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Spelling- Phonetic Zoo C Vocabulary- Caesar's English Grammar - last 1/2 of Analytical Grammar and CC essentials Reading - Memoria Press books w/o guides Writing - IEW Medieval and WWS Poetry - Grammar of Poetry Math - MM5 BA4 History- VPSP MAAR, Famous Men Middle Ages Science - BF History of Science and Berian Builders Science in Ancient times Extra - Philosophy Adventure Geography-Mapping the world through Art I have a hard time finding one curriculum that covers everything I want so I tend to throw different curriculums together.

I agree, in every instance of a horrific crime you could look back and try and blame failures of society, parenting, crimes on the individual but and I don't think anyone would disagree that people who commit these crime have a twisted mental state. Does that remove the blame from the individual though? I really think we need awareness on issues other cultures are going through and to fix thing like poverty among minorities we have to understand the history, I just don't know if I can go as far as blaming the oppression of a race for rapes. I can say that these issues contribute to breaking down a mans mental state but the choice is still his on what to do with that and how he will react to the world.

I think it's a good program. I haven't felt that it was time consuming at all. In fact we use Analytical Grammar on our weeks off of CC and my girls would rather do analytical task in eel. In the EEL you do one sentence a day. Parse it, classify it, diagram it and then change it to interrogative, declarative etc. Analytical Grammar gives you 10 sentences a day to parse and diagram. On the other hand EEL goes deeper into grammar. It's been a really good combination and I've really been pleasantly suprised at how much my girls have learned. I feel like IEW goes fast since it's a full year program crammed into 24 weeks. My girls hate adding all those dress ups but their paragraphs sound so much better once they add them. Next year I'm going to use WWS on our off weeks. Even with the intensity of IEW we still only spend 30-45 min a day on writing. Grammar is maybe 30min. My girls did R&S and JR AG last year so I think that gave them a good background to start essentials.

Phonics/Reading/writing- LOE A & B Math - Right Start A Extra - Memoria Press Enrichment Geography - Expedition Earth Science - Animals/Bugs pulled together by me Art - Meet the Masters

The problem I have with MUS is the scope and sequence is so different than any other curriculim. It isn't really a curriculum you can try for a year and drop. We did that and I feel like we lost a year of math instruction. We came away from a year of multiplication and my daughter still couldn't remember how to multiply correctly. If you take it from kinder through jr high you will cover all the concepts math curriculums need to cover just at different years you would normally cover them. If you jump around you are likely to have gaps and holes. Most math curriculum generally cover the same concepts the same years so you can switch between them without causing major holes. Mus isn't like that so if you plan on switching I would plan in sticking with it all the way through.

I just finished The Bluest Eye. I don't really know what to say about this book. My stomach is in knots and after reading the author notes at the end I really don't understand what message she was portraying. Apparently her focus was on racial issues of loving yourself the way you are and not wanting to be white. I just felt that part of the story was a little lost in the horrors portrayed in the book. It felt like she was presenting a mixture of issues all rolled into one but the last part definitely sticks out more than the rest. I won't give away the book in case anyone wants to read it. It's not an easy book to read by any means. I picked this book up because it's name stuck out at me when someone on here had mentioned it and O assumed it was a book I had wanted to read. It just clicked this was the controversial books I had read about in high schools. I don't know how I feel about this book being read by high schoolers especially if it is my high schoolers. Spoiler Triggers As a person who went through abuse I don't really like the way it is portrayed. A questioned you always struggle with is why. I think as a victim you learn to let that go as it's not a question that can be answered and in the end even of there was a why it wouldn't change anything or help. I feel like this book portrayed abusers as victims of their surroundings and upbringing. Even in an interview with the author she stated she wanted us (the reader) to see the abuse through the abusers eyes and that it was friendly and innocent. I disagree with her and it may be due to personal bias from my own past but I just don't care if an abuser has a checkered past or has bad influences I believe we all have something inside of us that tells us this is wrong and those people make a choice at that moment to ignore that conviction. I also am bugged about her (the author) using the character to portray what she was angry about in her friend as a child while simultaneously having her be the one who recieved the worst offense. She stated in the notes it was a destruction of the characters due to her wanting to be someone who she wasn't (which she does attribute to the character environment) but it's almost like the character is being punished. Maybe I'm reading this all wrong. I need to mule over it some more. It's too late...

Last year I did the paleo autoimmune diet to try and get my psoriasis under control and I was eating a homemade sausage with homemade liverworst, saurkraut and some roasted root veggies. That was every morning for a month. It wasn't bad actually.

