I'll plug the CM method. :001_smile: You can customize it so easily. If you don't want to jump in with an expensive prepared curriculum you could try the Simply Charlotte Mason organizer that I use at www.simplycharlottemason.com They have a free trial. They have a curriculum guide for all grade levels too. I love MUS too.

You should look into the Charlotte Mason method. Your children would probably love the low key, nature-centered aspects of her ideas for children 9 and under. She focused a lot on children gaining a keen sense of perception. Watching an ant hill, or drawing wild flowers, listening to music and observing great art were ways to help them be more observant. You can start by reading fun picture books and have him tell the story back to you (narration). Type it out as he talks, if he doesn't mind, and then you have something to show for his efforts. At the end of the day you would have a laundry list of things that he did academically and he probably wouldn't even be aware he did "school". DH would be happier too, maybe.

We are very, very low key until the kids turn about 6. I didn't start phonics with my littlest boy until he was 6 and a half. He is reading fluently now. I like to start K materials about 6. We read out loud a lot. If they show an interest in something I will assist them, but I don't force lessons. My daughter is 4 and wants to learn how to read her name, so I helped her with that. She also loves the Queen's book--although she wishes the whole thing were picture study!

:iagree: We are also square foot gardening. I just got The Handbook of Nature Study (finally) and my kids are nature journalling their way through the field in our backyard. Bugs, grass, trees, ants....are all being drawn and labled in great detail for hours each day. Micah (11) is going to do general science for 7th, but I want him to have a year or so of free learning. At this age he can draw very well and his nature notebook is fun to look at.

:iagree: although sometimes it would be nice to be recognized for all the efforts we put forward to educate ourselves, if only to have other employment options when our homeschooling days end.

:iagree: I am working through the 6 volume series too and I am also a Montessori teacher, but am currently homeschooling only. I wanted to get a degree in CM, but sadly it does not exist. I believe the original CM volumes really are a Masters in Home Education. Too bad we could not get some heft behind this study and be recognized for it. I too am 6 years into student teaching .:001_smile:

I use the Cursive First font from educational fontware to make worksheets for my daughter. All the letters start on the baseline and they have a nice big dot to start on.

I love Queen's, but I am a bit of a CM purist. There is no harm in bumping up a book if your daughter finds it too easy. My nine year old is doing LL for the Elementary child, but he also does copious amounts of narrating along with prepared dictations from his readers. We also do latin which has grammar. I make Queen's work all by itself because of all the other oral things we do. The author told me that LL is enough when a child is narrating and occasionally writing for other lessons from living books. After six years of narrating my 11 year old can knock out a decent report from a one time reading, completely from his memory. I am starting to see the fruits of our earlier work, but it does take some faith in the beginning.

My daughter is loving Dekodiphukan (decode-if-you-can) . I am teaching the 44 phonetic sounds through the story and then I am going to introduce blending with the pictures. After that I am going to show the phonemes that make the sounds and move to words. I have downloaded the picture font to make my own worksheets. It is very concrete to abstract and she is loving it. Plus, it it free! http://www.center.edu/ProgramDownloads/ProgramDownloads.shtml

I have all the Simply books, but I bought them when they were not all together in one LA book. I have the Simply English and Poetry and they are very good. I am happier with queen's but may use SE again in the future. I use Queen's LL for my kids now, but continue with Simply Spelling. We use it on a daily basis. Two days for copy work one for dictation. Occasionally, generally once or twice a week, I have my eldest do a prepared dictation. He is in level C, my younger boys are in A and B. I wanted a workbook format which is why I switched to Queen's for the LA and also because she had full color picture study. I will buy the Spelling Wisdom down the road too. Since we do more than one lesson per week in Simply Spelling my kids will complete each of their levels fairly quickly. I have been wanting to get SW, but I can't justify it just yet. I used Simply Phonics with my last son and it was nice, but he wanted something more colorful. It is thorough though. Simply Numbers is ok, but we went to MUS and have stayed there. I like a workbook and SN was a copy-the-lesson kind of book.

We are on our second trip through CHOW, once with Ambleside and this time with SL core 1+2. My kids seem to really like it. We are creationist Christians and so I just skipped the first three chapters. We often use this book as a reference too. My husband watched the movie "300" and I found myself grabbing my CHOW and reading him the account that movie is based on. It is nice to keep around for a quick overview of world history, plus it has a nice conversational style.

