I absolutely find April and May to be the worst. By that point I am just mentally DONE. Not necessarily because it's nice outside - we aren't nearly as outdoorsy as proper homeschoolers should be 😉- but because we are just tired by then. Christmas break gives us that oomph to get through to Spring Break, but coming back from Spring Break is HARD and by mid April I feel like I'm dragging everyone (myself included) to the end of the year. I tried schooling into June a couple of times. It was horrible. Hang in there!

@wendyroo this reality you live in is wild to me.... like some kind of Oz. Here in TX they tell us we are lucky we don't have state income taxes - even though our property taxes and sales taxes are quite high to support the public schools, who still have to/want to raise money right and left for all the things. We used to have free lunches over the summer for kids who qualified for free lunches, but our governor, in his infinite wisdom, decided to put a stop to that - can't be having too much free stuff you know, and since they won't be inconveniencing any school staff by going hungry over the summer it's not a problem. Bussing was the one thing they didn't push back on with my special needs daughter. Of course, you couldn't rely on the bus to show up at a consistent time or get your kid to school on time, Can't tell you how many times I was late to work because the bus showed up not a little late but really really late. But they didn't seem to mind offering it at least, unlike every other therapy or service I ever requested. You might think this is just an example of a really bad school district, but it's not. It not the top in the state, but solidly above average, and the particular schools we are zoned to attend in the district are some of the best. It's really crazy how educational access can vary so wildly from state to state - even district to district. It's part of what's wrong with the public education system I think. I kind of went off on a tangent, but to bring it back, it's ironic that if we had been in a school like yours I don't think we would have ever tried homeschooling, but it's been one of the best things I ever did for my family, and I never intend (of course you don't know what the future may bring) to anything but homeschool my younger daughter.

For us I'm not sure that homeschooling is CHEAPER than public schooling but there are a lot of costs that I think some of my friends don't consider when they tell me they can use the public schools for free. My oldest went to public school through 7th grade and it definitely cost money.... Clothes are absolutely a cost. A lot of schools here are uniformed which are not supplied by the school. Even where uniforms are not required dress codes are very specific and I definitely bought clothes just for school. And of course you have to have the "right" clothes and shoes. And backpack. I've bought two backpacks in the last 10 years (both relatively cheap ones). I used to buy 2 a year. And I buy school supplies now, but I buy what I know we need and will use, and I buy when I can get a good deal and the brands I want. I'm not buying 20 glue sticks per kid. I don't have to buy new scissors and headphones every year. I'm not supplying Kleenex and paper towels and cleaning wipes and hand sanitizer beyond my own households needs - which might be slightly more than if my kids weren't home all day, but not much more I don't think. And the nearly constant requests for donations for this, fundraisers for that, t-shirts sold for something every other month. First day gifts for teachers, Christmas gifts, Teacher appreciation gifts. Themed days that you have to buy special outfits for. Projects you have to buy supplies for (I buy project supplies now, but at least I have some control over deciding on the project and what kind supplies it will require.) Field trips and class parties that have fees or donations needed. Sno-cone days that you have to send money for of course. Of course, none of these (except perhaps the class projects) are REQUIRED per se, but really am I going to have my kid be the only one that doesn't get the t-shirt or bring something for the class party? Salary does make up for a lot of those costs - I gave up a full-time job when we decided to homeschool, but the school schedules don't conform very well to most work schedules. Generally I could make the morning drop-off or bus pick-up work and avoid before school care, but I never had a job where I was off in time to pick my kid up at 3 - so there was after school care. And then all the random days they just don't have school or have half days - more childcare. Summer break, spring break, Christmas break. More childcare. It adds up! Public schooling ain't FREE. That is for sure.

Sassafras Science might be kind of in the vein of what you are looking for. Science organized around a narrative story - although the story is a tiny bit hokey IMHO. Geared toward younger kids. You didn't say your age range. The same publisher also has their "Classical Science" line which doesn't have the narrative arc tying it together, and uses more non-fiction picture books and simple science encyclopedias as a base. Blossom & Root is also fully living book based, but doesn't have that SOTW style spine tying it all together.

