I couldn't find what I was looking for for dd at a price I could afford, so made up this one. It has spelling rules as copywork, word lists and dictation sentences. I'm working on level 2, but it's going a lot slower than planned. You can view the full program.

Although I have some aquaintances, I no longer have any close friends within driving distance and I'm really feeling the loss at the moment. My closest friend, the one I trusted to always have wise answers and whose company I really enjoyed immensely and whom I saw at least once a week, emigrated to Australia 6 weeks ago. I really miss her. We have been talking on Skype weekly, but its just not the same as sitting around a table and having a cup of coffee together. Our girls are very close in age and our husbands also got on well, so that made it easier to grow the friendship between ourselves and our families over the years. A very dear older friend, my "other mother", died about a year ago. She lived close to us and was a big part of our family. I still miss her too. My sisters and I communicate via email and Skype daily, but they live in the UK, so I don't get to see them very often either. I'm very good friends with my husband, but there is most definitely a difference in the type of friendships and understanding between women. I know that it will take some time for some of the aquaintances I have to grow towards more close friendships. It does take work though.

This post lists a number of free curriculums - you'd still need to pay for a printing though.

Ouch!!!

You can try the free Kiss Grammar site. The site is a bit hard to navigate, but there are workbooks available for the first few levels.

I voted "4 year cycle: WTM: Story of the World (SOTW 1-4)" because we're using SOTW, but we've taken three years to get to the end of Book 2. We do the activities in the guide with three other families. The moms take turns preparing the activities for 8 kids to do together one afternoon per week. I don't know how long it will take to finish books 3 & 4. We also read living books for South African history in parallel with the SOTW, so on slow "History Club" weeks, we add more local history.

This sounds interesting. Would you mind linking or forwarding ISBN numbers please? Thanks!

I was wondering why I've never had this problem with regular jeans (only with stretchy fabric ones), and that's it! We don't own a drier -very few people her do - so all laundry is hung out to dry.

I know of Homeschool share for literature based unit studies, First-school for themes, activities and printable worksheets, Letter of the week for units based on the letters of the alphabet and Kidzclub for activities, worksheets and crafts. ETA: I forgot about Learning Page

I would try it with everything except maths where for my dd repetition of the concepts is the key to retention.

Thanks for the replies Shannon, Mims and Linda. I was thinking of using it next year, but now we'll wait with it.

This sounds like a wonderful idea! I'd love a few ideas on how to get started please. What kind of things do you write? Thanks!

What a great idea!

Your file may have come from Jessica at Trivium Academy's blog. I think that she changed her teaching philosophy and programs somewhat after compiling the list, so am not sure that there is one for SOTW. Jessica?

I disagree. We have just started a loop here with a singleton. (ETA: my younger dd is in playgroup while the older homeschools). We do math, bible reading and violin practice daily and rotate through the rest of the schedule. I've got subjects that require writing followed by read-alouds or hands-on activities to vary the routine. The rotation makes it possible to spend as much time as required to finish something rather than rushing through to the next thing just because its scheduled. The idea is just to follow on down the list from the previous day. This means that things like composer study, longer read-alouds and other add-ons get done in addition to the basics.

This timeline index might be a good starting point. There's a people, personalities, heroes.. link.

Oh Wow! I didn't know one could do this either. Thanks for mentioning it.

What work do you do? I work in logistics - my team takes orders and makes sure that materials are despatched. How many hours per week? 25 hours. 7h30 to 12h30. Mo. to Fri. How old are your kids? 8 and 4 What are your kids doing while you are at work? I employ a childminder to look after my 8yo dd. She teaches her according to the schedule I set. Our final school term starts tomorrow (our year starts in Jan) and we're going to start with a loop schedule, so will see how that goes. When I get home we go over the work done in the morning. I teach math and some history. My 4yo dd goes to a small playgroup with a fantastic teacher 4 days a week and on Fridays stays with the childminder as well. She is then included with some 'school work' or plays on her own while her sister does a light schedule.

That's a really neat idea. Thanks Linda.

I must have clicked on the link more than 100 times today!! It's made me realize just how serious this addiction is.

Another book we've used a lot is 120 Great History Projects. It has colour pictures of the projects - great for those of us who are craft challenged. The Egyptian crown is included.

I can only see one page as a sample on the Sonlight website. Is the rest of the book in the same format as the Australia page 24? Did you children learn from it? Thanks!

Thanks Paige, I PM'd you.

Another to consider is Kiss Grammar. It's free, so worth a try.

I want to do one more level to cover multi-syllable words, syllable division, prefixing, suffixing, plurals, etc. I'm working on it, but family health issues and work pressures are making progress slower than I had intended. I'm hoping to have it done for our new school year starting in January, but don't want to make any promises. My intention for my daughter is that after she has learned the basic spelling rules, she moves onto a method like Spelling Wisdom that uses dictation as basis to learn spelling. We'll keep reviewing the rules as they come up. All I know of All About Spelling is what I've seen on their website. I think the similarities are that I have based Word Attack on basic spelling rules (Google spelling rules and a couple of lists come up) and offer dictation sentences. Each lesson in Word Attack explains the spelling rule, provides the rule as a copywork sentence, gives spelling lists for the word (based on the read-copy-write-check method) and provides dictation sentences to practice the spelling rules. You need only the workbook and loose paper for the sentences. It's very much a no-frills program. From their website I see that All About Spelling requires letter tiles and has other supplementary tools. The steps that would need to be covered are: Read and explain the rule to the student Copy the rule and put it up on the wall for review Read - copy - write and check the list of spelling words based on the rule as well as the sight word. Copy down any incorrectly spelled words. Practice the incorrectly spelled words again. Take down dictation sentences Review additional dictation sentences if required to cement the rule. The above could be done in a week, but if required, take longer. Thanks for bringing the problem with the sample to my attention. I made a change a few months ago and somehow messed it up and ended up with only the first 10 pages in the preview. I've now put the entire book up in preview mode. I know that this means my work is now freely available, but I hope that anyone who uses it, will recognize the effort and choose to buy it.