:bigear:

WWE was not a good fit for my ds either. We gave it a several tries over the last few years and it just never really worked for us. We got stuck for the last time in WWE 3. In our case, ds had a hard time with summarizing. I think the difficulty was caused, in part, by maturity issues (lack of patience and understanding of what was required), and because like your 12 yo, mine enjoys creative writing much more than what he was being asked to do in WWE. We ended up using Writing Strands for a couple years, in between our failed WWE attempts. Fast forward to now, ds is enjoying WWS a lot, even though some days are hard. I think he's just ready. He likes that the assignments vary and that some give him a little freedom to insert his own "style." WS was great for him. When he started WS 5 last fall, he decided to do all of the exercises in such a way as to include the same characters and "world" in each one. He had to be clever to pull it off, and there were a couple of times when the end result was a little awkward, but I LOVED that he was enjoying writing. Of course, I couldn't just let that happen! Lol. But really, we switched because I felt that because WWS is a more systematic and disciplined(right word?) way of learning to write, that he would benefit from that approach more right now. And he really has. I would recommend that you go ahead and buy WWS and spend some time with it yourself to see if you think your ds will enjoy the variety of assignments. I mean, compared to WWE, there's actual variety! If it doesn't work for him, sounds like you'll be able to use it with your other ds. I hope you get some more responses, too. Good luck!

Maybe a wood burning kit or model building?

The Milestones in Science Kit from Thames & Kosmos is the one I've heard mentioned several times. I also bought it to go with SOS, but we haven't opened it yet. It looks neat, just haven't found the time yet.

Ds consistently does well each year. Last year, 5th grade, he scored in the advanced range in math, science, and english. We used Excellence in English and WS 4 for language arts. For math, we used SM 6A, EPGY math, and Saxon 7/6(although not concurrently). For science, ES Logic-stage Bio, some fun classes, and he also spent 2-3 months covering the 5th grade science standards wtm-style. He wrote a summary, outline, or facts list for each topic. Jumping around from life, to earth, to physical science to follow the standards felt kind of weird though. It was the first time I'd ever deliberately followed the standards. Prior to 5th, and then again this year, we just incorporated test-prep materials a week or two before the tests. The next time I'll bother with the standards is in 8th grade when testing will include history.

Sounds good to me. Maybe ask kiddos to identify them using a reference book? The prices are surprising. Our kit was a gift, so i had no idea what it cost until today. I'm wondering if you'd be able to find better prices through a grower or even amazon?

:iagree: We love it, too. I also include chores and outside activities. Ds loves knowing exactly what he'll be doing each day and enjoys checking off completed assignments. Makes him feel productive and helps him plan his free time.

:iagree:Very cool, thank you!

My big ds will finish up pre algebra and continue working through WWS. We'll do some read alouds, books he didn't get to over the school year, because he still thinks it's a nice thing to do with mom. I don't know how much longer that will last, so I'm really going to try to savor it. Then, he'll be working on his rocketry projects, going to robotics camp, and helping out at the local urban farm. These things will be lots of fun, but they still fall into the "school" stuff category. Little ds will start learning to read and tend to his pumpkin patch and tomato plant. I will be purging, organizing, and planning for next year's homeschool.

The SOTW 4 AG introduces one-level outlines. Outlining is covered in WWS, one-level outlining once a week, in weeks 2-22. Two-level outlines are introduced starting in week 27. You could wait until then to do outlines, if you'd like. In the 3rd ed of TWTM, I believe SWB recommends creating lists of facts for each 2-page spread covered in the history encyclopedia, instead of outlining because the info is so concise that it makes outlining difficult. This depends on which encyclopedia you're using, of course. I've read here on the boards that the older ed Kingfisher (white cover) can be outlined from. I'm not sure about outlining from SOTW 3 & 4, maybe others will chime in. My ds also doesn't enjoy writing, but he likes the variety of assignments in WWS. Maybe it's more that he likes that some writing days are a lot shorter than others. At least this has been the case for him so far. For the first 15 weeks, there are summarizing assignments almost every week. Then the book moves on to other things and the student incorporates those skills into the other assignments. I'd base whether to do WWE 4 or WWS on what you think of your dd's summarizing skills when she finishes WWE 3.

Not sure if this is the type of thing you are looking for, but we are currently growing mushrooms with this kit: http://store.backtotheroots.com/product_p/mushroom-kit.htm I see that they are available through Carolina. I can tell you that the mushrooms from this kit are tasty and its a good value in that the kids can watch them grow and you'll harvest several crops to eat. As for educational value, it's been kind of interesting, but I don't know if ds has learned anything new. He got more out of reading about fungi than growing them. The lion mushroom on Terrestrial's site looks pretty amazing though. That might be fun to watch grow.

I'm not sure if this is the most efficient way to go about things but, what I did this year was go through our home library and all of our homeschool resources and i catalogued them. I made up lists of what we have for each subject and also included things like games, docs on Netflix, science and model kits, web resources. Then I made a chart with a rough sketch of what subjects, topics, curricula I know that am 100% committed to for the next few years. OK, more like 95% committed to. For us this encompassed the rest of 6th through 8th grade. Materials and resources that fit into my plan get to stay in the house and are listed in their appropriate categories on my chart where, even if they are physically out of sight, they don't run the risk of being out of mind. Everything else, I'll either try to sell or give away. My problem has been that, over the years, I've accumulated too much cool stuff. Crazy right? I'm sure I am the rare unicorn of homeschoolers. So another thing about my chart is that I have tried to be as realistic as possible about the amount of time each subject will likely take, and so it's not 15 subjects deep per grade level. We also need time for life. As ds gets older I feel like our time together is more and more precious and I need to be very choosy about how we spend it. Finally got my priorities straight, I guess. I will probably return to edit later. We are having Thai for dinner tonight so I really have to go! Hope you get lots of responses, I'd like to hear how others get/stay organized too!