You could also maybe look at Blossom & Root. It essentially is a booklist, and then some videos and experiments or craft projects to choose from, but even has a section that is labeled "for the minimalist" which is just some basic reading on the topic, and maybe that's all you do some weeks. Along with a video or two. Or maybe you assign additional reading from the "Book Basket section" (just more books on the same topic) as independent reading for your 7th and maybe 4th grader. And on weeks you have just a little more bandwidth and/or your kids are really into a topic, you pick a project or experiment. But you have a few (I think there are usually at least 3 choices) already thought up and supplies listed. She has different topics listed by grade- up to 5th grade, but honestly I think you can use any of them for any grade. The main difference might be in the notebooking pages, and the older the kid the more of the reading they would be doing on their own as opposed to reading aloud. Just an idea...

We do have a timeline that we use. I've used it more as a tool to help her see and understand the progression of history so we usually use it towards the beginning of a lesson.... hmmm food for thought. I do have a card game that has dates on one side and events and pictures on the other and the idea is to draw 3 or 4 (I can't remember) and try to get them in order - then flip them over and check the dates. The point isn't really to memorize the dates but get an understanding of what happened first, next, and so on. Sort of a timeline game I guess. We haven't actually played it yet (Christmas Gift.) It seems kind of unanimous so far that no one actually uses the review cards so that's interesting. Guaranteed to make you hate history seems like a stretch, but maybe I'll skip it for now too, and use the game as a kind of review as well as sequencing practice. Will save me some laminating and cutting - LOL. I wonder what SWB envisioned when she included them in the guides.

How do you use the review cards at the back of the SOTW activity guides? The guidance from How to use this book in the front simply says: But I'm not sure HOW to use them to review material? Flash card like and try to have her memorize at least the main sentence from each? Just read through a few at a time memory book kind of style? Make 2 copies and cut off the tops and have her match them Montessori card style. Those are the options that come to mind, but I'm not sure I love any of them, and would appreciate any other ideas you've done or even just ideas you've had - even if you didn't actually do them. 😉

I'll add the author Pam Munoz Ryan. In particular we read Solimar recently and really really enjoyed it.

I'm using Book 1 with my 7 year old (almost 8). She's technically in 2nd grade, but a fairly advanced reader. Her writing though is very average I'd say (sometimes I catch myself saying behind, but it just seems that way compared to her language and reading skills I think). She is doing great with it. Much better than the more "creative writing" program I tried last year. Re-reading The Well Trained Mind and SWB thoughts on the expectations for original composition and creative expression in the grammar stage was very comforting. I think it really works for her in that it gives her a nice starting point, and then lets her be just a little creative. She has also really liked the activities where you take the same sentence and change up certain words to make a sentence that is the same but different. I did kind of change up the recommended schedule a little to spread the writing parts and discussion parts a bit more evenly. Even so, I let her dictate some of the answers to me and I write, and on some of the longer written passages, we take turns with her writing 2 sentences and then dictating two sentences. We're going a little slower - we've finished week 6 of school and are in the middle of lesson 5, so we may not totally finish Book 2 by the end of the year but I'm okay with that. All that to say I would think if your 7 yo is a pretty proficient reader with good comprehension and decent narration skills, she (he??) would be fine. I can't really speak to Level 3 or the difficultly there.

I'm a secular homeschooler as well and I've used several of their science units and find them to be very usable. I don't have the Mammals unit so I can't speak to it specifically, but I've used Birds, and I'm currently using Geology and plan to use Weather and Water later this year. I enjoy the scripted nature of them (it gives me a starting point) especially the little intro activities they do (sometimes art, sometimes a poem, sometimes a little mini-demonstration.) The visuals are fabulous and I like the notebooking pages. They have a lot of really fun hands-on experiments and demos that my girl loves. But they also have videos of a lot of them so if you just aren't up for the mess or the hassle you can still see them done. The religious references are not overbearing. A brief mention here or there. And the guides are meant to be read aloud by you for "family style" learning, so it's easy enough to skip a bible verse - or mostly what I find is references to "God's creation" which I just substitute "nature" or something. You won't have to mark out tons and tons of stuff. Honestly there are many lessons I don't have to touch at all. I could be wrong, but I'm not remembering anything in the student pages that I wasn't comfortable with. I always preview the videos. They are very nicely done but do usually have some religious mention in there. If it's not too much I'll use it anyway. There was one (and I can't remember the topic now) that I skipped because it seemed a bit much. The units do come with these little non-fiction supplemental readers - and there are others you can purchase in addition - I will skip those because they tend to be a little more heavy handed. And there are so many other great children's books it's easy enough to find something else to use. This year I'm pairing TGTB units I mentioned with Blossom & Root's Earth and Sky curriculum for her literature suggestions and video suggestions. So far we've enjoyed the combo.

