I have been worried about this too, since my younger one will be in 1st grade when the older one does SOTW4 in 4th grade. I figure I'll concentrate on the 'fun' things with the little one! Any suggestions are very appreciated.

I buy freezer paper, which is laminated on the back and lasts forever. It's about $3 for 75 ft, and I can use it in quilting too!

I went to my library's discard last summer and it was great. I got Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard! (Eleanor Farjeon is a favorite of mine and hard to find.) AND Mortimer Says Nothing. I was on the lookout for a 1911 Britannica I'd heard rumors about, but no dice. :( I got a bunch of good stuff though. It was totally worth the trip though, even though it was July and I had to drive to the county seat 30 miles away and the short route was blocked off because a bridge collapsed that morning (no really, happily no one died) and I had to go the long way around in heavy traffic. The kids were sure hungry by the time we got home though. :)

I'm using Aesop right now, and we love it. I'm pretty committed to using CW for the long term. We also love R&S grammar; right now we trade weeks. So CW recommends Harvey Grammar to go along with the program, and includes the lessons to do in the schedules provided in the Teacher book, as far as I can tell. But I would really like to stick with R&S. I know that I can do that; but is it difficult to coordinate everything, or can I just keep on going through and not worry about it too much? Reassure me that I can continue to use R&S and CW without too much hassle!

Wow, this looks like fun! Thanks for making it available to us and I'll be sure to let you know if I see anything.:)

I have two girls, 7 and 4. I would say that both are probably moderately gifted; not geniuses or anything, but pretty bright. They'd be in the GATE program in school. The 7yo is an excellent reader and likes to write her own stories. She's always been good at fine motor skills work like drawing and writing. She's mostly doing 3rd-grade work this year, and Latin. It makes me happy to see how quickly she grasps a lot of math concepts--she must get that from her dad--but one reason we homeschool is to try to avoid the "girls are bad at math" idea that everyone seems to absorb by age 10. The 4yo has always been a bit mechanical. She loves puzzles and hangs over her dad's shoulder if he's taking a computer to bits. She's learning to read, has the ability, but is taking her own sweet time about it since she'd rather play knights. I suspect that she will turn out to be good at math and computers, but who knows?

If I had my choice, I'd go to the UK and France--plenty of castles. And Japan, to Kyoto! Within the UK, it would be really hard to choose. Wales has a zillion great castles, there's London, Oxford, Bath, Hastings/southern coast, Canterbury in southern England, there's Scotland with other castles and Hadrian's Wall, Ireland is good at any time...I think I need to plan a year in the UK. My husband can get a job there, right? :p

Bwahahah! This made me laugh out loud. I did some Henle last summer and I sympathize! We just aren't Catholic (or Protestant), but I felt kind of the same way.

What converted me to Latin was seeing how much I was learning from it. Suddenly I was making all these connections, getting things about my own language that I had never gotten before. I'm a baby beginner, but the more Latin I learn the cooler I think it is. (And hard. That rhyme about Latin killing the Romans is true!) So I think it would be great if my kids were able to make those connections before 18 instead of after 30. :)

We're in 2nd grade right now. Here is what we do: Memory work: Selected poems and scriptures. They get used as copywork too. Copywork/Dictation: Copywork 3x/week, dictation 2x/week of selected passages from our history or science, or from a favorite book, a poem, or a scripture. Handwriting: Two pages of Getty-Dubay Italic daily. Currently learning cursive. Spelling: Spelling Workout. She does a lesson on Monday and tests on Friday, nothing else. Grammar: Rod & Staff 3 -- we alternate with CW. A daily lesson when we're doing it. Writing: Classical Writing Aesop A: every other week. Latin: Latina Christiana, slowly. Math: Saxon 3. History: 3x/week. Day 1, read SOTW 2 and do mapwork. Day 2, read extra stories or do activity. Day 3, she re-reads the SOTW chapter and does a narration. Science: 2x/week. We did Earth science with the Usborne Encyclopedia of Our World and Nancy vanCleave's Earth Science for every kid, plus library books. Now we're doing astronomy with the Usborne book of Earth and Space (I think) and The Child's Guide to the Night Sky, library books and the local observatory. We do pretty much what we do with history. Golly, this sounds like more than it is. We try to be done by noon.

Oh cool, thanks! We'll enjoy this.

I'm thinking about 3rd grade and chemistry! WTM recommends Adventures with Atoms and Molecules--what does the Mind think of this book? Are there other books like this that some people like? I'd much prefer to get a book and use the library for extras; I'm not particularly interested in buying a science curriculum right now, but feel free to tell me what you liked. I am willing to have some fun with experiments, so please tell me about stuff like that.

I'm Jean in Northern CA. We have two girls, 7 and 4. I read WTM when my oldest was two and was hooked; it was the book that converted me to homeschooling. It was like someone had reached into my brain and figured out my ideal education. I'm still sticking to that frame, we love it. I'm a librarian and I work a little on weekends, here and there. I sew a lot--lots of quilts and some clothes. Someone got me into heirloom sewing, which you have to be crazy to do (and I am). We do kung fu and Musikgarten too, and my husband is currently starting his own software business.

Every Monday. I'd love to have fresh sheets more often but that's more effort than I can manage!

Thanks for the descriptions, Susan; that's extremely helpful. My daughter is doing very well with CW and has no trouble with the mechanics/process end of writing, so we'll stick with that, but my friend is looking for a writing program just like this for her little guy, so I sent her the info and she will be using it instead. What a timely thread this was for me!

So when can we see samples? My big frustration with writing programs is that they're extensive, complex, expensive...and unavailable to look at. (Actually this is my frustration with homeschooling, but writing is the worst.) I want to be able to look at a large chunk of the text so I can properly judge it; a couple of pages isn't enough. How do I get that without buying it first? We're using CW Aesop A, second grade, and I like it a lot, but I'm not irrevocably committed (yet)--though I like it much better than IEW or WS. How does this compare?

We had both hamsters and guinea pigs growing up, and both were fun. The hamsters were good at getting out, getting lost and possibly dying in the walls or getting eaten by our cats. The guinea pigs were loud--every time you walk by, they go "Weeeee! Weeee!" They were a bit smellier and took up more space. Both were fun to play with, and you had to change the cages either way. But if it were me, I'd probably go with a hamster.

Oh, I feel your pain! That would kill me. I do think you should keep some of it that your kids could use, but yeah, entire grades of A Beka should probably go.

We are using The Usborne book about space and "A Child's Guide to the Night Sky" as a spine, and checking books out of the library for each topic. We've only just started but so far so good! Also we're planning plenty of trips to the local observatory...when it's not so cloudy...

We had to take Monday and Friday off last week, so I pointed that out to my kid and she relented.

I'll be spending a lot more time here with the new format; the old one was frustrating to me and I didn't bother with it most of the time. So I'm pretty happy.

I mostly do a lot of WTM recommendations, and pick and choose each subject. I make my own schedule, such as it is. I use a lot of library books.

Wait, is this published? I haven't heard about it at all. Tell me what's going on!

Dangit, I missed an hour. It's taping now. I'll get the rest. It looks like quite a nice production.

This former literature major found it to be a very helpful book, and I wished I'd read it before college. It's also a lot easier to read than Adler. If you really hate the tone, you could also try The PIG to English and American Literature, which is a fun read, but hasn't got nearly so much about symbolism and whatnot. WEM is also very good, but again, covers somewhat different ground.