Sounds interesting. Bumping for you in hopes that someone chimes in. Good luck!

The ISBN for CPO Focus on Earth Science (CA ed) Teacher's Guide is 1-58892-249-9.

I think if you and ds love KISS, stick with KISS for grammar. We started using MCT this year and because I didn't want to miss anything I bought both Island and Town levels. I definitely fall into the camp that believes both the poetry and vocabulary books are much better in Town. You wouldn't miss anything starting with Town with poetry, vocabulary, or even grammar (if you chose to do both KISS and MCT). Maybe the way to go would be(?): Grammar: KISS Writing: WWE (and possibly Sentence Island, which would bring up the topics covered in Grammar Island) Vocabulary: Caesar's English (Town) Poetry: Building Poems (Town) I think, don't feel compelled to do all the books in a level together. For us, we had not done any poetry at all up until this year. So, starting with Island level poetry worked out great for us. The Island vocabulary book was a disappointment, just because we'd covered all that material a long time ago. Sentence and Practice Island were a good way to review grammar. We started off the year with Easy Grammar and I know ds got way more out of MCT. HTH

If you're wondering if there's enough new material in A2 to justify spending the time and money on it, I would say yes. We use the workbooks, but the material covered should be the same as in the cd-roms. There are 45 new roots introduced in A2. I didn't count the prefixes and suffixes, but from scanning the dictionaries in the back of both books, I can see quite a few new ones in A2, especially suffixes. A2 definitely presents more sophisticated words than A1, at least it will for my 6th grader. I know for fact he does not know what auxesis, recapitulation, nomolgy, or prognosticate mean. Hmmm...is that bad? Well, I guess he will before the school year's out.:D HTH

I would recommend you read Lewelma's posts and threads about science. Her family spends a good chunk of the year reading and watching documentaries on different topics and then each of her dc work on one project for a few weeks. Sounds like a great way to develop deep understanding of your selected topics and practice using the scientific method on a larger scale. We have adopted this idea this year, but my ds leans towards engineering and so his project is more of a design project. For us, having just the one long project has made science, though it's always been much loved at our house, feel more meaningful because we've gotten a real taste of the process scientists and engineers go through. I think the logic stage is the perfect time for a long-term project. It's all about connecting the dots and "a-ha" moments. Good luck!

:iagree: I found our books on Amazon. Good luck!

We have volumes 1 & 2 of K12's Human Odyssey and the authors are Klee, Crib, and Holdren. Volume 1 covers prehistory thru early Middle Ages, volume 2 covers 1400 to 1910. HTH I'm not 100% sure, but it seems Spielvogel's book, World History: The Human Odyssey, is just one large volume. Hopefully, others will chime in and give you a more info about the Spielvogel book.

True. The link I included contains all the vendors, and although the ones that offer HQT classes are on that list, they are a select few. The link you provided is the more efficient one.

Aww, man. That is a lot of trouble and expense to go through to be part of this charter. I can totally understand your frustrations. Honestly, at the beginning of this school year I was pretty sure we wouldn't be coming back next year--and I'm fortunate enough to live 15 minutes away from our monthly meeting spot! Is math the only component of K12 that you don't like for your dd?

With Sky Mountain, your student can take algebra, geometry, and algebra II for high school credit, or not, as 7th or 8th graders. Sky Mountain provides transcripts for high school years only. Prior to that, families can choose to use a grading system where the parent determines their child's grades, or their ES will compile a porfolio (with or without STAR test score, parent decides) for each student. My understanding, and I admit I am just learning about this stuff right now, is that if you want your child to receive high school credit for the above mentioned math classes and there are several other classes offered for high school credit (US government, english, foreign language, a few others), that you first have to get approval from the school and then enroll in classes that are classified HQT (taught by Highly Qualified Teacher), for the classes to be included on transcript. But like I said, I'm just learning about this stuff. As for approved math text/course, there isn't an official math program required by Sky Mountain. Each family has the choice from many publishers/programs. Our family has used Singapore Math, Saxon, EPGY, and Art of Problem-Solving over the years. These and many more are approved by the charter. If you'd like to see a list of all the approved vendors: http://www.skymountaincs.org/search/search_vendors.php I think tweaking is part of the process. We have friends who use CAVA and add IEW for writing because they don't like writing component of K12's language arts. We're using K12's Human Odyssey course (Intermediate World History) this year.

When I spoke to my ES about this last month, she didn't say anything about two classes either. Then I went to the school's website and came across the page that I linked to my last post. My dh and I have been trying to decide what to do in our ds's case. I understand what you're saying about needing all four of those high school years. I am not interested in rushing through high school either. Ds does have lots of strengths, but I want to ensure he is well-prepared for his college years. I'm thinking that the time we save by working through some subjects early, he'll spend strengthening his weaker areas and developing his interests further. *I think* that Sky Mountain will not force your dc to graduate early, but that's definitely something to bring up at your next meeting. You're right, sometimes parents have to get creative in order to make their plans for their dc "fit into the charter model." The older ds gets, the more I see that.

I use scholaric.com. It's easy to use. I've done a lot better with this than any plan book I've ever tried in the past. I don't mind paying the $1 per month. http://www.scholaric.com/

My family also uses Sky Mountain. When your dd takes algebra for high school credit in 7th, she'll also have to take another HQT class in order to get credit for both. Unfortunately, kids can't take just one high school credit class. I'm currently trying to figure out what ds will take next year. Algebra for sure, but then I haven't decided on what else. http://skymountaincs.org/guidance/7th_8th_highschool_courses.htm I like Crimson Wife's suggestion to see if you can get by with chapter tests when the time comes. I'll ask my ES about this, too.