My DH has followed this guys Youube for years and loves it. I was able to get this book at our library and it is so good! Definitely going to get this for a Christmas gift. He has a birthday in a couple weeks but it says it won't be delivered until September 25. Thanks for the heads up!

I replied to your question in the other first grade thread 🙂

Here is a link to their online samples of the text book Remember the Days for each level. One days reading assignment would usually be 4-5 pages of the text. There are some pictures and stuff but that is still just like A LOT of words for a first grader to process - and a lot for me to read aloud. Biblioplan Remember the Days Samples An example of the literature recommendations from week 2 of the Year 4 curriculum (that's the only one I have). These are the recs. for K-2. Readers: A Picture Book of Florence Nightingale (32pages) - not a reader for first grade (the first two pages include words like imagination, earlier, heroine) - a good read aloud though. Clara Barton: Spirit of the Red Cross (48 pages) Beginning Chapters - Step 3 Ready to Read. Again good read aloud - probably not a reader for firsties - maybe a 2nd grader. My special needs 3rd-ish grader read this with help spread out - I think she read like 2 chapters at a time. The Little Princess (Classic Starts version) (160 pages) - Spread over 2 weeks - Definitely have to be a read aloud and even still that's a lot of pages to read daily. Missionary Reading: Heroes of History: Clara Barton (32 pages) - my relatively advanced 1st grade reader could probably read this on her own with just a little help. Recommended Read Aloud: The Great Turkey Walk (208 pages) - Spread over 3 weeks Some of the other recommendations that are frequently featured are the Magic Treehouse series (as a optional addition - I don't think I've ever seen it as a main recommendation), If You Were at.../If You Lived... series, the D'Aulaire books. Depends... is he/she reading MTH and Zoey & Sassafrass on their own? Maybe not then. If they are just listening to books of that length, then you would probably be okay to read aloud any of the literature selections, but I'd be prepared to read them all aloud. And even then IMHO the textbook is just a lot, but they do also offer suggestions on pacing of other resources like SOTW and MoH. Maybe those would be better. I'm not intimately familiar with either, but a lot of people seem to use them with their first graders. Also if you wanted to do all of the recommended reading - which of course you do not have to do - for example 2 books on Clara Barton are probably not necessary but if you did... You would be reading 4-ish pages of dense text 3x/week. 16 pages of The Little Princess 5x/week. 14 pages The Great Turkey Walk 5x/week. Plus 3 more picture books/readers of 30-50 pages each. Before you do any of the other projects or other activities. That's like a lot of reading to me. Maybe not for you guys??? Content wise I didn't really have any issues. But my older kid that uses it isn't particularly sensitive. Don't get me wrong. I really like the curriculum. I think the Family Guides are awesome. In addition to the basic recommendations I outlined above there are so many other resources for movies, crafts, hands on activities, maps, and I really love the timeline figures. I'm less crazy about the text book. It is not a BAD curriculum. I just think it would be BETTER for an older kid. I've looked extensively at Tapestry of Grace also and have the same thoughts on them but I've never purchased it sooo.... If you had big kids and were trying to keep everyone together I'd say make it work. But for myself if I was trying to do this with my current first grader, I would end up NOT doing so much of it to make the workload more appropriate that I'd feel like I wasted my money if I'd bought it just for her. I hope that long-winded response was helpful. 😋

I have never successfully completed a full Charles Dickens book in it's full length unabridged version. Stories are good. Love many of the stories. The overly verbose, overly flowery writing style just bored me to tears every time. Can't do it. [Ducking now].

I saw that and the new paleontology unit at a HS convention and mentioned that to one of the ladies working the booth. I was like "what am I supposed to do here? Tear it out?" She just looked at me blankly and was like "I guess you could."

