I am thinking about joining CC this year with my daughter and possibly son as well- we were going to be doing SOTW 1 for history, but if we join CC would that be too confusing? Maybe refocus on Ancients next year when my daughter is in 2nd instead and just do American history this year? I'm not sure. If we do American history, I don't think I would plan to match it up weekly with CC, but I have never done this before so it's all new to me if we end up doing it this year.

Following. I was curious as well- mainly the history, not so much the science.

It looks like the books have a lot of activities in them. I think that, along with lots of books and videos (and my daughter has been begging to go to the observatory) should be good for a 1st grader.

This is awesome. I think I am going to go this direction with this! My daughter was looking at your blog with me, and got really excited about it :)

Thanks everyone! Great ideas here!

Following. I am curious as well!

Thank you for posting that. At least I get get a feel for what Intellego's programs are like.

I like the cards, but you could always make your own. For some reason (with AAR, like I said, we haven't started AAS) my daughter feels extra motivated when she sees I am getting "new" cards from the box. And watching me file her "mastered" cards makes her very happy. I also agree about not using the tiles when other little ones are around. My younger one wants to be involved if she sees us use the tiles..if she sees us at the whiteboard, she is fine with doing her own thing.

Thanks for the suggestions. I haven't heard of Intellego. I am trying to find samples on their website, but I haven't been able to find any. Considering it is a unit study, do you do it everyday? How does it flow with you other subjects? Whitehawk- I briefly looked at that, but was thinking it was a year long course so didn't look into it further since we are looking for something shorter. I like the studies of the Earth and solar system, but do not want to do weather (we did that this past year, and honestly I am weathered out!), although I guess we could always skip that portion?

We are still narrowing down our science for the year, and my daughter has let me know she is not a fan of Sassafras Zoology (we are going to do Anatomy for the first semester- THAT she is excited about.) I'm trying to figure out what we will be doing after we finish Anatomy, and she told me she would like to do Astronomy. I was hoping to get some recommendations. We prefer secular, but open if it's a good program for a 1st grader. Thanks for any thoughts!

I second McRuffy. My daughter loves it- we used it for K and just started the 1st grade.

Following this. We have decided to go ahead and use AAS1 (for my 1st grader), as soon as we finish up AAR1. I know for AAR, we don't use the tiles all the time. I will use them probably once a week, but we mainly just use the white board. I was assuming AAS would be similar, and have only just recently flipped through it to begin planning. So far it's really the nicest spelling program I have seen in person, and think it will be worth the time. Although, I am only using it with one child right now, and I am pretty sure we won't use the tiles.

Getting my kids to bed before 8:30 is key for us. Anytime before 8:30 and everyone wakes up in a good mood. Our youngest sleeps in our room, so she usually falls asleep a little later than the other kids, but she sleeps a little later too. That is nice because it makes for quiet mornings and sometimes I am able to get in some school with my middle child (early riser) before the little one wakes up. It's summer now, so our schedule has been crazy, but tonight everyone was down before 8:30. I also feel like if I wake up anytime after 6:30 that I am wasting my day away. My husband does NOT feel that way :) I am always up before everyone because of the gym, but even on my day off I like to get up and enjoy some peace and quiet with no one else awake in the house.

I think part of my stress last year is that we lived so far from everything (by so far, I mean 20 minutes..)- where we live now, we are pretty much 5-10 minutes from everything EXCEPT when my son starts school. That will be a 20 minute drive, but I will only be doing that in the afternoons.

I recently found out that my son's school will be offering the extracurricular afternoon classes to homeschoolers (it's a small private school with homeschool options- really neat)- if there is anything that she wants to take outside of the aerial classes I think this might be our best option since we are going to be going there everyday for pickup anyways..we'll see. I forgot that in her one day enrichment program she was taking sign language, theater, etc. She LOVED those things..

My kids are beasts if they don't get a ton of sleep (they might get that from me... ;) ) I have literally been sitting here on the computer all morning doing nothing productive because I can haha. It's now 8:40..no sign of anyone waking up any time soon. It's actually driving me crazy right now because I feel like they are sleeping the day away. I think we will go on a long bike ride tonight to wear everyone out so they will go to bed a little earlier and we can get back on schedule. It's funny because I never used to be a morning person. I really became a morning person when I was marathon training, and now I am just kind of used to it (although I don't get up nearly as early as I used to.)

My kids went to bed at 9-9:30 last night and it's 8:15 am here right now. They are all still sleeping. This is why we typically have them go to bed earlier because normally we like to have them up and eating breakfast before this time so we can begin school at 9.

I like the kids to go to bed earlier so dh and I can have time to ourselves. My oldest is 11, so he stays up as late as he wants in his room reading or drawing, etc. Our 6 year old has been going to bed between 8-9 lately, and I really prefer it to be between 7:30-8. We moved a few months ago, so our schedule has been completely thrown off. Our 2 1/2 year old sleeps in our room, but goes to bed whenever we put our 6 year old to bed. She falls asleep pretty easily most of the time, and we are able to still stay up for a bit and watch our shows, read, whatever. I usually get up at 5:30 to go to the gym and workout, so I can't stay up super late. By the time I get home from the gym, dh has the kids fed and they are ready to start school before he leaves.

I absolutely love this idea. My dd is always looking at animals, bugs, etc in the yard.

