A little more on Charlotte Mason. First off there is a wonderful website dedicated to CM. It has her books online, many links to other websites , free out of print ebooks, and free curriculum plans and schedules! It is called amblesideonline.org. This is some of what I use with my girls. I don't do every subject (like Plutarch) and do put the grades together rather than having to read many different books for each grade. I also aspire a little to Robinson Curriculum where I do require my kids to do much of there work alone, his website is robinsoncurriculum.com. ( I will talk of him later or you can just visit his website, I find him brilliant and fascinating) Each child has an assignment book that I write down daily reading list, spelling words (usually misspelled words from writing), math pages, and any unusual chores. The chapters they read alone they narrate back to me. We have a world map puzzle that is 1,000 pieces right now that we are doing for Geography. Michala learned the States and Capitols from music and her Leap Frog. She knows them better than I do! Most of our science is done in the Spring, Summer, Fall, and through reading. I love the Thorton W. Burgess books for science if you can find originals they are a treasure. You can find paperbacks at doverpublishing .com otherwise they are out of print. Back to Science, we do garden and when we find creatures we often draw them and look them up. We have also used Considering Gods Creation and that was a great hands on start to Science. I like to keep things simple mostly for my own sanity but also I think to many subjects cause a lot of disruption in the school day. To tell the truth, many days we have spent a whole day outside doing Science and nothing else, the same is true for all of our subjects. If your kids are actually interested and curious why stop to do math? Go with the inspiration. Some of our best learning has happened by chance not through my planning.