No one has asked my advice, so I'm not offering it. The seeming abundance of advice (maybe this is just confirmation bias since I am in the homeschooling word?) directed toward crisis schoolers makes me cringe, although I am not exactly sure why. It just seems a bit presumptive? Part of it is that in our public school district, all the kids seem to have been sent home with an inordinate amount of work, so parents are just scrambling to keep up. No one in my area is trying to find curriculum or asking for help in structuring their day. I have had quite a few friends texting me "I don't know how you do this" type things. I was just telling my husband yesterday that I think homeschoolers are going to come out of this a lot worse, socially. Like before, people thought I was weird but also didn't think too much about it? But now, everyone has *experience* and knows for certain I am weird. And probably has an opinion on my capability to do what I am doing as well... I am very introverted, so personally I am not looking forward to the all the "what? you are homeschooling?? I tried that and hated it!" conversations with random people. 😉 Could be wrong though!

Thanks! I am not on facebook, so I didn't realize there was a group. I will check it out.

Has anyone used Exploring Nature with Children by Lynn Seddon/Raising Little Shoots? I am curious what people think about using it for a K and 2nd (and tag along 3 yr old) science curriculum. Most reviews I have seen are from people using it with the preschool set, which makes me uncertain. I was reading The Liberal Arts Tradition (Clark and Jain) and their explanation of promoting synthetic thinking in the early years struck me. I'm not unhappy with our science (we are using Elemental Science's preK/K curriculum this year), but I do wonder if we could be more hands-on and if we could get outside more. I am even toying with the idea of trying to start a homeschool nature group using this curriculum, but I am not sure I could get the interest if it is mostly suitable for very young children. Anyway...my only real requirement is I find something that we can do together. Two separate sciences won't happen. I am also looking at Bookshark 1 (Animals, Astronomy, and Physics), Elemental Science's Biology for the Grammar Stage, and R.E.A.L Science Odyssey's Life Level 1 if anyone has any thoughts. I'm open to other curriculum too, but I'd prefer no young earth creationism.

We are using it this year for first grade (level 2). We switched midyear to this from FLL, so we aren't going to finish the book. I like it okay, but it isn't the perfect all in one language arts program for us. I really don't like the stories/narration/memory work they do . If you are attracted to the Charlotte Mason approach (and they claim to be Charlotte Mason lite), this goes against her emphasis that you give children good books (and art, music, etc.) and let them narrate and think about them. There is a very moralistic story that goes through the book and there is some terrible computer generated "art" that you are supposed to have them narrate on. We skip all that. It also is not sufficient for spelling for us. My son needs more direct instruction and practice. In this level, there is just one day per week on a spelling topic, with no repetition or review of the words. The writing part is okay. Surprisingly my son has enjoyed doing the writing prompts even though I usually tell him he can skip them (we have something else for writing). Finally, I have been happy with the grammar content, actually that was just what I was looking for at his level-- he gets very frustrated with endless repetition (FLL) and I wanted to be slightly more hands-off. He can do his page and get some basics and we are both happy. That being said, I probably won't use it again.

Our family is going to be living in the UK for a little over half the year (school year 2020-2021). I don't have a minimalist bone in my body, so it seems impossible to pare down our school essentials. I don't *want* to bring a suitcase full of stuff though. And I also want to free us (mostly me) up to do plenty of exploring without feeling like I am neglecting school, because I struggle with that. We will have access to the public library there. What would you take if you had half a year of essentials-only school? This is what we are mainly using this year: Preschooler: A Year of Playing Skillfully, All about Reading (Pre-Reading), HWT preschool level, and math activities from AYoPS, Kate Snow's Preschool Math, and some of Right Start A. She likes workbooks so we do the Developing the Early Learner series when she wants to. She is still young and of course I don't want to pigeonhole, but things have not come easily for her. Reading may be a challenge. AAR has been a good fit for her (we just switched to that a couple weeks ago), so if we were here, I'd probably get the next level of AAR for kindergarten...but it certainly isn't a slimmed down curriculum! I also think Right Start A would be great for her next year, but I am concerned about the number/size of the manipulatives. 1st grader: Right Start B, handwriting (he has a variety of options, but does something every day), All about Spelling, and some 1st grade grammar book I found off amazon. We have a special read aloud that we do together, so I can hear him read. He's a strong reader, so this is mostly just fun for us to do together. I like Right Start and would continue with C for next year, but I think he would also be okay switching math programs. Right Start is not a perfect fit for him, as he finds it frustratingly slow at times, but I really like the results. He thinks more mathematically than I did (as a kid who did Saxon math and did fine and yet doesn't really get math). We also read Story of the World 2 for history, and we do a lot of the extras in the activity book. We are with Classical Conversations this year, and I do review their timeline song and geography at home (nothing else though). We use Elemental Science's Intro to Science together, although my first grader does independent reading/narration on the weekly topic. It is a preschool curriculum. I think it is sufficient though, since we do nature study too and we have a subscription to Mystery Science and various science boxes that the kids really like.. Anyway, I would do SotW3 next year and Elemental Science's Biology, but I don't know how either would do without the supplemental projects and experiments. Especially as SotW's text is somewhat over the preschooler's head and Elemental Science's text is way too little for the first grader. Thanks for the help!

I started First Language Lessons 1 with my 6 year old 1st grader, and after 2 months or so, it just isn't working for us. We do poetry and picture study separately, so having a little of that included in this program is not a real benefit for us. The introduction of grammatical content in FLL is so slow and thorough that I think he feels frustrated because it seems too easy (even though he doesn't know the content). Our homeschool is very parent-intensive, and today I just found myself wanting an easy, open and go workbook for this subject. Any recommendations? For background, he is a very strong reader, but an average-low writer (he just doesn't have much stamina and he is quite literally afraid of misspelling so writing is a tough sell!). For language arts, he reads aloud and does 4 pages of the Zaner Bloser 1st grade writing workbook every day. Mondays he also does a unit of Spelling Workout 1; Wednesdays we do a spelling test on those SW words; and Fridays we have been doing FLL (multiple lessons at a time). He is extremely resistant to more handwriting, but I am also toying with the idea of skipping grammar this year, and doing a copywork sentence instead. Any thoughts?