YaY! you're almost done!! Remember don't fret too much about it being perfect. Do the parts that you know you'll be SO GLAD to have done and leave the rest for when you have more time... like finding library books etc... you can always do that on the fly. Lots of times I make up these great lists for library books and then when I go to pick them up, i find all these other really great ones too and we never get to half of them because there are too many of them LOL.

even if you only get half of what you wanted done ahead of time you will still be way ahead of where you would be if you hadn't started. I know what you mean though. I was flopped on my bed with a good novel yesterday in protest of homeschool planning !! I understand why moms start thinking of the following year before they are even done the one they are working on. I'm such a procrastinator that I've never done that, and then I waste my august trying to get organized for the next year. It's a lot more work this year now that I have three to teach and two who are ready to learn their letters in preK4 (twins). (and I just found out i'm expecting baby number seven in APRIL!! :D so I guess I'm really glad that I am filing this year or who knows if we'd ever finish)

:iagree:I agree it's a LOT of work. i'm up to my eyeballs in curriculum, but I'll be happy when I'm all done and organized for the year. Next year, i'm going to start organizing things in may and NOT in august :D

Thank you! this was so helpful to me as well and I didn't even ask the question :D I printed it out to read over again as we get closer to our school starting time. What do your bigger kids do during 'quiet time'? Do you require everyone to be in their rooms? I'm expecting baby number seven in april and I think i'm really going to need a quiet time every afternoon... not sure how i'll convince the almost-4 year old twins to be quiet for an hour. hmmm...

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

Latina Christiana: I filed this last year. My dd did her exercises in a blank book so we could save the workbook for the next kids but I filed the quizes (photocopied from the TM every week), and i ripped up the book Ludere Latin I (the activities book that goes with LCI.). It worked GREAT!! It kept us on track all year with Latin because I wanted her to do good on the quiz so I made sure to review latin each morning first thing. Classical Writing: We are using CWHomer A this year. I'm using the workbook and it fit into my files just beautifully. The TM stays in our daily school box with post-it flags marking our place for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 and Writing Project. SOTW: obviously you aren't going to rip up a real book LOL, although some of these days i'm tempted just so it will GET DONE!!! :glare: but what I'm doing is going through the activity guide and making copies of the sheets i want to use for each week and filing them, as well as lists of library books and project supplies that I will need. I am also filing a few blank narration sheets for the kids to fill in about what we read. (I'm using the Tanglewood book of centuries, but there are lots of free ones out there... look on the SOTW yahoo groups for some really nice ones). R&S and Saxon: What are the kids doing their work on? Perhaps you could just file in some lined paper so they had something to write their answers on, and some extra paper for scratchwork. (is that a word lol?) Some people are making up progress sheets similar to the AAS ones where the kid would color in a square or put a sticker on it for each lesson that they finish, and that sheet is moved from file to file. Just some little ideas :-) Hope it helps. Also, it's not for everyone. I chose to start filing because -I- needed more accountability in how much work I got the kids to do each week... I was tired of ALWAYS finishing so late every year... (or not finishing at all). For me, it's a life saver. For other people, it might not work at all!

I bought some at CHER... here's the link to their maps. (I live in Calgary, so I can just drive to the store). I have also seen them at Staples. Are you in canada or the states?

Any Catholic Moms out there using this one? I need a favor... I am so sad!! my dh reformatted our hard drive without realizing I had all of my HS files somewhere other than the my documents folder, and they are gone!! I had downloaded all of the CWH 2 units when they were available as a download a few years ago. Does anyone have them? The company owner says she can't send me replacement files and I REALLY want them as pdfs because I was planing on doing them with my iPad next year. :(

Hi kristi! Just own the system for yourself :001_smile: If you need lesson plans then add them in. I usually just read from the teacher manuals each day, keepong a post it flag as a bookmark. Some moms are having an extra folder for each week for themselves where they are puttin in plans. I am thinking of making a master calendar with all my weeks typed up and bound together, but i haven't decided yet. I guess it all depends on your teaching style. Does that help?

:lol::lol: we must be twins :lol::lol: I wish I had more time to blog. I had so much fun blogging through our K and grade one years when the twins were babies.... I just haven't had the energy to motivation to do it for ages. It's such a fun record of our life though. Maybe I should edit my first post in the thread to include a link to my blog so people can find it easier.

:iagree: Think about which parts of filing will make your life easier and do them. Don't be afraid to do it 'wrong' because there is no 'right' way!! Anything that will make your life more complicated in the long run or more stressed out, don't do!!

YES!! AAS does come with the progress sheets, but some people have bought it off the for sale/swap board and sometimes they aren't included. The ones that come with the program are on nice sturdy cardstock, and they also come with cute little certificates when they are finished.

