I don't really have anything to add better than what Critterfixer said, but just wanted to chime in that beekeeping can be fun and rewarding! :) I don't do it myself, but my husband and my DS do it, and it's a fun hobby for them to do together. At first having the bees right on our property kind of freaked me out, but they really are very fascinating creatures. Last summer one of the hives swarmed and we happened to see it as it was happening and the swarm landed just a few feet away from the original hive. Watching thousands and thousands of them swirling in the air and then landing in a huge clump right on top of the queen and just hanging there in a 4' chain was really and truly an amazing sight. DS got them into another hive box we had sitting around so we didn't lose them. I just wish they didn't like our swimming pool so much! lol This is the 2nd winter they've had them and they've learned a lot. They got started by talking to a beekeeper my DH works with and he became their mentor and walked them through their first year. Our local Indiana Beekeepers Association puts on an annual "bee school" where they've learned a lot too. And DS took beekeeping in 4H as well. They've had some hits and misses but this year looks to be a good one. They've got 5 or 6 hives that made it through the winter well and they have high hopes for a good year this season. Good luck!

I remember debating between them both and I finally settled on VCR. I like that it writes out several different definitions and gives many different possibilities for how each word could be used contextually, rather than requiring the student to come up with their own ideas of how it might be used. I also like the way it asks them to pick out the sentence where the word is used incorrectly. That's been very valuable for us.

We do all of our normal subjects M-Th and Fri is our "easy" day. On Fri we all do math but it's "fun" math, like online games or Hands-On Geometry or Math on the Menu or Drive-Thru Math or stuff like that. We might grade some Analytical Grammar for the middles and type some spelling words for the youngers. If they have any math or science tests we try to have them on Fridays. Then we do art and we go to a PE class in the afternoon. Easy peasy! Even my high schooler has an easier day on Fridays. He does math, then works on some geography with an online game, and does either vocab or grammar review. Then he goes to PE class with us in the afternoon. We have no problem getting a "year's worth" of stuff done, even if some of the curriculum is designed for a certain number of days. It takes a little bit of scheduling work on my part to see what we need to cover in those 144 days (36 weeks x 4 "normal" days/week - because we are required to do 180 days in Indiana) but so far it's never been a problem to get it all done. And it's totally worth it to have Fridays be an easy start to the weekend! :)

I had a mom tell me a few weeks ago that the Purdue admissions guy specifically told her that they like to see Apologia's science on homeschool transcripts because they "know what it means" - so I assume that means it has no negative connotations for them. YMMV.

What writing program are you currently using? DS did Wordsmith Craftsman first, and then did WttW. I thought it was very helpful and important for him to know how to write standard essays (narrative, expository, persuasive, etc.) before doing lit analysis. So if you're still working on essay writing, I'd probably recommend finishing that and getting proficient at that first before doing WttW. But yes, WttW has enough writing on its own without supplementation, IMO. The year DS did WttW he finished that in ~26 weeks and then afterwards did 2 units from Excellence in Literature (using the lit analysis skills he learned in WttW and applying them to longer works) and we called it a full English credit.

We are using Destinos now for Spanish II/III to get the listening comprehension practice in, and it's excellent for that. But I don't think it would work well as a first introduction to Spanish. We used Visual Link Spanish Levels I thru III first to get his grammar in place. That worked well, and my son is not having any trouble understanding Destinos now. I do have the textbook and CDs and workbooks and CDs, which is a lot of components but it does help him to practice his written Spanish.

We loved it and I will definitely use it again with all of my kids. It is a lot of writing, but it takes you step by step through how to analyze literature and write a good lit analysis paper. Since you're focusing on short stories instead of full novels, it seems much less intimidating to tackle. We covered it all in about 26 weeks. And to answer your question from your other thread, we did not use the Jill Pike syllabus or Teaching the Classics and we did just fine without them. The teacher manual and student book are all you need. :) Hope that helps!

We loved Science in the Beginning and the follow up books are good too. We ended up not using them because I found that we prefer to do science by subject, not chronologically, but I still think they're a good program. Dr. Wile is wonderful! We used them when I had a 6th, 4th, and K'er. It was just right for the 4th grader, a smidge too easy for the 6th grader, and a lot of it went over the K'er's head. We loved the experiments every day.

