My kids are in 9th and 8th grades. Things don't get organized unless I literally oversee (as in stand over them and see) it happening. I gave up on the idea of "make sure all your stuff is where it needs to go and your materials are put away" independent approach to ensuring organization. I now have a daily checklist that the kids must go over with me, demonstrating that things have been completed and stored in the correct places. I think that when a student is working fairly independently, they lack the influence of peers all doing the same thing in terms of filing their work and storing their materials. Also, teachers don't give kids lessons and then walk out of the room. If they did, chaos would erupt. After talking to many parents, I came to realize that it was my expectations, and not my kids' behaviors, that were out of whack. I don't always do what I am supposed to do. I dawdle, and I leave things unfinished, and I am sometimes sloppy, and I'm not really a very organized person. My role is to teach my kids how to do these things, not to expect them to just do them.

My kids won't have 30+ credits, and it's not the norm around here. College-bound kids usually have 24 minimum, and some have up to 28. But the usual class schedule around here is 7 class periods, and most kids take a study hall at least some of the time. I'm not worried about racking up the credits. But contrary to advice I receive on TWTM, I will list 8th grade credits on the transcript in the "credits earned prior to high school" column because it's accepted in our area to earn a few high school credits in 8th grade and factor them into the GPA.

I would not list Shmoop or Crash Course as a primary resource. I would list the books and that documentaries were used, but I wouldn't name the specific documentaries.

We had a microscope that barely got used. I'd say it depends on what you plan to cover in biology. Unless you're interested in topics that require or would benefit from a microscope, I wouldn't worry about it. Any time we needed to see an image that you might look at through a microscope, we googled a picture of it. FWIW, my oldest is entering her senior year as a biology major, and she says they have used microscopes in chemistry (her minor) far more than in biology ... but of course they use really expensive, specialty microscopes for chem, not the kind you'd have in your home.

We really liked Holt Science and Technology Short Course books. They are available for a few bucks apiece on Amazon.

If she likes Latin's Not So Tough, let her use it. She doesn't need any sort of super-rigorous program at 8 years old. If she just has fun with it, great!

Look no further than Six Weeks to Understanding Grammar. It's $6 on Amazon. I struggled for years with my son and grammar. What finally worked was a combination of time (he just wasn't ready until he was ready) and the right approach. You do not have to complete Six Weeks to Understanding Grammar in six weeks. That is the suggested time for review of grammar for someone who learned it previously. You can take as much time as you want to complete the book. One concept is introduced at a time and practiced until it is understood. Then you gradually add elements, continually reviewing what you have already learned. It's relatively quick, easy, and painless. We started at the beginning (what is a noun?) even though my son knew what a noun was because it built his confidence after years of grammar failure. "See? It's not so hard. In ten minutes we covered nouns. Tomorrow we will move on." You could work on it with your older two and not worry about it with your youngers. Having worked on grammar with my kids from the time they were in first grade (they are now in 9th and 8th), I have to say that everything up to 5th grade (for my dd 9th) and 7th grade (for my ds 8th) was wasted time. Grammar needn't be taught for years on end. It can be taught briefly and well in middle school or early high school. Your children will naturally pick up some grammar as they learn to write and read; they will figure out that sentences have certain elements and how to use them. You can study those elements in further depth as your children's writing becomes more sophisticated, but there is absolutely no reason (in my opinion) why grammar-aged kids need to be filling our worksheets on grammar points or worrying about what the elements are grammar are called (beyond perhaps the parts of speech). I would approach grammar much differently if I had it to do again.

