I should have said my girls were entering 6th. Depending on what ISD you are in here, middle school starts anywhere from 5th to 7th grade. We don't keep track of grades officially so my girls can be in as many as 4 different levels depending on the subject. I have changed my focus from learning "grade level" material to a list of things that I just want to be sure they have down pat before moving on to high school. Regardless of how long it takes we won't move on until it's down, but I also won't make them do redundant work in an effort to recreate middle school. And after looking at the work in middle school, we will pretty much end up leaving all of the "grade level" work for those years out.

This is the link: http://hecoa.com/skipmiddleschool Supposedly it was only available for a short time, but it still looks active to me. It wasn't earth shattering or anything, but it was interesting and made me look at what we were using which confirmed for us that middle school was this weird limbo in which nothing new was actually learned.

I recently watched a webinar which prompted me to research. I came to the same conclusion as you did. My British husband also agreed with me that the US middle school model is a waste of time. I basically scrapped all of my plans to trudge through the "next book" and now my goals are: My girls are 5th grade respectively. Math: have a very solid foundation in long division, fractions and decimals. Start pre-algebra. My goal is to have both of my girls ready for 9th grade algebra by what would have been their 7th grade year. We are flexible and if it takes longer or they get done faster we will go with it. We are using Math U See to reach these goals. I have tried other things but this works best for my oldest who thrives on mastery based math. English: Strong foundation in writing and a good spelling and vocabulary base. We will just continue doing what we are doing now for that. We are using Cover Story for writing, Wordly Wise for vocab and and a Reason for Spelling. Reading: Strong reading skills with good comprehension. We will continue reading classic literature with the random comprehension workbook thrown in. Sonlight covers what we need for most of our reading.The comp books are Memoria Press. Science: General science with lots of practice forming hypothesis, conducting experiments and writing lab reports. Apologia. History: Strong American History. We will cycle through world history again after American, but I would like them to be able to take a dual credit history course without too much trouble. I would like them both to be enrolled in dual credit courses for anything they can after 10th grade. I just dont see the point in not doing it since they have to have the high school credits anyways.These are of course, just my academic goals. I don't really plot out my social goals for them.

We use and really like Sonlight but you can just use the reading list if you didnt want to purchase the entire curriculum.

So funny how different things work differently for everyone. I put very little time into planning TOG, but my kids are only upper grammar and I am not one who feels like we need to do every little thing so perhaps that helps. I haven't had any "supplies" beyond the books. I am that boring mom haha. We are very much a do what is required and move on to free time family so we don't do a lot of hands on enrichment. I guess I feel the same way about TOG that you feel about CC. It is as in depth or not as you want. I am sure God knew what he was doing only giving me 3. I am not sure my fly by the seat of my pants mentality would go over well with any more than I have LOL!

Oh and thank you for the Holly Dutton tip! I found them on Spotify and plan on adding them into our day. We just finished doing copy work for the Westminster Shorter and I needed a way to carry on with memorization!

Wow, that seems like a really full day for mom, especially if you have more than 3-4 children. Also, for my own children, I wouldn't have been able to expect that much silent reading time out of them. They just weren't ready. I am inclined to lean more towards programs like Tapestry that allow me to cover multiple age ranges. Of course, I have no experience beyond my 3 so I couldn't really comment on how things would actually be if I had more and I find CC to be overwhelming just to look at much less implement with more than a single child. It looks very organized though and I would love to be off to the side watching how things go.

I think her science is inside of MFW. I would be adding in a great literature program that uses classic literature and reading comprehension of more difficult works.

I have two that have learned to read through ETC and a third who for some reason I tried on an actual reading program only for that to end in tears. He is now thriving on the ETC program. As with any phonics program you need to actually be reading from books as well for practice, but I credit my children's reading (which is 2-3 grade levels above average) to ETC in the beginning and great literature after they completed the phonics program.

