Is there another class at the co-op that the kids would all have the same book for? For example, if they have the same bio book, maybe you could have them outline a chapter that they're not going to cover this year (or a chapter from a book that they used the year before). Next year I'm planning to use history to work on this with my own 6th grader - the plan is to outline a textbook chapter on M, add in notes from supplementary reading on T and W, we have co-op on Th, and then on F do a short writing assignment that synthesizes the information.

Mine are 5th and 2nd, and I've never combined. What I do, though, is put their units of history or science at the same time during the year. So, world history/geography is in the first quarter of the school year for both kids. I can fill my 'relevant books' box with lots of books that are on-topic for both kids. Sometimes one child reads the beginning of a book about explorers while the other is using a different set of chapters. In the spring, they both do American history in the 3rd quarter. With science, the units don't always line up but I make them as similar as I can - one may be doing weather while the other does the solar system, and they both do the human body at the same time even if they're learning different systems. My older child moves to middle school next year and instead of units will be doing both history and science every/most days, but at this point is able to work independently for a while so that I can help the younger student.

At the younger ages, our co-op offers a lot of themed classes. My kids have taken a lego simple machines class, for example. This year one is taking an anatomy class geared for the K-3 crowd - they spend a few weeks on each system learning how it works. Next year I'll have one child taking a hands-on science, which is fun experiments for the younger kids. We're also offering a snap circuits class. For middle school we offer a mix of styles- some parents want the class to be their main course, while others want some fun hands-on extras. I know that there's a hands-on general science and also a life science with dissection. By high school the classes are academic instead of enrichment. I use Miller and Levine for biology. I don't have any specific recommendations, but how much you can do as 'fun' classes probably depends on what your group wants to get our of co-op. Our group is big enough that there are options, but for a smaller group you'd probably need to all be on the same page about you are trying to offer enrichment or the 'main class'. At our co-op, elementary is enrichment, middle offers some of both, and high school is more traditional academic.

We started when my kid was younger, so I can't tell you where to start. The books don't seem to build on each other so much that you would need to complete all of the preceding ones for the current one to make sense. I find that one book takes us a semester. There are 16 or 18 lessons, so we do one each week. He prefers it to wordly wise.

She might also enjoy something that involves stretching, like pilates. We can get free videos with our cable package, and they are also on youtube. Would she like dance-based movement? There are videos for different styles. There might also be a self-defense martial arts class - maybe she might be motivated by the self-defense aspect?

You might want to check out Spelling Works by Halverson. It doesn't take all year, and goes over a lot of rules. I pull it out every few years as a review. it doesn't involve tests and can be done independently.

Somebody upthread suggested that you focus any extra practice on skills that he'll actually need, so I thought I'd chime in. When I taught biology at a CC, I taught the first class taken in the pre-nursing series. The main math skills that affected students were exponents and decimals. A lot of work is done with the metric system and dosage calculations. Basic graph reading and fractions are also used, but the biggest problem for students was usually the metric system/exponent issue.

MCT is intended to be done with your student. We did the grammar in 15 min/day. Once you get through the read-aloud grammar book, which could be done in a few weeks if you do it daily or a few months if, like us, you did it only a few times/week, you move to the practice book. You're supposed to do 3 sentences/week for analysis, so 5 minutes 3x/week? In his plan, grammar isn't an all year subject, it's something that you do to move on to the writing book, vocab book, and poetry book. If all that you need is grammar, you can get just that part. My husband and I are STEM people, so we're happy to have something that teaches poetry. The vocabulary is meant to be done as read-aloud together, but I let my child read it on their own, and I just step in and quiz them on vocab sometimes. The 'how-to' silly books, Sentence Island or Grammar Town, depending on level, are also meant to be done as read-aloud. Sometimes I let my student read ahead and just discuss the lesson part at the back of the teacher manual.

