Hi, Can someone tell me what is in it? I used All Things Fun and Fascinating this year with the TWSS DVDs. Thanks, Wendy

Hi, I'm trying to come up with a good list for my 3rd grader for next year. He did the 2nd grade Sonlight readers this year. I would love to hear what your plans are! Thanks, Wendy

My oldest son followed the WTM sequence and began IEW in 5th grade. My middle son is using WWE with some additional narration and copywork with history. I plan to ease him into IEW in 4th or 5th grade. I like WWE because it is so easy to use. I found I can add to it some weeks and pull back on others. It keeps me on track though. IEW has a bit of a learning curve but my son is doing well with it.

I've been checking this out. It looks like a fun workbook program that encourages kids to dig into their Bible. I'm wondering if anyone has used this? I'm hoping we can get away with just the workbooks because buying 3 teacher editions (for 1st, 3rd and 5th) would be very expensive!! Thanks for any input. Wendy

I guess most people already know this, but I always get re-inspired when I read the WTM. Especially during my beginning of the year planning and curriculum picking. It helps me to keep things simple.

Math Mammoth SOTW WTM History Odyssey Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading

Mine was the same way. After several weeks of hand-holding he gradually began to work a bit more independently. Now things are much easier and I think he doesn't mind so much because he knows the system. He also knows its easier than just summarizing what we've read! I also found that sometimes the paragraphs I picked were too difficult. I would try to find paragraphs that interested him, but then I realized the sentences were too long and complicated. I went back to short and sweet sentences and that helped.

yes, thanks so much! It was just what I needed.

We've used MM for 3 years now. It has worked great for us. There are a few things my sons can do on their own, but mostly I spend a lot of time with them working through the problems. There are many problems to work through from many different angles. We usually skip some problems in a section when I feel that they "get it." We've done Horizons, Singapore, and Moving with Math. MM has worked the best for us. We use the full-year curriculums bought through Winterpromise.

We are doing year 4 of our history rotation and are about at the Civil War. I am using SOTW, Usborne Encyclopedia, History Odyssey Modern and Guesthollow.com's free Am History schedule. I love the Am. History portion. We have had such great discussions and my boys have really gotten into the pretend play with the Alamo and Civil War. Our library is full of great resources and I use History Odyssey and Guesthollow's recommendations for supplements. I am just going chronologically through World and American History and have a loose schedule. I try to read an overview of the topic each week (from SOTW, Usborne, Child's Story of America - CLP, or History of Our US - Abeka) and then we follow up with a good read-alouds, short biographies and picture books. We don't do a lot of writing or lapbooks (my boys can't sit still for them!) with our history but they are learning a ton. Hope this helps some!

We have both Sponge Bob and Typing Instructor Deluxe. My 7yo likes Sponge Bob. My 10 yo is annoyed with the goofiness of it and likes Typing Instructor. We have two Windows XP machines and I was able to get both programs for pretty cheap since they aren't Vista or Win7. Just a thought.

So it looks like everyone just keeps adding units as their kids get older. Is high school about the same? Thanks for the input. This helps a lot.

My son is a 5th grader and we have been doing IEW for the first time this year. I've been watching the TWSS DVDs and he has been working through All Things Fun and Fascinating. I have SWI-A but haven't used it yet. I'm trying to plan for middle school and high school with IEW and am a bit confused. Where do we go after SWI-A? Do we do SWI-B next or should we do SICC Level A? I would like to have at least a skeleton of a plan to get us through high school! I also have two younger sons who will be following. They are both doing WWE. Thanks!

I have a 2nd grader and a 5th grader doing the modern era. With my younger I am getting some great ideas from the free curriculum pulled together at Guesthollow.com. She has truly done a wonderful job of pulling together a year-long curriculum for Modern American History. I'm also using History Odyssey and STOW for World History (mostly with my 5th grader). There are a lot of wonderful readers for modern history and we are having a great year.

