I have written a thorough review of AG on my blog: http://roseacademyacademics.blogspot.com/2014/02/curriculum-review-analytical-grammar.html As for writing, we use IEW.

For me: couch to 5k training 3times/week...this is HARD for me! I'm having the kids a work right along with me. The youngers are doing the best they can, but I them my 14yo might actually run a 5k with me at some point. I can't keep up with her! Also for me: 30 day abs challenge starting June 1 For the kids: some math a couple times/week, my oldest will finish Exploration Education physical science, and they will all read daily. I've also instituted tickets instead of $$$ to encourage good attitudes, complete chores without being told or complaining, also for reading and memorizing scripture. They can spend their tickets to do fun stuff: pedicure, have friends spend the night, camp out, movie night, stay up late, ice cream, etc.

What curriculum would you use? Obviously anything lit based isn't going over very well. I guess I need suggestions for quick, short reading passages, get it done type of curriculum.

Math U See

I have a brother laser for b/w printing, but need something for photos. Would like something under $100. I'm ok with inkjet especially if it has separate cartridges for each color. Suggestions?

I found a lap book template on the IEW yahoo groups

Yes. But I still have to remind my son to think about the story.

I loved my canon mx 870. It was very reliable and worked great for 3 years. It died and we upgraded to the brother laser printer. Anyway I have a bunch of generic ink for the canon if you r interested. Lol

I think your plan sounds feasible. Would you consider LL8 instead of 7? Or maybe you prefer the book choices in 7? For IEW medieval, consider having her do the level B assignments. I don't know how HOD schedules the medieval writing book because when we did it, I taught it to a class of students including my 7th grade daughter. We mostly followed the level b schedule in IEW instead of the schedule in HOD. Basically we did 1 lesson per week. She should have a very strong foundation in report and essay writing after using the IEW medieval, especially if you do the super essays in the last few lessons. Are you going to read the story time titles out loud? If so then she could potentially read the extension titles on her own and do the follow ups for those. Are going to have her do the astronomy/earth science as scheduled plus the biology things you have listed? I would choose 1 or the other. The Astronomy in RTR is very thorough especially if you add the science extensions and maybe a few additional astronomy book/things. I like Teaching the Classics for lit analysis. You can use any book, even books that you read for history extensions or story time titles. So maybe you could use that to get you starts on lit analysis?

NM

The price is KILLING me!!!! I love HOD, it works well for my kids, but we will not be continuing it into high school, especially because of the cost! A lot of what the author has done is choose several different texts/courses which are already written. All she does is plan and schedule them for you. Then you need to purchase all of the student materials and also the teacher guides for each of those subjects. Then you also must purchase the HOD guide, which basically tells you what to do and when. It seems like the only original parts that she actually plans is the history schedule and related things like the timeline and notebook pages. The living library is unique (at least in name). The notebook pages are unique as well. As for everything else, I'm pretty certain I can handle all that. I also do not like her choices for several subjects. Basically the only things we would use are the history related boxes. It's just too much $$$ for us to pay for just those boxes. I would literally have to re-write all the other parts of the curriculum. We are not on the same science cycle that they are scheduling. My daughter is studying French, not Spanish. The art projects we will do together as a family. I will add picture study using some things from Simply Charlotte Mason. We use Analytical grammar and IEW for language arts. I also want to schedule my own literature and living library titles, and I'm completely ok with doing that. We are going to use the most important thing you will ever study. My daughter will complete 1 book each year of high school. This will enable her to study and read the entire Bible during her high school career, something I wish I had been challenged to do in high school. So even though I desperately want the high school guides to work for us, they simply won't because of cost mostly and then because I would need to supplement/change too much of it for it to be worth it. Personally I think HOD shines the most from Preparing through MTMM. Once they have completed those guides, they have a solid foundation for knowing how to learn and study on their own. They are independent. At that point, I think you could assign almost anything and they would be able to understand how to learn so that they can get the most out of it.

I have an auction for my classes. They spend their tickets they have earned auction style. Everyone brings at least 2 new or in-good-condition items to sell. Then we play a game. Simile shenanigans is extremely popular with my classes!

Does the AFF include paper grading? That may be well worth the cost. I personally prefer to teach the material myself, but if having a class will be motivation to complete the material, then I would go for the live teacher or online class. You will probably have to buy the AFF student book as well. Also in a live class it's great motivation for the student to do his/her best because of reading their work out loud, etc. also it's helpful for outlining and brainstorming to have a class of students to help with that.

We have it and love it. However the product truly shines if you have the lesson plans which are created to go along with it. My son bought the kit with his own money and enjoyed building the projects. A while later we were very generously gifted the teacher guide and disc and he had many Aha! Moments as we have worked through the sets. Totally worth it! I'm seriously considering using lego education products for his science curriculum.

