I can't believe I didn't really see this the first time! Thank you so much!

Yes!!! This is so true. And in my case I would go a step further and confess that my pride was bound up in it. I thought of BA as the best, and the only true "problem solving" curriculum as opposed to the "just learn the algorithm" approach. And if course that's not true, there are many great programs that teach conceptually. I just really wanted to think of him as a puzzle solver when he wasn't, though he has many gifts and math is his favorite subject. You just have the kid you have! That's why the forum for curriculum says "let's remember no one curriculum fits all kids"! 🙂

But again, this is where I get frustrated: if the subject is homeschooling oversight, then standardized testing looks smart to many people. But if the subject is standardized testing and the impact it has had on teaching, suddenly the opinions are way more negative -- teachers complain about having to teach to the test and not having time to spend on things that won't be tested but are valuable. Many of us got into HSing because we didn't want that. We want to, say, focus on poetry memorization and Latin grammar the way things used to be done. Or we want to teach our kids shop and mechanic skills and self-control and self-reliance, and those aren't on the test either. THAT is why we fight for autonomy and are willing to give people the benefit of the doubt - we don't want the public school's standards of what's valuable, and frankly, we don't think they have earned the right to tell us what should be learned when, because it doesn't seem clear that they know. Their desire is to send all (mostly unprepared kids) to college (of some kind). Many of us think this is outdated, and teaching plumbing skills and problem solving at home is MUCH better for many kids than (badly) cramming them with Shakespeare who (largely) don't care about it. That's not my homeschool, but I respect people who have homeschools like that. And until the schools can show a great track record of educating all their own students well, they don't get to measure the rest of us by their (awful and badly implemented) standards. /End Texas-y rant, lol.

I'm sure OP already got all the answers she needs. I would just add an example of something frustrating: in the year 3 book that introduces multiplication, it has a drill sergeant just say you need to memorize the table, and that's it. Done. After that one lesson, they expect you to have memorized the tables. So off we go, to find our own additional flashcards, practice timed worksheets, etc. In contrast, math mammoth does 2-3 pages for each number (8s, etc) and doing lots of practice, and then having them fill in their table with what they have learned so far, adding more each time. I think BA is great for kids who love puzzles, and who are proud and happy and "high" when they solve something. Lots of kids are good math students who hate puzzles, or who finally get the answer and don't feel "high" but instead feel discouraged and defeated that it was so hard. When my son said he hated math after successfully slogging through a hard puzzle, we quit. My husband was a math major and hated that curriculum from the start. But I know lots of people have very different kids and excellent results!

I know this is the perennial debate, but I just keep looking at the alternative: there's no plan in the public school for how to fix kids with messed up home lives, and most people who wouldn't do a good job educating their children at home live in areas with low performing public schools. It's very few people who can afford to live in high quality school districts but who then don't send their kids to those schools and choose to subpar homeschool them. I know there's no "magic bullet" to solving this problem... But it always annoys me when the following happens in the media/think pieces: 1. Story about homeschooling: highlights all the potential problems and abuses, interviews people who buy a dollar store workbook and call it good. Opinions about public school that are fairly glowing and show kids having a great time with caring adults. 2. Story about racial divides in education: highlights the terrible performance and high rates of violence and abuse at many or even most public schools in places that especially serve people of color. 10% abuse rate of all students nationally. Interviews with parents and kids who have been beaten daily or can't read at graduation but prosecuted for truancy if they stay home. Condemnation as unconstitutional but otherwise without solution, no homeschooling mentioned. The juxtaposition of these two things always makes me crazy.

It's not nice to watch, but I really don't think you should do anything at all. You mentioned this is a family member and there's already tension there. Well... She already knows how you feel, probably. She knows and doesn't want your help. I have struggled with this in my family and said to myself many times before "If they want your opinion, they will ask for it" and they never do (but my opinion is so good! Lol) so I end up approaching things obliquely to try to offer "help" and it inevitably goes terribly. They resent it all the way. Even people whose kids can't sleep on their own without massive interventions totally do not want anyone's help even when they are complaining on FB about it (that one always kills me). The truth is that public school is not that great in many areas. If they are in a rural area with few opportunities, it's not clear that they would obviously be Rhodes scholars in the public school. But even if they were in a good school district, the public school culture is so awful to kids today. I'm NOT saying "better out of school no matter what" but I see so many young people with such bizarre jaded, cynical mindsets and so many psychological issues, and maybe this mom can give them a better childhood and adolescence and equip them for life in a way that their better educated peers will not be. It's something to hope at least. But I see my family members doing what I think is the wrong thing with their kids and the answer is TS, if you get my meaning. We can't fix others' lives for them. Sorry if that sounds harsh but I really have made a hash of things in my family with my "tactful" attempts.

