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I've had 4 of our guides separated and put into 3 ring binders. I love it. I use page dividers to separate math extensions, poetry, etc. It makes it so much easier for us to remove a page or two when needed then put it back into the binder. Since I'll use the guides with all 3 kiddos, I don't plan t...

You have definitely been given some wonderful advice and input. When we started homeschooling 4 years ago, we began with MFW Adventures. My daughter and I really enjoyed some of the projects, especially the cooking projects. We really enjoyed the reading, but found a disconnect between the Bible, hi...

I enjoyed visiting with Julie at the conference today, too! I was telling my husband tonight that I love walking around and seeing so many other options at the book fair, but none of them even interest me! I am so content and happy with the choices of materials HOD uses. I stopped occasionally at ot...

Julie, I so needed to hear your struggles today. Does that sound weird? I have taken our first 'mental health' day off today because my husband's work trips are starting to affect me. Every trip he makes triggers my feelings from when he was deployed to Iraq and to Afghanistan. I am so blessed to ha...

My ds (6.5) used to complain about handwriting hurting his hand and wrists last year. We worked throughout the week on building up his fine motor skills. It sounds to me like your ds just needs to strengthen his fine motor muscles. Try having him work with playdough (strengthens muscles in wrists an...

Hang in there! Last year when my dd (then 4th grade) started writing the poems/paragraphs for the Preparing poetry, I worked with her a lot. We talked a lot about the topic and compared it to Robert Louis Stevenson's poem. I would guide dd and would write the 'rough' drafts on paper or a wipe board ...

Anna, It looks like medicine/anatomy is studied from Units 23-35. There are approximately 3 weeks dedicated to the Galen book, approximately 5 weeks for History of Medicine, and then the final 5 weeks are dedicated to the anatomy book. When I skimmed the units, it looked as if the experiments and ac...

Thank you so much, ladies! I guess since it was so late last night I wasn't thinking or writing clearly. We have only just started school and I am still tweaking our schedule/routine big time. My little guy LOVES doing his own schoolwork and begs to have his own lessons. :D Too bad my 5th grader isn...

This year for his prek year, our ds (4.5 years old) is working through LHTH (we started last year and didn't quite get halfway through it). We are really enjoying the program but I have worked myself into a dilemma. I currently use the guide as written, and sometimes add a few extra letter activitie...

Julie, Thank you for your quick reply! I can't believe you remembered my last post a while ago about being behind! My dd finished her math, dithor, and language (the basics) for the past year. I should have clarified we'd only be using the math, grammar, writing, dithor, and dictation from CTC. Sinc...

I am working on our plans for the upcoming school year and am wondering if Genesis: Finding Our Roots and A Child's Geography Vol. II could be used independently from the "Learning Through History" portion of CTC. How much do these two books correlate to the history portion? The reason I'm asking is...

This year we have used The Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading and Explode the Code. While I like OPGTR, I also like the idea of my ds having a little bit of reinforcement and written work to go along with phonics. He does 2 pages a day from Explode the Code and it's just enough for us! We w...

I had Staples cut off the spine and hole punch our Preparing guide this year. I am so glad I did! It has been so nice to keep dividers between the appendix sections and has made it easy to pull out certain pages for dd to work on assignments in a separate room. I am considering doing the same thing ...

You ladies are awesome, as usual! :D Thank you for your words of encouragement. We've only homeschooled for two years and I still struggle with 'getting my days in.' We live in Texas, and have no paperwork to submit on how many days we actually have school, which sometimes is a good thing, other tim...

This past year has been wonderful with HOD, however, teaching all 3 kiddos proved to be much more challenging than I'd originally thought. :? We ended up taking the entire month of December off, and between scheduled and (ahem) unscheduled days off, we are now looking at not finishing Preparing by t...