preparing for next school year...supplements?

[TinaM]

Hi ladies! Next school year I will be doing Beyond with my girls(or at least my oldest). Of course I'll need the books and manual. But i was wondering what other supplemental books do you find valuable in having at home? I'm looking into buying a world book encyclopedia cd rom. We just dont have enough room for an actual set. I'd like to have books that will be likely used throughout the the volume at home. I want to minimize our library trips. We'll of course be starting with Volume 1. What digital supplementals do you think are a must? Do you do all the available lapbooks?

Do you find you need to have supplemental curriculums? Like a separate history and science curriculum?

How much time per day do you spend on beyond? Estimated of course. :) How long does it take you to finish one book? Do you have them read on their own or do you read along with them? I'll be having our 4th blessing in July and so will have a newborn and an almost 3yo at home with us. I guess I would like to have them read the chapter on their own and then just do the lesson with them. Do some of you do this and if so, does it work out fine? or is it a much better choice to be present while they are reading the chapter(s)?

Thanks so much! I know i have a lot of questions. We are enjoying FIAR. I guess i want to see how they differ from each other. Thanks again!

[Esther-Alabama]

I think you will enjoy Beyond just as much as FIAR. It is fun and the lessons are really good.

I read each chapter with my ds. I read it aloud to him, just like with FIAR. I then give him a list of activities I want him to do for that chapter and give him the resources.... which usually consist of World Book or Brittanica Online encyclopedias that are provided by our library system. I get access to it at their website with just my library card number. I also use the Discovery Education Streaming website again free through Alabama Public TV. And of course, books from the library. I let my ds work on his own as much as possible. He is learning to be a more independent learner. I had to help him more last year, than this. He enjoys doing the "projects" himself, though.

I would look into free products from your statewide library system and plan about a week ahead.

This week, his list included: Diagram the parts of a chicken egg. Make a poster about measurement (distance, volume, and time), and plan/draw a vegetable garden, including what to plant, when to plant seeds, and an estimated harvest. Read about the Hoover Dam and write a paragraph about it.

Depending on the book, we do 1-3 chapters a week, usually 2.

HTH.

[Amee]

We have Usborne's Internet-linked Encyclopedia of World History and their Science Encyclopedia, and I use those a lot. You go to their website and put in your book and page number to get related websites, and they keep the links updated. It saves me a lot of time surfing the internet looking for good, kid-friendly web sites.

My son is not too interested in lapbooks, so I don't know much about the lapbooks that are available. Instead we do notebooking. His favorite is to make a comic strip where the characters have a conversation about the topic. :lol:

We have not needed anything extra for history or science. BFIAR includes plenty, sometimes more than we have time for.

We spend one hour a day on BFIAR. We have never finished a book in the time I had planned to, so I don't know what to tell you about that. Sometimes a project will just take us longer than I thought it would. I guess we usually cover about two chapters a week.

Sometimes I read to him, and sometimes he reads and comes and narrates the chapter to me when he's done. I prefer to read together, but with two other kids I just don't always have time. I am working on making him more and more independent on his school work. It's hard for me because I enjoy learning with him, but I think it is good for him.

I guess the biggest way BFIAR has been different for us is that I'm never really sure how much we will get done in a week. With FIAR it was easy to get a book done in five days. With BFIAR, there have been some topics that took us a week and some days when we covered two or three topics. I have learned to be more laid back about planning. I look through the manual and choose the lessons we will cover, and then we work for an hour each day. I don't worry about how long a book takes, because we are learning something good every day.

[CherylF]

We're doing our first book in BYFIAR and will finish it up in 5 weeks (The Cricket in Times Square.) We supplment with math, reading, and science as well. For this particular book, I found it on CD at the library and it's been wonderful! The reader is great and does different voices for each character, which I'm not particularly good at. I would highly recommend going that route if the book is available on CD. We listen to the book together, but if we didn't have the CD, the two of us would read it together (both of us reading out loud).