I have to admit that I do have it pretty easy in life as far as homeschool.  I only have 2 kids, and they are 4 years apart.  This makes it easy because now that Jett is doing school, Shawn is old enough to do alot on her own or even help him out. 

I have found that there are a couple of rules I need to pay attention to, the first being, what works for one child may not be best for the other.  My second point would be that boys are different than girls.   Lastly, you are going to spend alot of time with these children, and you will have the ability to cut them to the quick, but make sure you spend each day in prayer for your children and show them love and compassion.

I would have added consistency, but I'm not so good at that, plus I don't think that it's hugely important.

Jett has been vastly different from Shawn.  Shawn has a photographic memory and has always been eager to learn.  This isn't how Jett is...  at all.  In fact, he has just recently become eager to learn at all.  I keep thinking that he is somehow slower than Shawn, but he's not, he is just different.   He is also young for his grade (he just turned 7) and again, he's not Shawn.

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We have gone from the struggle of learning to read last year, where he fought me everyday we worked on this, to reading being a breeze.  We are listening to alot of books on tape as well as doing alot of reading aloud to encourage his love of reading.

For school, he reads a passage daily from McGuffy readers.  He is almost done with the 1st grade book and should be moving to 2nd soon.

We are continuing with First Language Lessons for grammar studies, and are in the 2nd grade portion of the book now.  This book focuses on memory work and narrations to learn basic grammar.  He is also using Spelling Workout, and has really gotten into the books lately.

Handwriting Without Tears is his handwriting practice.  He's not the kind of kid who you can just say how to do something and it's automatically in his brain.  He needs reminders and little things to jog his memory, and this program is full of these things.

He is working his way through Saxon Math 2, and is working on memorizing his addition/subtraction facts at this time.  I like this for the younger grades as it is scripted (easy to teach) and works on alot of basic skills in a practical manner.

Science is done with Shawn, and they are working at their own levels thru Apologia's Botany right now, with Astronomy to follow this winter.  He is completing his own lapbook of what he learns that is full of narrations, experiments and art.

We are continuing the study of history with Story of the World, Volume 2 this year.   The emphasis is on the middle ages, and so far, he is loving this.  He does a narration on what is read to him, and has geography and other art projects for the chapters in the Activity guide.

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Reading is really a big part of his study right now.  Mainly it is we who read to him, but he's getting there.

The book list for his year is not conclusive, as we will add other things depending upon where we are in history, but it is the general outline....

Beowulf ...Serraillier (appropriate for kids)

Cantebury Tales (a version appropriate for kids)..... Chaucer/McCaughrean

Shakespeare plays ... I love the illustrated books by Bruce Colville, and Lamb's book  is also a great one to have

The Kitchen Knight ..... Hodges

Medieval Feast.... Aliki

Who Were the Vikings.... Usborne book

Meet Christopher Columbus... de Kay

Good Queen Bess... Stanley

Starry Messenger... Sis

Joan of Arc... Stanley

Leif the Lucky.... D'Aulaire

Marco Polo for Kids...Herbert

Little House on the Prarie... Wilder

Mr Popper's Penguins.... Atwater

Story of Dr Doolittle... Lofting