I'm so sorry for your loss :( We've had a rough year of animal losses as well, it's so hard. I lost a calf today and cried all the way through milking both my cows.

Oh yes, I've been planning for couple of months now. Come spring I'll be too busy with the garden, cows, and hopefully hatching some chicks and ducklings, so I like to get the "planning" part of ALL those activities done before the weather turns nice :) So, I now have a tentative schedule and a list of curriculum purchases to make, I've purchased seeds for the garden, planned when to (hopefully) breed my milk cows, and I have birds separated into breeding pens. Now if most of these things would just actually go according to plan!

My kids both loved Where the Red Fern Grows, even though they both cried. It is a fantastic book. My daughter (who had already read it once) was horrified when, while she was still in public school, the teacher read it aloud to the class and she was one of only two or three kids in the whole class that cried. She's also read Old Yeller and Black Beauty. Sometimes it's the sad books that are the best treasured and remembered. My kids are now 12 and 8, and they both say Where the Red Fern Grows is their favorite book.

Oh this is an excellent idea! I am in Western Nebraska, no conferences anywhere near me, and I can't travel to conferences because I have cows to milk :) I'm so excited...I hope it will be really affordable.

Being a rural person myself, I can't imagine moving to a metro area for any reason at all. All the museums, libraries, and activities in the world could not convince me to live so close to other people...ugh. Do your kids do 4-H? If not, I would highly recommend looking into it.

Thanks for sharing! I am printing off this list to stick in my planning binder for when we get to the Civil War. I remember reading a ton of books about the Civil War outside of school, and comparing it to the woefully inadequate information we were given in our school textbooks. My uncle received a book about the Civil War at Christmas, and told me it was a really excellent book. I thought I wrote down the title but I'm not finding it now. I'll check with him and post later what it was.

My kids finished their Saxon math in April last year. We did a light schedule of Life of Fred math and a math workbook for the youngest over the summer.

I really like Rod and Staff, we switched to it this year and my daughter's writing is really improving. I think the key to really cementing the writing instruction from Rod and Staff is to apply the writing lessons to all the writing the child does for history, science, etc.

I love our ducks! We had only ducks (and a guard goose) for a few years before my daughter convinced me she wanted chickens as well. Yuck, those chickens smell way worse than the ducks, the chickens are a nightmare to try to get back to the run/coop after free ranging, and some of the chickens can be mean. Ducks are easy to train, my son walks outside and hollers "duck duck duckies!" and they all emerge from wherever they've been foraging and run for the coop. The stupid chickens go in 90 different directions, including UP into trees and onto fences. Some days I really question my sanity in letting DD talk me into chickens :glare: At least we have the ducks to set a good example for them, maybe it'll rub off on the chickens. Sadly the ducks are outnumbered right now...we have 13 ducks, 16 chickens, and 1 goose. I bought the kids an incubator for Christmas and I can't wait to hatch out some more ducklings :)

I don't have any really helpful advice, just wanted to commiserate. My just turned 8 yo. still occasionally wets the bed, although I think he is finally starting to grow out of it. I made him wear the "big boys" pull-ups (I think they're called Good Nites) until recently. I have one of those plastic mattress protectors that zips over the whole mattress, and a waterproof mattress pad. I have just resigned myself to washing all his sheets and blankets if he has an accident. Don't know what you could do about camping though. I have milk cows, so we never spend the night anywhere but at home :)

We have minimal away-from-home activities (music lessons once a week, church once a week, 4-H meeting once a month), but we do sometimes end up pushing our science to Saturday or Sunday afternoon because we just don't get everything done during the week. I can tell you with certainty that from what you described, your kids are getting way more science and history than what my kids got when they were in public school! My daughter went to public school through 4th grade, and the only history they did was a two-week unit on pioneers :( Do your kids not like any of the SOTW activities? Do they narrate back to you what you've read to them? If they don't like the coloring pages, maybe they can draw their own picture and narrate a sentence or two to write below the picture. As far as science, I'd say the class they are taking and the library books are plenty of science at that age.

