My first two years of co-op were with a small-ish (but not tiny) very informal co-op when my DD was in PreK/K. Kids ranged in age from baby - mid elementary. A couple of the moms who organized the group picked a couple general topics for the year (like geography, science) and all the moms signed up for a couple times to teach/lead part of the co-op time through the year. There was no nursery, and it was basically free since we had a free place to meet. The pro was low cost. It was an easy introduction to a group activity since we already knew the majority of the families from church. The second year the group was smaller, starting the year at about 8 families, but even a few of those families dropped out as the year went on. Quality was hit or miss (I was guilty too), since I would often forget it was my week to teach until the day before. With no nursery it was hard to keep littles under control (I had a baby and a toddler at the time). It was also easy for a one or two moms with strong opinions to influence the direction of the group rather than majority opinion (which should have been possible with a small group). I wanted something bigger and more established, so for the past five years we've been in a well-established co-op (it was pretty large to start -- maybe 30 families but has gotten smaller the past couple years after a location change). It is awesome in one sense to be in a co-op that has been established for a long time. I felt like I could relax after my initial co-op experience and know that the decisions are made by the board of the co-op. The kids know what to expect, because the format and the schedule of classes is the same every year, and even the assembly activities (parties, book reports, expert day, etc) are pretty much the same from year to year. We have nursery and preschool and I like having a chance to relax while my littles are taken care of. I offered to teach the last three years, but I like the fact that I don't have to teach if I decide not to in a future year (teachers are paid a very small stipend, everyone else has to volunteer to assist in a class, in the nursery, or with another role). On the other hand, because it has been around upwards of about 25 years, it is pretty "set in its ways" -- "Can I do X?" "No, we tried that 15 years ago and it was a problem, so please don't" "Can I teach a class on ___?" "No, we have a set format of classes that has been in place for a long time, we aren't going to change it". "Can we do Z?" "No, that's just not our tradition, we always do XYZ instead." That all didn't bother me at first, but as I am they type of person that tires of the status quo after a while, it is starting to drive me crazy. I am not sure it is driving me crazy enough to leave, but at some point (maybe when my DD would be transitioning from the elementary class after 6th grade) I might check out other options.

Of local homeschoolers I know, I feel like it would be MFW/HOD...I feel like at least 75% of the people I know use one of those programs and love them. (Ok, maybe not really 75%, but it feels like it). I so cannot use that kind of curriculum. Of things people here seem to like, I guess it would be WWE.

I've used BFSU to teach 1st-3rd co-op science. It works pretty well, especially extending the interactive portions of the lessons with ideas from Pinterest (see the link in my siggie). It does take some prep work though. I also did a human body semester mainly using scholastic books from the dollar sale days (Human Body Wearables, etc). This year I am using Science in the Beginning for the same age group. I am not liking it as well for a co-op setting. I find myself reading from the book, which doesn't make for as great of teaching (It is just so tempting to do it when the text is written to the students -- unlike BFSU written to the teacher). For co-op, there are some lessons in SiTB that don't really work at all or that we hit at the wrong season when trying to go straight through the book (No digging up dirt for a lesson on soil in the midwest in January!). No biggie in one sense, that was true of BFSU as well. But since BFSU is flexible in terms of what order you do the lessons, while SiTB is designed to be done in order it doesn't feel like it "works" as well when we have to skip lessons or do things out of order.

I can't do any combining for skill subjects. For content subjects, we have been mostly combined for science and history, with DD doing extra reading. We also have separate read-aloud chapter books most of the time (I read to DD alone at bed time, and read to the boys in the morning at the beginning of the school day. They also get bedtime stories from dad -- usually shorter books). Next year I think I might have to separate science in some way. Right now DS6 is not following along much at all for science. DS7 is quick to catch on to science concepts, so I might combine DS7 and DD, and do something light with DS6. Or I might let DD go into something more independent, and try and find something that can hit the boys at the right level.

I need to get my hands on a copy of WWS so I can evaluate whether or not it will be a good fit. The samples just aren't enough for me to decide! I just got a cheap copy of Warriner's "Composition: Models and Exercises Book 1" and I am really enamored with it for some reason, though I am not sure it is the right next step for my DD either!

What are your writing plans for next year (or after you finish TC)? I'm especially curious what you'll be using If you kids on the upper end of the age range for using TC, as I am using it with a 5th grader this year.