Thanks! I needed that. I can be like a dog on a bone when I am looking for something and I was beginning to think I had imagined it. :001_smile: I am trying to find something fairly fun for grammar. We do it in seasons and one is scheduled for this summer-- my own scheduling OCD is coming out. I thought I had save the link, but I can't find it.

Please? I know I saw it here. Someone said the lady didn't market her curriculum very well (to this I can attest after a LONG search) , but that is was a great alternative to diagramming. I have been searching for hours.:confused: Yellow book, used little pictures to label things. Maybe the word "mechanic" was in it? I remember a picture of a vice.

My youngest is really enjoying Dekodiphukan (decode if you can). It is free online and you can find it by Googling the title above. I have printed out the story, the blackline masters, and the various worksheets and placed them in a binder. Much of the materials are not necessary as they are for classroom use. Be advised that many of the downloads do no work as they are for older Mac computers, but there is enough to make it work I watched the videos on this page and it was very helpful. http://www.center.edu/ProgramDownloads/ProgramDownloads.shtml It uses pictures for the 44 phonetic sounds and teaches blending before introducing letters. My daughter is loving it.

Well, that is a really neat link, but not quite what I was looking for. I am pretty sure it was a yellow book and they had little pictures that labeled parts of the sentence. I was thinking there was a picture of a vice maybe? It was a curriculum for very visual learners. Anyone else have any ideas? I know I saw it first here, but can't remember where.

I saw something on this board once and now I can't find it again. I believe it was a yellow book and there were various pictures used to designate the parts of a sentence. I thought it might have the word "easy" in it but I can't remember. Anyone know what that was. The one who posted about it said it was a great program, but that they didn't market their site well and could be hard to find. TIA

We are only in the beginning, but I have heard from many that they have dropped the Eastern Hemisphere Explorer and the World Book cd without detriment to the course. I haven't decided how much of the EHE we are going to do, but probably a little out of each country, but not the whole thing. We have the four day and it has A LOT of books. I believe there is no one spine, but a variety of books that expound on each country. So far (four weeks) my kids are really loving it.

We do half-days, until lunch, almost year round only taking out time to travel cross-country to farm our ground. I use a timer for all lessons which last appx. 10- 25 minutes. This encourages the habit of concentrated attention. When the timer dings they move on and pick it up the next day. We are CMers. We probably do classes 49 weeks out of the year.

Along these lines I highly recommend www.thywordcreations.com . We have all of the books and the Romans 6-8 cd and the kids have just about everything memorized. The lady that made the Roman's cd is also working on the entire book of Hebrews set to music also.

:iagree: or Simply Spelling from Shoelace books. I use SS, but I am going to get Spelling Wisdom for variety soon.

:iagree::iagree:

We are going to do three years of Latin...Prima, LC I, and LC II, before moving on to Rosetta Stone Spanish. I believe that Latin is a strong foundation class, while Spanish will fill a need for the rest of their lives. I know others go on to many more Latin courses, but I look at it more as a basement foundation for other languages.

I love dictation. When I was studying the CM method I learned that spelling really requires the abillity to photograph a word in your mind. With so many exceptions to phonetic rules it makes sense that seeing a word forwards and backwards really helps to make it stick. My kids study the problem words in their dictation until they can see them backwards. We also pick out any common phonics blends or digraphs. I like Spelling Wisdom too.

Would First Form also have DVD's eventually? I have LC II that I was planning on using next, but is First Form better? I love the DVD lessons. Is First Form written to the student in such a way that they wouldn't need a teacher/DVD? What is the cost?

I emailed the Queen's about LA for my new 6th grader and basically it is asssumed that a child is also writing in other areas on a daily basis in addition to the LL. If you are an avid CMer then oral narration is taking a great deal of your compostion time. Daily dictation taken from readers also encourages correct grammar. With years of practice a child should be able to narrate and then write a complete summary of whatever they have just read. I believe that the Queen's Lessons cover the formal essay in the second HS level book that is coming out in the near future. I believe that Secondary 2 covers grammar more thoroughly, but I could be wrong about that. CM tends to delay grammar or gradually stretch a typical text over a much longer period of time. Correct grammar is practiced during oral and written narrations. I am sticking with Queen's for the duration. I may add in Analytical Grammar for a season or two, but for the most part I adore the gentle nature of the Queen's books.