We are stretching k over two years and starting year 2 this fall. MFW K units 12-26 at about a 2 week pace ETC books 1 & 2 HWOT k Bob books Singapore Math Early Bird book b integrate some FIAR in our mfw k unit themes Tag along for US history with big sis

Changed Again.... Lang- much the same ETC books 6-8 Cursive Connections Language Lessons For Today Grade 3 Free reading of beginning chapter book- 20 min a day Math - Singapore 2a/2b/3a (maybe?) History Core- US History 1812-1860's using unit studies based on American Girls and Little House Books- plan to do Marie-Grace & Cecile, Kirstin, Josefina, Addy, Little House books 1-3, will integrate art, music, poetry, and some science this way Science - not sure, probably will pick a monthly topic to study using non fic from library and science resources we have at home, nature studies, journaling, interest lead Spanish- complete level 2 of clase divertida, begin level 3 PE - horse riding

Dh and I have 3 children together and he has a son from a previous relationship who we have every other weekend and half of his school breaks. When I am out and about with three children, I don't notice looks from others or get comments about our family being big. When we have all four children, we definitly do! So, I voted 4, as I see that as the tipping point between the average family size and "big."

Mathmarm if I remember correctly has a toddler and posts some somewhat unusual questions.

Another vote for Singapore Essentials and Explide the Code. I'd probably toss in HWOT and Bob Books for practice reading. After that, reading picture books out loud for 15 minutes a day. Allowing k'er to tag along with older kids.

Last year we used MFW Adventures as our spine and added in the AG girls where they fit in. We did Felicity doing some stuff from POAG and then for Kaya we just winged it, getting ideas from the book and web for fun extras. There was no way with Felicity in 2nd she could do all the assignments from POAG in writing and the books had to be done as a read aloud, but now we are doing Caroline (summer between 2-3) and she's doing fantastic! She turned 8 in April and she can read the books by herself (although I still want to hear it, too so we take turns reading a page each). And she is able to write paragraphs on her own now so I think she may be ready. We'll see when we get to Kirstin and Josefina and Addy. Our plan right now- 2nd- US Exploration (Vikings on) to 1812--did Kaya and Felicity and doing Caroline now 3rd- 1800's - Marie-Grace and Cecile, Kirstin, Josefina, Addy, books 1-3 of Little House 4th- late 1860's-1910's- Little House books 4-9, Samantha, Rebecca 5th- 1900's to Modern---Kit, Molly, Julie (semester 1) State Study (semester 2) 6th- California History I think we just want to spend a our first cycle in US history and the do a 6 year chronological history cycle.

I can't see why you can't do geography and world cultures for a year or two and then do history the other early elementary years. Are you asking about a single year or grades 1-4? I honestly can't see spending that long on geography. Or doing it without learning about world cultures, even for one year.

I think where you might be going wrong is to count the homeschool group as an activity verses a bonus. If you already have 3+ commitments, adding getting together with a homeschool group 1-2 times a week (or month) would be too much for me to so long term as well. I tended to categorize commitments in different categories, ie, homeschool groups, church commitments, extra curriculars, verses all outside commitments. I am more extroverted. I get cranky if we have no down days during the week. To me two drop off activities and voluntary participation in a homeschool group (averaging 1x a week) plus church on Sundays is plenty. I like having 2 days a week at least we do nothing. I also try to do nothing after church Sundays but go home and hand out. We try to do a family outing Saturday. Sometimes my kids will have a short term Saturday commitment. I send dad, so I can stay home or have time to myself to run arrends. I like the idea of getting out to a Cafe, park or library to do work once in a while, well if you don't have little kids. Then you're around people and don't have to interact. I like that.

We are pursuing the CM two six year cycles. AO us not the only way to go though you might find some great ideas from their website. I plan to keep my kids in the same core. They are 6 & 8 like your children. I need things steam lined, and at this age they still need a lot of mama intense teaching. Especially the younger one. We are actually planning to do a lot more US history history, state history, and world cultures in our first six years. We'll probably fill in a chronological world history with CHOW at some point. To be honest, I don't think my kids retain enough to be too caught up in the history cycle in 1-4, even in 5-6.

