:iagree: That's the beauty of being the teacher:). You can even use materials meant to fit the 4 year rotation and just start and stop where you want to like a pp said. Take 3 years or 5 years or whatever you want to take. You own the curriculum, it doesn't own you! Good luck!

Next year I'll have 8th, 6th, 3rd, and K. I plan on doing the Middle Ages. After trying with only moderate satisfaction this year to put everyone together this is my "new & improved" plan for next year: SOTW as our "spine." This means I'll take it's chronology and run with it. Ds7 and dd5: *SOTW and narrations *UILE *library books (picture and non-fiction) *timeline *notebook pages *projects *Readers to go with the time periods Dd13 and ds11: *listen in on SOTW (if they want to) *Famous Men of the Middle Ages (read in chronological order to go along with SOTW) *Memoria Press (or Greenleaf, still undecided) Guide to go with Famous Men *KFH to list facts and timelines (in same order as we do SOTW) *K12's Human Odyssey to back it all up:D I have this lined up topic-wise as well. *Outlining from non-fiction library books or any of the above, whatever is suitable that week. *WTM logic stage suggestions for notebooks and writing (biographies and research papers and such) *Readers to go with the time periods (gleaned from these boards and the 2nd half of SL's core 6) *The Mammoth Book of How It Happened for evaluating original sources I finally decided something has to give us an order of things. I want all the kids on the same topics at the same time because we do RA's together and family dinner conversations and projects. If you have your 6th grader do extra non-fiction reading from the library and write a summary about something he read each week (doesn't have to be long) plus some outlining and some extra reading (historical fiction the other dc might not be ready for) I would think you're good. For the sake of your sanity I would keep everyone on the same time period.:D HTH

:bigear:

I've never used Jim Trelease but it's highly recommended! I also love Honey For A Child's Heart by Gladys Hunt. It breaks lists up into ages and genres and talks about why reading aloud is important all the way up through adulthood, even when they read independently. My oldest is 13 and we still do family read-alouds. Sometimes we have several going at once! (school and for fun). We have a lot of "friends" like The Pevensie kids (Narnia), Bilbo Baggins, Henry Huggins, Harry Potter, Laura Ingalls, Ralph Moody (Little Britches), and recently it's been Kendra and Seth Sorenson (Fablehaven) and Percy Jackson. We talk about these characters for years after we read the books. HTH

:iagree: Mine, too! But that doesn't count read-aloud time When she's motivated, it takes about 4 hours. When she's not, it takes all day. Sadly, when she decides to "help" me teach her siblings:001_huh:, it takes them longer, too!:glare: Dd just turned 13.

My ds7 used Zoophonics in ps kindy. We liked them well enough. But, I would suggest continuing with a full phonics program from beginning to end. I brought him home for first grade and jumped between programs and the results weren't good! With my next who starts hs kindy next year we'll do Phonics Pathways until we're done, regardless of how well she's reading! Just my 2 cents.:D

:iagree:I use CLE LA and WWE for my ds7. It's spiral with short lessons and gets the job done. My son likes it because it's short and all-in-one so to speak. The writing instruction isn't all that great but I totally buy into SWB's ideas in Writing With Ease (the textbook itself) so we just add WWE (the workbook) to CLE (LA only, I don't use their reading program) and do lots of read alouds and call that LA.

emphasis mine:iagree: :iagree: We always have a read aloud going. Sometimes it's school related and sometimes not. I always read history and science to ds7 and dd4 but the olders read their's on their own.

You read from the text first. In the Activity Guide there are reading comprehension questions and then your dc gives you a narration (which I usually write down for them until they hit a certain age. It just makes the process easier). The Activity Guide also includes suggestions for supplemental reading, coloring pages, maps, games and project ideas. I always have my dc do the maps, the usually color while I read aloud and occasionally we do a project. If we are studying one specific person in that chapter and he/she happens to catch my dc's interest (or I think that person is particularly important) then we'll do a notebook page on that person for our notebook. We read a lot of supplemental books (non-fiction and fiction) from the library for more info and for fun. Peace Hill Press also puts out worksheets and tests to go with SOTW but I have never used them. I think the main audience there is a classroom where the teacher needs some way to gauge how the kids are doing. With narration and the one-on-one I get with my dc I've never felt the need to use the tests. I know there are some on these boards who do use them. SOTW is a fabulous, engaging narrative to get kids interested in history and help them begin to understand other times and other cultures. If you do an archive search on these boards you'll find more info than you can sift through!:D

I think the bolded part is exactly right! Of course, that's just my 2 cents!:D

:iagree:

:bigear: bump

I started it with my mathy ds as a supplement (once a week we did a couple chapters) in 4th grade. We've finished fractions and are doing the same thing with Decimals & Percents this year in 5th grade.

The IG has the answers in it. The books do not. If you're getting an IG then you won't need to buy a separate answer key.

My piano teacher in CA did a "recital class" once a month in lieu of a lesson. But, she only charged 1/2 price that week. If we missed a lesson and it was our fault, we paid. If she had something come up and had to cancel a lesson, we either didn't pay for that lesson or we had a make-up lesson. This I thought was reasonable. What you have described I find unreasonable:glare:. If the teacher is canceling the lesson to go on vacation I don't think the student should have to pay. I also would NOT pay $48 for my kid to sit in a big group and learn theory. I think that's valuable and having opportunities to play in front of others is very valuable, but not worth the price of an entire lesson. Have you discussed this with the teacher? Perhaps you can "veto" the idea of ds starting the group lessons right now.... If you're not comfortable with her policies and you've discussed it with her and are still not comfortable, I'd look for another teacher.