Assuming you do all of these things every day, you have 7.5 hours planned. That means if you started at 8, worked till lunch, took half an hour for lunch, and worked until you were done, you would be working until 4:00. This assumes no breaks other than 1/2 an hour for lunch. Personally, I think that is way too much. Honestly, my 9th grader doesn't even work that long, and she is working on 7.25 credits right now. She works about 5.5-6 hours a day (she has always been a quick worker). She works on the weekends sometimes, too, for an hour or two. When my kids were in 4th and 5th grades, we were doing 3-4 hours a day. Given what you have listed, here is how I would arrange a 4-hour day: 1 hour math 1 hour LA, alternating writing/grammar one day, spelling/literature another .75 hour science, .75 hour history, alternating days or weeks (we did history and science in 2-week rotations) .5 hour Prima Latina/myths .25 hour typing practice (I think 30 minutes a day is too much) .5 hour reading That's four hours. You could start at 8, work till 9:30, and break for 15 minutes. Work from 9:45 to 11:30, break for lunch for an hour. Work from 12:30 to 1:15, and you're done. Lots of kids take piano lessons, and it's not considered school. I would consider piano practice independent of school and let them do it whenever. I think that in 4th/5th grades, 1.5 hours math is too long and attention will likely wane after 45 minutes or an hour. We did 30-45 minutes of math daily at that age. I also think 2.5 hours of language arts is extreme. Not everything needs to be done every day. Think about it this way: if your kids are working on school for 7.5 hours a day in elementary school, what's left to work up to in high school? Ten or twelve hours a day? Is that reasonable?

I think you have way too much on your plate. With kids your kids' ages, I would definitely drop geography and Shakespeare. (Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Shakespeare, and we have spent a lot of time on it, but if you are overwhelmed, you need to pare down some.) You can also alternate science and history; until my dd was in 8th grade, we did science and history in alternating two-week blocks. I would also set a limit of an hour a day on read-alouds. Whatever you get through is what you get through. Don't become a slave to your curriculum--it works for you, not the other way around. And, honestly, I don't really think it's feasible to have your 4th grader working more independently. My kids didn't start doing any significant amount of independent work until 7th grade. In fourth grade, I don't think your child needs to do more than 3 or so hours of work each day. Set your time parameters and figure out what you can fit into them. Let the rest go. Alternate days if you need to; for example, we I alternate grammar and root study with my son. We don't do both on the same day. I would also suggest not having your kids do math independently. That's pretty much the #1 thing that young kids need instruction in. I understand the urge to do it all, but if you burn out, then it's not worth it. Pick the must-haves and let the rest go.

If this guy would pressure your daughter to eat food he knows she shouldn't, what else would he pressure her to do?

I don't presume to know how my dh can best do his job, so I would never even hint that somehow Dad's poor job management skills caused him to have to work and miss a child's game or other activity. I would certainly not want to be told by my husband that I was doing things all wrong just because I didn't do it his way. My dh and I think very differently and approach tasks very differently. It's part of who we are. And why is this a problem? I think we're discussing a difference in personality and making judgments about which personality is "better." I've realized as my kids have gotten older that they are who they are and that trying to bend them to be someone they are not just causes conflicts. My ds doesn't approach schoolwork the same way I would, but I've also learned over the years that my way simply doesn't work for him. I could harp on him forever about it or I could let him live his own life and find the ways that work for him.

And particularly for students who are whole-to-parts learners or who have executive function issues, stretching the task into multiple little parts over a long period of time can be very overwhelming. I used to have pretty rigid ideas about how to learn best and how best to tackle assignments (outlines, anyone?). My three kids, who are all very different, have shown me that there's rarely one right way.

FWIW, my dd is using Tablet Class for geometry this year, and my ds uses TT. This is the first year I haven't taught math to my dd. She's working pretty independently. The lessons are definitely shorter than last year's algebra lessons, for which we used Math Without Borders/Foerster.

Our Sav-A-Lot is a bunch of low-quality, processed junk. When they have national brands, they seem cheaper than at other grocery stores, but the package size is smaller. So they really aren't cheaper. I much prefer Aldi to SAL.

Well of course not. She already knows everything, remember? :lol: It will get better. I promise.

My dd loves math, but she does really hate endless numbers of practice problems. While I understand that practice is the backbone of mastery for math, I think that presenting kids with huge math assignments can definitely kill the love. I've solved this problem by requiring only a small number of practice problems on the day a new concept is studied and then spread the remaining practice problems over several days as review as my dd has moved on to learning new concepts. When she studied algebra last year in 8th grade, she usually did about 30 problems, but they were broken up such that about 10 were on the newest concept, about 10 were on yesterday's concept, and about 10 were mixed review from even earlier in the course. Think about when you learned math: did you love tackling huge pages of calculations? (If you did, I'm pretty sure you were in the minority.)

Same here! We start our day with a read-aloud, and the kids love it. (So do I. I have sometimes been known to proclaim that my mom super-power is reading aloud to my kids.)

