Y'all. I'm feeling utterly lost. ODS is 10.5, YDS is 7 and we've always homeschooled. The boys refuse to public school because they want to be together and with me, even cranky me. I have ADHD and fairly certain ODS does too but we've never had him tested. I also suspect he's somewhere on the gifted scale (not profound). We're debating having him tested just to see where he's strengths lie and where we can better meet his needs. I struggle with pulling together all the subjects and curriculum choices. I'm not trying to be a Pinterest mom but I want to engage my kids, let them do interesting stuff and get them prepared for 2ndary education and life while not going insane. We're a military family and we move in a year to ??? so this limits us on outside lessons, groups, etc. They both do sports and love it.
Given our struggles with sticking to a schedule and having a good rhythm we're going to implement a Block Schedule with some looping. As in, doing an hour of math and for 30 minutes he's going to work through his spine (Singapore). For 10 minutes work on multiplication & division memorization. Then 20 minutes of fun or practical math like board games, budgeting, read some of our fun math books. Repeat for other subjects. We've really been lacking the structure and expanded learning that drew us to homeschooling. While he's doing his independent work I'll be working with YDS on his stuff. We'll do some of the fun stuff together. ODS - 10.5 years old. 5th grade
Math
Singapore 4/5.
We've gotten a little behind in the curriculum but have done a LOT of practical stuff and math is one of his favorites. He'll be breezing through or skipping several sections in 4 because he's already done it elsewhere. He's going to start working through LOF Fractions in a couple weeks.
I'm thinking that we'll be heading to AOPS for PreA for 6th grade. Should I transition or supplement with Beast Academy? Is Singapore, with IP enough?
Language Arts
Grammar - Finishing Grammar and Writing 4, just the grammar portion. Will move to Fix It Grammar when done.
Writing - Starting IEW.
Spelling - Running through AAS to make sure we haven't missed anything.
Reading/Literature - Total Language Plus for guided novel study. Plus choosing books from various lists (Mensa, Newberry, NEH). ODS is an avid reader so we'll just be guiding him to good books for free reading.
YDS - 7 years old, 2nd grade
Math
Singapore
Life of Fred (reading together, more for fun than main curriculum)
Language Arts
All About Reading
IEW
Reading/Literature with Total Language Plus & his own reading lists for free reading. He LOVES listening to Audible books & being read to. He'll spend HOURS listening to books so this is very appropriate to him.
***They'll be doing science, social studies, most extracurriculars together just on age appropriate levels. Science
We've got a couple of Apologia texts & journals but we haven't been super formal with curriculum to this point. We want to work in a lot more experiments and hands on stuff. I really need to do some backwards planning to figure out what we need to do to get ready for middle and high school.
Social Studies
Notgrass Uncle Sam & I for an extended study on government as a lead up to the 2020 election.
Jr. Ranger Programs. We like to camp & road trip so we'll be hitting a few of these.
Geography - ??? We'll talk about specific locations as they come up in our studies but we do want a more structured something to really reinforce geo.
Extras
Some art with youtube, typing, coding & cryptography for ODS. Dinosaur stuff for YDS. This is open to whatever the kids are interested in. Plus practical life skills like cooking, budgeting, calculating prices while shopping, domestic chores, etc.
I don't know if its FOMO or my guy saying something's off or self-doubt or what but I feel like I'm not doing right by my kids. The journey to today has not been very easy. We've had 2 international and 1 cross town moves in the past 5 years. There's another move in a year; possibly international. Given my ADHD and other (minor) health issues we've REALLY lacked structure that ODS needs. I know I've said structure multiple times but it has become clear that its VERY important for our family.
Please give me ALL your thoughts and recommendations. I'm 100% open to whatever you have to say!