My dd is 8. We will start her in 3rd grade next fall. We were really on the fence as to whether to red shirt her. She struggled academically and is still not quite at grade level. We feel that she could catch up and so haven't held her back and stuck to the grade level cut off dates in our state. If we feel by 8th grade she's not there, we have discussed extending middle school one year.

There are 12 historic dolls with 6 books each. You can do 6 per year and get a 36 week school year for two years. I can recommend some sources. Portraits of American Girlhood is a 36 week curriculum based on the original 6 girls- Felicity, Josefina, Kirstin, Addy, Samantha, Kit, and Molly. The other 12 girls you can find resources online. Lots of free lap books and blogs on using the American girls dolls are online. Another source is the Prairie Primer. It's a one year curriculum based on the Little House books and is a unit study approach covering history in the 1800's. I have it but haven't used it yet but plan to do at least a couple of the books when we get there.

We are going to hold off on the history cycle and spend 3/4 in US history. My dd did mfw for k and 1st. They do a sort of "the world around us" for k and a brief intro to ancients in 1st followed by US history for 2nd for a mini cycle. We ended up taking our time with our history spine by adding in a lot of good books from their book basket and then doing projects inspired by that plus we did 2 6 week units on American Girls- Felicity & Kirstin. We did the Welcome to their World books and got bios related to the time. Lots of fun but only got as far as Vikings - 1800. Anyhow we're having so much fun I think we'll do 1800's next year and 1900-present for 4th. Then we'll do a history cycle. I might throw in CHOW as a read aloud just to give the overview briefly. We are reading through The Bible Story right now. I feel like that gives them some overview to the ancients.

I would not do 2 history cores. Pick what works for your 3rd grader and let the 1st grader tag along on a wants to basis. Then focus in math, Lang, and reading quality picture books to your 1st grader. Remember children in public school typically don't begin history until 3/4 grade. What state do you live in? What history is done for 3rd? In my state we do State History in 4th but we are not required to spend a full year in 3rd as independent study students at a charter school. It's suggested we cover some state history at some between 1-6 and again 7-12 but not a whole year. Anyhow, you could start at year 3 or 1. It doesn't really matter. Your oldest will complete 1 4-year cycle and two bonus years. If you complete a STOW vol a year. You might find you linger longer. You might want to take a break and do US history, or State, our World Cultures and Geography. In fact you could go that route and start STOW in 5 / 3. Honestly I don't feel like doing a history cycle in k-4 is all that critical. They don't retain to much. You could just easily just read a lot of good historical fiction.

Don't feel discouraged please by that comment. We are beginning our 4th year of homeschool and I actually am just starting to realize how much I still don't know! lol! Some families thrive with lots of commitments. We seem to lie somewhere in between. One thing I thought of when you mentioned CC, I think joining some sort of homeschool community would be a good idea. My first year homeschooling we found community not in a homeschool group but by joining American Heritage Girls, which was primarily ran by homeschool moms. I think CC would be a good option to see if CC is a good fit and get feedback on homeschooling. You could easily pick math and phonics and fill in the rest with stuff from CC covered each week. I know a lot if great families who thrueve off CC. That said it's not necessary either. I think you could just as easily find a less structured homeschool group to get community. I personally feel CC is not for us. I lean more CM and so prefer a longer history cycle then CC 3 year. I find I can do memory work at home (ie, Bible versus, poems, etc). I can't justify the cost. I joined a homeschool group that offers a park day weekly and lots if field trip opportunities and a weekly mom's night out! That was good for us! We do academics at home. We like a park day or field trip weekly (one or the other). If you want more structure / guidance (and you mention CC so I assume you are Christian) then a more planner out curriculum for a year or so might be helpful. We did that our first three years to get a feel and I am now doing my own thing more. For k some favorite resources were.... My Father's World Kindergarten (all subjects included, but you may want a k level math program to supplement their math) Five in a Row (you'll need math and Lang) Wee Folk Art (similar to FIAR but more Wardolf, free online as seasonal studies via wee folk art website) These curriculums helped me gauge how much to schedule each day and what a school day looked like in lower elementary years (k-3).

