Elemental Science is outstanding. I highly recommend it!

We are currently reading The Story of the Amulet then we will start the Cat of Bubastes and move on to the Dragonkeeper Trilogy by Carole Wilkinson.

I think it is hard to switch from one style of curriculum to another. Whenever I find something my child enjoys, we stick with it. Thankfully my dd also enjoyed MCT, so we are doing MCT Town level this year with Spectrum Writing level 6. MCT is pricey but I think it really is top notch in conceptual design even though it requires a lot from me. It is money well spent if your child responds positively to it.

ä½ å¥½ï¼I speak Mandarin and teach to homeschoolers in my area. I am also raising two girls who will hopefully be bilingual some day. I really like Chinese with Mike. Miss Panda has some good stuff, too. When I learned Chinese in College we used the Chinese Reader text which is now available free online with audio files. CCTV has many wonderful resources for learning Mandarin, as well. Feel free to hit me up with any questions! ä¿é‡ï¼ T

My solution for a timeline was to make a timeline book out of a medium weight sketch book spiral bound on the short side. We used a ruler and a marker to draw a line across each page. 2 single sided pages = 1 century. My daughter can paste her information to the correct page and mark the corresponding date on the line. The sketch book cost 3 dollars at Michaels. The pages are perforated so if she wants to take them out and tape them end to end for a visual timeline to display, she can. Cheap and easy!

Thank you for the warm welcome. I am in a pretty isolated part of NorCal behind the Redwood Curtain, in Eureka! I love the Sonoma area, Laurel. Hope you are holding up in the Central Valley heat, Maela!

Hello, I am new to posting in this forum. I started home-schooling my 9 year-old dd last year. We were fresh out of public school after 3rd grade. We had a decent public school experience, but we chose to home-school because we could. We are going through a home-school charter mostly for financial reasons. They do not prescribe for us what or how to teach. They just require that we report what we have done and participate in standardized tests. We basically spent the first year (4th grade) mostly "de-schooling" while keeping up on Math, Grammar, Religion, and Chinese. It took the year to discover what method of homeschooling would work best for our family. I found that my daughter kept asking questions about ancient times and the first humans. She was really interested in the origins of things. I found that I had to keep going back to ancient Greece and Rome to explain why we still do certain things today. In reading other home-school bloggers talk about classical education and referencing Susan Wise Bauer, I reluctantly concluded that we needed to use the trivium and go classical all the way! I say reluctantly because I am lazy and this is not the lazy homeschooler's route! I have been reading The Well Trained Mind for a few days after lurking as a guest on this forum for a few months. I am really excited to be here and happy to have finally settled on a method for my children's education. I also have a 2 year-old daughter who is quickly picking up her letter sounds and other exciting new skills. I look forward to learning more from all of you! Sincerely, T