I enjoy being with my kids (most of the time). I love homeschooling and the flexibility it gives us and being able to tailor school to my kids likes and needs. All of my friend stay at home so I have a good network. I also enjoy cooking (when I don't have a kid hanging on my leg). I hate cleaning however and I hate that some people look down on stay at home moms. I would say though that homeschooling gave me what I felt was missing. I love education and educating myself. Coming from a really bad homelife where I was left to fend for myself most of the time I really see now how I missed out on a lot at school. I was getting college level on my state test in reading and language arts by 2nd grade but since everything was so bad at home I became very much a recluse and stopped doing school. Homeschooling has reminded me I actually enjoy learning and being able to teach my children has been such a joy for me. The plan was to stay home until they went to school but when we pulled the kids out we did it knowing I probably wouldn't end up going back to work.

I was hoping that I finally discovered the easy part of having twin but ultimately they are two seperate kids and I have to treat them like that. I had a freak out about 6 months ago with my older girl because I felt like we had no direction and sat down to write a plan for where they are headed and wrote one for my twins and lo and behold the kids decided not to follow it lol. I do try and let them play, the workbooks are really just for when they ask but one twin never ask to do school and the other one constantly wants to do his work so of course that one knows quite a bit more than the other. Well I think I've realized no matter with reading and math I would probably need to work one on one with them so they will be wherever they are in those subject and I will just have to work with them at that level. I've been lucky with my older girls since my younger daughter is advanced and ends up working at her sisters level. They've been able to do the same grammar writing and math books so I was hoping I would have the same with the twins but kindergarteners are different than 5th graders. I've never homeschooled for kinder so it's all new for me.

I keep looking at tapestry but I can't make heads or tails of the samples. I think they are going to be at the homeschool convention here so I was planning on looking at it there and talking to the representative about it to try and wrap my brain around it. I'm a whole to parts person so I really need to see the whole picture before I can begin to understand. I have 4yo twins, 4th grader and a 5th grader. I've read the literature selections for rhetoric are similar to omnibus (vp) so that intrigues me and being able to pull my twins in on the studying would be great.

Do you guys get the amazon prime free books of the month? These are the selections https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/kindle/first/ref=kf_lp_redirect_rw_to_aw Any recommendations?

I have 4yo twins right now. One twin is super energetic and has no desire to sit down. I have lots of building and pretend toys and he loves to play with those which I am totally fine with. Ny other twin ask constantly to do school and is adding sall numbers, taught himself to write letters and is starting to read small cvc words I was happy that my two would be at the same level but I'm wondering if I will be able to keep them at the same level. Has anyone else had this issue? Did you push one twin to keep up with the other or slow one down. I'm also wondering if doing different levels will cause problems between them. Any advice appreciated :)

I finished war and peace yesterday. It took a little longer since everyone is sick in my house including me. I really enjoyed it. For anyone who is not familiar with Leo Tolstoy, he is a Russian writer and has influenced Ghandi and Martin Luther King with his ideas on non violent resistance. He was corresponding with Ghandi for a year before he died. Tolstoy seems to have such intuition about the nature of people in general and the way they feel , social pressures and why people react the way they do to different situations. I love history and reading about the wars and Napolian written from different soldiers perspectives, all the way from Kutusov down to the hussars gave me a different view of the history as I knew it. The transformation of Pierre who seemed to want a deeper understanding of life and only recieve it after going through trials, whose understanding of what really makes a man free rings true to me. I really felt a connection to Natasha in the end when she realized being a wife and a mother was what she really wanted and didn't care about full filling social obligation or handing her children off to a wet nurse. I plan on getting the Kingdom of God is Within You since this book has really sparked my interest on Tolstoy.

Well my plan was to finish war and peace this week. I have 380 pages left. I have to say the second half has gone so much quicker than the first. I felt the same way with Anna Karenine. I felt at parts in the beginning as if I was pushing though but now I'm really enjoying it and want to finish it. Wish I could just read all day like I used to when I was younger. To many mom/adult responsibilities pulling me away. I plan on starting Passage to India once I'm finished although I think most of you will be done with it. I haven't read any more of Mere Christianity and will probably put it off until I finish Passage to India.

I plan on using the enrichment program from memoria press and you can purchase it as a kit with all the books or just purchase the guide if you want to go the library route. It seems like a very complete enrichment program with poetry, literature and picture studies. The other thing O plan on purchasing is ivy kids kits. They are a monthly subscription box with a book and supplies for activities that go along with the book.

I would love to dedicate my house to homeschooling. As it is our homeschool room is more like a dedicated library which is what I was going for. I was thinking of turning our spare room into an art room. It's nice that homeschooling is gaining popularity. It opens up so many options to people. There are so many good reasons to homeschool. Schools just can't provide the individual educational experience homeschooling can.