I use TOG and love it, but it covers some of the other subjects you have listed (LA and Bible) so it may be too much unless you cut back. I believe both MFW and HOD are pretty hands on but again I wonder if it would be a lot considering what you already have listed. I don't think Veritas is. MOH and SOTW both have hands on projects for history so that might be something to look at? How old is your child?

I think it really depends on the child. When I was in school we did Abeka and there was A LOT of written work. I try not to be that extreme with what I require, but my children do more written work than what you have listed. I have had to watch my children and adjust to what works and what my expectations were

I am looking forward to the reading on D+E :)

I seem to be the odd ball but I found the site very easy to navigate? I liked how they divided it by core and grade level as it gave me an insight into about where each core fell. I will piece the package I want together myself as I do think they are quite expensive, but over all I am just not seeing these big changes that everyone else does. It looks pretty much the same as it did a few years ago to me other than the LA being added in. I don't know if I will use that or not since I have never seen it (we used an older core the last time we did SL), but that really doesn't bother me that much. That said, I know nothing of the behind the scenes stuff so maybe my view is not jaded by that?

Coal or no coal my house gets a distinct shut up feeling and smell during the winter. I love setting aside a week to open everything up and air it out, swap out winter and spring clothes, dusting and some chores that I generally do bi-annually (grout cleaning and carpets). Just call me archaic ;)

Syrup season? Sounds yummy.

Anyone starting their spring clean this week? The weather is finally starting to warm up more often than not (though we have 1 random cooler day this week) so I figured it was a good week to toss open some windows and get the seasonal jobs finished.

We are doing 4 and it seems right on track.

We are using CLE Math. I am very happy with it. It so far has been very rigorous without being overwhelming. I also like R&S math. We are using ACE for English and Spelling. I think we will keep the spelling but I am going with R&S grammar next year so I might just go ahead and go with the R&S spelling. We love both MOH and Apologia. We will be doing Zoology this next year. We did break from MOH to do a year of American History (Notgrass), but will go back to MOH next year. If you have found some things that work, stick with those. I would just try to combine the science and history :)

As far as the addictiveness, I guess yeah, it is easy to be sucked into but we just monitor it like we do all of the other screen time our kids get.

We just finished up castles and canyons and my daughter really enjoyed it :)

I read it years ago so am somewhat prepared but yes, we are having to stop often to discuss the book. My oldest is absolutely engrossed in though and has sat practically on top of me so that she can ask questions.

Goodnight Mr Tom

I am going to put both of my DD's here though age wise 1 is in 3rd grade they are both doing 4th grade work for the most part: Together: Bible Group Studies: Apologia Who is God? Bible Independent Studies: LifePac 4 Catechism: Westminster Shorter Catechism Copy Book History: Notgrass America the Beautiful and will go into Uncle Sam and You once we finish Science: AIG God's Design for Life The Human Body. Geography: Little Passports Both: English, Writing and Grammar: ACE Spelling: ACE Word Building Classic books for literature DD1: Math: Rod and Staff 4 Art is co-oped out DD2: Math: CLE Light 4 Competetive gymnastics I am completely happy with our math choices and we will stick with Notgrass until we move back into our 4 year cycle. I don't entirely love the English Paces, but they aren't terrible. I will be on the look out at our convention for something better though. I am also not sure I will stick with the Apologia Bible. Again, it isn't bad, it just isn't something I can't live without. AIG Science, I like this a lot but am not 100% sure if we will continue on with this or move into some Apologia Zoology that I had already purchased. I may finish out the Design for Life series and move into Apologia when the girls hit jr.high level. We will definitely keep doing the LifePacs for independent Bible as well as the catechism studies. Little Passports is just something fun I add in once a month. I need to get a Spanish program at the fair in May as well.

Well we did it. We pulled her from her team after the meet yesterday. Her coach was completely uninterested in being there and sat texting on her phone instead of warming Keira up. Keira is now nursing a pulled muscle in her back. That was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I wrote the email this afternoon and this evening got "Ok, hope she feels better good luck." I don't think I could ask for much more so I am happy with that being over. I am calling the new gym tomorrow to get her situated in her new classes.