We celebrate every year too...my kids want to have a party this year. I have been wanting to have a game night for a while, so I have been considering the idea of having guests bring pies and then we will play Trivial Pursuit for at least part of the time (get it...the little pieces you get are like pie wedges...lol!). In the past we have read books, and done activities like measuring carefully around a circle with a string to see the relationship between the diameter and the circumference.

I would totally drop Fred if you are short on time. The only reason my DD is doing it is because she wants to. If we skip quizes in CLE and occasionally combine on easy lessons, we can get thru a year of CLE doing it 4 days per week, and she does Fred on the 5th day. I think her math would be fine without it. Even my totally mathy DS7 is only doing BA right now (not counting fact practice in xtramath). We decided it would be more worthwhile right now to spend longer on BA If he wants to do longer sessions of math rather than mix it up with other things. He might do Fred as a summer break from BA (but partly to throttle his speed thru the program so we don't have any chance of getting ahead of the production schedule for BA!).

What is it about level E...LOL! We had a similar Level E experience. DD used A-D beautifully, then we only made it a couple months in to E before we had total meltdown. For us, DD really, really wanted math independence. She was so sick of me giving her a "lecture" about math, and wanted to be able to read for herself what she was supposed to learn. We tried a bit of MM and it just wasn't DD's cup of tea. At the point we ended E, she was able to jump into 400s of CLE, and just move quickly thru some concepts we had already covered.

One town I lived in growing up: K-4 elementary (small neighborhood schools$ 5-6 elementary (but in a centralized school) 7-9 junior high 10-12 high school I moved between 8th and 9th and the new town had K-6 elementary 7-8 junior high 9-12 high school The large city I currently live in has some variety depending on neighborhood, but most of the schools are: K-4 elementary 5-8 middle school 9-12 high school

One sale that I have sold items at assigns each seller a unique "code" and sends a template word file with that code filled in each box. You use two haves of a larger "box" on each item, so you as the seller are only writing the price on each item twice, not the other info. Then at checkout half the tag is removed and used to calculate how much each person earned. It's a bit more streamlined for the seller, but not any less work for the people running the sale, I guess. I know that volunteers who sort/unsort/work the checkout table get "early access" to the sale, and they don't usually seem to have a hard time getting enough volunteers who will do it for that privilege. This is a pretty big sale though (run by a smaller but state-wide organization), so anyone is a potential volunteer...not just members of a specific local group.

We follow more of a traditional schedule, though we usually start our school year earlier in the fall and then end a bit earlier in the spring than the public schools in our area. We do try and do math and keep everyone reading over the summer. Where we live summer is about the only nice time to be outside, so mornings are often spent at the park or tennis court, and afternoons at the pool. Most of our kids' friends (homeschool or public school) take the summer off, so there is lots of time spent playing with the neighborhood kids too.

He sounds a bit like my DS7, who did RS B in K, starting C in the spring of that year. We opted to move thru RS C at a brisk pace. When he finished C I initially wanted to start D right away (this would have been about a year ago), but I had loaned my D teacher manual to a friend and wasn't able to get it back right away. We decided to try a book of Beast Acdemy, and it turned out to be a great fit. The lowest level currently available is 3A, so you would have to fill in most likely with something between RS B and BA3a, but if he is able to learn the concepts easily you might be able to do it with another program that is more streamlined than RS. On the other hand, RS isn't too hard to accelerate if you double up lessons. In RS for my DS7, I would often only do one example problem, then he would do some on the worksheet (and maybe not even the whole thing), then we would move on to another lesson.

Jumping into this thread with a question...I often see WWS given as an example of a parts to whole writing curriculum...can you give a couple examples that are whole-to-parts for the middle grades?

Maybe it depends on the age of the kid, but I am considering Foundations C to be just "exposure" for spelling for my K'er. We are aiming for 2.5 to 3 lessons per week, but he does no other reading or language arts work besides LOE, unless he asks to read a book outside of school time. We do everything in the lesson, but sometimes we may skip or modify a game if we are short on time. For example, if a long phonogram game is called for but we don't have time for it, we play a quick game of "slap the phonogram" or a phonogram tightrope walk instead. I know he isn't remembering all the sounds of every new phonogram or all the nuances of spelling every rule, but he will have exposure again next year in level D, and again after that in Essentials. I don't do spelling tests until 2nd grade (which will be the year that my current K'er does Essentials).