Last year in 5th my DD: Read 12 high quality classic children's books that went along with our history studies and wrote a short one paragraph summary of each Completed a lit guide for one of the books (skipping the vocab sections) Did about 15 minutes of AAS 4x/week Easy Grammar Grade 5 Wordsmith Apprentice and then created a family newspaper to send out to family and friends Wordly Wise Grade 5 It was a pretty easy language arts year (for me ;). Like you, I was not impressed with Easy Grammar, so for my next DD I will likely use Fix-It Grammar instead, probably books 1 & 2, before heading on to Analytical Grammar in 6th-8th, which my 2 DS's have really enjoyed and learned a lot from.

This is the fine line I walk, especially with my oldest. I'm glad I'm not the only one! :)

You are wise to do this! Also, I don't know how to multi-quote, but Homeschool Mom in AZ's suggestion to plan the whole year out at the get-go is a good one. I do tweak it as necessary, usually re-evaluating every 9 weeks and making some changes, and I never put dates on things, just plan out what I want to cover in what order over 36 weeks, but it is sooooooo helpful to have everything laid out at the beginning of the school year. Plus I'm an organizational nerd, and planning is my hobby. ;)

This was my impression as well. Of course I haven't read every page yet, so I may be surprised when I actually start doing the lessons with her, but I'm hoping you're right and it's easy to gloss over the rude condescending parts.

Welcome to homeschooling! I jumped into it when my kids were older too (8th, 6th, 4th, and K). We don't do Latin here - please don't throw tomatoes :) - so I can't speak to that, but the rest looks like a good solid lineup. Are they all going to be on the same Artistic Pursuits book? We did it as a group here and it worked out fabulously, even though the book we did was geared for younger kids. The older ones were able to put more effort and skill into their creations and it was a fun time for us all together. Doing as much as possible our first year all together really helped solidify us as a homeschooling unit and set a great tone for our homeschool, even though we do more things separately now. It was great to build that family culture the first year. Just a caution though about that first year ... while I did all the research I could and made very informed choices, some stuff just didn't work out. I didn't/couldn't know ahead of time what my homeschooling style would be, and while I knew my kids well enough to know what their learning styles are, I just didn't have the experience to know what kind of flow we would need to our day and what programs would work well with that. So although your choices look great, don't feel like you're "married" to them if they don't work. It's really ok to have some hits and misses your first few years. It doesn't mean you didn't do your homework well enough, it just means sometimes things need to be adapted. Good luck! ETA: We use Handwriting w/o Tears too and while I think it's kind of ugly, once they know how to form the letters in cursive, they really start to add their own handwriting quirks pretty quickly. So it's only ugly for a little while. :)

Mr. Q has a good life science and earth science, and the experiments and lab sheets (you can download these from the site) are great. I'm not a fan of Mr. Q physical science and chemistry, but the life and earth are good. Dr. Wile's Science in the Beginning series is great to give a creationist perspective while not being dogmatic about the age of the earth, but you're not going to be spending a long time on zoology with him. It skips around a lot more from subject to subject. I am also YEC and can't stand Apologia's tone. I am using God's Design from AiG next year instead. I really don't like Ken Ham all that much really, but I think the tone is more ... sporadic, maybe? easier to edit on the fly? ... than Apologia. Anyway, that's my plan. Edit as I go any tone I don't like, because I think the program is solid.

The vendor hall will be immensely overwhelming. The first time I went, I almost couldn't get out of there fast enough and it made me want to cry that I absolutely did not know how to make all these big decisions, even though now I really love browsing and shopping. It would probably be ok for a couple of hours if you know ahead of time which books/resources you want to get your hands on to look through and you go only to those booths. Welcome to homeschooling in all its messy reality! :)

This is basically what we do. DS doesn't really like the time-based schedule because he feels like he can never "get ahead" and "finish early". For things like Chemistry and Spanish and Grammar/Vocab, he can work ahead and when the book is finished, then he's done and it's a credit, and I feel comfortable with that. But for those types of subjects that are mostly reading & discussion based, such as Health and Literature and History, I feel like we need the time schedules/guidelines to make sure what we're doing is credit worthy. He understands that, but he doesn't like it. And I often tell him since he's my oldest he's the guinea pig and I'll figure out a better system by the time his younger sibs get to high school! Lol But I don't keep track day to day or even week to week or month to month. We just both know he needs to work for about an hour-ish on each subject each day (2 hours each day for the subjects he does in a block schedule), and as long as he does that, we're good.

