I have an 11 yo and a 2 yo, so I know how it is. My 2 yo wants to do school like his big sister, so I"m trying to find activities for him to do as well. I wish I knew what worked. I started out boxed and it went well until 4th grade, since then I've been trying to figure out what works best. Math I almost have down. English she is pretty easy and seems to work well with anything we try. It's history and science that are the hardest.

I was thinking modern American history for our study. As for the order I had things, anything past 7th grade was just ideas, since I know I want to do american history for 7th, that was a given. Oh, and government and economics for 12th, though if I get to it before then, as long as it's covered. The only other things the colleges she wants to go to ask for are american history and world history. Science, I just want something that will get done and for high school it has to have labs. I'm not really sure what that means, can it be virtual labs she can interact with, labs she can watch, or does it have to be labs she preforms? My daughter loves earth science, so I know that is one we will have to do again. Science might not even end up as semesters, if she enjoys what we do.

Now I'm thinking.... History Grade - Subject 6 - Ancients/American 7 - Ancients/American 8 - Middle Ages/ ? 9 - Middle Ages/ ? 10 - ?/? 11 -?/? 12 - American Gov/Economics Science Grade - Subject per semester 6 - Bio/Earth 7 - Bio/Space 8 - Chem/Physics 9 - Bio/Chem 10 - Bio/Chem 11 - Physics/Earth 12 - Physics/Space Weekly lay out idea Day 1 history read spine and activity Day 2 history read book (non-fiction/fiction) Day 3 activity related to reading Day 4 read/video Day 5 read/video/nothing Day 1 science read spine and activity Day 2 Read/video something related to what we are studying Maybe? This of course isn't set in stone, just ideas that have come to mind.

I love the idea of semesters. Just not sure how I'd implament it, without trying to have everything at the beginning of the year. Hubby hates buying things half way through the year. Hum. Need to find a way to show him that it wouldn't be so bad. I'll have to think on this. So far she is doing okay with HO right now, since I'm using human odyssey spine and the usborne history encyclopedia. I need to find an HO esque american history and science, or make it myself. :eek: My daughter and I love the picture your daughter took OhElizabeth. The angle and depth she captured is really good.

Yes my daughter is learning to type, since when I have her write by hand she doesn't do it very well. It's messy and her thoughts are not very organized. Typing has helped the disorganization A LOT. We are doing 6th grade at the moment, and in WWS I only have her do the outlines and narrations. I agree that if I had her outline and narrate history or science the same days as I do WWS it would be too much. I usually have her read a two page article in Cobblestone and outline or narrate what she found interesting. For history we are doing History Odyssey Ancients level 2, she has fun with the history pockets and the reading. She doesn't care for Kingfisher history encyclopedia, but she likes the Usborne Encyclopedia we have. My husband wants us to do American history next year since he says she hasn't had enough formal education on it. I was content to just doing all of HO level 2, and do more formal in high school. Science, right now, consists of Mr. Q since what I had planned didn't work out. Dd doesn't care for the kingfisher science encyclopedia either. I might be over thinking things, okay I know I'm over thinking things, and I get lots of great ideas here. Trying to approach subjects from different angles is what i'm trying, I just don't know where to look. You have given me a lot of ideas and things to think about. I need to find a spine, find fiction and non-fiction books to add, and then lots of hands on stuff.

Some of that might work. She loves watching how things are made, and we have lots of discussions on them afterwards. I will have to look in to that. Thank you for the suggestions.

She hates writing, I have her typing, but she still grumbles about it. She doesn't like WWS, but she is learning how to outline and write narrations, which I'm incorporating into science and history. We are still working on how to do the rest of the weeks lessons. As for going to the library, it isn't that good and even the one an hour from here isn't much better. Overdrive is my only way to get the majority of books and even that doesn't seem to have many of the books I look for.

We do talk about what we get before we order it. These are the curricula that she had shown the most interest in. She is hard to shop for, since half way through the year she will come to hate everything. She is only interested in art and making crafts. She doesn't care about anything else, I try to make things interesting for her, but I'm not a crafty person. She needs a schedule with everything listed and a time next to it. I've tried 6 years without one and we would do okay. This year I made one and she is a new person. She knows what is coming and about the amount of time to do it. If it goes over or under doesn't matter, but she likes having it. We start the bulk our day at 1 pm, since that is when she is most focused. She will read and do small things starting at 11. We finish our day at 5.

Yes, I agree. I was looking at that again last night. I might offer my dd some book options for the middle ages, since she wants to read about it, but not actually do a full curriculum.

Well I did stop, until today. We were talking about finances, and now I'm looking to cut costs on my schooling. Which Sonlight is a huge financial investment. I've looked at trying to piece it together and it would cost more.

something comes up and makes me question what I'm doing. So I had 7th grade finally figured out. Math - Life of Fred Pre-Agebra with Keys to Algebra and/or Lial's Prealgebra Science - Noeo Science Chemistry III English - Essentials in Writing and Easy Grammar Plus/Daily Grams 7 with Vocabualry Workshop B and All About Spelling History/Literature - Sonlight core D+E with added grade level readings Now I'm looking at Notgrass America The Beautiful with Lightning Lit 7 for History and literature. Possibly adding in History Odyssey Middle ages, to continue after Ancients this year. OR Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum's People, Places, and Principles of America 2 year course, with Lightning Lit 7. Possibly adding History Odyssey Middle ages here as well. There are just too many choices out there. So out of my choices, which might be the most interesting for a 12 yo girl who enjoys reading to learn.

