Yes, I have been stressing about it for awhile but I just haven't found the perfect solution. We started the year using Story of the World Vol. 4 for ds 12 and Vol. 1 for dd 6. They both hate it. Vol. 4 because the activities are terrible and the outlining gets so old. Vol. 1, dd just isn't a classical type student. Any suggestions?? It has also been hard to find a science curriculum to meet our needs. Those are that: 1)The curriculum meets our state standards as close as possible. 2) The curriculum must be secular. There aren't that many secular science programs out there for homeschoolers. And those that are out there are not that great. We have tried Real science 4 kids and Harcourt Science. Like them both but RS4K is too focused on one subject area for us, and not structured enough. Love Harcourt but the workbook is dry and experiments are not ones that are easily done at home. Any good ideas? I have searched and searched till I have just given up.
http://www.eequalsmcq.com/Elem Life Science info.htm That's a free science program Also - if your older one is in middle school - I'm finding Apologia General Science though Christian based seems to be more secular than the younger ages. You can go online to their site and download the entire first module and see if it would work for you. We did that and then were using DonnaYoung.org for the planning of it. I also bought the 1st edition on eBay for $40 for the teacher book, text book, and the CD. So deals are out there
I have looked at the Apologia program at curriculum fairs, but you don't really get the chance to check it out real close. Many of my friends use it but I was afraid it would contain to much doctrine. I will definately check this out. Thanks!!
I would completely change how you are doing SOTW. We just listened to the stories and then did additional reading as we chose. On rare occassion, I would see an activity worth doing, like the Monk's meal. That was fun. But there are few activities we did. We never got in to outlining. I did the same exact book regardless of age. So, we all listened to SOTW 1 at the same time. Then we just picked extra books we liked from around those times if we wanted. But seriously...how much history do you think they would get AT a school? If they just listen to 1 years worth of the book in 1 school year, they probably will know way more history than they ever would from being AT school. I always add in some maps workbook, generally by MCP or Spectrum.