If your dc are in middle school you should choose SICC-B. If they are in high school you can go with SICC-C. If you go through SICC-B this year and they will be in high school the next year, you can go to SICC-C after you complete the SICC-B this year. Clear as mud? Lol

You could do SICC-B successfully or one of the theme based books--Narnia or Ancient history would be a good choice. You could choose medieval but it might get challenging in the latter half of the book. Personally it depends on what you want...do you want to put Ina DVD and have Andrew Pudewa teach the material? O are you comfortable enough to teach the material yourself? The theme based books are nice and very well written with lots of help. The instructions are written to the students so you could be their guide and help with brainstorming and outlining.

http://roseacademyacademics.blogspot.com/2014/02/eeme-electronics-project.html Ours is more like a day in review....Caden finished his 4th EEME project and said it's the best one yet! I've wanted to share about this fabulous electronics curriculum for a while now. Looks like today is the day!

I just posted a review about AG on my blog. Link is in my signature if you'd like to check it out. I also posted the same review at homeschool reviews.

I have 4 and we are making it work :) My oldest 3 are mostly independent though. My youngest will be starting Bigger soon (it's so parent dependent that I'm dragging my feet). I want to encourage you though that it does get easier to do HOD especially in the upper guides. They truly can be independent especially once you work with them and show them how you want them to work. And they must understand your expectations. I have mine all separated. It created way too much competition when I tried to combine. Mine are ages 8, 10, 12, 14. So close enough in age to combine some of them, but almost too close because of the competition factor. HOD does say that bigger and preparing are e most teacher time intensive years. However I have trained my 10 yo to do preparing totally on her own, yes even the teacher boxes. Occasionally she asks for help not because she needs it, but because she wants my attention. So I give it to her. That said I am dragging my feet on starting my youngest in Bigger. It's not that I don't like it, I do like it, it just takes a lot of my time. He is my one whom i already spend a lot of time working with math, language arts, etc. that I'm afraid adding in bigger would just kill his love for learning. He learns and discovers so much n his own already and chooses to do educational things, watch educational videos on his own that I really don't want to burden him anymore. You can read my blog (link in my signature) for a peek I to what our days and weeks look like.

A few weeks ago, I shared with someone briefly about Analyticl Grammar. I have written a detailed blog post just in case anyone is interested in reading about how we use AG and why it's been successful in our homeschool. Hopefully it will be helpful to someone! http://roseacademyacademics.blogspot.com/2014/02/curriculum-review-analytical-grammar.html

Could you tell me more about what you are using, which units, etc?

The grammar in AG is less-redundant. For example in R&S the student practices nouns for an entire unit in every book with frequent reviews over the course of a book. with AG, the student truly masters the material. Once the material is mastered they practice it one time every other week. So less drill and kill. AG is a no frills program much like R&S. It's not pretty, but it is thorough and efficient. There are 3 stages. You can choose to do 1 stage per year or all 3 in 1 year. Quite honestly I think doing it at a pace of 1 stage per year is sufficient unless your student is in high school and needs to do the entire book in 1 year. After u complete a section then you move to review and reinforcement which is practicing the skills u just mastered. You basically parse and diagram sentences once every 2 weeks just to keep those skills fresh. My dd is flourishing with this method. Plus the motivation that after she finishes this unit (hooray!) she only has to do review and reinforcement for the rest of the year. AG is pricey...around $90 something for the student and teacher guide, but it's 3 years worth of grammar! Also after they complete all of the grammar worksheets (and throw them away) they will be left with a grammar guide that they will use for the rest of their lives. Honestly what sold me on AG was the very thorough video walk through at the authors website. She will explain it so much better than I am! She also offers DVDs if you aren't confident enought to teach it yourself. I haven't used the DVDs though so can't comment on those.

We also tweak HOD. The History project box is always optional, always. If it looks like fun, they can do it, it they want. They don't miss anything if they don't want to do it. We do Bible as a family, so the Bible study in CTC is not being done this year. Also we do a different Bible memory program, so we don't also do the Bible memory in CTC. We use MUS instead of the HOD recommendations. We use IEW instead of any writing suggested in the language arts box. Its faster for us. We also don't start any grammar until middle school. Even then, we use Analyticl Grammar. My daughter in CTC often does the watercolor assignment all in one day. It works for her. She then has shorter days on the other 3 days of the week. Also once my kids hit their groove with whichever program they are in, it goes really quickly. It's also important to note that the older guides do require much more time on the student, so that's a factor as well.

Wanted to add that when we did use R&S we used it about 2-3 times per week. We also skipped any writing portions as we use IEW for writing.