I remember reading on the Elemental Science yahoo list that Physics for the Grammar Stage would be fine for a 5th-grader and that you could do the sciences in any order. The author did say doing chemistry first would make physics easier but that you could do physics first.

Elemental Science, mentioned above, is also available in PDF form, so you can get it anywhere. It is inexpensive, and then you just have to get a couple of books to go with it -- some you might want as supplements to any program. We are enjoying Chemistry for the Grammar Stage now, and I plan to use Physics for the Grammar Stage next year. You can download samples that include the short book lists to see whether they're available to you there. Some, such as scientist biographies, are optional or just suggestions.

I've used Cursive First and made copy work with Start Write after that. It was $15 for a helpful booklet that explains preparation, theory, and how to do it and a packet of worksheets that you can copy over and over for practice and for more children. It also includes phonogram cards with scripting to help teach the proper letter formation, as well as other helps. I started my now-8yo son with this in K, and his cursive is beautiful. My 10yo started with printing and usually still prints less-than-neatly, but when he does write in cursive, it looks quite nice. My 5yo son is now learning cursive with this. It is cheaper and appears easier than other programs I have considered using.

I'd definitely say combine them (option 1), but as you continue, if you find a reason that one needs to slow down or speed up, these ideas may help a bit. I have a 5th-grader and 2nd-grader this year, so last year they were 4th and 1st. We combined history and science (and are this year, too). It worked great. As it is the first time through, both have plenty to learn, but I can change the requirements depending on skill level. Next year, we'll be on the same topics, but I don't think I'll be using the same programs -- for science, at least. That may become more complicated, but it will be much easier than teaching two completely different areas. My oldest says he wants an independent science program next year, so he doesn't have to wait for me. I'm all for encouraging that, although I don't know how much he'll really need my help. Your son may reach that point soon, too, which would open up more options for you. And neither is on the right 4-year plan for the WTM because we started homeschooling when my oldest was in 3rd grade and the second was in K. I had thought about ways to get one of them on the right rotation, but I figured that once they get to high school, we may not do the 4-year plan anyway, depending on interests. It is a little challenging to know whether the WTM recommendations will work for my boys at different grade levels than intended, but most resources have worked out very well. Now I have a new plan to get some of my children on the WTM rotation. Even though you're talking about just two children, this may help if you feel the need at some point: We will be on Year 4 (physics and SOTW4 for us) for 2011-12, when my boys are 6th, 3rd, and 1st. Nobody is on track. The next year, we'll do a one-year quick overview of world history, maybe with Sonlight, which I've never used before. I haven't decided science, but as we haven't ever done any formal nature study, I am thinking of really devoting time to that for the year. That may make biology more fun the next year, too. Or we'll do interest-led science, which we haven't done. In 2013-14, I will have 8th, 5th, 3rd, 1st, so if we start again in Year 1, then 2 of the 4 will be on the WTM schedule. My youngest, who is due next month, will also be on the WTM schedule this way. In a few years, my boys will be 12th, 9th, 7th, 5th, and 1st, so three of the five will be on track. I think it is worth stepping out of the rotation for one year, and doing some really fun things, to get three of my children on the right rotation. Two will still be off, and that's going to have to be OK. If I had just two children, I might try to get the oldest on track -- not the youngest. That way, I'd have a better idea of the materials being used at that level and would know whether it would be appropriate for my younger child when he reached that level. Does that make sense? I'm sure you didn't need that much information, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately and think I've finally decided what I'm going to do. And I'm excited about it! Good luck with whatever you choose to do!

You have been given lots of great advice. I just have a few ideas -- hopefully not duplicates, as I didn't read everything completely. We had to suddenly travel twice last year. We had less than a week to prepare each time. The first time, which was a 4-month trip, we drove to another state and took 8 bins with us -- 4 were for homeschool and the rest were clothes and other personal items. That obviously wouldn't work on an airplane. My greatest relief came when I realized I could take my computer (desktop -- actually sat on top of the bins wrapped in our coats) and printer (included in the 4 bins) with me. Will you have access to the internet and a printer when you get there? You can do A LOT with these -- just buy some printer paper when you get there. The second time, we had to fly out of the country, and I changed everything we were planning to do. We did not have reliable internet access this time or a printer, but we had an old laptop that I loaded with ebooks and audio books. We used this for bedtime stories, entertainment, readalouds, history and science, some foreign language, etc. I took a 1" binder for each child, loaded with math (Math Mammoth, which is printable PDFs) and Latin (Lively Latin, also printable PDFs). I took a few basic art supplies that fit in a pencil case, mostly for fun. You could buy a few things when you arrive so you don't have to pack them. In a 3" binder for myself, I also took memory work, some supplementary science and history materials (things I could print or copy a few pages from, including some games -- things I may never have gotten to if we'd stayed home). I copied some SWR spelling lists for one son and took a Spelling Workout workbook for another. That was about it. We covered just the basics. These items weren't very bulky or heavy, so they were OK in our 2 suitcases. Again, they were more important than taking lots of clothes. This was just a 5-week trip, but with a library with English books or with the internet, we could have managed for much longer. Still, the best education my sons got was from the experiences they had there. Our schoolwork was mostly to give them a sense of routine in a strange place and something to do to pass the time. I was worried about falling behind, but that was just the beginning of our forced delays in our current school year. We just completed Week 19 of 36 today as others are almost ready to finish the year, but I know we'll eventually catch up. Even with a baby on the way, we may be ready to start the next school year in September. We school year-round, so we've been taking fewer breaks. My prayers go out to you and your family in this trying time. I agree that academics aren't always the most important thing, and I hope you'll find the balance between family time and routine that you and your children need. Good luck!