i've had no luck finding any of the books so far on overdrive. i'm not sure how i'd schedule cpo science.

we do have netflix, and i have looked at a lot of their documentaries, but have yet to settle on something to watch. we tried mr. q's and i liked it, but it seemed rather young for my daughter. i was hoping i could combine it with classiquest, but that didn't work out well for me. ruth, thank you for a lot of ideas. my daughter hates anything that includes bugs, so we did great science adventures that talked about bugs last year, and she did it all with paper bugs. if we did do anything outdoors it would have to be in the yard, which is pretty bare until spring. :glare: seems a bad time to do biology. i'm not very good at compiling thing together, but i do have many encyclopedias, which my daughter dislikes, but will read them.

didn't work out this year. classiquest science looks good, but without being able to do the experiments it isn't very fun. our funds for schooling this year is very limited and unable to get even basic things for experiment. so i'm moving to just outlining and summarizing different encyclopedias that we have on hand. any other options when unable to get extras, going library is out of the question, but we can get books from overdrive online, i just have no idea what to look for at the moment. for seventh grade i'm -not- going to buy pieces for science, i'm going to get noeo chemistry 3, since it comes with everything.

how is math u see working out with life of fred...

i was thinking of getting keys to fractions to help my daughter with fractions. which one would go with pre-algebra, the algebra ones -question mark- i wish i had working shift keys -sigh-

so i stopped life of fred fractions for life of fred decimals and percents, it's working better, and we will go back to fractions in a little while. now to my questions. my daughter likes fred again, she would like to do pre-algebra, i have both the books and she has looked through them, but i'd like something else to go with them to help her. i just don't know what might go well with fred. i was thinking math-u-see, but i don't know. i know -not- teaching textbooks. if things go well, i'm going to try beginning algebra with fred, too.

thank you all for the suggestions. i just didn't want to make yet another math thread. i'm getting a headach looking over all the pre-algebra threads. i've read and re-read and previewed all the pre-algebra i could. my daughter doesn't like discovery math, she likes it presented to her. the ones i'm looking at are.. saxson 8/7 saxon 1/2 lial's bcm lial's pre-algebra or just doing jacob's elementary algebra since that is the algebra i think would work best for my daughter. my daughter said she'd kill me if i made her go through remedial math again, since that is what she is doing this year so far in tt math 7 -which she doesn't like- other than fractions. i'm also trying to get an idea of what her math sequence might look like. we'd go through it as slow as we'd need to. i know algebra, geometry, algebra 2, but after that i get so confused, trig, pre-cal, calculus. my daughter isn't going to be in a stem career, though she might try to run her own business.

we have the first year of irasshai, just have to figure out a good way to implement it.

yes we are doing mep a mix of year 7, 8, and 9, skipping what she knows and working more on what she doesn't.

life of fred is supplemental at the moment. she wanted to do teaching textbooks, which isn't the best fit for her, but she doesn't want to give it up. i don't have the money to get another curriculum for math. i'm trying to find a good fit for her. i'm doing mep with her too. i'm looking for pre-algebra, and keep ending up at saxon or math-u-see. i'm going to hopefully get the key to fractions for the end of the year and add in percents and decimals if need be.

my daughter refuses to learn how to divide fractions. she has adding, subtracting, multiplying, and reducing all down. when it comes to dividing she just says i'm confused and when i try to show her why and how it works, she refuses to watch. she will put her head in her hands. i don't know what to do. i have life of fred fractions, we got all the way through until lesson 30 and she just stopped. any suggestions would be wonderful.

so after months of trying to figure out what might work with my daughter, i finally have a plan of action for 7th grade more or less. history and literature - sonlight core d+e history and literature, adding level appropriate reading grammar - saxson grammar and writing 7 writing - finishing wws1, possibly staring wws2, queen's language lessons for the secondary child math - saxson pre-algebra with dive typing - continuing what we are doing now art - artistic pursuits japanese - mango logic - perplexors, venn, grid, math spelling - continue with aas and megawords vocabulary - wordly wise 3000 online science - noeo chemistry 3

my daughter and i don't start our school day until 1 pm, since we are also night owls. we get up between 9 and 10, have breakfast, do house work and work out, then have lunch, start schooling after that. our week, the times are rough since things take shorter or longer times monday 1-2 lit 2-3 logic, typing, grammar, writing 3-4 math 4-5 history 5-7 walk, dinner 7-8 vocab, art tuesday 1-2 lit 2-3 logic, typing, spelling 3-4 math, science the rest of the day for scouts and free time wednesday pretty much the same as monday except after dinner we are done for church thrusday pretty much the same as tuesday except we add vocabulary and art at 7-8 friday same as monday except we do not have vocab and art and add spelling, science and history i've been working on this schedule for a long time and we change up things as they work and don't work.

this is where i'm at now for 7th grade. sonlight core d+e tweaking it for higher grade level sonlight science f or noeo chem 3 math horizons pre-algebra with life of fred art artistic pursuits since my daughter likes it logic perplexors, grid, math, Venn typing continuing what we are doing now --adding winston grammar for added help and understanding if needed-- --or-- oak meadow seventh grade, i know it's world history and not just american history, i like the books they have with their english curriculum, minus the math and keeping the science. horizons pre-algebra with life of fred art artistic pursuits since my daughter likes it logic perplexors, grid, math, venn typing continuing what we are doing now --adding winston grammar for added help and understanding if needed-- we will be going through american history in high school again, per my husbands request. so something that does an overview now would probably be best, since her writing isn't great and i'd like her to do more hands on activities. thank you to everyone who has helped me with this.