I *think* I’ve figured this kid out: LA: -Beautiful Feet Horse study, maybe with Funschooling with Horses to go with -AAS - finish 5, not sure about 6 -Grammar for the Well Trained mind, first go round -Killgallons Paragraphs for Elementary school, then start Writing with Skill 1 (and read some of the books mentioned) -The Writing Revolution level 2 pages to go with history program from Lithouse Learning (should be out in June!) Math: CLE 6 History: Curiosity Chronicles Early Modern 1&2 Science: Blossom & Root 6 Art: Outschool classes Lit-based Canadian history with older brother

Another vote for CLE. I have a son with dyslexia/discalculia and it works for him. I have an intuitive mathy gifted son and he likes it because he can understand it most days without my help and can just go to town. I have a bang-on neurotypical but more into language daughter and it works for her too. With all of them, I don’t make them do every single problem (except new stuff, quizzes and tests) because I found it wore them right out to expect that of them plus the drill at the end. My oldest is in Algebra 1. He did Teaching textbooks for a year (video based) so he could be more independent and it was a disaster and we ended up redoing PreAlgebra (level 8 ) in CLE. I teach the new stuff each day and watch while they do the new section, then they do the review parts on their own. It does a great job explaining and I’ve learned a ton myself! Teacher’s manuals are replicas with answers fully worked out and there are extra supplements in the back if needed. If you do decide to try one of the booklets because a previous poster is right, its not expensive at all, don’t get the first booklet of the year as it’s not typical to what the rest of the year will look like. The second to ninth books are best for a real idea.

Some my whole family has enjoyed over the years (they're 7, 10 and 12 right now) -Ramona series, Henry Higgins series, Ralph and the Motorcycle series, Wingfeather Saga, Hank the Cow Dog series, Harry Potter series (the first few are appropriate for the under 10 set), The Hobbit and The Penderwicks series. We own them on Audible and they have been listened to REPEATEDLY, literally for years and years, for all three kids (two boys and a girl). ETA Also, books by Roald Dahl. Mine especially love Matilda.

My kids (7th and 5th grade, but looking ahead by about a year) and I just started FFC B. There doesn't seem to be a C? Where did everyone else go from there? It seems like a pretty standard middle school French program. I'm fluent, if that makes a difference, so I can tweak things to suit, but I want something fun, laid out for me, and mostly oral/aural for my writing averse and/or dyslexic boys. Suggestions?

I think we're mostly just continuing on where we leave off in June: Math: CLE 2, though I could try MM 2 out of curiosity. I have both. CLE 2 is partially independent which is really nice, especially when so much of what she does isn't. Grammar: First Language Lessons 2 Writing: Writing with Ease 2 Reading/Phonics: All About Reading 2 (assuming we'll be part way through) and whatever ETC book she's on by then, possibly 4. Spelling: Finish All About Spelling 1, move on to 2 Literature: Read alouds from her big brothers' Build Your Library 7, rounded out with my own favourites at bedtime and audiobooks from WWE excerpts. Handwriting: Might continue with HWOT, but she writes constantly on her own, so the practice doesn't seem necessary as it was for her brothers. Could do cursive? Science/history/geography: whatever she magically absorbs via her brothers' program, with some good living books at her level Considering Song School Latin 1, but not sure I'll have the time. . . she'd love it though