A lot of people just do math and Lang for k as formal k and then just read good books, get outside, and teach kids basic chores. It's all up to you. We spent about 2 hours of school a day in k, with only about 45 minutes on "seat work"- about 15 minutes on math, and half hour on Lang arts. The rest about 15 minutes reading out loud, 15 minutes of Spanish, 15 minutes of Bible and about a half hour activity time that rotated between science, art & music, social studies, cooking, crafting, outside time, nature journaling, etc. It was a fun year and my k'er tagged along. This year with my k'er our schedule is roughly the same. We spend about 45 minutes in Lang and Math, and he joins his older sister on her core for what is appropriate, usually about an hour or so. Then I try to read to him for about 15 minutes a day, mostly picture books. If I were to give any advice it would be don't feel like you have to have your child doing some sort of organized activity most weekdays because you homeschool. I felt like I needed to do that my first year and it end up burning my children and myself out. I would start with only 2 weekly commitments and see how that goes. Time to just play is good, too.

Maybe wait until he is in 8th and if it seems like he could still use more time extend jr high another year by not moving up into "high school level" work. Then give the option of completing high school in 3 years if he'd like to or 4 so it's his choice. That's what I would do.

I always kind of knew I wanted to homeschool when I was younger. I attended private school in k-4 and public through high school. I knew some families who homeschooled and always thought they were lucky. I struggled with school in my early elementary years k-2, and then made some good leaps once I got the hang of reading and was a big book worm grades 3-5. By 6th I was advanced and spent most of middle school and 9th ridiculously bored to tears. I would often finish all my class work and homework within the first half of class while the teacher taught the lesson and then be bored and either read, write or be disruptive the rest of class. In 10th I started taking honor and ap courses so once challenged things were better. I always just sort of thought to myself, yeah, I think I am going to homeschool my kids. I would have made a fabulous unschooler in middle school and high school. I loved reading and researching, and I preferred doing my own thing. I learned so much on my own those years from reading books I would get at the library! By sophomore year I took some classes at our local community college. I scored into English 1 and Stats / Calculus at 15. I could have probably started college at 16. Fast forward to when I had kids. Homeschool didn't enter the picture when we had our first child. I had her in college and so she went to uni childcare at 4 months old part time one year and the following year about 30 hours a week. When I graduated I was pregnant with our 2nd child. He was born about 2 weeks later. I took a year off and was surprised by how much I loved being home with my babies and felt a bit of a sting in seeing that I had a stronger bond with baby2 since I got to stay home with him until he was 15 months old. The next year I started grad school and they attended the childcare there full time. I was so burned out and hated to have them gone all day long! They were 1 & 3. I decided my school could wait but my kids would still keep growing and I would miss it! I had started my masters at 24 and had a bachelors degree from UC Berkeley. If I waited to go back to school when my kids were both school age it wouldn't be the end of the world. So I took a year off and stayed home with them. Dd went to a Christian preschool 3 mornings a week and ds stayed home with me and we'd do kinder class and play groups and stroller strides the mornings she went to preschool. They were 2 & 4 that year. I missed her. I remember thinking I bet she'd live to be her, too with us. Anyhow fast forewarded to our first parent teacher conferences with dd. My 4-year old was "behind". She couldn't keep up with the class. Her teacher suggested we work at home with her or have her come to school 5 days a week. I enjoyed having 2 days a week with her, so we tried doing some preschool at home with her on those days. Didn't help. Duplicating what wasn't working at her preschool at home seemed to make no difference. The teacher suggested assessments for learning disabilities. She also suggested she not attend the private school we were planning for her to do k at suggested we either have her go to k at 6 or we send her to public k and they could do the ld assessments but that private schools don't have services kids with learning disabilities (not the ones we were looking at anyway). So I got really stressed out and ft desperate and began going online to see if I could find different ways to teach her the letter and number of the week and how to write her name. Enter homeschool blogs and free preschool printables! Wow! Didn't know all this stuff was out there and free! It didn't take long to get the wheels turning in my head that for what we paid for one month of preschool I could have all the material to teach her myself and do all sorts of much awesomer crafts and science. When it became apparent she wasn't going to be ready for k in the fall and wasn't eligible for transitional k as she was a April birthday I decided we'd homeschool for that year and try k at home. If it didn't work I figured she'd just start k at 6. No change really. Except the $550 a month we'd save in money for not paying for pre-k. That was my selling point for dh. He was reluctant but let me try. I was gun ho! I ended up pulling her out of preschool after Easter vacation and started doing preschool with her at home right then and there. We started k officially the next fall. We took a full break from learning letters and numbers. We worked on cutting, coloring, pasting, crafting, baking and going to the park and library and reading. She was so much happier! I also started school that fall again part time and have been doing 2 classes a semester since. K at home worked. She completed mfw k and was reading a bit by the end if the year and adding and subtracting. Maybe it was a gentler approach to k and not on pare with what our local k's were doing but we had progress and it was a good fit for her. 1st grade- we decided to give it another year so she'd have another year to get caught up to her peers if she went to ps and because she had urunary incompetence. We were just going through testing and the child couldn't keep dry through a full day school. We didn't want her to be embarrassed so we thought we'd wait until we got this issue resolved. That turned out to be a blessing. I got pregnant that year and our dd was referred to a urologist and after lots of scary times when there was a possibility she had renal cysts, and was taking meds that made her groggy, we found out she had a duplicate ureter and one tube was emptying in her flesh with no exit point. At least it could be fixed with surgery. Lots if testing, lots if labs, dr appts, pre-ops and finally surgery and a 5 day hospital stay. A scar like a c-section on my 7 year old. Surgery was scheduled for Sept of this year, when she would have started 2nd grade. We decided it would probably be better to wait so she didn't miss the first 6 weeks if school another year if did put her in public or private school. At the same time I had a 5 month old. She would have been missing a lot of school in the beginning and then still at least 2x a month due to follow up appointments and lab work for the rest of the year. It was a hard year. A baby, surgery, my school and my ds was officially a k'er so now I have officially homeschooling! But I am still happy we did it! All along those first 3 years I kept my preschooler at home to. We did preschool at home with simple workbooks and some educational toys and he tagged along with big sis. I was floored with how prepared he was to start k with our 30 minute daily preschool lesson in comparison to his sister who attended preschool at 2,3, & 4. DH was sold after the first couple of months by the way! He could see dd was happier and making progress on her terms without being made to feel like she was "behind". And by the way she is now at grade level in lang arts and loves reading for fun! She's approaching grade level for math and showing an upward trend if progress each year. So I guess that's how we ended up here. I think we'll stay here if we can.