Darn! Your link didn't work for the FLL. I also made one and posted it somewhere in a different thread.... here's the link to mine. I would love to see yours, because mine is just plain boring :001_smile: The AAS program actually comes with a progress sheet in each lesson, and if you don't have them anymore, you can download them off their message boards: level 1 level 2 level 3 level 4 level 5 Level 6

You are AWESOME!!! Thanks for posting all your menus!!! I love the internet for the chance to share all these great ideas from other women. It's such a blessing. I had a menu we used for a whole year after my twins were born, but I got so bored of having the same thing every week, that I gave it up. I don't know why I never figured out the idea of printing one up like you did. YAY!!

:iagree::iagree:

In my opinion, Prima Latina is so easy, and if you are going to spend the effort doing latin, you might as well start with at least LC1. ALL of Prima Latina is in LC1, plus you will be gently introduced to latin grammar. LC1 isn't hard. It's just a bunch of memorization and a grade 5 student could easily do it,without having done prima latina first. We have done PL, LC1 and now are starting First Form in the fall. We did PL when the kids were K and 2 (the K doing it orally). Last year we did LC1 with my grade four and she found it easier than -I- did :) Kids are so good at memorizing things. As long as you do it in small pieces EVERY day, any of those programs would be fine. Even First Form would be fine for a grade 5, IF you are committed to doing it every day in small bites, but if you want an easier intro, I would go with LC1.

A lot of moms are using both, because they like the idea of workboxes but didn't want to scramble each day to find things to put inside each drawer. With the filing system, they already have most of the work done for them....they just pull a folder and distrubute the work for that day into the boxes. For me, I am trying to eliminate any extra steps. The more fancy the system, the less likely it is I will still be doing it in January. My blog (in my siggy) has a long post about how we file in our homeschool. You can make it as simple or fancy as you like. The key to filing is that it forces you to stay more on track and finish each group of subjects before moving on. In that respect, it is quite similar to the 'loop' that gets mentioned on here frequently. In fact, i did a loop year before i started filing, but realized i needed even more structure than just the loop. Hth

:lurk5: Still trying to decide what to do for history next year... Modern times or back to ancients and using HO or back to WTM style.

I hope you all aren't getting bored of my long winded answers. I am grown-up deprived at home with 6 little kids :D For me, this is why I started filing in the first place. I wanted to keep my subjects flowing together at the same time, and I was always getting behind in one or two (or all :D) of our subjects. I've said this elsewhere before, but it's the key to my sanity in homeschooling: in a school, when someone is sick, or there's a dr appt, etc,.. the teacher doesn't make the whole class wait for that child to come back before she moves on. She just keeps moving on in the lessons, and the child catches up orally, skips the work because it's just a little bit, or does it as homework. In my homeschool, because I DO want to get to the end in a reasonable time (I understand for some hs moms they don't have this as a goal, because they are happy with the 'do the next thing' and school year round etc..), I need to file and keep my weeks together as a cohesive unit. When we get behind by a day, we typically just cross out half the work on yesterday's page and half the work on today's page and then are covering both days in the same ammount of time it would take to cover one. Does that make sense? I guess if your homeschool is the kind where you have short weeks as a NORM, and you are always missing school days and assorted subjects for various reasons you have a few options: 1) don't file... it might not be worth it or even appropriate for your teaching style.. don't worry that you aren't following the latest organizing craze! What works for some doesn't work for all. 2) file, and be happy that you are on track for finishing all of your subjects for the year close to the year end date you were hoping for.... but know that you have to be mindful of the fact that you have to KEEP ON MOVING! (slow and steady wins the race). 3) evaluate why you are missing so many school days and decide if you are ok with that. Some people love that flexibility... but I found that even though I enjoyed being able to pick up and go whenever I felt like it, I was dissatisfied at the end of the year when so many moms were posting in May that they were done, and we still had a good eight weeks of math left and we had barely started science!! In the end, filing is great if you also are committed to making a good effort to KEEP ON MOVING. 4) one more option: File by subjects instead of by weeks. At the beginning of every week, instead of pulling work out of the week 1 file, you can pull 5 days from the math file, 5 days from the grammar file, 3 days from history, etc... This allows you to prepare everything ahead of time, but gives you the flexibility of being able to work at different speeds through your curricula. This isn't as helpful at getting you to the end of the year at the time you planned for, but it's still a good option :D

This sounds like a great idea, can you share your sheet you made up?

When is it coming out?

I bought the pdfs and am thrilled with them for a few reasons: I can scale it down in size when I print it off (I don't like how BIG the spacing is for them to print), and I can read the TM from my iPad which makes me HAPPY :D

So after doing abunch of A level ones ok, do you think the B book is too hard for a ten year old? What are you doing after that?

Thank you!! Just exactly what I wanted to hear. That link page is wonderful!

I lent out my WTM, and can't remember what her recomendations for logic are at the grade 5 level. I bought Mindbenders A2 and B2 just because that's all they had when I went to the store. CAn we do both of these in grade 5 or should I save B2 for grade 6, and do some logic puzzles off the net for the rest of the year? Do you typically do one puzzle a week or one a day? THere are only 15 in each book, so I wasn't sure what to do. Thanks!