I went to college at one State U, grad school (where I was a TA) at another, and taught at a CC for several years. This would not have been OK at any of them. Some teachers did not return tests because they reused them, but those would allow you to see them in their office. I have never heard of a prof anywhere who wouldn't discuss a test with you. I have taken classes in the sciences that had a huge curve, so that a 65 was an A, but you knew that when you found out your grade. They would tell you the high, low, average, standard deviation, etc, and then tell you where the As, Bs, and Cs were. Those classes had tests that were like that by design - they covered so much material that you couldn't answer it all - but they never would have said 'Everyone failed'. My own teaching philosophy is that if a few students fail, it might be their fault, but if everybody fails, it's my fault. Ugh.

I'm not sure that it's that most people value sports more than academics (I know some do) as it is that more people seem to believe that you can improve sports with practice, while academics is innate. And, as somebody who remembers being told that you couldn't study for the SAT, it never would have crossed my mind to practice. When I took the PSAT at school, they told us that it was the practice SAT. I was a national merit scholar, but I don't think that I knew that the test we took at school that day meant anything until I got the letter. We were comfortably middle class and my parents had always encouraged academics, sports, music - whatever I wanted to do - but neither had gone to a 4-year college and we had no idea that there was a system to be worked. We thought that you just applied and hoped for the best. I wound up wait-listed at a few places that I might have gotten into had we known what to do, but when I got an offer for a lot of $ based on my NMS at an out-of-state place that looked like a good fit, I said yes. We didn't even visit it until spring break of my senior year, after I was already planning to attend! My husband was in a similar situation, in a totally different state. The counselors had no idea what to tell us, our families didn't know what to tell us, and we both just made the best of the opportunities that came along. We both wound up with STEM PhDs and try to help pass along bits of advice wherever we can. We are fully aware of how much more 'advantaged' our kids our, not because of family stability, encouragement, or even money (we are more comfortable than our families were, but there was always enough), but because we know so much more about how to prepare and what is expected. I don't even know where our families would have gone to get the information - not the schools, and there was no internet in those days.

We saw a lot of Smithsonians (if you have kids who would like it, the 2nd Air and Space at Dulles is neat - very popular with my boy!). I love the documents at the National Archives. Surprise hits were the tour of the Supreme Court and also the Library of Congress (we got a tour guide who knew a lot - the architecture is amazing). Most buildings close at 5, so we did tours and museums during the day and saw monuments outside at night. My daughter loved watching money get made. The tour of the capitol is very scripted, so although it's neat to see, you don't get the same passion and funny stories that we found with some of the other places that have volunteer docents.

My child has done well with books that seem to be at opposite poles in methodology. Growing with Grammar has been good for us. It teaches the details - where to put the commas and quotation marks, parts of speech, intro to diagramming. We don't need a lot of repetition, so this quick 'get it done' series is sufficient. In an attempt to help my student write better, I decided to try MCT's entire series, starting with Grammar Island. It did an amazing job of teaching about language and why we put words together in the way that we do. The Sentence island (and subsequent Parahgraph Town) books are silly, and I thought my kid would think they were childish. For some reason, he thinks they are hilarious. He has loved that the examples that are used in the exercises come from history (today we used the Gettysburg Address to talk about main ideas for paragraphs). I think he's finally starting to see how to organize his writing instead of it being a download of his brain that makes no sense to anybody else. You'll find people on here who like and don't like both of these, but it's really about finding what works for you. Many have great success with FLL, but we made it through less than a week of reading the same definitions repeatedly before my student thought I'd lost my mind. Next year my older student will be in 6th, and I'm planning to use both of the series that I listed above. For us (or at least that child - I'll see what my younger student thinks), the MCT books have really helped and are enjoyable. I'm planning to continue with the GWG workbooks, too, but I'll cut out some of the exercises that we don't need (like subject-verb agreement) and just us it for a quick review of punctuation, etc. I'm planning to do a good bit of writing next year, but I could easily see us forgetting how to punctuate dialog while we're focused on how to write an essay!

We have used AoPS, but my kid has enjoyed the Jousting Armadillos, Crocodiles to Coconuts, and Chuckles the Rocket Dog books more. It is written in a very conversational tone that seems easy to understand. As far as I know, they only have algebra - actually, the first book might be considered pre-algebra, but at any rate the series ends after you do polynomials.