I can't make a direct comparison between SOTW and MOH since I have only used MOH, but I think those are great ages for MOH. Despite a lot of people telling me that it would be lost on younger kids, I actually started MOH 1 with my daughter when she was in 1st grade -- we went through MOH 1 in 1st and all of 2 and part of 3 in 2nd grade. She loves history and by 2nd grade often asked me to read more than one lesson at a time, which was how we made it through so much in one year. We took two year to do American history, and are now back to Ancients. My Kindergartener is hit or miss for listening, but both my 2nd grader and 5th grader love it (DD remembers vague details from the the first time around, but not too much so that it is boring). My DD certainly could read the lessons on her own, but since my 2nd grade DS probably couldn't, I just read 4 lessons per week out loud to both of them. I get a bunch of books from the library to be our "history book basket" and my DD does a lot of related reading from the basket. I decided to not use the written work (quizzes, reviews, etc), but a middle school age student certainly could do those independently. We haven't been much for the projects -- my kids just aren't very interested in them at the moment. We'll make it through the 1st quarter of MOH 2 this year, then do the rest of 2 and half of 3 next year, before going back to American History again (though DD may at that point read MOH -- the rest of 3 and all of 4 -- over two years while we also do American history).

Same here..I use the digital edition of the foundations teacher manual on my iPad and it works really well. I tried doing A printing the student manual a page or two at a time, but that ws pretty annoying. Even though I already owned the PDF of the student manual (I was a beta tester when DS7 was in K), I sprang for the paper student books for DS6 for B and C.

These are my tentative plans...they may change depending on how much progress DS6 makes between now and next fall. Logic of English Foundations D (this should be fairly complete language arts for him) Miquon - continuing from where ever we leave off at the end of this school year (we are using both orange and red right now) Listening in to lit selections with older brother (who will be in 3rd) Listening in to science and history with older sibs - not sure at all what we are doing for science and history will be Dark ages/Middle Ages/early renaissance with Parts of MOH 2 and 3 as our spine, but adding in my own list of lit and library books to go along. That is the main gist of it. We do gym, art and science at co-op. He will be old enough for our public speaking club next year and will probably do one other outside activity. He has done Tae Kwon Do for the past year with DS7, but DS6 is ready to be done, and is interested in trying some kind of dance class next.

I think Hunter's points are really good. I think another factor to consider is the student's personality when it comes to something like this. My DD really likes having something that she can open up, turn to the day's lesson, complete, and feel like she is making progress toward finishing the book. Even if it is something that has a big component of working with me on it (like Treasured Conversations), we turn to a new student page every day and make progress through the book. With Write On, since the idea is to repeat the same general lesson/concept many times with different topics until it is mastered, I think some students (like my DD) might feel frustrated at lack of apparent progress. I know completing pages is not the same as actually becoming a better writer...but even if I wanted to, I don't think I could convince my particular DD that she was making progress by apparently doing the same "lesson" many times. :-)

I just started using Miquon (and not sure if I am doing it "right" yet either), so it may not be a fair comparison...but I don't think Beast is nearly as discovery oriented as either Miquon or RightStart (which we used previously). The guide (comic book) is pretty clearly laying out the concepts and the basic techniques. There are times where the guide suggests to "Try it" before they have completely explained how to do it, but that is kind of optional, KWIM? You could just blow through the "try it" and move to the next page. At the top of most workbook pages is an explanation of what technique the page is supposed to be practicing. A few of the problems in each section require genuine puzzling, but it is really a minority of problems. Some of those have "hints" in the back, and if my DS is getting frustrated by puzzling out a problem, I don't hesitate to ask him leading questions to help him see what is going on. Very different in my mind than RightStart (and maybe Miquon), where I remember a lot of "do this" "now do this" "now do that" -- then "what pattern do you see" ...and from that the student is supposed to understand the concept. I am wondering if Miquon can kind of be an either way sort of program (I know that is neither here nor there for you since your student doesn't like the rods and didn't like Miquon)...for my c-rod loving K'er, I am finding myself "teaching" him what he is supposed to do on each page, then having him try it. No bar models is definitely a plus for you for doing BA -- they teach variables early on for problem solving.

