I didn't realize I had purchased so many curriculums until I went through and counted! I've purchased: Making Math Meaningful Saxon Miquon Singapore Math U See Math Mammoth Horizons Life of Fred Keys to.... I started my oldest in MMM. The next year we did a combo of Singapore and Miquon. The following year my next boy came aboard and I decided to do Saxon for both. Saxon was a horrible fit for the younger and I really didn't want to do 2 different math curriculums. We switched to Math U See for everyone and we've pretty much camped out there except for adding in the others listed above as supplements.

I'd appreciate the link also. Thanks!

It's great to hear the positive reviews! I'm planning to use this next year.

I put 3-4 because when my 12 yo really puts his mind to it he can finish in that amount of time. On the downside, he almost never does because he wastes so. much. time. We've been talking about this as next year I am upping the expectations and he will move into the 5-6 hour category.

The only things I have are the things we will continue from this year; WriteShop for oldest son and TOG (which we started mid year). I buy MUS every year at our homeschool convention which is in June. I also browse through things there to help finalize my decisions on new things I want to try. Then I come home and order whatever else I need around the end of June.

We used CATW for about 6 months. I was SO excited to start the program and we did get off to a good start. But as time went on, I felt that it became kind of monotonous. You have the same basic schedule each week: 1. Read an intro to the country that describes its geographic features. I liked this at first but then I felt like my kids couldn't really picture what was being described. So I added in library books to supplement with pictures. 2. Read the history of the country. And I mean the entire history! I remember for some countries you would cover 3000 years in about a page and a half. You touch on the major events but my kids eyes would glaze over. Eventually I ended up skipping those sections. 3. I can't really remember this day in the Children from Many Lands book. In the Disney book you go over food and celebrations. 4. Read about what you might see or do if you went to that country today. Each week is supposed to be completed with a celebration. Ideally you would make a meal from that country and then have some sort of a party like they might have there. In theory that sounded great....but for me the follow-through was another story! I struggled with having the desire to do all that. I know other people love that type of thing so it depends on what you like to do. When we did make the meals, my kids loved it! But I would often get too busy and not be prepared for the end of the week. I think if you leave that part out you miss out on a lot of the "fun" in the program and then it becomes monotonous like I mentioned. By February one of mine was begging to do something else, one was indifferent, and one wanted to continue. Since I felt the way I did, we moved on to TOG. As for the mature themes, you are warned in the parent pages when they will appear. We read A Cry from the Streets which had some of those mature themes but I edited things out as I went along. My kids loved that book but my dh questioned whether the 9 yo really needed to hear about kids in Brazil getting high on glue and such. It's a great book that really shows a couple's faith in God and how that looks being lived out in tough situations, so we finished it. I don't regret that but YMMV. These are some of the things I wish I had known before I purchased. You know the types of things that your family likes so I hope this gives you some more information to make your decision.

Our plan so far is: Hist/Geog/Lit - TOG Year 1 Math - MUS Pre-Algebra Writing - WriteShop Music - Piano lessons Art - local co-op Science - Life Science through co-op Latin - co-op After reading this thread I was reminded of Apologia's Who is God. I need to look into that again and may add for next year. I just looked at Orbiting with Logic and will probably add that as well. I love planning!

I chose no, never but I don't buy a lot of workbooks. All my kids use Math u See so each year they get new workbooks for that. I don't buy them ahead. Other workbooks we use are things like Wordly Wise and Grid Perplexors. I also don't buy them ahead. I feel like I'm already buying so much for the current year that I don't want to buy extra! Plus, I may change my mind over the next year and decide to go a different route for the next child.

