I'm not a "math person" (and see my current thread asking for help on a year six question for confirmation!) but I've found the home instructor guide does a great job of helping me understand the "Singapore way". I've had plenty of lightbulb moments as I now understand *why* you borrow and carry and add zeroes to multiply large numbers and all that kind of thing, and my son's foundation is now stronger and faster than my own was. I can't guarantee that it will click for you, but my own experience is it's very homeschool friendly and not dissimilar to Kate Snow's approach. You would want a workbook, Home Instructor Guide and possibly the textbook for each level. We never actually use the textbooks but I like having them "just in case".

Depending how firm your "no" is on Singapore, you might try the Primary Mathematics US edition? I have Kate Snow's Math Facts That Stick and feel like her approach and explanations are similar to Singapore, though she has described her books as "easier" than Singapore. There are also Home Instructor Guides for the US edition which hold the parent's hand, giving lightly scripted explanations of concepts and pairing them with simple games (often card/dice games) or hands on activities for reinforcement and extension.

Oxford Uni Press has a medieval series as well, "The Medieval and Early Modern World". The European World 400-1450 An Age of Science and Revolutions 1600-1800 An Age of Empires 1200-1750 The African and Middle Eastern World 600-1500 And so on - there's one on Asia, one on voyages of discovery, and a primary source volume that accompanies all six books, and you'll find links to those beneath the main Amazon listings I've linked above. There are also teacher books and student study guides which include a "group project" (hands on activity but sometimes designed for a group eg drama projects) for each chapter, map work, comprehension questions and primary source work. It's definitely more "school-y" than SOTW, and it does not include any outlining, which might be a minus for you? The European World plus An Age of Empires dovetail reasonably well with SOTW 2; there are two specifically non-Western volumes that would greatly expand the coverage SOTW gives to Africa/Asia. It sounds like there's a lot you are pleased with in your current pattern. You don't have to outline everything just because the book says so - what if you just adjust the frequency? They outline one week, and the next week they write a narrative summary/tell you orally what the outlined points would be/write about the previous week's content using the outline they wrote last week? Another point to consider is that the OUP books are out of print. They're easily available used, but the teaching and student guides aren't always. If you're looking for more of a complete curriculum than a build-your-own, that might push you back toward Pandia.

All the others in the grouping seem straightforward, but for some reason I'm struggling with this Singapore challenging word problem for DS. The book gives an answer but no working to show how they approached it. Esther had five times as many cards as Richard. Esther gave 1/4 of her cards to Richard. Then, Richard gave 1/6 of his cards to Esther in return. In the end, Esther had 90 cards more than Richard. How many cards did Esther have at first?

The Well Trained Mind was great for me starting out because it explains how to get a "spine" book for history/science or lit list for English and turn it into a year of learning. It provides some goals depending whether the student is grammar/logic/rhetoric stage, e.g. grammar stage science: cultivate wonder and close observation; begin to learn some scientific terminology for what you observe. It might give you the confidence to launch out on your own without a purchased curriculum, even if you start just DIYing one subject.

The OP gave examples of the kinds of topical study she had in mind, and boardies responded in kind. I don't think we have to take Crosswalk as some kind of gatekeeper for what might be called a unit study.

Personally, I would not skip it. WWS is classic Susan Wise Bauer: so carefully and incrementally graded that you might not even notice you are building slowly and steadily toward a rock solid writing foundation. In my opinion, it goes deeper than W&R Narrative II or Chreia, gives more demanding assignments, and gives more concrete suggestions about how the student can improve. Eleven is on the younger side for WWS 1. You might find your kiddos have a better foundation for it from doing W&R but I definitely would not rush past it to level 2.

Agreeing with Clemsondana. "Moving at his pace" can mean "completing the math lesson in 10 minutes instead of 60". It doesn't have to mean "doing several lessons a day because there's still time left in the schedule".

What about a "micro break"? The days when I send each kid to their own room for an hour after lunch I notice an immediate feeling of relief in myself. If they're separate, they can't argue and the noise level goes way down. I have been known to set the oven timer for an hour and leave instructions that when it goes off, they should get a snack and put on a video but that they should not come and see me before it finishes unless there is blood or smoke 🙂 Feeling like I have been away from them, even just for an hour or two, gives me what I need to come back and fully engage again. Otherwise I find myself existing in the same space, but not wanting to connect, just kind of phoning it in.