Some kids did 2 builds - some really seem to have a preference for build, lab, or study events (and some of it is the coaches knowing where to put kids). When we sign up, we commit to 20 hours of work (which is 1-2 hours of work/week over the course of the study time). When our team advanced from regionals to state, they moved some of the B team kids (mostly younger or new to SO) up to A so that each kid would have fewer events to work on over that month. We have 3-4 main coaches/organizers who have been doing it a long time and really know how to organize and prep. They will also get other folks as needed. Some topics cycle in and out every few years and I've been told that I'll get to coach when they add cell biology back to the list. :-) Most events are done in pairs, so while students study alone they need to practice taking tests together. For some events, they divide the topics (for anatomy and physiology, they each took certain systems) and on others they divide the skills (the map reading event has 2 'specialty skills' to practice, so the coaches make sure that one kid on a team can do each skill). For our team, coaches use trello and post links to videos and websites for the kids to read and check off, with occasional practice tests or quizzes. You would NOT have to start with this level of organization, though. My kid didn't do build events, so I don't know about cost. With study events and a 5th grade boy, my main job was reminding him to study, going over answers to practice tests sometimes, and getting him to practice. A lot of times, they would have both B and C division teams practicing tests together, so they'd say that 10 am was ecology time and 11 am was anatomy time and the kids would all work through practice tests so that they could discuss answers together.

When you asked about how much time it took and counting it as a science curriculum, I wanted to chime in. My 5th grader competed for the first time this year with an established homeschool team - we have enough that we have A and B teams for B and C division. He choose 2 study events, and for the last few months spent at least an hour or each week for each event. After placing at regionals on the B team, he was moved to the A team when they put the final list together for state. At that point, group practices were 2 1/2 hours a week, plus a couple of hours of independent work on practice tests, video watching, or reading. At first I was kind of boggled at how much time this was taking, but then I realized that any topic that my kid did for science olympiad was a topic that I wouldn't need to cover again, including high school. At one point he was reading my college texts to study! Next year, we're hoping to keep the 2 events that we've already done (we'll continue to study, but it won't take as much time) and add a new event. I'm planning to make study for that event around a semester's worth of our science. SO was a great experience for my kid, and most of the others must feel the same way since, as we finished the meet at state, there was already discussion of who wanted what for next year.

I vaguely remember them doing a basic version of this at my kid's preschool. When they explained what they were looking for, it seemed to e something about perspective or relationships between parts (did you put the head at one end of the torso and the legs at the other, with arms in the middle? did you show 2 things that can't be seen at the same time, like did the head have 2 eyes, a nose, a mouth, and ALSO the back of the head?). There was also maybe something about the act of drawing it - grip on the crayon, ability to cross the midline, etc. This was just a teacher-based assessment looking for major delays. I seem to remember them doing it at the start and again at the end of the year and looking to see what had changed - there are some developmental targets that they could see. Most of the drawings changed a lot over the 9 months of the school year. They talked to the kids so that they'd have explanations if it was strange (I drew it upside down because she was doing a cartwheel!).

I had laproscopic surgery, and the recovery was fairly quick. Mostly it felt like I'd done 1000 sit-ups - more sore than pain, if that makes sense. For me, sleeping on a wedge pillow helped make it easier to get in and out of bed. Because my stomach muscles were sore, I found it a little hard to feel confident any time I stood on one foot - I sat on the side of the tub to shave my legs, and had to hold on to something to step in and out of the shower (we had a tub-shower combo where you had to step over the side). I only took 1 pain pill after I got home, and that was to make sure that I could sleep that first night. My biggest issue was that I was so bloated from all of the air that they pump in to do the surgery. I was living in a place at high altitude at the time, and folks who have surgeries out there seem to have this problem more often - maybe a difference in air pressure? People in my current location don't seem to have that problem. Anyway, loose clothing might be necessary - I looked 5 months pregnant and needed sweatpants or a baggy dress for around 2 weeks.

There are foods that only bother me if my allergies are already a problem - if histamine levels are high, then it's enough to push them over the edge into feeling bad, and otherwise it's fine. As for the shots, I'm down to once/month. I may continue with it forever - the difference is big enough that 30 min/month is a small price to pay. It's been interesting watching members of my family, who never had allergy problems, start to develop seasonal allergies. They seem shocked - you felt like this your entire life? How did you function? :-)

At ours, it's $25 for belt testing, $50 for black belt. Our testing is done on F or Sat am, so they only end up canceling competition practice and some of the adult 'exercise' type classes or private lessons. Most of the regular lessons are M-Th, so they're not affected. Stripe testing is free and done during class.