Is that Writing With Ease 5? Is it ready? And I couldn't find a Creative Writing Book on the Peace Hill Press site. Could you please direct me to these books or correct my hopeful assumptions on the acronyms? Thanks!

My boys aren't yet aware of how many days or weeks we are officially doing school. Our schedule is so random that it's difficult even for me to keep track! The public school is right behind our house, and my boys know our schedules don't align at all. We homeschool year-round out of necessity, as well as desire. My oldest son went through second grade in a year-round public school (it's the one behind our house and is now on a traditional schedule). He had three months on, one off. So after his second-grade year, he got one week off school before we started homeschooling. I wanted to get him hooked on homeschooling before his one-month public-school break was over. Since then, we take breaks whenever it is convenient for the family. My husband travels a lot, and occasionally we can go with him. Even when we can't, we like to be flexible about hiking trips and the like when he is home. We take some schoolwork when we go on long trips, to keep us entertained, but it's mostly break time. We've also had lots of life events in the past year and a half that have made breaks necessary. We started our current school year in November because we unexpectedly went to Costa Rica (business trip) for five weeks. We took only spelling, a little math, and supplemental history and science. We did maybe 8 hours of school a week maximum. As soon as we got home, I started getting sick with my current pregnancy. I was in bed for about two months. The boys practiced lots of life-skills but not a lot of academics. And now that the baby is due in 8 weeks, I am trying to cram as much school as possible in as quickly as possible. At the same time, though, I am trying to relax and slow down -- also kind of necessary because I've had to go to see various doctors an hour away every week since the end of January. That means 4-day weeks for the most part. So we didn't get the full Thanksgiving week off as I'd planned. We took only one week off for Christmas. And we've had very little time off at all. But we're on track to finish all our books sometime in August or even July, depending on how much time we take off when the baby is born and how much he slows us down. But that looks pretty good for starting our next school year in September. I'm hoping that will be a more relaxed school year, but as there are no guarantees, I never print a schedule more than one week in advance. I enjoy the planning, so I have an Excel spreadsheet with my plans, but I know they are just goals. Often we don't meet them, but sometimes we exceed them. I make my weekly schedule after all the work is done on Friday, with whatever adjustments are needed. This works great for us. And I can't imagine having the whole summer off. Two weeks is about all my oldest son can handle before wanting more structure.

I've purchased some items from Rainbow Resource and some from Dick Blick, depending on prices. Mostly Dick Blick -- and search online for a coupon code. I seem to remember getting free shipping that way. I even got one or two things from Michael's, but that was more trouble than the few cents it was worth. And Rainbow Resources may have more supplies now than they did when I bought mine last. I'd check there first. I used K-3 book 1 last year for 4th, 1st, and Pre-K. I duplicated a few supplies, but mostly they shared. This year, for K-3 Bk2, I duplicated more of the supplies. I especially wanted each of the three older boys to have their own watercolor paints, which were fairly inexpensive. And I have enough brushes that the older two can paint at the same time -- but the younger ones have to use cheap brushes, not the recommended ones. When they're older they can use the good brushes. Most things can be shared. The watercolor paper comes in pads big enough for everyone -- unless every child is painting several pictures each time painting comes up in the book or extra paintings outside of the lessons. We did some of that and still had leftovers for the next year. Same goes for other papers. Don't buy the big packet of tissue paper like I did. I think you need it one time, and it doesn't need to be anything special. Just use leftovers from gift bags. As long as you have a few colors, your "stained-glass windows" will be beautiful. I now have a lifetime supply of art tissue paper. As for the watercolor crayons -- my boys have enjoyed them, but they aren't what I expected. Not the painting method we were used to. But then, we've all learned lots of fun things with this program!