Could you have her make a fairy garden? I don't know if you have a yard, but I send my 6 year old dd outside all the time to collect things for her fairy garden (she has created it, we haven't actually bought anything for it- but I have seen some cute ideas on pinterest!) I'm getting art bins for my kids so they can each have their own access to their own art supplies. Maybe have a craft box that has random things, supplies, etc and let he just make what she wants. My daughter is going through a phase where she wants to save everything and make art with it, but I have actually been hindering her because I haven't provided her with easier access to the supplies and have been "too busy" to let her go at it. I know I have a lot of other ideas, so I will come back to this as I think of them. I'm also curious to hear what others say as well.

Yea, I have come to find out that if we have any morning activities (besides the gym for me) that we just don't get much (if any) school work done. It's probably my fault, but by the time we get home from any activities etc I am worn out from chasing the 2 year old around, etc. so I just let the kids do whatever they want at that point. They can literally entertain themselves for hours and are actually doing creative things, but I really know we have our best "homeschool days" when we are focused in the morning until about lunch time. After that we can do anything else and be fine. I kind of wish we could have morning activities, and come home and do schoolwork afterwards but that just doesn't seem to work for us. If my youngest would nap, then it might work better. I kind of feel like we have had too many scheduled things this past year and we have been able to enjoy the fun things, library, museums, hiking, etc. because we have been tied down. I forgot to add that my son has educational/language therapy weekly as well.

I am still trying to figure out all the planning and details since this is our second year. I have been using OneNote to enter in this year's plans, and I'm liking it so far. I have make a weekly list of library books needed for each subject, along with supplies and any extra activities we will be doing. I am in the process of gathering all supplies needed for the first 6 weeks of school, and on week 5 I will gather the following 6 weeks worth of supplies. I am literally putting them in ziplock bags, labeled, in a tub. That way for any science experiments, history projects, art etc it's ALL THERE ready to go. I found that was my problem this year. If I didn't have everything in a convenient place or organized beforehand, it didn't get done. Things like math it's just do the next thing, so I'm not planning that out really. I am also doing the 36 week file folder system and have torn apart all workbooks we are using and separated them into their weekly spots. Anything that needs to be printed, I am printing and filing. I want everything as grab and go ready as I can. I am trying to think of things that would have made this past year easier on myself :) We'll see how this goes!

Thanks for the responses. It's interesting to see others' takes on scheduled out of the house activities. I think the OT and Aerial is enough scheduled for my daughter. It will give us plenty of time to be able to go on afternoon park days or just do whatever we want when we finish school for the day. That is 3 days of commitments for her. My husband will be taking our son to school everyday, and I will be picking up, so any outside commitments besides OT will have to be after pickup time. I just see some homeschool families that are always going and attending every.single.thing and I honestly wonder how they do it! How do they have time to do it all? Even for me to workout, I need to do it early before everyone is up or else I have to do it in the evening after a long day, and that is my only motivation to get up early in the morning to get it done ;)

I am trying to plan out our schedule for this year, and I do think I overdid it this past year (our first year homeschooling, I didn't want the kids to miss out or anything ;) You know how it is!) I am trying to realistically figure out what scheduled things/classes/etc we should plan on doing outside the house every week, and still leave room for letting the kids just BE KIDS. So far- my 6 year old daughter will be doing Occupational therapy 1x per week (morning). She loves sports of all sorts, and she is going to be doing 2x weekly Aerial classes(afternoon). She also wants to do an organized sport, but I am not sure about that. I think that would eat into our schedule and leave no time for park days and other things like that, so we might hold off until baseball season and let her do that since that seems to be her absolute favorite sport. There is an art class for homeschoolers that parents are allowed to do art in as well, so I think we will do that 1x per week before lunch also. I might be able to work that in as the same day we do OT, so we aren't leaving the house more than one morning/before lunch per week unless it's a field trip or something. My son will be going to a small private school, and he will do extra activities at school. After school he wants to do something, but not sure what yet. He likes the idea of sports, but isn't really into it. Trying to figure out something for him..I'd rather not have it be more than once or twice per week. My youngest is only 2 1/2 (she will be 3 in September) so she probably won't have anything specifically scheduled at this time being so young. Last year my daughter went to a one day per week homeschool enrichment program, which was great and she took so many fun classes..but I'm not sure I want to do it again this year as it takes away time we need to do school and I feel rushed on the other days, especially since we do have to go to OT one morning a week also..I always go to the gym before everyone gets up in the morning for 1 1/2-2 hrs, so I like to be able to come home and just do school for a bit before we have anything else to do in the afternoon instead of rushing around to get out of the house, and trying to fit in schoolwork later in the day.. Sorry this post is so disorganized..it's all my random thoughts that I am trying to piece together so I can feel somewhat more organized this year. I would just love to know what others' schedules are like for outside of the home (planned) activities.

I think it depends on what it is. In your situation, I would go ahead and sell it to be honest. But that's me. Unless I know we are going to use something in the future, than I just don't hold onto it. It sounds like you don't really care for this book in general, so why hold onto something like that? Life is just so much simpler without the extra clutter. If you have space for an extra shelf or storage for only curricula that you may or may not use, then I guess that would work- but I would only save that extra space for curricula that you love and even if it didn't work for one child, might work for the next- Not for something that you didn't like at all. I'd let go of that. If you decide you really want to give it a go again in the future then you could always find it used, but maybe it would just be better to find a science program that was more enjoyable.