There isn't a perfect answer. For most kids, as long as you're consistently working on sounding things out, they'll be fine. So don't stress!

So we call my DH the superintendent. (I'm the teacher and principal.) For the family business, I'm the unofficial chairman of the board. (DH is the president and CEO.) Seems like a fair trade.

Another vote for Bohnanza and Carcassone, with Bohnanza being my absolute favorite. I agree that you should definitely use the normal, not junior, version of Apples to Apples. OP, I'd say that Clue is better for a younger crowd. Trivial Pursuit is definitely aimed for teen to adult, so it might work well. A couple more to try: RoboRally - use directional cards to plan the route your robots will take, then all of the robots move (sometimes throwing each other off track, or even off the board). This one is great for teens and adults. Keeps you thinking, and despite being a bit long, the pace of the game is good. Quiddler - word card game - I love it, but only with a crowd that's not likely to challenge every word. Then it takes too long.

Math Dash (the board game), the 24 game, xtramath.org, multiplication wrap ups

For a fun supplement, there's a Basher book about weather.

The Ruth Heller books about the parts of speech are beautiful picture books. Many Luscious Lollipops is about adjectives. I think there are 7 total.

Yes, Stack the States is a great option. We also use a puzzle of the US, the game 10 Days in the USA, GeoCards (and others from this company like GeoDice, GeoBingo). Eventually we'll get around to filling in blank maps. I think memorizing states and capitals is a great opportunity for learning through play. There are lots of games focused on it.

Exploring different mediums freely is great for encouraging creativity. Don't forget that teaching principles is the other side of that coin - form, color, technique. For example, when painting, you could have assignments to create a color wheel, to develop different values of a color, and eventually to exactly match the colors on a fabric or wallpaper sample.

That's a really difficult stage for me - just on the cusp of being able to read so much, but not quite there. Here are some that my kids loved: Francis books Magic School Bus (originals and chapter books) The Big Balloon Race Arnold Lobel - he wrote a lot that you don't see as often today Henry and Mudge Alexander McCall Smith's juvenile books are lovely. The Akimbo books are the easiest of them, but still at a higher level than these others. Non-chapter books helped us full in some gaps, too. Non-fiction, compilations of fairy tales, the Mr. Men and Little Miss books (vocabulary is high in these, but they're picture books), magazines, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes.

Lives of the Musicians: Good Times, Bad Times (And What the Neighbors Thought) by Kathleen Krull is well-loved here. My kids find it amusing and read it for fun.

Have you considered including the Newbery Honor books as well as the medal winners? Often if the book that won the award in a particular year isn't appropriate for a young reader, one of the Honor books from that year would be a great substitution. The year Bridge to Terabithia won, Ramona and Her Father was an Honor book. When Julie of the Woods won, Frog and Toad Together was an Honor book.

Yep, I have one like that. She keeps us on our toes - and her Sunday school teacher, too! I adore her deep thoughts, and I often wonder what else she's thinking about that she doesn't mention. There's a lot going on in her brain. That was me, too. Pondering the nature of eternity at 3, according to the family story. I grew up to be more than averagely concerned about moral issues, integrity, religion, service. But otherwise pretty normal? I figure society needs our deep thinkers.

Try exaggerating like crazy when you say the word out loud, using a couple of different options for stressed syllables. The wrong stress pattern (I hope!) will sound distinctly worse to your ears. ap-PLI-ance AP-pli-ance ap-pli-ANCE This is too technical for a 2nd grader, but you can also try dropping vowels or changing vowels to a schwa ("uh") sound. In English, we tend to change unaccented syllables to schwas, and sometimes we drop them altogether. So if it sounds crazy to change a vowel to a schwa, it's likely an accented syllable. uh-PLI-uhnce is understandable and dropping the last vowel also works fine, but changing the middle vowel "I" to a schwa sounds odd. So the accent must go on the second syllable. This even works on words with 2 long vowel sounds, like "oatmeal" - OAT-muhl sounds better than uht-MEAL.

So sorry for your loss. I'm glad you all got to have a little time with him here on earth.

Yes, Caesar's English and classic literature, both on her own and as read alouds.