Lol, I didn't mention which because most people aren't Catholic, but we now mostly use the Language of God series from CHC. Some people think they are too easy because they almost always review absolute basics in each book like punctuating a sentence and what nouns and verbs are, but they do get harder and do include some diagramming. I tried to skip some lessons so we would have time for R&S but I couldn't skip as many as I wanted to - it was more solid than I expected. The diagramming is NOT as extensive as R&S and doesn't move as quickly. I also think R&S does an excellent job with teaching outlining. However, I was having a hard time planning out R&S lessons for all the kids (it sounds like it should be easy to just see what lesson you're at and where to go next, but times that by all subjects and kids and it adds up). So I switched to these workbooks and they just go on to the next page, with the answers in the back if you need them. When they finish a book we go on to the next one, or else fill the rest of the time with R&S or other writing. I think it's easy to flip through R&S and cherry pick the ones about diagramming gerunds or whatever you've missed.

I can't say I have made a meta review of the studies! But this quote from a New York Times article is typical of what I've seen: "In fact, learning to write in cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing." (*ETA: this was an opinion piece by an OT. I totally have not examined the studies. Just sayin.) When I was looking at this issue, I saw lots of people say that when children learn cursive first/primarily, they are able to back their way into print if needed without being taught. It's (anecdotally) a derivative skill. But the same is not true in reverse. Another interesting thing I picked up at that time was that people in Europe and worldwide do NOT have "printing"!! How crazy is that? They literally don't understand what Americans are talking about. "Joined up writing" is the only writing. One person said "I'm so confused. Like you try to pretend you're a computer or a typewriter and try to separate each letter? Why?" Apparently printing was introduced very recently in the history of education in America as a "reform" to make things "easier" and this just did not happen elsewhere. Anyway, interesting! But I found the whole "teaching both" thing to be very easy and natural.

I wasn't talking about whether to teach it first. I personally don't teach it first -- I tried that and it failed. I now teach all my littles print and then cursive once print is established. I was just saying I do think it's worthwhile to teach in general, at some point.

It seems like a silly preference, but my understanding is that studies have shown that more goes on in a child's brain when writing in cursive than you would think. It seems to have a lot of benefits even though most children will develop a hybrid for their own writing later in life. My children started with print in preK, but then I discovered and felt super convicted by the "teach cursive first!!" idea. But I couldn't find many programs intended for very young children. I ended up using Abeka's preK cursive books for my two littles, with mixed results. The books were colorful and cute, but there wasn't much instruction and they just weren't really learning much. In the end, we went back to print. Once that was well established (for us, by about the end of K year) I started cursive in first grade using MP's New American Cursive, since MP starts these cursive books in first grade, and I wanted something intended for that age. The instruction was better and they were more ready. Now we do both print and cursive, a little of one or the other. It has worked well. If you do just a little a day, it does add up.

I see. Thanks, that is helpful.

Yes, this is all very helpful! Thank you, it's exactly what I had in mind. Lots to read through. My oldest will only be in 6th next year so I do have some time. And he is doing well with his skills and independence. Random follow up regarding colleges wanting 2-4 years of the same language... We do Latin (and some Greek to a lesser extent), and I had planned to continue that up to at least part of high school, and then after a certain point (not sure what) I was going to let him transition to a modern language and just study that modern language for the remainder of high school. Does that sound like it would cause problems? He doesn't have to go to a selective/competitive college per se, but we (parents) are ivy league/top 10 school grads, so even though I think all that is super highly overrated, I don't want to preclude it either.

Hey all, I'm sure I've seen threads about planning out middle school (especially 7-8 grade) with an eye toward setting things up properly for high school, and all the things that go into that. Can anyone point me to those, or do you have thoughts on this?