When I finally decided to get treatment for my allergies, I found that a whole suite of problems went away - full-body aches, muscle twitches, reflux, random panic feelings, insomnia, and vertigo being the unexpected ones (congestion, ear pain, and headache were the normal ones that disappeared). I asked the allergist what else antihistamines and allergy shots helped with, and he said that most doctors dramatically underestimate all of the effects that allergies can have. Having a chronic hyped-up immune response can affect a lot of systems. After feeling pretty much the same my whole life and thinking it was normal, it was completely amazing to not feel like that any more. I tell my allergist that he gave me a whole new life, and my husband says that it's sometimes like taking 20 years off of my age. So, no, it wouldn't surprise me if you had stomach symptoms, especially if you have food allergies. You might also want to look up 'histamine and food' - there are some foods that I'm not allergic to but they can cause problems if I eat too much. Glad you found something that makes you feel better.

Last year I found some at JCPenney and bought a few pairs (they're kind of a stretchy knit denim, in colors). My mom found some reasonable ones at kohls - not quite bermudas, but mid-thigh. For sports, we found some under armor girls basketball shorts that come to the knee (we live near an outlet, so I don't know where/if you can find them elsewhere). I also ordered a pair of XS sized womens umbro shorts and this year, now that she's more of a 10-12, sometimes 14, they should fit. You know the choices are bad when my dad, out shopping with my mom for a birthday gift for my girl, looked at the shorts and said 'Those don't even look comfortable!'.

At the suggestion of somebody on here, I ordered Simply Charlotte Mason's 'visits to' books. I got North America because I wanted to do the states and also Asia because I let my soon-to-be-third-grader pick the other one. If you're trying to spend money, you could get them all. They look like an effective way to learn to label the places on a map. They also have you buy a couple of books (I got them used) that you can use with all of them, and there are suggestions for particular books to read with each. I'm also a big fan if pin-it maps if your kids like hands-on things. It took a while to get all of the pins put together, but I imagine that we'll use it for years. Even my older child (going into 6th grade next year), who has always seemed to absorb geography without much work, enjoyed finding all of the places to put in pins, and there were places that we had to look up on an atlas (and, if you haven't already got one, you could also get a good atlas and a globe as part of geography).

How old is your older child? At this point, Vocabulary with Classical Roots seems closest to what I'm looking for. My older child is in 5th. He's pretty advanced, but we've been using it for 2 or 3 years already. My younger child is less interested in academics, and I'll probably start it in the second semester of 4th or else in 5th grade. My older student doesn't like to write, so this book, with it's fill in the blank and multiple choice analogies, is popular and the words are good - most are words that you actually hear or read. Be forewarned - as best I can tell, the books are in a weird order - there's 4, 5, and 6, and then A, B, and C (judging by the picture on the back of the book).

We've used soaring with spelling for my younger child - it's very straightforward. My older child has used Vocabulary with Classical Roots and we've just chosen 10 words each week to use as spelling. One of these books takes us a semster, so we focus on other things in the spring semester. We also use Spelling Works! which is a workbook of general rules. It doesn't include vocabulary, although it does focus on breaking down words into parts - that's part of teaching when to double a consonant, for example.. I tend to run through it every other year as a refresher during the semester that we're not doing the classical roots study.

I try to have everything here by the last day of school (for us, in May - we start the first Monday in August). On the last day of our school year, I file this year's papers and line up the next year's textbooks and workbooks so that they are ready to go. I still add novels, or pull reference materials as we need them, over the course of the year (at the start of each new history or science unit I fill a basket with related books for the kids to read on their own or for us to read as a family). I've already sketched out a plan for next year and most of the core books are here or on their way, although I'll add fun things as I find them. So, no, you're not alone in this. I do a lot of garden work in the summer, and it's easier to enjoy my free time knowing that the school materials are ready and waiting for me when we're ready to start!