I honestly haven't hashed it all out completely, but besides history/literature, we're mostly continuing on with what we have. My son also has dyslexia and struggles with math as well, so some of this may seem too easy. I feel a lot of confidence in the materials we're using though and have seen a lot of progress as of late! Math: Whatever CLE book is next. Currently he's on 507 with Key to Fractions books. Keep plugging away, going backwards and supplementing as necessary! Spelling: Whatever All About Spelling is next. Currently just started 5 Grammar: Grammar for the Well trained Mind - we're not very consistent with this honestly, but it's there Writing: Whichever CAP W&R book is next. Or Killgallon's Paragraphs. We're almost done book 4 of W&R and I'm undecided which one to do next. We also do Diana Hanbury King 1, mostly out loud Science: Ellen McHenry's chemistry and various living books, documentaries etc - History: Finish History Odyssey Middle Ages Literature: Build Your Library 7 - World Geography, Religions (but not the Chemistry) Logic: Continue Fallacy Detective French: Finish French For Children B. Anyone have ideas for where to go after this? There is no C level. Also, continue Reading and Reasoning 1, unsure if we'll go on to 2 or not. The content subjects as well as French and Logic are done with his sixth grade brother.

For my kids, I didn't find it took longer than completing two pages of MM a day, which had been our usual. My son is dyslexic and struggles a fair bit in math. My older daughter had a better math instinct and memory and she could finish a CLE lesson in less than an hour, even in sixth grade. The thing that made that work for us is that they didn't need me to sit with them for the whole lesson. the first 10-20 minutes are the lesson, the rest is reviewing and strengthening previous lessons. There's also a daily math drill If I started to feel behind, with my daughter anyhow, and I felt like she had a good grasp of what she was doing, I let her skip lessons 5, 10 and 16 (which are quizzes and review days). One could also allow them to skip the unit test at the end, lesson 17. That brings each booklet down to 13 lessons, which gives a bit more breathing room. My son, however, I mostly had do every page, every day. We set the timer for 45 minutes. Since the last half of grade four, he's been doing about 2/3 of a lesson per day and I'm learning to be okay with that lol.

I also switched my kids from Math Mammoth to CLE Math. One in fourth grade, one in second grade. Another one, I switched half way through third grade to Beast Academy cause Math Mammoth moved too slow for him lol. I think it just depends on the kid. But for those kids that need more review, more time to mull things over, CLE has been amazing! I can't say enough good things about it. It's really not expensive either - 3.50 a booklet, 10 booklets in a year. Might be worth a try.

I have a sixth grader, though he's all over the place: math - CLE 5 spelling - AAS 4 & 5 writing - killgallon sentences and then paragraphs, plus writing across the curriculum a la WTM history - wtm history. finish ancients and start middle ages in February. Contemplating History Odyssey at that point science - finish elemental biology 2 and start elemental earth science 2 in February typing.com, intermediate reading - mostly historical fiction tied in with history studies, plus "not to miss" and other classics I think would appeal to him French - French for Children A

I had a similar thing going on with my fourth child ? Yes! Kumon books for the littlest work wonderful. Simple colouring, stickers, cutting, pasting. They were so great for her. They look so official lol. My dd also received gakken workbooks for Christmas one year (that's how much she loves workbooks!) and they have a very similar feel and are available on amazon as well. Usborne has amazing sticker books - although maybe at two, they wouldn't be independent unless you peeled all the stickers off and stuck them to the edge of the table so he could pick them up and stick them himself. I believe the series we used and she still loves is My First Sticker Book. Melissa and Doug also make some great sticker books, though they're in big pads. funny faces, animals in different habitats, adding sticker foods to plates, that kind of thing. The big kids love them too! As a hand me down, dd also got an old Tag reader set? Not really sure what they're called, the plastic pen onto which you download books and they can "read" the matching physical book in front of them with it. Got oodles of use out of it! One more thing was I collected a pile of unused math pages, abandoned for various reasons by the big kids, and gave her a sheet to "complete" during math time. She LOVED having a page full of numbers to scribble on and I could relax knowing it was recycling anyhow. For us, at two, she would colour with smelly markers or make a terrific mess cutting paper in to teeny tiny little peices while I did morning time, the bigs would go off to do a bit of independent work while the two of us did a simplified Before Five in a Row and a workbook page of some kind and she was usually pretty satisfied. If she came back asking for more later in the day, it was a sticker page or a math page.

