A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson is my (and my girls') favorite. My oldest dd & I were just reminiscing, the other day, about all the poems she learned when she was in the early grades. The thing she liked best was the "project" she got to do after memorizing her poem - she would write it out, in her best penmanship, then draw a picture that reminded her of the poem. We kept them all in a binder. Sheri :) Mom to 3 super daughters

Yes, my kiddos had penmanship. I've been bad with dd#3, though, as I haven't transitioned her to cursive (she's 10 now :blushing: ). She's a lefty and I've been dragging my feet......that's for another thread, though! ;) As far as what we've used: Abeka handwriting and several years ago I bought an inexpensive CD (created by a homeschooler, I believe) to print my own penmanship worksheets. It's really cool, as it has several handwriting fonts on it and you can make it so the letters have dotted lines to trace, arrows showing the direction to move your pencil, etc. There's even choices on the type of "lines" you want to write on. Sheri edited to add: once my girls had the hang of cursive and just needed some 'review' I bought some inexpensive workbooks at Barnes and Noble. The thing I liked best about the workbooks was that the big letter 'Q' looked like a 'Q', not like the number 2 (kwim??)! Do you know of any other penmanship programs that do that?

We also do "light load" during summer. Math is done 3 times per week. If we decide to take a week to go visit grandma and grandpa, then we'll skip doing math that week. This summer we'll surely do science because all 3 of my kids are doing Biology for the 09-10 school year. IMHO, it's much more fun to study bugs and plants when they're in abundance...and since we live in ND, that would be May-October! My oldest will be doing high school biology, so there will be a lot of dissecting going on and I like the thought of doing that outside in the fresh air where the smell of formeldahyde won't be so overwhelming!!! Our school year runs July 1 - June 30, so we'll be starting our light load of biology right away in July. I sometimes try to keep history reading going through the summer, too, but I only have one student that doesn't resist that idea. "Fun" reading always goes over well. I guess that's about it and it's nice to know that I'm not the only meanest-homeschool-mom out there! LOL ;) Sheri Mom to 3 wonderful daughters

I used TWTM swap boards a lot "back when." I had bought a lot of curriculum ahead of time to cover us into middle school, but now my oldest is in high school so I'm back to square one with her! I'm hoping to be able to participate in some "conversations" in the forums and build up my posting requirements. The WTB board will be my friend in the coming weeks, as well! :001_smile: Sheri Mom to 3 wonderful daughters and wife, of 15 years, to the world's greatest and hardest working husband!