I'm interested in adding more "notebooking" type pages to our Modern History schedule. This would be for a 2nd grader. I can't find any samples of this book by WP and was wondering what people thought of it. Thanks!

The spines we are using this year are: Usborne Internet linked Encyclopedia of World History Story of the World 3 and 4 A Child's Story of America by CLP History of the United States by Abeka Complete Book of United States History by McGraw-Hill I have actually been pleasantly surprised with the Complete Book of US History and the History of the United States by Abeka. We are loving history this year. There are sooo many great books covering American History!

Just so you know...all 3 of my boys are like this! I have spent oodles of time trying to make learning "fun" and they still can't wait to be done. I now just have a list for each one and they check it off as the go. Fortunately none of them want to go to PS, so that is incentive to get their work done! My 7yo is a major lego/hands on kind of guy. He is very intelligent and does well on his seat work (but very quickly). I have spent a lot of time trying to get him to sit longer for read-alouds. His 10yo brother loves to be read to, but my 7yo hates it. I require it everyday and give him something to color/create while he listens. It is his most difficult subject! One thing he has really started to enjoy are short nonfiction readers. We follow SL for our other reading and I just added these in with our science. He has a box of the Rookie Reader Science readers and picks one everyday. I also have purchased several hands-on science kits for him to mess around with (no structure). I notice as my boys get older they seem to get more interested in learning. My 10yo really loves cowboys/mountain men/trappers and other topics we hit in history. He now will (finally!) voluntarily pick up books on our history topics and read through them!

We have used GWG for 2 years. My 2nd grader can easily do 2 pages (one lesson). My 5th grader gets bogged down. He is actually working through the 4th grade book which is still quite a bit of work for him. I feel like there are a lot of problems to work through at this level, so I often cut out half of them so he doesn't fall behind. He still retains the info. well so it seems to be working fine. Each year seems to review quite a bit, so I wouldn't think there would be a problem slowing down.

Thanks for posting this. I had forgotten about Paula's Archives!

Oooh..I really appreciate this input! I think our insurance does cover speech therapy so I'm going to call tomorrow and get an evaluation. I feel so blind-sided. Its hard to believe you can miss something when it is right in front of you everyday!

Thanks for the input. I'm going to check with our dentist. I guess I assumed if there was a real problem my friends who were public school teachers would have commented (but of course I realize my shy son probably never really spoke when they were around!). The catalyst to all this was when my son told me today that some of the boys on his All-star baseball team this summer made fun of him! I had no idea and that was several months ago. Does make me wonder how I could have missed this when other 10 year-olds notice! Ugh.

I've always noticed a slight lisp in my son, but always thought it endearing and I guess thought he would grow out of it. Until recently nobody has said anything to me, but now a couple of people have commented on it to me. I'm not sure what to do. I was going to call the local school district to find out about speech therapy, but I'm not sure if they accept homeschoolers. Has anyone else dealt with this? I would appreciate some advice.

I know some are, but I don't think the one he had is a newer one. I wish so much I had found it before him! I got rid of several a few years ago (although I should have taken them to a hazardous waste disposal area as I've read now). Save yourself some misery and get rid of yours and get digital! We're thinking we need to cut a 1'x1' area out of our new carpet....ugh.

My 7yo broke an old mercury thermometer on the floor in his room. After calling poison control and searching the internet I still don't know what to do. I know mercury vaporizes and inhaling is the danger, but does anyone know for how long? I really don't want to cut a chunk out of the carpet and I was wondering if it would eventually dissipate if we just closed off the room for awhile? I remember breaking a thermometer as a kid and not doing a thing. I'm still alive today somehow! Anyone have experience with this?

We lived in Alaska for about 4 years. I bought a lot of clothing through Sierratradingpost.com and Campmor. I mostly wore jeans with different layered shirts/coats. Depending on the temps I would either wear a fleece coat with gloves and hat (in the fall), or one of two down coats (winter). I had light fleece gloves and heavier ski type gloves and a fleece hat. I also have several zip-t fleece shirts (turtlenecks) that I wore a lot. Hope that helps!