My natural speller is moving on to Spelling Workout E next year. . . not sure how it will go. I was considering Megawords as well. At least spelling workout is cheap, so I won't worry too much if I decide to switch. . . I found this to be a really hard decision, what to do after/instead of All About Spelling lol!

AAR 1, with Bob books and ETC CLE Math 1, probably 1/2 pace HWOT K tag along in everything else

I'm afraid i can't recall exactly what time periods each book covers. I believe the first one starts with very early recorded history until about 1500? I'm not sure with the 2nd and 3rd books. I'm sure you could read them out of order, or start in the middle, if you had to. It's a very interesting read, but you probably wouldn't have to know the information in the first in order to read the second.

My daughter used the first book in the CAP series - she was in fifth grade, but diagnosed with dyslexia, if that matters. I wanted her to get practice reading independently, reading and following instructions, I wanted her to get exposure to a variety of concepts and get her thinking more about what she was reading beyond figuring out how the phonemes worked, if that makes sense. I found the book fairly independent. Often, when they introduced a new concept, I'd have to go over the page with her a bit, discuss what was being presented, but then she was able to work independently for a number of pages on her own. She didn't love the book, but she didn't hate it, and I felt like what she was doing was worthwhile. We didn't move on to the next book in the series because she transitioned back to public school shortly after completing the first level. Actually, I'll probably get that level for my son too, now that I'm thinking of it.

We've used it, but more as literature rather than a history. Unless I missed something, this is not a history program. There are not timelines etc (although you can definitely add them in I suppose?) I haven't used any other Beautiful Feet programs because we're Canadian, so most of the history doesn't suit. My dd was 9/10 when we used it. She's dyslexic, so at the time, she read the novels with audio companion and it worked very well for her. The books are lovely, of course, and she enjoyed the diagrams and "non-fiction" learning about horses that went along with the literature.

Fairly relaxed about K in our house. My youngest is nearly five, but really wants to "do school" like her older brothers, so we've done quite a bit already. She's done pre-1 in AAR, but not ready for level 1. We're doing the two-letter blending out of Phonics Pathways right now and it's going well. We're almost done HWOT preK but we have the little kindergarten connection book to do (she'll be stoked!). We've finished BFIAR but I'm not sold on FIAR 1 for her. She's just not needing that kind of depth, though I'm still using the reading lists. For math, she mostly does iPad apps, though we did Calendar religiously until Christmas. I think we may start Math Mammoth in K, if she likes. That worked well for one brother, will see how it goes. She's a fanatic about Kumon - done many, will probably continue. All that to say, here's what I think K will look like for her: HWOT K AAR 1 Math Mammoth 1 (to do over two years, probably) Lots of reading aloud and audio books More Kumon mazes, cut and paste, etc She joins in all kinds of things with her older brothers, but sporadically. Except Nature Walks. Family-wide favourite :)

I don't know, honestly. I've had my similar sounding second grader work through ETC 4-6 this past year, but he enjoys them. I also use AAS with him which I figure does help some. I think if my son had been very opposed to the workbooks, I wouldn't have pushed it. He reads (constantly!) at a sixth grade level so I think he's going to be fine . . . ?

Really depends on the kid, I think. OPGTR is great for remediation, for a keen, quick kid, who can focus and doesn't need games. I liked it a lot, but it moved too quickly for my two oldest (who later proved to be dyslexic) and too slowly for my advanced, osmosis reader. I'm still glad I have it and I still refer to it or use it ocassionally.

Thanks everyone. It is helpful to see that this is common. I know everyone will survive just fine, I just wish sometimes . . . but there were some good ideas upthread and I'll mull them over for a while and see what I come up with!

