Ok, I need advice. I used to hs my kids. Now they are in a classical school. The school made changes in their Latin curriculum that I'm struggling with. I need some people to either tell me how wrong I am or back my suspicions. Last year, my son was in 4th grade and did Latina Christiana I. They did it in a "VERY" low key way, not fully completely following the book's progression, specifically with the conjugating and case endings. They "touched" on it in the last few weeks, but that's it. Now he's in 5th grade and the new Latin teacher decided to have them do 2nd Form Latin. Is this a ridiculous jump for them, or am I being too easy on him???? Any advice is welcomed. Thanks, Jen

Thank you for the suggestions. I had looked at Biblioplan in the past. It just didn't appeal to me for the same reasons as SOTW and others. Thank you Hunter. It's soooooooo nice to know I'm not alone in my frustrations. I will check out your suggestions. I love your quotes. They sum up my new take on hsing. I believe in TWTM suggestions and curriculum, but they don't always fit with my ability to teach combined with my kiddos' ability to learn. If they aren't learning, then I'm wasting time and energy as are they. I'm learning the art of saying, "it's ok that that amazing, highly recommended curriculum doesn't work for us. "SIGH"!!!! I am definitely looking at Veritas Press. I had looked at them right before posting, but hadn't seen the detail that averyhappymama had posted links to. A BIG THANK YOU for that! It just may be what I need.

It seems that God may be leading us to hs again. When we home schooled in the past, I always got stuck with a history curriculum that either didn't fit my kids' needs or didn't fit mine. I've tried SOTW several times. My kids just stare at me like a deer in the headlights and quite frankly remember very little of what I read to them. They do fine with me reading books to them, but they had little to no interest in listening to a history lesson. We've tried My Father's World. It had the same effect as SOTW. I'm looking for something that is chronological. I want tests and work sheets. I know some people don't think that they are necessary, but they are in our house. I've looked at Mystery of History, but there seems to be a lot of me reading with them again. I guess in my perfect world I would like something that is laid out like Abeka or Bob Jones, but taught chronologically. I've also looked at History Odyssey, but it doesn't look like it has any testing. I am all :bigear:! Thanks, Jen

Sorry, I forgot about sports. The only town that I think allows hser's to play in the ps sports is Carmel, and they are very pricey as far as house prices. There are a ton of leagues open to the public. Swimming, basketball, soccor, tennis, gymnastics etc. Indy had about 3 or 4 Olympic divers last summer with an Olympic dive coach from one of our local schools and a couple of gymnists too! THat's kind of exciting!

I'm not sure about you're actuall area. We've only lived in Indy for the past 3 years. I still LOVE the Children's Museum. Homeschooling in IN is EASY. You don't have to report to anyone. The only thing we do is keep track of how many days taht we hs. It is suppose to be 180 days a year. We don't even give this to anyone. We just have it just in case someone asks. There are a lot of unschoolers that don't even come close to doing this much school (not that I recommend that:001_huh:)!!! (As you can tell I"m not a fan of that, but it's just my humble opinion.) I'm just pointing out that it is a very easy state as far as homeschooling laws! There are groups everywhere. There are secular and religious, and many to choose from. We personally don't go to any. I just don't have enough time in the day to add another thing. If you check out http://www.homeschoolclassifieds.com they have a page where you can locate some of the groups. I think the HSLDA also has a listing. HTH, Jen

One more thing, I did go back to Abeka grammar after 2nd grade. It just fit us better than anything else at the time. I've never tried FLL 3 or 4 since they weren't around when we chose my daughter's curriculum. I just didn't like how Abeka made them write so much so soon in 1st grade. They can learn a lot without writing it all down at that age. I also didn't like that a lot of things seemed like busy work in Lang 1 and 2 instead of real grammar lessons.