This is great. Wish I could save for future reference. We plan to do a long trek through US history with my kids in the younger years, so this'd be good for resources to share.

My first born started homeschooling since k, but as I am finding we like to take the scenic route with history, I am actually seriously considering a six year history cycle. This could change of course but I am sort of thinking towards jr high / high school at what that'd look like. So I think the idea of continuing the history cycle were you're at when you get to high school works. It could mean that you finish chronological history in 11th and year 12 looks different ----current events, government, or they don't do history that year. I've been finding Ambleside online to be a good guideline for how to do a 6 year cycle through jr high / senior high school. I might not actually follow their whole curriculum but it helps me get an idea for what I might like to do. Right now I am thinking--- 7th - world cultures and geography 8th- Pre-history - Ancients 9th- Rome to Renaissance 10th- Renaissance to 1860 11th -1860 to Modern 12 - US gov / current events / econ

TKDmom I agree! I feel for me (and this is just me because I know plenty of moms who say they pretty much never finish a book and it's ok, and it is!), that I want her to finish her spelling book, phonics, and grammar. I looked at it yesterday and she actually only has about a week to go for phonics and grammar and 5 spelling lessons. She does these subjects pretty independently. With spelling I give her test and help her with some of the activities, but this literally like 10-15 min. Then getting her to read 20-30 min a day is easy since she likes to read. No struggle there. As far as our core, I would like to get the last 6 weeks in but in the grand scheme getting to 1850 versus getting to 1812 is probably not a deal breaker. If by the time we get to July and I don't feel utterly burned out, maybe we'll pick our core back up and wrap up those last six weeks, without doing math and Lang until the fall. So another issue related to burn out.....it's hard to admit but a big cause of me feeling burned out is we are going through some behavior issues. So I feel like I can't really keep homeschooling with the attitudes. My husband and I were discussing it and I feel like because I had so much going on we were not always able to deal immediately with behavior issues since we were hoping from one place to another. And then they are probably burned out, too. They have also were spending 2 afternoons a week with my mom and stepdad when I had class. No is not in my mothers vocabulary. She gets very defensive if I try to talk to her about the kids and what we do and don't allow. I kind of just let it go and figure what they do when I am not there is out of my control. She can't even comprehend how their behavior reflects her utter permissiveness. But the aftermath I deal with when they come home! I don't know if it's even worth it!