This looks exactly like what I had imagined when I bought Simply Classical B but it's all laid out for you. SCB does a similar idea of working on one letter per week, etc. I do like that format. Unfortunately, with lots of littles I now realize even this would be too much for me, and we have to stick to the Kumon or R&S books. But this is a great resource.

I also like R&S, with the caveat that you don't need to get through all 136 lessons or whatever. And not every exercise. Even picking and choosing, it's very solid. I now use a different program, a Catholic workbook because they can just write right in the book, but I do still buy R&S to supplement. They just do such a good job.

CHC defies categorization; it is really an eclectic mix. There's a little Charlotte Mason (some dictation, and lots of storytelling in lessons, like How to Dress a Duck, or actually reprinted victorian-era stories for virtues). There's a lot of "school at home" or traditional school-like stuff, with workbooks and textbooks, including using standards from other publishers like Faith and Life, and the Catholic Textbook Project. Religion is woven throughout, and even some apologetics in the spellers. There's an intention to make things hands on, like Tour a Country. And there's an intention to bring religion to life through stories and beautiful art: Kids make mass books, cut out images for a psalms booklet or a "days of creation" booklet. The art program Ever Ancient Ever New books 1 and 2 is the best I've seen anywhere - it has glossy full color picture study, art theory, art history, and technique, along with projects for each chapter. I haven't seen anything else like it. So yeah, it's a mix. They have interactive grade level catalogs you can flip through online.

It's really not *that* gentle except in the earliest levels, and it does ramp up in the later grades. We add to it (like Latin and Greek) but we did not get to everything scheduled for 5th grade this year. I think sometimes when providers aim for maximum "rigor" they end up including everything and the kitchen sink, and in real life schools don't cover it all. I know I've heard that MP schools (highlands latin etc) don't do more than the first problem or two in a given workbook together on the board or orally. But if you were to look at what MP schedules, it's way more than a classroom could do in a day or week. But again, I don't know how that would scale in a B&M school. I think personally that CHC is a realistic level of work to get through in a week, but we don't use it exactly as written so anyone else's mileage may vary.

I was just going to say this. We paid for the entire MP simply classical level B program because I liked the idea of all the hands on stuff. I didn't have time to use a single thing other than the memory work, but the package came with ALL of the rod and staff preK books A-F I think, and they were a huge win. My daughter would just walk up to me with a page open and say "what do I do here?" And I would glance and say, "they want you to circle the number of kittens." And she would go away and do it. She loved them all (except B, the coloring book). Next year I have another new preK kid and I'm just going to order the rod and staff books.

I have this problem too, with 6 kids. I have two systems: one for school-related papers, and one for artwork/doodles. For school stuff, I have a very large bin (drona from Ikea) and everything goes in there. At the end of the year, I pull out only the best to save in my files and toss the rest. But the advantage of this is that I can easily go back and figure out where we left off if we haven't gotten to something recently. For artwork/doodles: this may not sound like much of a "system" but I use a three-stage process. In the first stage, I say "thank you!" and gather up all the pictures, without prejudice and without throwing any away, and put them all in a big running pile. This pile usually holds about 2 weeks' worth until it gets too big. By that time, if no one has asked for those pictures or shows any interest in them, we move to the second stage, where I very heavily cull it and only save the very best, usually putting their name and month/year on the back. The vast majority (98%) then get thrown away. The keepers go in a big pile in one of my cabinets and then periodically (only about 2x per year I'm afraid!) I go through and sort them by person into their art bins (that's the third and last stage). They each have a large sterilite bin in their closets with keeper art. This fills up most when young and really tapers off as they get older. It holds a lot but you have to be intentional about what you save. The benefit of this method is that the first "time delay" of about 1-2 weeks prevents those times the kids come to me and say "where's my bear picture?? You threw it away? But I worked so hard on that!!" *tears* If no one has said that about a picture for several days/weeks they probably don't care and it can be thrown away with confidence unless particularly worth saving. The other benefit is that I only need to do any real work (filing away the items) a couple times per year. I know lots of people like the method where you scan the artwork and make it into photo books. I personally don't because I think the kids don't feel the same about a real picture they made when little, that they can hold in their hands and say "I remember this!!" vs seeing a picture and saying "oh, I remember that, I wish I still had that." It's like seeing a picture of an outfit you used to have, or a place you used to go - it's not the same. You have a photo of the art but you don't have the art. That's my two cents.