:iagree: My now-8yo son didn't do very well with any writing in kindergarten, but we used Cursive First anyway. He still struggles to put anything on paper (numbers, letters, drawings), but his cursive is beautiful. I am now teaching my 5yo son with Cursive First, and he is doing very well and loves it. This program has many elements to it, and for this 5yo, I'm doing the minimum. I just gave him the worksheets, explained how to write the letters, showed him, watched him and corrected him, and he does well. Now he copies words. But the program also has information about more that you can do if your child needs it (probably any child would benefit from it, but I just wasn't getting it done).

I've just added all of these to my list. Thanks!

Some I've recently read to my 10, 8, 5, and 3 yo boys that all liked: Mr. Popper's Penguins The Mouse and the Motorcycle Pippi Longstocking (actually, my 10yo didn't care for this, but it's short, and he listened) The Little House books

Wow! Thanks so much! I thought I'd get some help on how to do this, but I didn't expect to get excited about spelling! I really appreciate all of your help.

How do YOU use Spelling Workout? This probably seems very basic, but I'm sure I'm missing something, and my son needs me to do this correctly! I'm switching my 2nd-grader from SWR to SW this year. We just started with SW-A yesterday. He didn't get very far in SWR last year, which is why we switched, but SW is very easy so far (we orally went through lessons 1-6 yesterday and just did lesson 7 today, and I expect to do one lesson each day for a while). I did not get the teacher's guide and realized I don't really know how I'm supposed to do this. The format in SW does appear to be more like Spelling Power (which I have used with my older son) than SWR. Should I pretest my 7yo? If he spells all the words correctly, should we skip the lesson? Post-test at the end of the lesson? Review? I know there are review lessons, but what do you do? Also, how do you use the Spelling Notebook at the back of the workbook? I had my son write the Lesson 6 words in it today, as a kind of quiz. I planned to have him write the Lesson 7 words there tomorrow before he does Lesson 8. Any scheduling ideas or tips on general usage would be very helpful. Thanks a lot!

After having listened to SWB's lectures and read the WTM 3rd edition, my interpretation from the mp3 was that no other writing program was needed and that we should even skip the R&S writing portions. Still, this is my tentative plan for my 9yo son who will be in 5th grade next month. We may make adjustments, but here's our starting point: M: dictation, letter (2/month); Tu: dictation; W: literary essay; Th: science report; F: history report. Daily: Rod and Staff grammar (orally), which has 10 units, skipping most or all of the writing lessons (with tests, this leaves 101 lessons). He will still read the writing lessons for an overview of the concept. Between each unit, my son will do one Writing Strands lesson (he has 10 lessons remaining in WS3, which we attempted at the beginning of 3rd grade, for a recommended total of 56 days). In the weeks that he does Writing Strands, I will ease up on the other writing requirements and will try to use WS across the curriculum when possible. My son is a strong writer (though he'd rather not put pencil to paper) and has requested more writing instruction. I also have an editing/writing background, so I feel confident teaching him -- with the guidance of curricula! I am going to closely monitor his attitude this year, though, as I don't want to kill his love for writing. Also, I just now realized that if I try out all these methods at once, I'll have a better idea of which ONE small part will work for my second son when he's older. I don't expect him to be able to do nearly this much. I'd love to hear how others are implementing SWB's writing recommendations.

Thank you for your generosity!

Is the workbook you mentioned Mastering the Periodic Table? My oldest is getting ready for 5th grade but has never had any chemistry before, so I'm not sure whether that book would be too much for him. On the other hand, he may not have time for that and all the other work when he does chemistry again in high school. Also, have you seen Fizz, Bubble, & Flash? It looks like an introduction to the periodic table, too, and I'm wondering whether it will be sufficient for this year. As always, I have learned a lot by following your threads! Thank you. Teonei

So, Colleen, what did you decide? I was about to place my Rainbow Resource order and wanted to check some more on the science parts first. Now I don't want to use CHEM C2000. (Thanks everyone for this very helpful thread!) Although I now have lots of ideas, I haven't decided for sure what to use when we start chemistry next month. Since you start Monday, I assume you've decided? :tongue_smilie:

I love that idea! I'm still working on a plan for 5th grade -- starting in a few months :eek: Math: Math-U-See fractions (Epsilon?) and Math Mammoth and real-life math to be determined History: WTM way w/ SOTW 3 and Kingfisher and lots of books. We'll probably take 3 years to get through SOTW 3 and 4 because I want to add a lot of U.S. history. Grammar: Rod and Staff 5 Spelling: some SWR, moving back to Spelling Power Writing: WTM method, across the curriculum Science: CHEM C2000, etc. Latin: continue Lively Latin Big Book 1, then? start Spanish? Logic: Mind Benders Art: Artistic Pursuits Music: Piano lessons