The whole first part of the book is available to preview on Amazon, so definitely check that out before you buy it. Gallagher lays out 6 reasons we write, then covers each one in detail, with examples and many suggestions for writing assignments. Some ideas are emphasized throughout the book, like modeling your own writing process, but there's great content throughout. He covers these writing purposes: express and reflect, inform and explain, evaluate and judge, inquire and explore, analyze and interpret, and take a stand/propose a solution. Editing and polishing is covered in one chapter, but is clearly not the main point of the text.

I totally agree with the other posters - go for what you know and like. Any foreign language is a success. I don't think we should stress so much about which one. And just to tip you over the edge, here are a few advantages that French has: It's spoken on every continent, and it's second only to English in the number of countries that have it as an official language A research language - at a certain advanced level in many disciplines, you're expected to have a basic knowledge in a research language or two (meaning that you'll be able to translate academic research from another language). French and German are the most common ones for English-speakers. Helps you understand English - Norman conquest and all that One of the best languages for ballerinas, artists, musicians, chefs Rich literature tradition - much more than in most languages

Is the Peter Pan version abridged? The original jumps out at me as being much higher in difficulty level than the others on the list (assuming that you're using a children's version of Gulliver's Travels). If you wanted to use the unabridged version, it makes a great read aloud. We love the D'Aulaire books! My kids really enjoy the "you wouldn't want to be" books, also.

OK, in that case, I wouldn't worry about reading the trilogy books in a certain year. The literature references in the main MCT texts do include the books in his trilogies, but a lot of others as well. Caesar's English, for instance, includes tons of sentences from great literature featuring the vocabulary words. Some are books you'd want to read now or have already read (like the Alice, Peter and Mole trilogy, or The Secret Garden). Others are books like Wuthering Heights, that kids this age probably aren't ready for. There's not a clear connection between certain books and certain levels of the grammar/writing/vocabulary/poetry. My kids like that they've already read some of the books featured, and I like that they're getting familiar with some other books that they'll read later. Long post short, it doesn't really matter ;)

We did astronomy last year. The kids loved it! We went to a planetarium, a meeting of a local astronomy club (to get access to telescopes), and did some stargazing. These were good books: Usborne Book of Astronomy and Space Janice VanCleave's Astronomy for Every Kid (some of the experiments/demonstrations are too advanced for 1st grade) These were our favorites: Find the Constellations by H.A. Rey (Yes, the author of Curious George! His original astronomy book is aimed at slightly older kids. Also adorable, it's called The Stars). Basher Astronomy

The Mud books are about characters that are introduced in the other books at this level - it would certainly be more fun to read through Sentence Island at least. And the 4-level analysis that you'll see in the literature books is introduced in Grammar Island. So yes, you'll get more out of it if you use the rest of the books, but if your main interest is in the discussion questions, they are independent. (Edited to correct the book Mud shows up in! He's just in Sentence Island.)

MCT literature - I like it, but know it for what it is. It's the original works with some annotations: vocabulary, notes on style and technique, and 4-level analysis of sentences from the text. The teacher manual is thin, but provides some excellent questions to discuss and potential writing topics. The most interesting questions have the kids consider the novels as they relate to each other. SEARCH is not intended to take 2 years. MCT just hasn't done a set of literature for every level yet, so SEARCH is listed as a possibility for two different levels. By the time you get there, I'm sure there will be a literature set for each level. In fact, if they sell well, I expect that even more will be added. I'm pretty sure he talked about writing some literature about the Queequack character from the Town level ...

I agree with nansk - I don't feel like just one resource can get me there. And I like the books she recommended, too. I also like Write Like This by Kelly Gallagher.

The Suppose the Wolf Were an Octopus series from Royal Fireworks Press might fit the bill. Each volume has questions at each level of Bloom's taxonomy for different books. I think once you went through a couple of novels using this as a guide, you'd be ready to try it on your own. I like the questions in Michael Clay Thompson's literature teacher guides even more, but I think you can only get those by buying his annotated literature volumes.

What kind of exams are they? Are you talking about a written theory exam? Or a juried performance?