Books!

And I've done it. All the books for AO Year 2 are in my possession. I'm still waiting for D'Aulaire's Abraham Lincoln, which should be here in a few days. The workbooks on the bottom of the picture are from "The Complete Book of..." series, which ds loves and we'll use to supplement. The last thing I'm buying the the TT Math 5 which ds is dying for. We did a bunch of sample lessons online and he's so into it. That costs about $120. The AO books came to a total (after tax and shipping) of $144. So W's total for the AO books, math program, and supplemental workbooks comes to about $265. Woohoo! The only other stuff I buy is the sale stuff from the Target and Staples back-to-school weeks in August. That comes to another $50 or so - for both W and J. (10 notebooks for $1, $.25 glue and crayons, packs of pens and pencils for $.50 - love that).

So, even though J enjoyed Teaching Textbooks, I realized that she's way more drawn to actual books, not the computer, when it comes to learning. I just purchased the first 4 Life of Fred books for her. Those are right up her alley and she's excited about them. J did extremely well on her CAT (standardized test) but more review of the basics will only help her in high school. The books are "Fractions", "Decimals & Percents", "Beginning Algebra", and "Advanced Algebra". All 4 of these came out to about $100 less than the TT program. J decided she wants to listen in on W's Year 2readings - she loved what she caught of the Year 1 stuff - and wants to try doing written narrations based on the readings. She'll have her own booklist of classics to read throughout the year as well. J's total cost for the year's academic stuff will be about $150. Maybe I'll splurge and get the kids nice nature notebooks this year, too.