I haven't used these, but they look intriguing: http://www.theoldschoolhousestore.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=335&products_id=10696 The entire 10-pack includes: Firefighter, Veterinarian, Chef, Military, Doctor, Police Officer, Missionary, Artist, Pilot, and Farmer

My fourth-grade son has almost finished going through Levels 2-4 this year. We have skipped a lot based on what he needs work on. We spent the most time in Level 3, and then I saw that Level 4 starts out with the same things as the end of Level 3, so we jumped ahead. He has been doing narrations for history and science, so we are now focusing more on dictation to get him up to the longer passages. Even if we were to stop now, I would be confident that he had gotten what he needs from WWE. My goal in pushing him through quickly was to have him ready for logic-stage writing by the middle or end of his fifth-grade year. He is ready now. So yes, you can definitely get through WWE 3 and 4 in one year, using the suggestions others have given. Skip or double up.

Thanks, Michelle. I'll check that out.

Kathy, My children are similar in age to yours, and I, too, have been considering ways to be a little more relaxed. Others have already mentioned RightStart and SWR. I used RightStart B with my second son for a while, but it was painful for us both. We started it in K and used it half way through 1st grade and barely got anywhere. I was going to use Math U See Alpha, but I was waiting for a revised edition. While I was waiting, we started using Math Mammoth, which I'd heard compared to RightStart and Singapore, and my son took off! It was much easier for us both, and I could tell he was really learning something (I never knew with RightStart). We have been using SWR since last summer, but it is too time-consuming for us to use it as intended. I only ever planned to use it for spelling, not so much to write and read or for grammar, so that may be why I have less patience for it than I might. I have started changing the way we use SWR to make it better fit our family. For my 9yo, after having completed all the reference pages, we finger spell and dissect the word only if he doesn't know how to spell it, which is rare. My 7yo needs much more instensive word analysis than SWR suggests. For both of them, I find I am moving closer to the Spelling Power method (which I found used for $5), using SWR as a word list and resource on rules. This is more relaxing for us and the only way I can get spelling done right now. I'm still doing spelling only once or twice a week, but it's better than the nothing we were doing for months. I haven't seen Classical Writing but keep being drawn toward it. But I keep hearing that it is more complicated than I might like right now. We use Writing With Ease at the moment, which is very painless with the workbooks (I didn't have time to do it without the workbooks). It takes only a few minutes each day with no prep time for me (except to prepare copywork pages for my 7yo, but I did all of that months ago for the rest of the year). As for Latin, my 9yo is using Lively Latin, which is mostly independent work for him. I had intended to keep up with him, but I am on chapter 3, and he is on chapter 10. When he asks a question, we search until we find the answer. I thought he'd be closer to chapter 14 by now, but considering how little effort it costs me and how much I can see he is learning, I am not too worried about his pace. I also think about how some of the subjects I really want to teach will be a bit easier when my younger 2 are a little older. I'm sure your young ones add to the feeling of not being able to accomplish what you hoped to each day. I have been trying to give myself permission to have more "reading days" and more "minimum days" with only a couple of core subjects. Those days are more relaxing to me than a day completely off, when I just think of all we should be doing and how far behind we're getting. One of the biggest problems I'm having right now is that I am exhausted by 1 p.m., so I can't even consider doing the fun projects and activities I hear about others doing. On the bright side, for the past couple of weeks we were studying the explorers of the late 1400s and early 1500s. We read lots and lots of books and looked at maps, and I was too tired to think of doing any more. One afternoon, my sons decided to build boats and race them because they'd had so much fun learning about explorers and their ships. When they really want a project, they'll come up with one on their own. They're very creative and active in imaginary and historical play in the afternoons, so I have stopped feeling guilty for not initiating the projects for them. I love the WTM methods and have been afraid to get very relaxed. But I am excited by some plans I am working on to try a unit study here and there and see how they go and to try some more child-led learning and see what I think. Maybe experimenting with different things, a little bit at a time, would help you, too. I don't see myself leaving the WTM way, but I do think I could be more flexible within it. And with increased flexibility comes decreased stress, I've found. I hope something here might help you. Good luck!

I just looked at Winter Promise American Story 1 -- very briefly -- and it says it is for K-3. My oldest will be in 5th-6th grade when we study U.S. history. Any more ideas?

I am interested in how others have done this, too. We are using SOTW 2 right now, and I am thinking we will take three years to get through SOTW 3 and 4, so I can spend lots of extra time on U.S. history and government. I don't know yet how I'm going to do it -- probably lots of different resources. Maybe more of a unit study approach for parts of it (we normally don't use that method) and more projects. Maybe just lots more library books. I need to start planning all of that very soon, so I'll be watching this thread. :D

Thank you for your posts. I have been struggling lately with how to have both structure and more freedom. You have given me some great ideas to consider.