Wait, zombies wear gloves?! 🧟‍♂️

Agreeing with Rosie that this would be too much for just about any kid! I would also hold off on AAS for another year (at least), and save WWE until he's reading simple books comfortably. For literature I'd read lots of picture books and sometimes do related extension activities - eg How To Make An Apple Pie & See The World - you make the pie; for The Very Hungry Caterpillar maybe you can keep a caterpillar in a jar until it turns into a butterfly and then release it; that kind of thing. For history and science I'd read picture books too. This is not short changing your kids, it's giving them age appropriate information in a sustainable way (won't burn you all out) that leaves a little extra in the tank for the therapy and learning challenges you are going to be dealing with. Story of the World is awesome and we're on our second loop through it now. The one thing I'd do differently is I wish I'd waited until kid #2 was old enough to join us. A younger can usually join in for books 1 & 2, but the books' target range increases through the series, with book 4 being aimed at grades 4-8, so kid #2 was "too young" for the entire loop. He's enjoying it far more this time around as an 8 year old than he did as a tag-along 4. Are you doing all those extras now? Every family is different, but there's no way I as the parent could sustain a sane homeschool ritual and also play taxi for all those other things. I would think about how many extracurriculars you think you'd like, and plan to do one fewer than that. Margin is good 🙂 Wishing you all the best as you think through your options and make some plans.

We play "Kaboom". Write the target facts onto craft sticks. Write "Kaboom!" on a couple more sticks. Put them all into a mug so you can't see the writing. Players take turns to pull out a fact and say the answer. If they get it right, they keep the stick. If they pull "Kaboom!" they have to put all their sticks back. First to 5 or 10 wins. You'll need to adjust the number of "Kaboom" sticks based on how many are playing and how many target facts are in the mug. Works for sight words too. As facts are mastered, replace with new ones.

The SOTW activity guide is a good starting point for both history and lit suggestions, and then as I look at those on Amazon I also tend to follow the "items other people have looked at" links to find more. Lists by other publishers - Sonlight/Bookshark, Tapestry of Grace, things like that usually publish a list of recommended titles for each time period. Blogs by people who use SOTW and share what books they enjoyed. Also the Well Trained Mind literature lists for 5th-12th grade are aligned to ancient/medieval/etc history. I stash ideas on four Pinterest boards as I find them, and then the summer before we start that period I decide what to buy/borrow and plug it all into a document according to SOTW chapter so that it becomes open and go: for each week I know which picture books, NF, novels, hands on activities, etc I have, and I sort of "pick from the menu" at the time, deciding what to read aloud, what to assign to each kid and sometimes what to just skip.

I homeschool outside the US. I love openlibrary.org - it has a lot of the picture book suggestions from SOTW that I can't find anywhere else here, and is free. I just cast it to our TV and read to the kids on the lounge as if it were a real book. I also plan ahead and do one large order each year from www.rainbowresource.com - if I spend $500 I get the best shipping, so if that means roping in friends or including Christmas presents in the order, I do that. For "top ups" during the year I like Book Depository (because the prices include shipping and are in local currency, and they tend to ship pretty fast to where I am) and thrift.com (used books from the States, shipping is no longer cheap but has become faster in the past couple of years). Sometimes even eBay (use ebay.co.jp and search worldwide to automatically exclude sellers who won't post to Japan). We're not Kindle people, but that would be another way to save postage costs and storage space. You might also try a local international school, if there is one. Some are willing to let you pay a small membership fee and then borrow their (usually English) books on a similar basis to the students. You can definitely give your kids an excellent education with a smaller selection of well chosen books. You will also probably find homeschooling doesn't take as long as their private school day, even with four of them to teach, so you may have opportunities for extracurriculars, community classes, field trips, service projects and other things that you wouldn't otherwise. You'll likely be able to combine your kids for some subjects - homeschool-friendly history, science, foreign language, even language arts are often presented in a broad banded way (suitable for multiple grades) rather than narrowly grade focused, and that will save you time and brain space and give the kids some group learning and discussion. All the best as you consider your options, and welcome to the WTM boards!

Ha, I read it as a summit entitled "Happily Family Free" and wondered how it related to homeschooling!

There's a large series called (fill in the gap) Lab For Kids. They contain around 50 projects/experiments on a theme, either art or STEM. Kitchen Science Lab for Kids is one. Each project is a double page spread, with clear instructions and a short "why" for the sciency ones. If I had a criticism it would be that the explanations are very brief, but my kids love them and it hasn't been difficult to pair a nonfiction title from the library with the books if I want to flesh out a fuller curriculum.

