

I'm somewhat freaking out about planning for a 5th grader next year. I feel like things should be be noticeably harder but I'm less sure how to do that, especially since he and his then-3rd-grade brother do a lot together now and the younger brother won't be ready for the same things. What I think I'll do: Singapore 5 (TB, WB, IP) and Beast Academy level 4 MCT Town Level Spellingbee.com's prep materials Connecting with History/Story of the World renaissance years, maybe getting up to 1700, depending on how far we get this year Science: BFSU finish vol 1/start vol 2/lots of independent stuff Geography: continuing Beautiful Feet's HCH study There have got to be some missing things in there. Mainly, I think I want to incorporate more writing into history and science, maybe some beginning note-taking, since right now we primarily read and discuss books for history in particular. For extracurriculars, there will be Cub Scouts and Lego Robotics team, with homeschool gym & swim when the weather stinks and maybe indoor climbing team if I can convince him that he'd love it.

I'm planning on it (although my oldest is only in 4th) because my husband teaches at a great Catholic prep school (pre-k to 12th) and the reasons we pulled the boys after 3rd/1st don't apply by high school. I know they'll have great teachers, a religious education, and honors classes in a small environment. I didn't like high amounts of homework for 7 year olds but I expect that by 9th grade. From what I can tell, homeschooling high school often involves community college and/or tutoring and/or a different feel than the sit on the couch around your siblings that is important to me with my grade schoolers. Knowing we have an inexpensive private school that fits our needs seems silly to pass up.