I'm just starting to think things through, but here is what I have so far: For DS, who will be 8 by the fall: Math: Continue Beast Academy - Depending on how things move along yet this year, it will probably be books 4B thru 5A Spelling: Continue Spelling Plus/Dictation Resource book Latin: 2nd half of GSWL Writing/Grammar: No idea at this point Lit: I think I will be making my own list for DS for next fall -- some of it to correlate with history plus some classics History: Together with DD for Dark ages/Middle Ages/Early Renaissance with MOH 2 and part of 3 as a spine Science: Not sure yet...I haven't liked Science in the Ancient World as much as I thought I would, but DS7 says he loves it so...Hmmm...not sure if we will use the next book in the series or not Other stuff: Art/gym/science at co-op. Tae Kwon Do, ICC public speaking club, maybe start a music lesson at some point in the year (DD started half way thru 3rd grade, so I have been telling DS he could consider an instrument of his choice -- probably drums or guitar -- at that point).

I'm still in the beginning stages of planning...Looking forward to seeing what others are using as I think about what to use. For DD, who will be 11: Math: CLE 600s (this is probably the one thing I am most certain about) History: Dark ages/Middle Ages/Early Renaissance with MOH 2 and part of 3 as a spine Grammar: maybe Hake? Writing: Totally unsure...I'll be considering WWS, but not sure it will be a good fit Lit: I'll compile my own list to go along with history + some classics. Maybe do a couple lit guides. Spelling/Vocab: Spelling dictation from Dictation Resource Book and possibly other sources. Maybe continued study from LoE's phonogram-based lists. Or maybe a word root study Science: Fairly uncertain at this point..I haven't liked Science in the Ancient World as much as I hoped I would, so not sure we will stick with that series. I need to decide if I will still keep my kids together for science next year or have DD do something different than the boys. Other stuff: Art/gym/science at co-op, guitar lessons, book club, ICC speech club, maybe pottery classes. Maybe we'll make a more serious effort at German via Duolingo or another source. We fell off the bandwagon pretty early with that this year.

I have a friend with multiple kids who told me that she purposely skipped it in her kids math books until they were in at least 3rd grade. Then they could learn it in a couple days vs. weeks or months. My kids so far haven't struggled with this concept. With my two older ones, I think using the Right Start clock games helped make it a bit easier than just using workbook exercises. Having a geared practice clock (where the hour hand automatically moves with the minute hand), helped them to see how the hour hand is in a different position in different points during the hour. We also talked about how clocks have a "secret number" (the minutes vs. the hours that are marked"), and it was like learning a secret code to learn which minute number corresponds with the hour numbers shown. That helped motivate them to memorize that. We also counted by fives around the clock as a warm up exercise, even before doing much time work beyond time on the hour.

Point them in the direction of official minecraft wiki if they haven't found it already. My DH and I and all three older kids all play, and that was (and still is) an invaluable resource for learning crafting recipes and finding out what everything does. If they like a physical book to read the Minecraft Essential Handbook series is a good one. It really is a "try it out and play around" sort of a game. I too would recommend playing single player on your own computers (or if you have two computers, you can start a world on one computer and "open to LAN" to get the other local player into the game). Until you master the basics, it is easy to mess things up in other people's servers if you are not careful. We found this out the hard way more than once when my boys accidentally blew up someone's house or broke a redstone contraption in the world on our friend's server...then I had to fix it so as not to upset our friends who host the server. ;-) (ETA -- They broke complicated things that were beyond their knowledge to fix...especially beyond the ability of DS who just turned 6...he was not quite even 5 when we first started playing, but blowing things up with TNT was one of the first things he learned how to do! We soon banned him from multiplayer until he learned to be less destructive).

I tried it for a few months when my DD was in 3rd. Cons for some families might be a lack of a daily/weekly lesson plan sort of a structure, and lack of enough explicit instruction/practice without the parent thinking of many, many more topics and assignments. Some of the topics/lessons were fun, but my DD just needed a lot of explicit instruction and practice - like weeks of topics for writing better sentences and months of outlining and writing paragraphs. A teacher with a lot of ideas for extending the Write On lessons could certainly use those lessons for a framework, but honestly I wanted something that would lay out an assignment for us for each day of a whole year to practice those skills. We used CAP Writing and Rhetoric in 4th and she is doing Treasured Conversations this year in 5th, and those have been perfect for us to daily work on practicing those skills with no extra work required for me to think of something for her to write about.