We started the year doing the guide exactly as written except for math (continuing with Horizons). As the year went on, a few things got left by the wayside. First, we gave up "sharing" the poem. A few times she shared with her dad or a grandparent over the phone, but she began to always pick to share with her little siblings. They weren't overly enthusiastic about listening (since they often hear the poem during the week as we do school), so I didn't require it after a while. Second, we stopped doing the Bible box after Christmas. When we started back up, we were crunched for time for a few weeks with some outside of the house things, and it just didn't always get done (we would do 2-3 days per unit). And then in late January/early February, we replaced the box with Awana studying. My daughter was doing Bible quizzing, so we studied that instead (we had been doing Awana Mission Grace in Action all year, with the regular and silver sections completed). Here and there we skipped a project or research, but otherwise we completed the whole guide!
As for how we set up everything for the year, here you go!
First, we continued our composition books for grammar (Rod and Staff 4 this year) and dictation. I again printed the dictation passages and put them in a report folder for my daughter. This allowed her to mark them as needed - completed, what she missed, things to remember, etc.
We also continued our vocabulary box from Bigger. So, she again wrote on 3x5 cards and alphabetized them in the file box.
We also bought a nice red journal for a common place book, which we will continue for years to come.
For everything else (except the math and DITHOR workbooks), we used one 2in binder. It was HUGE! My daughter complained about how big it was. So, we won't be going this route again. But it did work. We had sections for timeline, history written narrations, independent history, science notebooking, science labs, science five questions, poetry writing, and other. We used tabs with pockets, so I could store blank paper in the pockets. For things she would use printer paper for (which was a lot of it), I put page protectors in for filing. This kept her from having to open the binder prongs too often! I put the parts where she would use lined filler paper int he middle, as those are the easiest places to fill later.
For timeline, we decided to use baseball card holders instead of the accordion style. We don't have wall space to store things, and a set of "loose" cards would be easily destroyed. And it worked great! I will definitely be doing this with my younger kids.
Here are pictures of the HUGE binder:
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