I am really relieved that I am not the only one in this boat :) My 12 yo DD has really been struggling with this. On days where her math is dragging out, I too find it helps a lot to just sit with her and make sure she stays on track. Last year (5th grade), she could easily finish her math assignment in about 45 minutes, sometimes even a little less. This year, it can easily drag out to 2 hours if she's dawdling and daydreaming, and she makes silly computation errors, which really frustrates her. So if I notice that she's dawdling (ie: if it's been 20 minutes and she's only on problem 3) I sit with her and help her direct her attention back to her math. Not every day is like this, today she's taking a test and breezing right through it. I really do believe it is just the age.

We like Rod and Staff. My daughter was in 5th grade when we started homeschooling, and her grammar and writing instruction in public school had been sorely lacking. We did a year of LLATL, which was nice to "ease" her into homeschooling, but I realized I wanted to ramp up the grammar and writing this year. We started with Rod and Staff English 5 this past fall, and while challenging, she is enjoying it. She is planning to start on English 6 as soon as we finish 5 and work through the summer, as she'd like to finish English 7 and the end of 7th grade. Some people use a separate writing curriculum, but I am finding that the writing instruction in Rod and Staff is working really well for us. The key is that I take what she's covered in Rod and Staff and make sure she applies it to her writing that she does for history, science, and lit study.

We like Rod and Staff

I really loved the idea of BFSU. We did successfully complete the first book last year, and started the second book last fall. I got so bogged down in trying to come up with how to actually teach each lesson. I'd try to find corresponding pages in the Kingfisher and Usborne encyclopedias and the myriad of other science books on hand, diagrams or pictures online, etc. If it was more scripted and open and go, it would be perfect. About a month into the school year I threw in the towel and ordered Elemental Science's Biology for the Logic Stage. It's not perfect, but it is getting done without me having to do hours of planning.

I just recently bought this, and we're planning on starting it this week. It looks really fun!

4-H has poultry curriculum, and it's very reasonably priced. Check with your local extension office or on the 4-H Mall website.

I'm in the same boat. I can't read music at all. My DD12 is taking guitar lessons. DS7 is taking piano lessons and received a guitar for Christmas, so will add that in as well. They each have a lesson assignment book that their music teacher fills out, I check to make sure they have practiced each piece and have done any theory work, and I make sure they practice a sufficient amount of time each day. My son keeps telling me he wants to teach me how to read the music, so I guess I'd better carve a little bit of time out of my day to do some learning myself :) The kids' music teacher told me that she has had a few moms start taking lessons themselves after their kids. I may have to look into that Accelerated Beginner book from Faber.

The two biggest hits for read alouds this year were Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and Starry River of the Sky, both by Grace Lin.

We've slacked off on our nature study and our exercise (especially me!), so I want to get back in the habit of making those a priority. DD12 started Rod & Staff English 5 in late fall and loves it, so we're going to try to work through it pretty fast so we can get to the sixth grade book (she is in sixth grade now). We'd like to get caught up to the point where she would finish the 7th grade book at the end of 7th grade, but we'll see how that goes. We will be setting aside LLATL and she will choose her own lit books from a stack of books that she and I have put together. DS7 just started Rod & Staff English 3 and loves it, but also wants to keep doing LLATL and so far hasn't had any trouble doing both. We also switched science programs in the middle of the fall, from BFSU to Elemental Science Biology for the Logic Stage. They are enjoying it and I am loving it because there is a lot they can do independently. DD also switched from All-American History to America the Beautiful mid-fall, but we decided just to stretch that out over this year and next. Both kids also just started Spelling Power and it's going well so far. Wow, I didn't realize how much we switched out so far this year until I typed all that! I think the only thing we'll be adding is a little bit of Spanish for DD, just some Rosetta Stone for now and then a curriculum next fall, still deciding which one.

Thanks for sharing, this looks like just what I've been searching for!

I wouldn't skip any lessons, but you can do just the front of the worksheet rather than the front and back until you get to newer material. The back of the worksheet has the same problems as the front, just with different numbers. They were designed for public school to do the front of the worksheet in class and the back at home as homework

We have occasionally done a couple of lessons in a day or omitted a small part of a lesson, but have not skipped any lessons or books. This is our second year using LLATL, we are in the Yellow and Tan books this year.

Thank you :)

Could someone tell me what WP stands for in the above replies? My daughter loves horses and I'm interested in looking into this further. Thanks!