I've used the PASS test for a couple of years now. You administer the test yourself and send in the forms. Within a few weeks you receive the results. The results will show the raw score...how many correct out of how many attempted and the percent correct associated with that. Then it will go on to show how the student ranks compared with all homeschooled students taking the PASS test and then a Nat'l ranking which compares your student to the Metropolitan Achievement Test. The results include an analysis of your student's overall performance (High, High Avg, Avg, etc.) and then analyze their individual performance with regard to specific goals. For example, in the reading section the goals were: 1. Word Meaning 2. Literal Comprehension 3. Interpretative Comprehension 4. Evaluative Comprehension Each specific goal is also evaluated with the High, High Avg, Avg, etc. categories. Then they give you recommendations to improve your results or to challenge your student more in the future. The recommendations are computer generated so keep in mind they are general recommendations for the all students that scored "average" or "high" rather than individualized recommendations. My state requires a test or an assessment once a year, so I use the PASS test to meet that requirement. I don't necessarily use it to find out how they are doing. Let me know if you have any more questions about PASS. I don't have any experience with the other test you mentioned.

:iagree:We tried the Burgess book here as well and I just couldn't take it! I also didn't like sticking to short lessons. I often felt rushed and it is one of the "negatives" that I had about schools. If you're on a topic and everyone is engrossed, why stop just because your time is now up? That said I do enforce time limits on math. My kids are assigned x number of pages or x number of minutes whichever comes first. I assign the # of pages based on what I think they could complete in the 30-45 minutes, depending on their age. But if I'm wrong, and the topic is a breeze, I want them to keep going and not stop after 20 minutes. OTOH, if a topic is tougher or more time consuming (think long division :glare:), they have the reassurance that they can stop after 40 minutes, and won't be doing math for 2 hours! I also try to avoid twaddle...especially for read alouds. However, I'm not strict about it. My kids do read things that are probably twaddle in their spare time...Star Wars series books, Diary of a Wimpy Kid....but I believe there are days that we just need to "chill" in our down time. Some nights I just want some light and easy reading! The funny thing about the Star Wars books was that 2 of the boys decided to write their own Star Wars story. This wasn't an assignment...just something they decided to do on their own. I agree with the poster that I quoted in that we all have to take what works for our family and toss the rest. The longer I homeschool, the more I believe that.

I wish I could say it's getting easier but it's still hard! The best time for me to exercise is early in the a.m. My goal is to go 4x a week. The first 2 weeks I did, but the last 2 weeks I've only gone 3x. Both weeks I told myself I would make it up on Saturday but by Saturday I had talked myself out of going that day. That's the problem....I talk to myself too much:) I'm doing better on the eating. Not every day mind you, but most days. If I have an off day, I shrug it off and start the next day with a clean slate. I weighed in on Friday and I am down 5 lbs. which was an encouragement! I'm hoping that I can be down another 5 by the end of February. Hang in there. Even if you're not doing it "perfectly" in your mind you are probably doing better than you were!

I agree with the OPs that it's more about the attitude in the home. When I was growing up my closest friends always wanted to come to my house. Our house was nothing special to look at. I had 2 good friends growing up. One lived in an enormous, beautiful house. Her bedroom alone was about 3x the size of mine! My other friend's house was bigger than ours and was beautifully decorated. It could have been in a magazine. I could never figure out why these girls would always rather come to my house than their own. So I asked them. They both said it was because of my mom. She had a way of always making anyone feel welcome. She let our home be lived in (i.e. it wasn't picture perfect) and she enjoyed our conversation. I'm sorry to say that same warmth and peace doesn't come as easily to me. I've been trying to figure out what sets me on edge. I've noticed if the house is cluttered, I get edgy. If we're over-scheduled, I get cranky. It seems that the more we're gone, the messier the house gets...how does that happen??? So this year my focus is to slowly change my ways. I hope to slowly de-clutter our closets and cupboards so that everything can be put away a little more easily. I'm learning how much time we can spend out of the house before I start to lose it. I'm also trying to be more present for my kids. I spend a lot of time with them as "teacher" but maybe not so much as mom. I'm trying to engage in their conversations...even the ones about video games that I'm not the least bit interested in. I really want our home to be a place that my kids love to be and that my dh looks forward to after work. For us, that all comes to down to my attitude.

I keep them separate because I most household supply type items at Target instead of the grocery store. If I end up buying something at the grocery store from the HH category, I take it out of the grocery $$ just to keep it simple.