If you love Hillsdale College videos, you might also love CenterforLit.com. They are all Hillsdale graduates and have a fantastic approach to teaching literature. There are free podcasts as well as $$ content - their Teaching the Classics seminar will set you up to teach lit yourself and they run online classes if you prefer to outsource. It sounds like you're doing everything right - trying stuff out, working out what you do and don't like. Most people take a year or two to find their rhythm and it's common for people's homeschool "style" to morph over time. It's not wasted time, even if you drop some things and head in a different direction. Best of luck on your journey!

This might be a good place to jump ship - book 4, Chreia and Proverb, teaches the 5 paragraph essay. There are people who do it and love it, but it seems to me that there are more people who thrash about and pick something new half way through. You could do other writing for a couple of years, teach the essay with another format when you think he's ready, and then jump back in later when you feel like it. SWB has a list of possible writing progressions in Writing With Ease that you can find here, and one of those ignores the first six books altogether, then teaches books 7-12 over two years in grades 10 and 11. My 5th grader will do book 3, then work on outlining and start Writing With Skill later in the year, probably at half pace. My 3rd grader will also do book 3, alongside Writing With Ease 2/3, then perhaps try Killgallon in 4th. Good luck - there are so many options!

You might try lit classes from www.centerforlit.com. Kids read one book per month and discuss it in a single 2 hour live class, writing class is optional and runs weekly. They usually have a semester 2 intake but they only just started their school year this month; you might be able to just join in from October? Instructors are deeply Christian but the books and not their faith takes center stage. Website has sample discussions you can listen to to get a feel for their classes. Their approach teaches kids how to read a book and understand the author for themselves and is great prep for high school, college and just lifelong reading. You might try their elementary (gr 5-6) class or middle school (gr 6-9).

Seconding the large format grid books - I sometimes copy out problems for my 8 year old so he has more room to write (and so he doesn't use up his "writing miles" on math before we get to actual writing!). Some kids really love some creativity here too - if you don't need to keep them as evidence that he did the work, you might write the problems on a window with a glass marker, or outside with sidewalk chalk, or just on a whiteboard or boogie board. You could do some orally if you're available to listen to his answers. If you have a large format printer, you could photocopy the pages at 144% (this turns A4 to A3 for instance - doubles the size).

But clearly a relevant post - not one about hairstyles or bed wetting! Thanks, @M.E.. I often scroll through old threads for ideas and I agree that Chanticleer and the Fox is a worthy addition for younger students.

@Servant4Christwe are huge SOTW fans in our house, but with the wisdom of hindsight, I should have waited till kid 2 was in first grade instead of enthusiastically jumping in the moment kid 1 was ready. SOTW will easily stretch up to meet a kid who's in say 3rd or even 4th grade when they start, but it's less easy to stretch the later books down for a younger sibling who's hitting book 3 or 4 in 1st or 2nd grade.

As well as the timeline in the back of the book, you could also use the dates listed in the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History. The SOTW activity guide tells you which pages to read with each chapter (or you could just use common sense if you don't have the ac guide), and each spread in the encyclopedia usually has a call-out box with important dates.

Ours was a supermarket chicken that lived in a ziploc bag inside a Tupperware container on the school room bench while being mummified. It never stank, despite it being late summer when we began. Now it's enjoying its 3000 years of bliss in a styrofoam box on top of a bookshelf, still not stinking, and shortly before we come back around to ancients again I will bury it in the backyard in preparation for an archaeological dig. It did need far more salt and bicarb than I had guessed from the instructions, and I wish I had asked the butcher for one with head and feet still attached.

We played verbal phonemic awareness games until they could hear beginning and middle sounds and rhyme, then started Explode the Code. It was great for my boys - literally 5 minutes a day - and they both took off and began reading picture books on their own around book 4. My daughter is in the thick of it right now and she also loves Explode the Code, but it's a very different experience: rather than knock it out and be done like her brothers, she's all about painstakingly coloring every picture, so her two pages a day is more like 20 minutes by her choice. For very first readers, we love Nora Gaydos' Now I'm Reading series - extremely short, phonically controlled, hilarious pictures. Great for building confidence in that early stage. After the phonics is done, the other thing that has been magic for us is a @Lori D. suggestion: bedtime here is 7:30, but if you're reading you can stay up later than that. New readers might only stay up ten minutes, but both my boys regularly read for an hour or more on top of any reading during the day.