So thinking out loud---- No k for summer DD continues her Lang arts stuff until she's done- they are almost completely independent anyhow and only take 30 minutes plus maybe 30 min reading (also independent) and then nothing We do nothing at least for a couple weeks, maybe start swim lessons, June 22 or after 4th of July. I need some weeks of nothing. We had stuff going on m-the afternoon pretty much all the trad. school year. We start school when I stop feeling burned out and my house feels organized, could be July 1, could be August, could be after Labor Day....

We're in the same place. My ds is who did transitional k and will be officially in k this year is fine. He's exceeded my academic goals and I am not at all worried. My 2nd grader on the other hand has not finished her grammar, handwriting or spelling and has another 6 weeks to go since we planned to school 6 more weeks. We also planned another 6 weeks of science and history but since we continuing our US history into next year and our science topics usually cover a new topic every 2-4 weeks it's not to big of a deal. I guess neither is the Lang arts in all honesty. She did finish her math book for the year. This year was quite a year! We have a 14 month old, so through out the year we had days were all we did was math & Lang and read alouds. DD had surgery in August so started school mid September. We took an extended winter break since I ended up taking a winter session. Did I mention I go to graduate school part time? We had a lot of light days when I had projects due or finals. So my dilemma is a part of me feels like I should keep going, especially since I don't have as much going on. Then, I feel like I am just treading water in so many areas --- homeschool planning, paperwork, housework, laundry, organizing, oh yeah, and my own school----that maybe if I took these 12 weeks to get everything super organized and planned, things would run smoother so we wouldn't need all these emergency breaks. I love the flexibility but at times I feel it confuses the kids. They don't know if we are doing school or not. Sometimes I don't even know?!? And I just feel like I can not drag myself to do it anymore. Another thing? I think I want to plan my own curriculum. I have been doing mfw and while I liked to get an idea of how to structure our time and see what's realistic to do each day, week, get some hand holding, I think it's caused some extra anxiety / stress since I keep adding things in or swapping things out as I go because I am tweaking it on the fly versus taking time to plan ahead. Which is a whole new concept. How do you plan out your own curriculum? I think my plan will be a general overview of what we plan to cover, our projected school calendar, and then a more detailed list of 6 week course objectives for each "unit" followed by weekly detailed planning, ie, plugging what we hope to do into set days.

We've always schooled year round and only taken a short break in summer. I am feeling pretty burnt out and getting sick of all sorta of loose ends that seem to never get resolved since we tend to only take a week or two off at a time. If you take a full 10-12 week summer break, what do you do with the time? How do you use it to make your next school year smoother? Do you complete 36 weeks of school in a traditional school year? Do you do less? Do you feel burned out and just keep going?

This! I am shocked when I talk to some homeschool moms about teens and young making bad choices and getting the reaction that this won't be their kid, their family, because they are Christian and homeschool. Like that somehow insulates your family from having bad things happen or having your children do things you do not agree with morally. It just doesn't. We can lead by example and share our morals and values but they'll ultimately make their own choices. Even if I am a Evangelical Christan who homeschooled my kids since k. Not to compare this to Josh Duggar molesting his young sisters as a teenager. My opinion is he is pediphile. I don't know if his upbringing impacted him acting on his or even shaped it, given the info about the cult they belonged to. But I mean we can't honestly believe our kids are above getting into typical teen trouble like drinking or experimenting with other teens or even end up pregnant. I'm not saying all teens do those things but at the same time I am sure some Christian homeschooled ones are.

This is what I told my husband. Although they were unusual I had no idea about the quiverful movement, ATI, Gothard, or even the Perls.