This might be a simple suggestion, but in case you haven't thought of it, do consider separating composition and penmanship for your dyslexic kiddo. If he uses talk-to-text software or dictates to you and you write it down for him, this truly does count as "writing", and lets him develop his thoughts without being hampered by his dyslexia. Whatever program or approach you choose, you could have him answer some (many) questions orally and only require him to physically write answers to some.

Rainbow Resource sells the teacher and student guides for the Hakim books.

I found Tim Marshall's Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain The World fascinating. He has a couple of other titles along similar lines, but I've not read those.

The original thread that @cintinative referenced is here: https://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/706624-psa-it-is-february/#comment-8891193 If you think what you're experiencing is burnout, though, don't just wait and see. You might find some helpful advice in SWB's burnout lecture, in which she says she herself has had multiple burnouts and talks about what to do about it. Good on you for backing off the pace already. Last school year, I also got to mild burnout stage and after our spring break we just never went back to our books. The older kids had almost 4 months off even their math (I still tried to do a bit of reading with the youngest), and we did things that I find lifegiving and hung out with people that I find refreshing. My energy and enthusiasm have returned, and I'm being more aware this year of keeping margin in my week. Health problems + teenagers + mid life transitions + long cold winters is a lot to deal with all at once! Hugs to you. May you find some light for your path again soon x

I've attempted Killgallon Sentence with a 4th grade "budding engineer" and switched to W&R books 1-3. I think Killgallon was tough for this kiddo for two reasons. 1. We hadn't done any formal grammar, so he couldn't easily go, "Oh, the model sentence starts with an adverb, so I need to start with an adverb, too." 2. There is no guidance or restriction about what the imitation sentence should be about. It's essentially creative writing where you imitate the structure of the model sentence but provide your own content, and that was difficult for this particular kiddo. I found W&R provided more scaffolding - you were rearranging their sentences or substituting synonyms but keeping the same content - and both that kid and my creative type enjoyed it. I'm planning to try Killgallon with another kid next month, I really like the program, but not for one particular kid. Hope our experience is useful to you 🙂

Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit?

Are you looking at a particular time period? There might be specific titles that other history haters have tolerated, eg D'Aulaires Greek Myths and Genevieve Foster's Augustus Caesar's World were surprise hits with mine (I read the Foster book aloud over a term and he kept asking for more), but D'Aulaires Norse and Foster's World of Columbus and Sons were less engaging. Depending on her tolerance/appreciation for gross stuff, Horrible Histories is popular here, and some of Albert Marrin's titles are aimed at that age bracket - Oh, Rats! was enjoyed here and Little Monsters will be soon (history/science, I guess) but they're definitely icky. I can't read them aloud, too much shudder factor. Heroes of the Middle Ages by Eva Tappan was another that I read aloud that my history hater enjoyed - shortish biographies of lots of key players, mostly men, mostly European, but a lively narrative style. Eric Kimmel books always go down well here (myth/legend retellings) and many are freely available on Open Library. Picture book biographies (and myths) by people like Demi or Margaret Stanley (also on Open Library) might be good for a visual child, although the Who Was series is also aimed at that 3rd-4th bracket. A number of girls I know enjoy the My Story series by Scholastic (varying authors). They're HF novels set in various time periods. You wouldn't call them great literature, but for a story oriented child they could be, like the American Girl books @Kassia mentioned, a way to get some information in through the back door. Good luck! We actually took a year off history in favour of world cultures to give my history hater time to forget his prejudices. It has helped a lot and was the right call for my family at that time, but history is still a subject he tolerates rather than adores.

I think it depends on the legislation in your state. I don't see any issue with holding off until 8th grade before introducing essays (and indeed, I didn't do them until 8th or perhaps even 9th), but perhaps you have a reporting requirement that's prompting your question? In my state, we're encouraged but not required to follow the Australian curriculum, so I could have her *speak* her persuasive argument to me and I could either scribe for her or just make notes of the conversation and use those as evidence that we did it. Or I could just say that although I was aware of the guidelines, I chose to follow this interests and learning style of this particular child and do creative writing instead. Why would she have to do it by hand? I see no issue with having her type (or talk-to-text), then you print the first draft, then if she revises and edits you print the finished copy as well.