Bible LM Montgomery Tolstoy CS Lewis Gk Chesterson Maya Angelo Laura Ingles Sandra Cisneros Homer Edgar Allen Poe My list is authors who have deeply affected me at some point in my life and their work changed my point of view and altered my look on either myself or the world. Some of them as a child, some as a preteen, some as an angry teen, some as someone looking to find herself and others as am adult wishing for a deeper understanding of life.

We are about an hour from the Getty. I've been thinking about taking a trip down there I think he would love it. He's a twin and his brother is very active and would not do good there though. They don't really like to seperate although I suppose they have to seperate at some point so it might be good to start little trips apart from each other. We have a few artist in the family but that gene definitely skipped me so I feel very lost with him. He is a perfectionist but it seems to push him more. He will start, crumple up the paper and start again until he gets it to look like he wants. I gave up working on letters with him due to his perfectionism so he taught himself. I'm really hoping the perfectionism is a phase. He's such a different kid than any of my others and I'm not really sure what to make of him or how to work with him.

I have a 4 yo who loves to paint, draw, color - anything to do with art really. I am by no means an art expert but compared to any of my other children and any 4yo art I've seen his drawings are really good. I watched him paint a picture of the hulk and he was blending paint colors and then using water after he had painted to get the shade he wanted. I was looking up ideas on how to help children who like art (since I am not artistic at all) and from what I read early artistic abilities does not necessarily mean the child will be a great artist but generally there is a correlation with high IQ. Has anyone here had a similar experience with their child? How have you encouraged or helped along their art interest?

My 5th grader will have read 14 books by the end of this school year that are assigned. She also has to read from the mensa list during summer. I assign 20 pages a day so the amount of books varies depending on page count. Bedtime is at 8 but I will allow my girls to stay up till 10 if they are reading. They often do read to avoid going to bed. I don't moniter or check free reading books. I have gone over intro, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution but we do that in writing to break a story down and write an outline. We will do as you do and discuss the book they are reading every few days just to check that they are reading it and understanding it. We had half history books, half literature and we did quarky botany which is science.

I usually just use conventions to flip through stuff I am interested in and buy online later. The sales aren't that good imo. Some curriculum is hard to figure out based on samples and there's always a rep there that can answer questions so that helps.

I agree with homeschool buyers co op and rainbow resources. Other than that I use the direct websites and Amazon. You could also go to some of the homeschool conventions and set up a booth. Educents is another site relatively new. I would also try and get some popular boggers to review it to get the word out. I don't feel like there is a lot for homeschoolers in robotics and technology so I think anything in that field would do well.

Well I didn't post on here last week but I am still chugging along with War and Peace. I am about 800 pages in. I watched the first episode of the bbc mini series and as always the book is so much better. I had high hopes for the mini series since it seems to have great reviews. Tolsky has such a gift at painting a picture of human characteristics that no one utters but everyone feels. Doubts about how you are being percieved by others, conjuring up boldness to do things you should, the growth of a person and how understanding of something can evolve. The series captures the story quiet well but the emotions of the characters, which you grow to understand and feel quite close to in the book, feel underdeveloped in the series. The chapters on war do translate better on film than in a book imo. I found myself just wanting to get through those parts while reading it but on screen it was much more exiting. Overall am really enjoying this book and should be able to finish it by the end of the week. I will most likely move onto Mere Christianity once I have finished since I started it prior to getting sidetracked with war and peace. Eta: and I must say the romance with natasha goes nicely with the romance topic although war and peace is not quite the quick easy romantic read and is part romance, part war with some history sprinkled throughout. I read Anna Karenine over the summer and it leans much more to the romance side.

I'm reading Mere Christianity right now and it came to mind reading your post. Not everything in every religion is wrong because it's a different religion. I'm not saying I follow any other religions, I don't, but there are sayings and beliefs that ring true in every religion. In Abolition of Man CS Lewis points out the similarities. Also I really dislike putting the idea out that the Ancients somehow weren't as smart as us so they believed silly stories. The same society that believed these myths produced Euclid, Socrates, Aristotle and countless others that lay a foundation for our civilization. Smart people believe different things. It's important for me to lay a foundation for my kids so that they know what we believe and why (and CS Lewis has some great study material) but I believe it's also important to understand western society and their beliefs and where and how Western Philosophy was founded. I haven't had trouble with my kids questioning their faith due to Mythology but I am planning on studying theology and apologetics. At some point in their life they will face things that may make them question what they belive and I want them to have the knowledge to despute those doubts.