I always check my receipts. Like most other posters I try to watch as each item is rung up but sometimes I can't. Then I check my receipt before I walk out of the store. If I had to make a guess I find a mistake about 50% of the time. It drives dh crazy but to me it's the principle of the thing...I hate being charged the wrong price whether it's too high or too low.

I'm in! I really want to lose 10 pounds. I had gotten it off about 3 years ago but that was due to a huge amount of stress in my life. It's weird how during times of high stress the pounds just fall off...at least for me. Otherwise, they slowly appear out of nowhere! Never slowly DISAPPEAR...just always slowly APPEAR!:lol: My problem is I'm a snacker...so I'll just have a little bit of this...then maybe a little more....then a little while later I'll have a little bit of that. All those "littles" really started to add up. I had no idea how many extra calories I was eating! So I joined a free program on line to help me track my intake. It's called Spark People. If I am good about logging in and recording all my eating I can usually stay in my calorie range. But if I don't I'll start to creep back into my old habits. You can also track calories burned at this site. I just started back at the Y this week. My goal is to go 4 times a week. It will be great to have another place to be accountable. I'm on this site almost every day.

I'm about 40 pages into Going Rogue by Sarah Palin. I'm not sure I like reading an autobiography about a current figure...the whole time I'm reading I hear her voice in my head and it gets annoying!!! I can only get through about 10-15 pages and then I have to put it down.:001_unsure:

I chose mostly good with a few bumps along the way. For the most part our homeschooling continues to improve because I'm learning to make better choices:) DH likes his job and his hours have become more routine. Extended family....well that's where you'll find the bumps and bruises...:001_huh:

:iagree: This is my favorite study as well. I've also done several by Beth Moore but those were always in a group setting with the DVD. I did the Blackaby one alone and LOVED it. It's set up in a similar format as a Moore study. I think it would work great to do with a friend.

We did and we're all having a great time with it!!!

:lurk5: Anyone???????

I have a wall hanging type thing with 3 pockets. One says "Joy," another "Peace," and the third one "Love." I got it at Family Christian Store last year and have enjoyed it. I love the idea of praying for one of the family's each day that someone else posted! We'll have to start doing that :)

We're getting one for Christmas. I didn't really want to do a game console thing because I was concerned about having to monitor the amount of time my boys spend on it. They already have the handheld DS's and I always have to remind them about "screen time." But, in talking to friends it sounds like this system is one that the whole family can enjoy. I think it will make for some fun family nights, rather than just watching a movie. I also like my kids to have their friends over and this will give them one more thing to do when they're all here!

I was so sorry to hear about that. We're praying here as well...

It depends what you're looking for.... Qwirkle is a game where you sit down and each player takes turns placing their tiles...kind of like Scrabble (but without the board). You build off other players pieces or add to them. In Set the dealer deals 12 cards and the players try to pick up "sets" of 3 cards. All players are searching for sets at the same time so you're racing against each other. Set going to be more fast paced. In Set you're looking for 3 cards that have the same feature (color, shape, or pattern) or 3 cards that do not have any of those features in common. In Qwirkle you are trying to build a line of tiles that are either all one shape or all one color. Game play is slower than in Set because you are trying to decide where to put your tiles for the most points. Another thing about Set is that you can play it in a "Solitaire" form. You can't do that in Qwirkle....unless you play against yourself :) Hope this helps,

I would go ahead and do the Human Body study since that is what you have planned and you have 1 that really wants to do it. It seems like it would be a good continuation...isn't it part of the God's Design for Life group? Letting your dd that's crazy about animals work on a notebook on her own sounds like a great idea. If her passion is animals she can work to her heart's content! But I wouldn't continue with all my kids in that area if they aren't as interested. I'd also tell the 9yo that after the human body book you'll move into Chemistry. That will give her something to look forward to and a chance to mature a little bit more before studying this topic. I noticed that the God's Design series show grades 1-8 for the human body book but 3-8 for chemistry. I would wait a year on that one so the Chemistry lover can get more out of it and it won't be quite so over the 7 yo's head. That's just my .02 :tongue_smilie: My boys are all SO different, I understand how hard it can be juggling all their unique interests.