It sounds to me like you are pretty well set on going to college as soon as possible and finally fitting in age-wise. It sounds like you just really feel like you need to do this. The reason you are getting push-back is that college is a very expensive method for trying to fit in -- we have all been there and it works best when you use it to get a useful degree. You can't help your feelings and desires, but you can take a step back and ask yourself seriously if your feelings are being dictated by the "high school bubble" that makes people want to buy letter jackets and class rings. I would say to go volunteer or travel and see what your preferences look like then - that will cost a few thousand dollars, rather than 15-45k. You can be very, very smart at a young age (I know I was) and yet not be wise at all. A few anecdotes: - My husband refused to go to college after high school and bummed around. Then he went to Africa and taught English for four months. Then he went to community college for a year and got perfect grades and recs. Then he went to an East coast ivy league college with a bunch of other older students, and majored in a STEM field. Some of his friends chose interesting majors, and then had to go back into school after graduation to get a job with a more marketable major (one of them was a poli sci major who had testified before congress - and still had to go back for computer science). - My brother in law followed the path he was supposed to and went to college at 18, but he was interested in the "social aspects" most. He failed out of his first year. He went to Haiti for several months and helped rebuild after a hurricane. He came back and majored in a STEM major and graduated and got a job during covid. These are just random anecdotes - but they illustrate the major point, which is that college is a very expensive place, and it is currently used mostly as a "find myself and my place in life" type of experience for a lot of (especially younger) kids, but older students frequently are just a little more able to be practical and realize that school is just there to set you up for what comes after it - the rest of life.

I like CHC's Behold and See science, especially if you do all the experiments and projects. I also like CHC's hands-on geography stuff and their hands-on religion program supplements, like Preparing to Receive Jesus, Growing with Grace and Wisdom, etc. Their Language of God is also fairly good but might move too slowly for some; but again this is something where doing all the dictation assignments and extra writing practice (included) helps with that.

Forgive me for butting in, but I just wanted to link to this story from Andrew Pudewa (about his son who didn't read until 12) which I just always think is nice when your kid is struggling: https://iew.com/help-support/resources/articles/the-work-of-a-child While he was dealing with those years of phonics, he had his son memorize poetry and prose, and listen to read alouds and high-quality audiobooks, and he really learned to excel as a writer (as he has said since in interviews). He wasn't standing still! He was learning all that time.

Oh I forgot! There are these graphic novels that look so good, https://shop.catholic.com/amp/graphic-novel-series-pack/

I'm so glad you are getting into some apologetics for your kids!! I was raised Protestant with a "blind faith" mentality, and it drove me to atheism, because I had questions that no one could answer that in retrospect had plenty of good answers. One of the things I love about Catholicism is it is so reasonable! We marry faith and reason -- we love "both/and"! I haven't done online religion yet. But Homeschool connections has live classes with Trent Horn and Tim Staples from Catholic Answers! That's so amazing to me. My kids aren't old enough yet though, but I would do that in a heartbeat! For quick and easy... There is the "friendly defender" flash cards. Honestly, though, I don't think that would cut it with two older kids who have tough questions. If I were you I might just listen to Catholic Answers Live whenever possible in the house or in the car! It's a call-in show available as a podcast and there's an app. My favorite is Jimmy Akin so I mostly listen to his episodes. There are lots of tough questions and if you listen often enough you will learn so much. I think it's humbling, too, to be sure "no one knows the answers to my questions" and then to hear someone calmly and masterfully explaining the answers that St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas gave like millennia ago. Anyway, prayers for you and your family that you find something great for your family! You might also look at MoDG which has some online classes, though I don't know if you have to enroll fully with them for that.

Lol I have no experience at all, except to say what I'm sure you already know, which is that most of Jane Austen's works are squarely in Regency England. If I recall correctly, the site Republic of Pemberley had a ton of background info on Regency times to help explain customs, food, dress, servants, money etc so that the books could be more comprehensible by the reader. Ah, here: https://pemberley.com/?page_id=12315 And of course the movies would be fun, and the popularity that still remains high means it's easier to find costume ideas than it might be for more obscure time periods.