Switched-on-Schoolhouse (SOS) again, that is.  I keep changing things up here, but change can be good, especially at this time of year when it's easy to be discouraged, and especially when I've gone from having a wonderful assistant with my 5 children to going solo with them once more.  We are, however, not using SOS exactly how it was designed to be used.  The first time around with it (about 17 months ago) when my oldest daughter has just turned 7, I allowed her to begin using it for Language Arts, then for math, then for just about everything, and she did it independently...for awhile.  Then it was like pulling teeth to get her to do it. 

This time I'm starting my son (who just turned 7), but I'm not asking him to do it independently.  We are doing it together and including my daughter.  We are using it for Language Arts and Math, while continuing to use Story of the World and Considering God's Creation for history and science.  We're also dropping out the spelling part of SOS in favor of Sequential Spelling, in which we're on day 7.  So far so good.  We're also using Ambleside Online curriculum for some additional read-alouds.

Switched-on-schoolhouse was designed to be used independently.  As I said, we're not doing that.  We are completing the lessons together (logging in as "class"), reading through the lesson screens and then the kids alternate answering the questions or problems.  It is working out really well since the number of problems was overwhelming for my daughter when she tried it the first time.  In addition, the kids can check answers out with each other before submitting it for a grade.  When quiz time comes, my children use separate logins to take the quizzes independently.  We've already had a couple language arts quizzes, and that has worked well...I'm not sure if I'll use the same strategy for the math quizzes and tests or not, though I better decide soon since the first one is coming up next week!

I wasn't sure about teaching math and language arts to my oldest 2 kids together, as they are a bit over a year apart, but it seems to be working out well.  My daughter is breezing through the Language Arts so far but is demonstrating a need to practice math more.  My son, on the other hand, is finding the math to be quite easy, but is challenged by the Language Arts.  I'm pleased to be able to teach them all subjects together for the time being.  It makes my life so much simpler.