Thank you for your reply! I am still chuckling about your story this morning. Having just read The Lord of the Rings this summer, I could see my son doing the same. I did need a reminder that an element of this is simply that he is a 13 year old boy. We will keep working, but was also both need grace. 🙂

From what you have stated, this sounds like a great addition to our curriculum. I have done a bit of this on my own with my kids.

I should have mentioned originally that I was not intending for these books to be curriculum, just a supplement.

Also, I have been looking at Killgallon's materials. I am thinking that Sentence Composing for Middle School and/or Paragraphs for Middle School might be appropriate to help my son. I have no experience with these and don't know anyone who does. I can't fully tell if they are just copy work, or also cover all of the concepts of great sentence and paragraph composition as well. Any thoughts?

@Lori D. Thank you so much for all of the feedback! I think I am going to have to print it all out and ruminate on it a bit. After reading through everything on this thread, I feel like I am lacking in my instructional skills for writing. I'm not sure where that leaves me. More research, I guess.

Thank you all for your help! I think we will take the semester off from formal curriculum and take time to work on sentences and paragraphs. Hopefully we can find topics that he wants to write about. Lori D. - I am pretty sure you have met my child! Ha! Your first sentence perfectly described the struggle we are going through. It does make me feel better that this is common for his age. Thank you for all of the feedback and suggestions.

Overall, the class went well. He received great feedback and some additional instruction. But as he finished up the 8 week course, his final paper was fraught with all of the same issues. Thank you for the suggestion! I will look into it.

My son is 13 and we are really struggling with writing. He has gone through all of the WWE books and book one of WWS. For grammar, we covered all of the FLL and then have used various other grammar curriculum since then. I also put him in an essay writing class this summer to give him some perspective and instruction that wasn't from me. He struggles with the whole writing process: run-on sentences, well constructed paragraphs, and just an overall dry, clunky writing. I am stuck and don't know how to help him. Most other subjects come very naturally to him. He breezes through math, science, coding, foreign languages, etc. He is also a voracious reader. How do I help him with writing?

I just looked up Layers of Learning. It looks great! Thank you so much for passing that on!

I think this is where I am having trouble deciding and figuring out what to do. I like the integrated science approach and the grade appropriate reading list that goes along with with the history that we would be studying, but my kids are on very different reading levels. If I move forward, will the books recommended for 8th grade Modern history advanced for my 6th grader (he reads well above his reading level, but it is more content that I am concerned about). If I do that and then I would go back to Ancients when he is in 7th and his brother is in 5th... Would those books still hold my 7th grader's attention? I am quite sure that I am overthinking this. We homeschool over the summers, so I was thinking about, instead of moving forward to book 4 of SOTW, just going back to Ancients and Life Science to start the whole cycle at the beginning for both of them. I don't know. I wish I had started all of this years ago!

Thanks for the feedback! Sounds like I am at least on the right track and it would be fine going any direction. I haven't heard of Layers of Learning. I will look that up. Thanks again!

I am sure this topic has been covered a lot on here, but I am not finding what I am looking for when I do a search. I will have a 6th grader and 4th grader next year. I would like to do history and science in one lesson for both of them, but I am not sure where to start. I would like to follow the lessons in WTM for those two topics fairly closely, but they are obviously in different places on the cycle. We have been using SOTW for 3 years now and are set to start on book 4. So here are my questions: Should I do different lessons for each child for science and history to keep them closer to the books grade plans? If I keep them together and just start the cycle over, should I go back to Ancients for history and sort of splitting the difference a bit and starting with 5th grade for those two topics? I love the timeline/suggestions in WTM, but for more than one child, and especially for friends of mine that have lots of kids, this seems like a large amount of time to do a separate lesson for each child in the family for every topic. Maybe that is better and worth it! I'm still learning. Any advice or links to other threads on this topic would be great! Thank you!

True, I shouldn't have said he just needed help with phonics. I did mention later that he has trouble with rhyming, rote memory and flipping syllables while reading. I have also found out recently that dyslexia runs in my family. Please forgive me for my inconsistencies. I am sick and have had a fever for two days. I am emotional and my brain isn't running at full capacity. Everything I have read over the past couple of weeks seems to indicate to me that he has dyslexia, with his weaknesses and his strengths. I could be totally wrong though! That is why I am pursuing testing. I just want to do something to help him while I wait, which is why I came here to try to get some thoughts and opinions on different programs. I don't have any presumption that it will be easy for me to help him if he does have dyslexia. I realize that I may need to get outside assistance on this one. I have read about the Orton Gillingham method and I thought all of the ones that I listed were OG. Although now that I go back and look, I don't think Saxon program is.

Wonderful! Thank you for all of this! I actually got the Phonemic Awareness for Young Children from our library about a week and a half ago and I have been working through the "first grade" schedule with him. I can already see improvement in his rhyming ability. I will order Recipe for Reading. Looks like a good, inexpensive place to start. I feel bad that the way I taught him may have caused issues, but I guess all I can do now is go back and fill in the gaps.

And just fyi, his troubles aren't just with phonics, but he also struggles with rhyming, rote memory and flipping syllables. These things combined are why I am pursuing dyslexia testing and help for him in these areas.