We are using Tapestry of Grace and are going through year 4, which is the 20th Century. I am using the DE version and so can print whatever I need and how often I need it. Which is really nice, because if one page is all messed up because I made too many marks and comments on it, I can just print out a new one. Also, it allows me to take it with me since it's on my laptop. All through the week there are several days when I drop the kids of and am waiting for them to be done, like AWANA and youthgroup, music lessons and so forth. Now I can use this time and plan for the next day or week. The kids are in different levels, lower grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. We do enjoy many of the books used by TOG, for one of the kids I try to use audiobooks whenever possible, because of dyslexia it is easier to listen than to read, obviously and it allows us to stay more on track. I really like that we are all working on one subject together, just in different levels. I don't have hunt down the right books for each level, that has been done already! I used to put our curriculum together in a VERY ecclectic way, but that didn't work anymore when I had to separate them all into their own levels/grades. I didn't manage well before when we all worked on different things, now most of the work is done for me and I have a teacher's manual - really cool. I also like the price of TOG, which is more than reasonable.
We use Math U See for math, Apologia's Physical Science for High School and Jeannie Fulbright's Anatomy and Human Physiology for elementary. Some of the kids use Rod and Staff for grammar and spelling while others use "All About Spelling" which is a great program for dyslexics. I ordered it about a week ago and just got it in the mail. I am very excited to try it out with the kiddos! I'll talk about it some more as we go along. We have tried some other things before, one was Sequential Spelling, but that didn't work for us. It is absolutely possible that we didn't use it the right way..... We are very curious about the new program and are eager to start!
We use Life in the Word for Bible at this time, along with The Answer Book from Answers In Genesis. The Answer Book is not as easy as I expected it to be, my little guy has a hard time following it in parts. We are only in the first chapter, but I don't feel that the language is for younger kids. We just take a slower pace to work through it.
Other than that we pick up different books, many of them from our Christian library, but I also make extensive use of the public library!
We usually work from 9:00 in the morning until about 4:00 in the afternoon. We also have one hour lunch in there. I would like to shorten the day but since we only have half a day on Wednesdays, because of Science co-op and meet with our homeschool co-op every other Friday, we don't have much time to get through the books. We do have weeks when we don't get started until 10:00 or so. Unfortunately, those are the days when we don't do the more fun things like Art or Shakespeare/Plutarch....
I think that is about enough insight into our far-from-perfect home school :D
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