You're welcome!

Personally, I don't think that Lightning Literature is enough for writing for 7th grade if that's all you do for writing. It's a great lit curriculum, but it's not a writing curriculum. In 7th grade, writing takes precedence over literature (at least imo). Were it me, I would making writing the focus of the year and then add in lit as you have time (and I wouldn't worry about it if you don't have time). You could certainly use Lightning Literature at a slower pace. LL7 is for 7th-8th grades, and LL8 is for 8th-9th grades. My plan, with my son who is also not a good reader, is to do LL7 in 8th grade and LL8 in 9th grade. You could spread LL7 over 7th and 8th grades and use LL8 in 9th grade. Also, I let my son listen to the books on audio. I have him follow along in the actual book, but there's nothing wrong with letting your son listen to the books. It's not cheating or anything. I looked at Figuratively Speaking but decided against it. I don't see it as a "literature" curriculum. I see it as a "literary elements" curriculum and that, to me, is not the same thing as studying a book as a piece of literature. YMMV, of course.

We used it over a full year. We spent about 30-45 minutes on it 2-3 days a week. You can certainly do it orally. The next book, The Argument Builder (which is not nearly as much fun as Art of Argument), has a lot of written work, though, and to get the full benefit would need to be written work.

While I understand what you re saying here, I do have some differing thoughts. First, let me say that I wrote a 10-15 page high school paper (forget exactly how long it was) the night before it was due, and I got an A. Was it the best work I could possibly have done? Maybe not. Maybe so. I can't really say, but it clearly met all the requirements of the paper, and met them well. Since I did not enjoy The Canterbury Tales and wasn't really invested in it, really, what more could be asked for than "met all requirements with a grade of A"? Some students really can turn out decent work in limited time. Second, I also think that it is ok if a student doesn't pour their all into an assignment. Not everyone enjoys or is motivated by the same things, and that's ok. I am not big into the idea that "a thing worth doing is worth doing well." In my opinion, "a thing worth doing is worth doing well enough." I can't do everything I have to do super-fantastic-awesome well, and I shouldn't have to. I don't have to be 100% about everything. When we tell kids that they have to do all their assignments the absolutely best way possible, we are telling them they have to be 100%, all the time. I'm honestly fine with my kids doing some things just ok simply because they have to be done. I allow it with myself, too. And lastly, like I said, I do understand how you feel in the snippet I quoted, but really, it's not the job of the students to make you feel validated. Not every kid is going to love your class regardless of how good a teacher you are. Some kids are just not interested in some things. A student shouldn't feel guilty for not liking your class or putting as much effort into it as you do. (Or a student may love your class and still not put in all they effort they possibly could.) Some classes I took simply because I had to, I learned the material reasonably well, and then I moved on. I would never have thought about whether my ho-hum attitude was upsetting my teacher because, really, it wasn't my responsibility to make to worry about it.

I would rather do a big project at all at once than work on little bits over an extended period of time. That's just how I am. My dd is the same way. Some people are just like that. By 11th grade, I'd turn the responsibility over to the kid. It's his class and his education. I don't think Mom should be standing over him. He should be working out his own way to handle his classes.

Just as an aside, I almost didn't read/answer your question because the font you chose is so hard to read. You may want to use a more conventional font. Unless you feel confident teaching algebra, I suggest both Math Without Borders and the solution guide. David Chandler teaches actual lessons, and my dd would not have been able to learn algebra just from reading the book. When we used MWB, it did not contain any video solutions. Now it does for the problems he assigns. Since we often used more problems than he assigned (for review and extra practice), I would have wanted the solutions for all the problems. Plus, the solutions guide includes the solutions for the chapter reviews/tests, which, IMO, are necessary.

My dd has one notebook that she dislikes using. For some reason, the paper feels awful. I have found that more expensive paper feels better than cheap paper. Also, a pen that writes very smoothly (like Sharpie brand; not an actual Sharpie marker, but a Sharpie brand pen) helps as well.

Too bad for them. About what? "I don't like that person's gender"? So what. It's not up to you (general you). The counselor's gender is irrelevant because it's not a religious camp and transgender people, contrary to the beliefs of the misinformed, are not people in drag who are attempting to prey on others.