What I mean by that is :p do you feel like your youngers get as much as the olders? I have four kids and the two oldest are dyslexic and dysgraphic. we've made astounding progress this last year and they're reading approximately grade level at this point. But now I need to really focus on writing! And we're moving into logic stage, more advanced math, more advanced everything really, and of course I can't just turn them loose and say "do it". They still need some help and a lot of one-on-one, especially as I bump up the expectations a little. My 7 year old reads at a sixth grade level. He reads all the time. He LOVES science and asks questions constantly. I would have loved to have done BFSU science with him, or SOME kind of science, but because of my extra focus on LA with the olders, he just kind of gets a "bit" of science. I mean, besides reading. But I'm pretty sure he'd LOVE the interaction, the discussion, the hands on stuff, demonstrations, experiments etc. And he's 7, and that's fine, but I suspect if he was oldest, our school flow would focus a lot more on his needs. I always feel like he's just tagging along, or i'm fitting him in around the others. I'm not 100% sure, but I think my youngest may follow the 7 year old's path and be just as interested and motivated. How can I make more time for them to learn what they'd like to do? I've looked at our day backwards and forwards, sideways and inside out, but there's just only so much time in a day!

Man! I've been drooling over this! But I'm in BC Canada lol. Just not gonna happen. There are so few secular conferences ANYWHERE though. It's such a bummer.

I just have a mini white board that I write on as we sit on the table. I even have all the tiles on the whiteboard mounted on the wall behind us, but I only pull down a tile or two if we're introducing something new or have a particular tile to practice that day, for reference sake. Of course, my kids are older? I remember I used to use the tiles a bit more, especially for word analysis in AAS. I just finished AAR4 with my ds10 and I also do AAS 4 with both 10 year olds as well as a 7 year old. I dunno. We just write, so do they.

I also find it really hard to set solid goals for my kids because they never really do what I expect them to do. I guess my biggest thing is just to improve each year. Show more mastery in skills subjects and broaden their awareness and (hopefully) enjoyment of content subjects. I do choose a yearly focus area, though. With one or two dyslexics, up until recently, the priority has always been reading. Reading. Reading! Omg, more reading. Finally, this year, I was able to ease up on the reading and make writing more of a priority. That just means that if I only had to make tough decisions on what got done that day, it was easier to decide what would stay and what would go.

This summer my oldest will be away for 4 weeks - not all in a row, but scattered through July and August. While she's gone, I don't *think* we'll do school? But I'm undecided. Ideally we'd do one page of math each day (during the school year, we do a full lesson which are about 3 or 4 pages). I'm considering a few math fact apps, especially for the middle two since they are working on multiplication facts. Maybe that will be our non-school school lol! 1/2 hour of reading whatever they want - no assigned reading. Journal writing or story prompts daily, their choice. I'm not expecting it to take more than an hour or so each day. Rainy day board games and documentaries. Membership to an important provincial historical site and a visits to others nearby. This is what we did last year and it worked really well. Also, we live on a ranch and they spend hours and hours outside each day mostly unsupervised. So important imho - maybe more important than math apps :P Oh, and read alouds. That's not really considered school here, though, just fun family time. We have a family-wide supper read aloud and more individual bedtime read alouds, and all my kids love audiobooks. A little too much sometimes, if that's possible!

Okay. I just have to tell someone. These past two days I've been giving the kids standardized reading tests. They've all been doing the same company's tests for three years so it's easy to compare how they've improved over the year. This year, they did SO WELL. Like above grade level (youngest was three years above grade level lol, but that didn't surprise). Even my oldest, who's been diagnosed as moderately dyslexic!! She jumped three grade levels since last year! It's such a relief, you have no idea. I'm not sure whether to cry or dance. Maybe I'll do both!! I know all that stuff about how tests don't really demonstrate true knowledge yadiyadiya, but they are something concrete I can look at on tough days and years. We've all worked so hard these past years, especially the older two. Oldest dd has been doing Horizons elevate all year, and has hated it, but it seems to have helped! My partner is making a book-shaped cake and I think we'll spend the rest of the day doing nature study, board games and documentaries instead of math, history and science