I'm planning a one year survey of world history for my rising eighth grader next year. He's not super academic, but he does like non-fiction (especially science). I am considering using The Story of Science series, but I would also like a spine (or a few) that focus on general history. Any ideas?

My 9th grader is only 1.5 weeks into her online classes. I'm glad they started before her at home classes, as it's been an adjustment. She's finally listening about showing her work in math!

He sounds like my 12yo. We've borrowed The Inexplicable Universe twice from the library. I'll be requesting the StarTalk book for him.

My 8, 6, and 4-year-olds will be using Build Your Library year 0 and science encyclopedias this year.

I agree that Writing & Rhetoric is enough. If you are looking for a little more, just spend some time writing or orally narrating in his other subjects.

My 3rd, 1st, and pre-k students will be using BYL year 0 along with science encyclopedias this year.

Our final line-up: Math: Singapore 5A & 5B English: AAS 5, Writing & Rhetoric 1-2, Rod & Staff English 4 Geography: BYL 7 Science: Harcourt Grade 6, half of the book Spanish: La Clase Divertida 1 (as a family) Religion: Bible, catechism, saints

My oldest will be a 9th grader this fall! English 9: She'll be studying international literature and writing about topics pertaining to her world geography course. Some resources we'll be using: How to Write Better Essays; Global Issues, Local Arguments; and Other Voices, Other Vistas. Honors Algebra 2 & Trigonometry: online at Kolbe Academy World Geography: Oak Meadow Biology: Online at Kolbe Academy Spanish I: Online at Kolbe Academy Religion 9: Bible, Catechism, Fire Within, The Art of Loving God Logic (1/2 credit): Discovery of Deduction Introduction to Philosophy (1/2 credit): still deciding on resources

Thanks for the info on the upcoming sales. DH and I have a few graphing calculators from high school/college but not the one used for dd's class (TI 84+) so we'll be getting a new one. Good thing I didn't purchase it yet!

My ds did part of 6A last year. The current plan is for him to do the rest of 6A and 6B, Real World Algebra, and Khan Academy for review of arithmetic next school year before moving on to Algebra the following year.

My oldest read the young readers edition of I Am Malala within the last year or so and I would recommend it. I think I'll be reading it to my 12 and 10-year-olds this coming year (we are also studying geography).

We'll have a 1.5yo and 1mo in the fall (in addition to a 4yo, and 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th graders). My oldest dd is taking 2, possibly 3, online classes for the first time. We will make sure to take advantage of all time that the baby and toddler are sleeping. (Though, I am basically teaching all day that I am not actively feeding or otherwise taking care of someone anyway...). I am usually only teaching one, sometimes two kids at a time, so other kids are often available to play with the toddler, if needed. We do school time on the couch or at the kitchen table and the toddler is often happy playing nearby or sitting/crawling on one of our laps. When she is getting into trouble or we are too distracted she is sent to play with someone else. If the baby is anything like most of our other babies he/she will hang out nearby in the bouncy seat, nurse, or just sit in my lap. I also recruit the 5th and 7th graders to help teach their younger siblings, mostly reading books to them or listening as they read their books.

Not a specific suggestion, but reading just takes longer to click for some kids than others, even if they don't have health or learning issues. My 5 oldest kids can read now. Two of my kids jumped in when they were younger (4.5yo and 6yo) and were reading well within 6 months. The others were older. Two of them had a much harder time and it took them years to become fluent. Switching programs might help, or you might need to just give it more time.

Most likely you will start with level 1, but go through it quickly.

It teaches whole-to-parts, not parts-to-whole. It depends on how your students learn if it would be a good fit. It worked well for my oldest dd, who prefers that type of curricula, but we did use it alongside Prima Latina. We did have the teacher's manual, which was kind of expensive. If you are just using Minimus as a reader, don't bother with the teacher's guide. If you decide to use only Minimus I would recommend it.

I do similar to what others have said: I pick the books and curricula we will use for the year and make more detailed plans each weekend. I do have a general schedule for our weeks, though. Some subjects are every day, others are 1-3 times a week, scheduled for particular days. Some subjects have multiple books, and I also schedule those out for a particular day of the week. It is easy to just do the next chapter, and if we miss it one week it's not a big deal. We just do the next chapter the following week instead. When we finish a book we are either done with the subject for the year or move on to another book.

One of my kids didn't click with the specific question-based narrations in WWE. He does better with just a regular telling back of what happened in the passage. Have you tried that?

Thanks for the recommendation. We love Great Courses, so I should have thought to check if they had any lectures about religions. Our library system has a copy, so we will most likely use this, and my middle schoolers will probably tag along. Would this be appropriate for them?

Several of us have World Geography planned for next year and at least some of us are planning a religions component. So far I just have the Usborne book my middle schoolers are using along with BYL 7. Are you planning on using anything else to study different religions, especially the major ones? Suggestions from anyone are welcome. :)

Thanks for your ideas and for the specific resources. I'm starting to feel like I can do this.

She will be using Oak Meadow as her main curriculum, but her younger siblings are using BYL 7 (and 0) and she'll probably follow along with some of that, too.

I thought the EiL book seemed more focused on literature based on world history than world geography (as most programs labeled world literature seemed to be). Thanks for your list of literature titles. What do you plan to do with them, as far as output? What else are you using for an English credit?

I'm more of a science and math person so I was really hoping to find something that we liked for English this year. Since we didn't, now I'm trying to plan something myself. We did use and like Excellence in Literature level 1 this year, but they don't have one covering international literature. I was thinking of covering about 1 book a month in a similar style (so probably one context paper on the author and/or country and another essay about the book). I would also like us to cover some other writing. She did have to do some research for her papers for literature, but that is something that I'd like to cover more in depth this year. Any recommendations for some resources we could use? She has covered essays (mostly persuasive) pretty well, though I'd like her to continue to practice writing them. We also need to cover editing this year, as we have been pretty lax with that so far. I'd love any recommendations on a book or other resource to help with that, too. So, other than some resource suggestions, I'm also trying to figure out how much to cover. If we covered one book a month as described, would it be too much to also be working on another composition (probably of essay or short research paper variety) each month? She is a strong reader so I will certainly assign more books for her to read, but should she do anything else with them? Thanks!

Our homeschool group had a combined 8th grade and high school graduation ceremony (last night, actually), so we participated. I don't think we would have had something just for our dd if there hadn't been one for our group. She's participated in weekly enrichment activities with most of them since Kindergarten and I think all 9 of them will still be homeschooling next year.

I have World Geography planned for my dd for 9th grade next year and I'm still trying to decide what to do for her English credit. I'm definitely learning that a course, as opposed to cobbling together materials, is going to work better for us (especially me) to keep her on track. She loves to read and her writing is fine. I'd be open to two separate courses, though I do want to include both writing (ideally some instruction with this still) and literature.