We are doing 1 credit of "Ancient and Medieval World History" that covers the ancients up to the 1700s. Then we are doing "USH in World Context I and II" for 2 credits over 2 years, which will cover the North American Explorers through Civil War/Reconstruction and Westward Expansion through the Present respectively and which will also cover events and people from all over the world as they intersect with US History. I borrowed the course name from regentrude on these boards and I love it! :) My goal is to show on a transcript that we did cover the whole span of world history at a high school level, just not all in 1 year, and with a specific focus on US History.

I have the old MM6 and my DD just finished it. She is taking some "break" time to do Life of Fred Fractions and Decimals & Percents to make sure she has those down cold from a different angle before moving on to MM7 pre-algebra next year. I know MM7 will repeat a lot of stuff from the old MM6, but I'd rather have her do that than try to take on algebra before the other stuff is solid. She does great with the formulaic-type answers, but struggles with the word problems, so I think the extra time to re-do that stuff will be good for her. We did not do geometry from MM6 but did Hands-On Geometry instead this year, which she has loved. It was a free download that I found on these boards somewhere, sorry I don't have the link. Next year with MM7 we will probably skip the Geometry section there as well and do several chapters of the Critical Thinking Company Understanding Geometry instead along with it. She might do some Life of Fred Pre-Algebra (just the biology book, the other ones are not very good, IME) if she finishes MM7 before the end of 7th grade. Up through 5th grade we slogged through the MM Geometry stuff, but it never really was my favorite portion of MM.

We started AAS with my younger DD when she was in 1st grade after she finished AAR level 1 and part of level 2. She's got 9 weeks left of 2nd grade and just finished level 2. My older DD started AAS in Level 1 in the middle of 4th grade. She's now nearing the end of 6th grade and is almost done with Level 7. She's a pretty good speller and really only had to slow down once we got to the end of Level 5/beginning of Level 6.

My DD used WA in 5th grade along with AAS and Daily Grams and it worked well. Next time around with my younger DD I'll probably use Fix It Grammar instead of Daily Grams, not sure if you'd classify that as formal grammar or not. :) Older DD started AAS at the end of 4th grade and very quickly went through several levels and now is in 6th and set to finish Level 7. It has helped her spelling tremendously! She also did Wordly Wise 3000 for grade 5, which has surprised me at how well it's helped her vocabulary, and read/summarized several novels that went along with her history studies.

I just went through this same mental drama thing and spent hours reading threads and researching because my promo code ended March 2 ;) But this is what I ended up buying with that code for World History: History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective by Aldrete Foundations of Western Civilization I by Noble We're just doing Ancients up through Renaissance in 1 year. We'll do some world history as it intersects with US History the following year, so I figured this was a good stopping point. As far as output, I'm requiring him to take notes on all the lectures and discuss them with me. He will also write a compare/contrast paper on the world religions studied, and a cause/effect paper on the Reformation. He will also do some World Geography with Seterra software and then we'll call it a decent credit. Not AP quality, but certainly adequate and probably more in depth than I ever learned it. On a side note: Methinks The Great Courses is doing pretty well with that whole "newcomer promotion" and getting us all hooked on their stuff lol

I'm sorry you had this experience. Thanks for the heads up. Was it because you have a Mac and their software was only compatible with Windows users?

Hmmmmm ... so maybe calling/emailing and asking would be worth a shot?

:iagree: Totally!

I started hs'ing when my oldest was in 8th grade. That first year I also had a 6th grader, a 4th grader, a K'er, and a toddler. If I can do that, and I'm definitely nothing special, you can surely do 8th grade and K. :) If you've already talked to him about expectations and what it might actually look like and he's still interested, that's the biggest hurdle. You can do a great job without expensive, fancy curriculum and outsourcing. Focus on math and writing, especially if those are areas he is weak in, and he'll be prepared for whatever you and he decide for high school. If he likes science and reading nonfiction, let science and history be more interest led and relaxed so he has time to focus the hard work on the core areas of math and writing this first year and still have the down time he needs.