I always teach the phonics portion of the lesson. Depending on the grammar portion, I'll teach it. For example, I don't think it's over kill to teach that a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a period. I only use the Letters and Sounds 1 workbook. The Lang 1 book has too much writing for my little guy. He's one of those boys who is taking a little longer to write. He's doing better these days, but has little patience with writing sentences over and over. FLL is sooooooo easy to implement with our lessons. I try to do 3 lessons a week. If there is a longer phonics lesson, we just skip FLL for that day. FLL only takes minutes a day, so it isn't overwhelming at all. My son is what Cathy Duffy calls a "wiggly willy" and is doing very well with it! He actually asks to do it everyday, which is a true blessing!

:iagree::iagree::iagree::iagree: You nailed it! We went with Saxon this year and just yesterday went back to Abeka. My daughter, who is generally really good at math, was not retaining anything. I know some kids get things after seeing it for the first time, but some need that extra "something" that Saxon is not giving.

Nope! You'll be fine. By then you are trying to get them reading well, reading with more fluency, and reading with more speed. It's not as phonics based as K and 1st grade. We only did a few 2nd grade readers and then I let her just start picking things from the library. My daughter lost interest in the readers and got hooked onto other things like Magic Tree House and American Girl books. I just made sure that she was picking things that were challenging enough to widen her horizons, but easy enough that she would enjoy them. I own all the 2nd grade readers, but they just didn't appeal to her. I thought it more important that she be reading than to stick with what Abeka assigned. I know our local Christian school here is a strict Abeka user. I just found out that they don't use the 4th grade readers as scheduled in the TM's for book reports. THey are using other great childrens' novels instead! They still have to use all the phonics rules in books that aren't Abeka. The only thing that I did like about Abeka's reader schedule is how they they picked out harder words for her to sound out beforehand with me. It was a good practice session for sounding out big words, along with a small vocab lesson from time to time. But, she would come up to me when she didn't get something or couldn't sound it out in one of her library books. So either way we ended up working it out together. HTH!

Why not? Abeka has handwriting for 4yr olds and they teach cursive! They do printing too, but they rather people start with cursive. Or, you can do "Handwriting Without Tears." They have a pre-k book. It's really simple to teach it. I have one that just knew how to write the letters based on their shapes. He would constantly love to copy things down for me. Now he's 5 and he makes little love notes for me:001_wub:

It's a great book. I own a copy that I'm trying to sell if you are interested. It didn't work for my daughter. She needed the extra drill of phonics rules. She would learn the rule and then read the words on the page, but would forget the next day. I needed flashcards and a daily review for her. Abeka phonics was her match. I know lots of people that it has worked wonders for. My son did ok with it, but by then we just went all Abeka. It's cheap to try out. If it doesn't work, then go with something else. Spelling....well, I personally like to have a spelling program. You could use the book and do spelling words with the rules that you already learned. You could make up practice things or even enter your weekly list onto http://www.spellingcity.com (my favorite spelling website!). HTH, Jen

You've hit many great points! I might need to print this to show hubby why we may need to switch! Abeka just updated their 4th grade material and none of it is compatable with earlier editions:glare: That's why it's so expensive. In all of our past years of buying I have always bought the TM's used. THat's half the cost right there!

It's both concepts and calculations (due to speeding through) and copying! I found someone selling their abeka package for a great price. I might convince hubby that we need it tonight. He's not real happy with me since we had to buy Abeka for grammar recently. I should have just bit the bullet and bought both at the same time. Live and learn!

You girls are great! Just to clarify, she's gotten a 57% the last 2 days. I would say that she mostly gets a 70 to 75% on homework (about 40% of the time), but more and more often gets in the 60's. (Again, this never happened with Abeka!:confused1:) I get the whole grading thing. I understand why some would and/or would not grade. We do just because I want that level of responsibility for her. You're suggestions are great!

I do go over all of her mistakes with her. If it's a concept that seemed to be misunderstood, then I do it with her. If it is addition and subtraction errors or copying errors I circle it and have her redo it by herself. What I need help "getting" with the grading thing is that is it ok if she gets almost half the work wrong? That just seems wrong.