I have the HIG for grade 6. It's the same Jennifer Hoerst series as all the others, and I purchased from Rainbow Resource. Hope this helps 🙂

I love it - but my husband and I chose it when our eldest was a baby, and we had lots of time to investigate and decide it was what we wanted to do. I have so much respect for the mamas who always imagined their kids going to school for 12 years, but then a diagnosis, a bullying issue or some other trigger leads them to pull their kids out of school and put their hearts and souls into something they weren't originally drawn to, not for love of homeschooling, but for love of their child.

We are about to take a jump up for 6th, I think. Moving up to middle school math, WWS for writing (after no formal program for more than a semester), formally discussing lit, assigning a formal WTM style reading list AND adding a foreign language all in the same year means I'll probably be spending about the same amount of time with this kiddo, but his independent work will increase to a couple of hours each day on top of morning time, family style history and science and some kind of regular meeting with me.

Sorry it's been a rubbish year. If you have the mental energy to look around at other curriculum choices, I wonder if BraveWriter might be a good option for language arts? I find Julie Bogart's tone to be very encouraging and reassuring for me as the parent, and having raised kids with some LDs herself, she is very supportive of things like sharing the pen to help kids have success with composition even if their actual mechanics aren't great. You might try her Growing Brave Writers product (I believe this is a rebadge of the old Writer's Jungle) for low pressure ways to be your kids' writing coach, and/or you might try one of her writing project bundles - Building Confidence (the old Faltering Ownership) might potentially flex to fit both of your older two. Whatever you choose, I hope the next school year throws fewer cream pies and more roses at you ❤️

Perhaps CAP's new program The Curious Historian might have some of what you're looking for. It's aimed at grade 3-4 and up and rather than the review questions and narrations of SOTW, they ask the kids to match words to definitions, select multiple choice answers, draw pictures and answer "imagine you lived there" type questions. The link I included is to their website and there's a "look inside" feature. The chapters are definitely longer than 2-6 verses, but there are plenty of subheadings to use as rest points if you wanted to break the reading up over multiple days.

My son has just finished Singapore 6 and is finally getting better about this. In his case, I got a word problems book that was several grades lower and told him that one day per week he would be doing two pages of word problems from a grade 2 book, not because he didn't know how to do the math, but because he needed to learn to show his work. I broke down questions into 5 possible marks, of which only one was for getting the correct answer. When showing work became a habit, he got to stop the extra problems. Then on the odd occasion where he made a mistake in his grade level work, I just corrected the ones where he showed work, but made him re-do the ones where he didn't. I actually wonder whether this is the dark side of Singapore's excellent mental math training? I recall fighting with this same kid years ago when he wouldn't learn the multiplication algorithm for problems like 82/4, and I explained he'd need it when the problem was bigger, like 658491/3. The kid proceeded to do that in his head as well, with no more difficulty than the first one.

A holiday booking for February, when the optimism of summer is a distant memory and you're fantasising about putting them on the big yellow bus 🤪

Oh I'm so jealous, what a fantastic opportunity! I hope you have a lovely time. Homeschool for the win!! You might like to have him read Laura Amy Schlitz' book The Hero Schliemann: The Dreamer Who Dug For Troy. You should know going in that she doesn't think he's a hero at all, but rather a boaster who probably made up legends about himself after the fact. Nevertheless, a good account of the man and the discovery of Troy, as well as an encouragement toward critical thinking. Are you going to Crete as well? You might have him trace connections between the Minotaur myth and the Knossos excavation - eg the labyrinthine palace floor plan, the objects that look like bull horns, the frescoes that depict bull jumping. I know there are sites in the UK that allow the general public to assist in excavations. I wonder whether any sites convenient for you will do this as well? Not sure who to ask - one of the universities, perhaps?

Farley Mowat's Owls in the Family. Sterling North's Rascal. Andrew Clements' A Week in the Woods. Bear Grylls' Mission: Survival series.

@EKS, I did not know that as I've only seen the Open Library one. Can you tell me a bit more about how they're different?