One I just pre-read for my DD is The Wishtree by Katherine Applegate. Really sweet!

Great Expectations would be an obvious choice I guess. I don't know much about the public domain thing... but paperbacks are pretty plentiful on the used market.

I think the Quill might be a bit different though... because she's not featuring one specific book each month it's based on a theme. Some that I remember were transportation, weather, wordless books. There is a list of recommended picture books included for each theme, but she made it clear you really could use any picture book in the theme. So next year I'm not sure if there will be different themes or not.??

So helpful wendyroo! It sounds a lot like what we've been doing. She has two shows on PBS that she watches in Spanish, and we watch YouTube videos for songs on colors, numbers, shapes, etc. I hadn't really thought about focusing on particular verbs that way... I've more focused on vocabulary (nouns), so I'm going to start incorporating that more. She does know me gusta... tienes... and quieres pretty solid. I will look into ULAT too - never heard of that. 🙂

This is so encouraging to me!! I've also really tried to prioritize Spanish for my DD 5. Like you I speak, read and write some Spanish, but it's by no means fluent. Our school district started a dual-language immersion program for PK-2, and I enrolled DD last year, but I'm really debating whether I want to continue for the upcoming year. I know immersion is the best way to learn and it feels foolish to give up this opportunity (it's a public school, but kind of like a magnet school - we had to apply and get accepted.) BUT it's across town and takes up a lot of my day to transport her back and forth, and because of her birthday they've placed her a grade behind where she is academically, so we're still "after schooling" which makes it hard to really cover what I want to cover with her. And she didn't really learn as much Spanish as I thought she would last year - but last year was so weird and she was doing school virtually nearly as much as she was there in person, so may not be fair to evaluate the program based on last year... Anyway your story makes me feel like there is some hope that I could really teach her enough Spanish for her to really become fluent. I'd love to hear more about your process and how you built up to where your DS is now, starting when he was young.

Wendy - I've looked at this on Amazon, but it's hard to see what it's really like. Could you tell more about it? Does it have any teacher guide or direction or something? Or does it assume you know what to do with the workbook pages? Do you use the Clásico or the Oro? I can't really tell what is the difference. Anyway anything about how it works or your experience would be great.

I've also created similar things with tables in Words. Excel has some functionality Word doesn't have - but I have a rather tense relationship with Excel. We just don't get a long well. Ha ha!. I've been into using Trello this past semester though. It's really cool way to create a visual kind of checklist. You can include images (like book covers) and links to YouTube videos or PrimeVideo or whatever directly in the Trello list, which is awesome for me. And it's super easy to move things around when/if needed. There are quite a few Trello tutorials for homeschooling on YouTube which helped me visualize how to make it work.

If she's a very strong reader, and you don't mind some "mature" themes. Ken Follet has a trilogy called the Century Trilogy that spans from just before WWI to the end of the 20th century - although after the 1960s it jumps in big chunks to the end of the century. It's a historical fiction that interweaves stories from Russia, Germany, England & America. Amazing illustration of the consequences of WWI, the Russian Revolution, and the real life effects of the Cold War and communism in countries other than America. Doesn't much involve Chine except tangentially as a motivation for the wars in Korea and Vietnam - if I recall correctly. They are long and they are for adults, but they are amazing. I'm kind of a history buff, but I feel like I learned a lot and expanded my understanding of how "regular" people experience these events, and why and how things like the holocaust and Bay of Pigs happened. I totally would have read them in 8th grade - in fact, I think I read Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth for the first time in 7th or 8th grade, but I was kinda nerdy like that. LOL. Another great book on the other end of the spectrum. Probably a bit on the easy side for 8th grade, but a really good, immersive story is "The Endless Steppe." Takes place during WWII. A Polish family exiled to Siberia and their struggle to survive. Let us know what you come up with. I'm interested to see what you come up with.

Oh I'm in! I need to do this. I've had making a list of things to do in the schoolroom this summer on my to do list all week. So I guess that's first. Is it a bad sign when I'm making lists of lists I need to make?

Never done it, but I'd love to take your class - LOL. I'm weirdly obsessed with English history - ha!