I am looking for a list of which Jim Weiss stories go with each chapter of Story of the World. I know that the Activity Guide for Volume 1 lists many of Jim's CD's under the Additional Resources for the chapter, but the Volume 2 Activity Guide does not. Is there a correlated list anywhere? Thanks in advance for any help!

We start in mid-August and go through early June. Public school here starts after Labor day.

We are really lucky to be in an area where there is tremendous support for public libraries. We are able to have cards to two counties worth of libraries. (We have reciprocity with libraries from 10 other counties, but haven't needed cards for them yet.) One has a 50 item limit per card, and the other no limit. We can put upt o 25 books on hold per card, and there is a 3 week check-out with 3 full renewals. Growing-up I didn't appreciate libraries, but I don't know how I would function without them now. Sorry to hear about the frustrating policy at your "local" library.

I tend to be a boxer-checker and ruler follower. I find that when I plan things too stringently too far in advance, I become more concerned about checking off the boxes then really allowing my kids to learn and explore at their pace and based on their needs. What works best for us is to have a routine and goals for the year. I sit down to plan out the details of our lessons on a weekly basis and, keeping the overall goals in mind, try to set reasonable weekly milestones during each planning session to help us make progress. For right now, it seems to be working, but every family needs are so different, so YMMV.

We just finished our K year in VA. Dd was not 6 before Sept 30th of 2012, so no need to test. If the school system is insisting you test, you can find the specific law online at the HSLDA website or the VA state education website. The state office of homeschool instruction is very helpful with sorting out issues, as are the state-wide homeschooling organizations like VAhomeschoolers and HEAV. (Sorry for the lack of hyperlinks, my mobile device makes it hard to do)

We split our afternoon time between Science and History, usually doing between 2 and 3 days of science each week. Right now I am struggling with deciding between doing those 2 days back to back for continuity with the subject matter or alternating between history and science throughout the week

I did print off the lesson plans, but find that I don't need them printed. When I sit down to plan for my kids each week, I glance through the PDF version of the lesson plan we are studying to see if their are any good ideas. I am not so great at coming up with hands-on ideas for my kids, and some of the hyperlinks in the lesson plans lead to great ideas. Especially with her Letter of the Week curriculum. I also glance through the plan to see what things would interest my son,and print those off. I am taking the time to laminate some of the pages, as ds is not my youngest, and I want to save myself the work of doing some of these things again with another child. The printed or laminated pages we haven't consumed go in a binder for that letter at the end of the lesson. We are using K4 and Letter of the Week by Confessions of a Homeschooler as a supplement for other things we are doing. Hope this helps!

Our family got an ipad over a year ago. I am mostly a pen and paper kind of girl. Although I have learned to love reading books on my kindle. It wasn't until both the kindle and the laptop died in the same week that it had to figure out how to use and love the ipad. After a few weeks of playing around with it, I have found I really do love it. I have particularly enjoyed the following things: Playing audio and video where I am working in the house The kindle app PDF expert apps, so I can make notes and comments right on my PDFs Educational games for the kids Productivity apps...hopefully eventually Olly :) Downloading PDFs of curriculum and viewing them on the ipad...even at the park :) Notetaking on the ipad ( so easy to organize and sort through later) Airprint apps, allowing me to print from the ipad to the printer. It really did take me well over a year to love it, but now I have decided that I would rather have another ipad or 2 than a new laptop. (We do have a desktop computer, so we won't be completely sans traditional computer.). Good luck with your new ipad. Hopefully you can find ways to make it work for your family!

My 6 year-old tells me that the best games in our house are: Sleeping Queens Qwirkle Rush Hour JR. Rat-a-tat-cat Forbidden Island

We live in a small, 2 bedroom, townhouse and are lucky to have 3 wonderful kids. Current market situation doesn't allow us to upgrade to a larger home, so by necessity, after the birth of our 7 month-old, we are in the emptying out. The goal is to have 50% less stuff by the end of the summer. It has been difficult at times, but the rooms that are finished really do feel more homey, and, as a bonus, I am spending less time cleaning up the clutter. As for curriculum, anything that we bought but haven't found useful is gone, which includes at least three math programs, a handwriting program, 2 Language Arts programs, 1 science and 2 history programs. We have been trying to buy more thing digitally, which saves us space on the bookshelf. Somethings, however, just need to be hard copy. We have gotten rid of projects, and reassured the kids by taking pictures of items we no longer have room for. They still have the memories, but we aren't taking up space with old projects. It is good to know there are others out there on this journey as well!

We are fairly new to hsing, but have found that we love the following: SOTW with activity guide MUS Jim Weiss Sonlight's Read Aloud lists

I love Wednesday Wars. So many great characters and themes. There are some issues that children will need to be guided with in a follow-up discussion.