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.

I chose "homeschool some, outsource some" because I employ and au pair while I work mornings and she teaches my 8yo dd according to the schedule that I set. In the afternoons, I check the work done and teach math and history. My 4yo dd goes to playgroup 4 mornings a week. ETA: My eldest also has violin, horse-riding and pottery outsourced.

I don't know much about Guatemala, but any foreign exchange based in a free market is valued by the demand for the money. The demand comes from transaction demand (people needing it to buy goods and services in the country in which the currency is used) or speculative demand (people wanting to keep the money for a period because they think it will increase in value against their own currentcy). In times of economic downturn, people tend to want to invest less in emerging markets (such as I pressume Guatamala to be) because there is more uncertainty in those markets and rather have their money in stronger currencies (like the US$ or Euro) or in something physical with inherent value like gold or platinum (which is why the prices of these commodoties have gone up). The quetzales is probably loosing value against the dollar because speculative buyers are pulling out. The longer term value depends on what investors believe the economic prospects of Guetemala are and how much foreigners wish to invest in the country. I hope this makes sense!

Because of deterioration of the State Education system, high teacher:learner ratios (targetted at 1:40) and a new outcomes-based curriculum that was introduced unsuccessfully in 2005, many more people in South Africa are homeschooling for academic reasons. The schools act has allowed for homeschooling since 1996. The law states that home education should meet the minimum requirements of the curriculum for public schools. It is, however, open to interpretation what this means. If it comes to it in a court of law, the parent will have to prove that the best interests of the child pertaining to education are served by non-attendance of a school. The majority of homeschoolers join a legal defence fund rather than registering with the Education Department. There are local curriculum providers, but most follow a "school-at-home" approach with exam services included. The homeschool market and therefor the range of products is growing and the quality is improving. There is an annual expo in most of the major centres. Most of the materials we use comes from the USA or is home-made. We live in a fairly small town and there are 15 families in our homeschooling group. The group organizes field trips, information and encouragement days and last year we did a year-end concert in which families from neighbouring towns also took part. 60 kids were involved.

What are grade-level rubrics and where do I find them?

Thanks for linking the sites! If you're still looking for a site for younger kids, you can try G Major Music Theory

I ordered from RR recently and about 45% of the total cost was for shipping. Not that it's RR fault, it's just the cost of shipping. With the catalogue included they paid more for the shipping than they charged. Adding insult to injury, I then had to pay 12% import duty, more than doubling the cost of the books. It does make one consider every purchase VERY carefully. Unforetunately only if you're in the USA. The small print on the front cover of the catalogue says *some restrictions apply. :iagree: I also ask if the supplier will sell a download rather than a hard copy and have been pleasantly surprised. The author of a very popular writing program went to the trouble of providing a special download on Lulu.com for me for a few hours. I got excited too. Bookdepository's ad that they do "Free Delivery Worldwide" is for a small world :001_huh: Seems like anywhere outside of the USA is a problem for homeschoolers. Especially since surface mail was stopped last year. I've learned to make a lot of material myself and to use free curriculum. Printing costs are less than shipping costs!

I voted "one year at a time" as we are still considering the possibility of emigrating (if dh's health allows it) and it really depends on the country we end up in. If it's an English speaking country, we'll continue homeschooling. If we move to a country with another language, we'd probably put the children in school so that they can learn to speak, read and write the language fluently and to pick up on the culture.

In South Africa, refugees and immigrants are eligible for medical health care by law, but for various reason they often have problems accessing this care. State health facilities are overcrowded and underfunded and there is a lot of xenophobia amongst staff who would rather treat local people. We recently had terrible xenophobic violence and many foreigners were moved to camps for their own safety. The feeling against immigrants is that they take jobs away from local people. With uneployment at around 40%, the emotions around this run high. Illegal immigrants are arrested and kept in deportation centres from where they are bussed or flown to the countries from where they come. They get basic health care, food and access to cold showers and amenities at the centres. Children born to non-South Africans do not get South African citizenship.

It's a great idea!! I'd love that, but I think we'd end up living next door.:001_smile:

I'm enjoying all the responses! http://www.librarything.com A site where you can catalogue your books and give them tags for easy reference. The first 200 are free and thereafter you can join for a year or lifetime.

Where do you keep them?

I have been entering our books into Libarything in the last few months and although I always knew we have *lots* of books, I didn’t expect them to add up to over 2000. On Librarything there are people with much larger libraries and I wonder where and how they store them all. We have large bookshelves in every room and I think 2500 is probably our limit as we purge as we go to make space for new books. I don’t like the thought of double stacking or of putting books into storage. Our adult books are mostly history, philosophy, art, field guides and some homeschooling and parenting books. We hardly ever keep novels. The bulk of our collection is children's books (fiction and non-fiction) as we have a very poor public library. I am always looking for bargains and have found many over the years. How many books do you own? What types of books are they? How do you store them?

A pamper basket with champagne, champagne flutes, candles, bubble bath, chocolate, etc. has been well received by couples who already have their own homes set up. For younger couples, I usually buy something off the registry.

If you're thinking of sending new books, it might be worth considering Amazon.co.uk for a saving in the postage costs from the UK vs USA.

So, I just practically yelled "Be nice to your sister, use a gentle voice" to my dd. Tell me I'm not the only bad Mom around...

Just to add one more option...we're using the free Kiss Grammar. My 3rd grade started with the 2nd grade text. It's very thorough.

Wow Eliana, you are awesome! I have a file called "Eliana's recommendations" and I've not been dissapointed with yet! Regards, Hannah

Thanks for mentioning this! For others trying to find it, here's a direct link to lit2go.

We enjoy Storynory and Librivox.

I don't think that my dd had a very clear idea of the time periods involved (or that she has it now aged 8), but with the timeline, history cards and memory sentences she has visual reminders for the sequence of events. It also helped to reinforce what we'd learned earlier. Thanks Kelly! I use google images for the timeline pictures. If you're using SOTW1 and SOTW2, I've made our pictures and a template available at the Yahoo group.

In the triangle-like shape we have above, the strips are about 15 inches in length for 3000 bc to 0 and from 0 to 1499. 1500 to 1599 is about 2.5 feet, 1600 to 1699 about 2.75 feet and a bit longer piece for every following century. 1900 to 1999 is just over 3 feet long.