You could see the full text of the third K12 Human Odyssey book, the modern history one, at Open Library for free. Here it is: https://openlibrary.org/search?q=human+odyssey+cribb&mode=everything

Ogden Nash's The Tale of Custard the Dragon is worth adding as a narrative poem often published as a stand-alone picture book. Christopher Paolini's dragon quartet the Inheritance Cycle was popular a few years ago. He's a former homeschooler, if that is of interest to your audience.

Is there a film version of this Shakespeare play that is appropriate for fifth grade? I'm wanting something more to follow the Bruce Colville picture book. This will be a first dip into the Bard.

Hello, and welcome to the forums! If @WTM's link above doesn't work for you, the following might help. The goal of WWE is to help a student practice two distinct skills separately until they are ready to do them at the same time: summarise a passage in words, and write those words on paper. Level 1 has students copy 1-2 short sentences on two days a week, and tell you one thing they remember from a reading passage on two days a week, which you will write down for them. Later in the year, some of the sentences they copy are the ones you wrote down for them. Level 2 has the student begin dictation as well as, and then instead of, copywork. It also begins to help the student not just remember any one thing from the passage, but begin to identify the most important information to include in a true summary. There are scaffolding questions to help the student do this. During level three the reading and dictation selections get longer again, and the student gradually transitions to reading a selection of a couple of pages and writing a one paragraph summary. In my family, kids who have completed WWE 3 are easily able to write chapter summaries for Story of the World as well, usually one paragraph per subheading (2-3 paragraphs per chapter). Writing With Skill is a big step up. It was originally slated for grades 5-7, but after feedback from lots of parents they now say to *begin* somewhere between grades 5-7. Many on this forum have said that 6th is the earliest that they'd start, and 7th and 8th are not uncommon. That means you might be looking for something else until your son is ready for WWS. Somewhere on the WTM site is (was?) a lovely chart with lots of possible progressions through writing from K-12, but I can't seem to put my finger on it today. I do recall, however, that Killgallon Sentence Composing for Middle School was one of the possibilities for 4th grade, and another is simply writing across the curriculum (asking the child to write narrative summaries of selections he's reading for history and science). Something that wasn't from the WTM chart but that I'm glad we did here was Writing and Rhetoric books 1-3. We are jumping back over for Writing With Skill after that. Writing With Ease does not cover spelling or grammar. They recommend a spelling workbook such as Spelling Workout or Spelling Power, and a grammar program such as First Language Lessons for those two areas. Best of luck as you make your plans 🙂 ETA: Aha! I found the chart! https://downloads.peacehillpress.com/samples/pdf/WWEandWWSexplanation.pdf

We loved Science in the Beginning as a genuinely multi-age elementary science year. It's arranged by the creation week, so there were 10-15 lessons each on topics like light, water, air, rocks, plants, animals and people. A good mix of variety and depth for my (then) 1st and 3rd graders. However, we have not loved the next book, Science in the Ancient World. Because it's arranged chronologically, I felt like we were cavorting wildly from an astronomy discovery by one scientist, to an anatomy one by someone completely different. There wasn't enough time with many of the scientists to get a feel for who they were, nor enough time on a single topic to get any depth. I believe the elementary series is called "Science Through HiStory", and it's definitely elementary, not middle school. However, he does have other books for older grades, beginning with Science in the Atomic Age which is aimed at 7th grade. I don't own that book, but looking through its table of contents it seems like it might be less "skippy" and better organised. You could find out more about his junior high and high school books at the Berean Builders website: https://bereanbuilders.com/ecomm/ I would not recommend you plan to work through all the elementary books with an older student. If you were looking at a history of science approach for a middle schooler, perhaps Joy Hakim's Story of Science series could fit the bill. Sonlight uses this as part of their History of Science year (grades 8-10).

@Lori D. has previously recommended The Rainbow. It's a two year course covering physics, chemistry, biology and earth science and is aimed at 7-9th grades. It's definitely Christian. Perhaps you might jump straight into year 2 if you feel that physics and chem are already in place?

Can realistic adventure include adventurous historical fiction? * My Side of the Mountain * Tom Sawyer * The Sign of the Beaver * Call it Courage (Armstrong Sperry) * Banner in the Sky (Ullman) * Johnny Tremain * Hatchet