When I was doing SL I joined both the secular and the Catholic yahoo groups. I found them both extremely helpful in prepping myself to use/discuss/drop/tweak where it was needed.:D Honestly, it was very informative to see where others found things offensive that I hadn't noticed or would have considered innocuous. That provided some good discussion points with my dc as well. Obviously, while reinforcing our own faith I do not want to denegrate others, even unknowingly. Having a heads up on something others found objectionable was very helpful in this goal.

Disclaimer: I am a devout Christian but I'm not Catholic. I'm also not John Holzmann's "flavor" (for lack of a better word) of Christian, either:tongue_smilie:. We did both core 3 and core 4 but only used History, readers and Read-Alouds. There was plenty in the IG teacher's notes that I didn't agree with. But, it didn't really matter as I chose what to share or not share from the IG notes with my kids. We did not read the missionary stories. The only book I had a real problem with in those cores was Incas, Aztecs & Mayans but John Holzmann. I don't know if they are still using it or not.... (Warning: :rant:) The book itself had great info on the cultures and was very well done. My porblem was all the "sidebars" in gray in the book. So, right next to the section on Incan gods there was a sidebar where Holzmann was "pontificating" about how we as Christians need to use the name of God (Yaweh) more in our regular lives.:001_huh: Then, in the section where they talk about Aztec human sacrifice there's a page-long shaded gray box right there on the page where he compares Aztec human sacrifice to the modern practice of elective abortion.:001_huh: Seriously?? In an elementary school text??? I know it's meant to be read aloud to the kids but now do I leave it out on my shelf for my kids to pick up and reread? Grrr.:banghead: Anyway, in those particular cores I don't think you'll find much anti-Catholic bias. I would totally avoid core 200 (obviously!). Also, joining the Catholic SL users Yahoo group would probably be very helpful! Good luck!

:bigear:

:iagree: :iagree:Me, too. Thanks!! I'm going to remember this one! My sis in law has 4 kids (last 2 are twin boys) when she has all 4 at the store people are always saying, Wow you've really got your hands full! She finally came up with a good response: "Yup, but so is my heart!" Love it! I wouldn't change a thing!:D

My sister's mom in law used to make her boys hug each other instead of fighting. The hugs would always start out a little too tight but mom was standing there watching and eventually they would stop squeezing and start laughing! For kids who can write I prefer the love letters! What a great idea!!:lol:

I wouldn't do FLL and CLE LA & Reading and LTR, I think that's overkill.:D You could use CLE LA and LTR and then do the memory work from FLL. The one thing I would think you're missing, even if you do all 3 of these is writing. CLE LA doesn't really teach much writing. You could easily add in WWE for writing or lots of copywork and narration from your reading/history/science stuff. Is your daughter already reading? Has she completed phonics? I wouldn't skip a phonics program, whether she's reading or not, I think a thorough grounding in phonics is really important. At this stage a "reading" program on top of LA and phonics seems like overkill to me. But, your opinion may be different. I have a ds who hates to sit still and so for the grammar stage we keep mostly to the 3 r's with some history and science thrown in for fun. If your daughter really enjoys music and art then by all means, continue with those. But, please don't feel like you have to have them in 1st grade to get a good education! They should be fun subjects, not stressful. I didn't see science of any kind on your list? That may or may not be on purpose:tongue_smilie:. As far as history goes, ancients is a blast! I'm not a big fan of social studies, I think it's good for kids to have a grasp of what people were running from and what they left behind when they came to America. I also like to give context to slavery (ie it's been happening forever) and why a representative gov't was such a big deal. This is why we study history chronologically and don't focus on American at my house (although history is my passion, specifically American history!). However, there are plenty of others here who would disagree with me on this!:D Just my 2 cents, hope some of it's useful to you.;)

:iagree: That's a really good point! This year I worked SOTW around History Odyssey Level 2 as far as topics go. We've read SOTW outloud together and then I dismiss the olders to do their additional stuff and ds7 and I have done the narrations together. When we got to Rome I decided we needed to simplify so I've eliminated SOTW for the olders: they just do their own thing on their own schedule. Ds7 and dd4 do SOTW with me. The entire family is doing the read-alouds together still. This has really helped free up time in our school day! But, keeping on the same topics at the same times allows us to enjoy RA's together and have great dinnertime discussions.:D

Ancient Egypt: The Golden Goblet Ancient Mesopotamia: Hittite Warrior Ancient China: ??? We read the Chi'i-Lin Purse, a collection of stories, not a novel, but still good. Ancient India: ??? never found anything Ancient Africa: ??? only found picture books Ancient Israel: The Bronze Bow Ancient Greece: ??? We read D'Aulaires's Greek Myths but actually enjoyed Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief a lot more. (I advise pre-reading to make sure it's suitable for your family). Ancient Rome: Detectives in Togas was fun. It has a sequel "Mystery of the Roman Ransom" but we won't start that till Monday:). Okay, that's more than 5, but at least I kept it to one per geographical area!;)

We use the KFH to list facts but it hasn't worked very well this year for outlining, really it's like outlining an outline. I wouldn't use Usborne for outlining, either. So, next year my kids are going to outline either non-fiction books from the library or k12's Human Odyssey textbook on the Middle Ages (I'm not a big textbook fan, but this should work well). Another thing I've thought about using is Famous Men of the Middle Ages. This won't be a spine, but I can assign the sections on certain men when we read about them in SOTW or K12. We'll see how it goes. I just wanted to chime in that the outlining doesn't always have to be from your spine. I'm going to have dc do listing facts and dates for each chapter and then outline once a week and write a summary of something else they read once a week. We'll see how it goes....:D

This sounds cool! Would you care to elaborate?:D My dc aren't happy about it but they know it will happen anyway: at least 30 min of free reading a day and math 2X's a week. I'm also hoping to get a lot of fun science experiments in since that's where I totally dropped the ball this school year!