I will have a Ker and 2nd grader next year. We are using SOTW for history (and art, geography...) and REAL science odyssey. Loving both this year and I am definitely planning on continuing with them, they are great for both ages.

Our schedule is like idea B, it works for us.

We do AAS and get through about 2 steps a week so that is about 20 words.

My 1st grader does about 2 hours * 2 days per week and 4 hours * 2 days per week, gives about 12 hours over the entire week give or take. Between 3 and 5 hours of that overall total is spent doing fun projects, science experiments and art. We will be sticking to about the same schedule for 2nd grade

No, I have only ever looking in the TM once or twice per level then it is shelved and forgotten about. I am sure in the higher levels the TM will be useful but in the lower levels it is completely unnecessary IMO

Honstly I have never been able to successfully resolve this issue. My mathy daughter is doing MUS, MM and LOF. We love them all for different reasons, I would love to cut one but somehow we cannot figure out which it should be.

I agree with using a program with no grade level on it. IMO there is no point trying to jump ahead a level because she wants a book at her age level if her ability is just not there yet. You are better off taking your time and mastering the basics rather than jump into a program that is just too hard, that is likely to cause even more problems in the future and may even be a step backwards for her. Alternatively, maybe try her on the MM blue series to work on the concepts she needs to master to start on TT5. If you start now and cover just those concepts she might just manage to place in TT5 by the new school year.

My dd was exactly like this, she was very interested in spelling from a very early age but no interest in reading. By age 4 she could spell most simple words but was not able to read those same words, she could work out the individual sounds and put them down in order but not blend those sounds to actually read the word out if it was shown to her on paper. We took a spelling approach to reading using OPGTR, we used magnetic letter tiles most days and did a combo of reading from the book and spelling her new reading words using the letter tiles. She especially liked changing one word into another by changing one letter, for her that was a fun spelling challenge, "if i change one letter when spelling cat can i turn it into...?". We are now (at age 6) flying through AAS, she still loves spelling and still is not really interested in reading. On the plus side, she is already a better speller than me some days :) I will admit i wish she was reading more but I cannot deny she is clearly a gifted speller and I am thrilled about that (I struggled with spelling my whole life, dyslexia is not a friend when it comes to spelling)

For most of our curricula I do not plan lessons, we just continue on with the book. I find pre-planning does not work here as sometimes we get through 2 lessons in a day and sometimes it takes a week to do 1 lesson, I would rather schedule the topic only and do a reasonable amount per day, where we get to is less important on a daily basis than actually doing that subject regualrly. Most things are open and go I find so really I do not need to schedule lessons, we just pick up wherever we left off. For the things that are not quite so open and go I like to pre-read the entire term in the holidays and make a note of any supplies we are not likely to have on hand at the last minute, I then get them in one lot so they are ready and waiting. My timetable for my 1st grader today looked like this: Reading (we continued with OPGTR) Grammar (next lesson in FLL) Explode the code (we usually do 2 pages) WWE (next lesson) AAS (finish lesson, typically we take 2-3 days per step) Game (we did a board game from the shelf, time focus) Math (next lesson in MM) Computer game (15 minutes educational game, child choice) Sport (HS class) Science (next lesson in book) Some days we do science after lunch, some days it is history etc, each day is different. I also alternate between different curricula and activities mixing things up over the week. The timetable gives me the structure to make sure I cover each subject over the week and don't forget something but I also have several chooices most days in terms of what games and hands on things we will actually pull out.

How do I get it all done? I have a weekly timetable. Honestly it works for me. I am the tick the boxes, write and complete a to-do-list kind of person. If it is not on the timetable or to-do list it just never seems to get done, EVER! So start of the year I write a weekly timetable (finalise it after 1-2 months once we work out what works and what is not working etc) and that is it. It lays out what we are doing each day as some subjects are daily and some are 1-2 times per week etc so every day is slightly different. The timetable also (ironically) allows me to be more spontaneous as I do not have to spend time and brain power working out the basics. I do not have work planned as such, my timetable includes the following; "reading", "game", "puzzle". "manipulative play", "history activity session" etc on it, I know what sort of activity to prepare (ie grab from the cupboard at the last second lol) but it is my choice (or i let the kids pick) what we do in that area that day. It gives me confidence knowing that our weekly schedule is well rounded and I am not forgetting or neglecting anything but also the freedom to select activities daily that we want to do that day. BTW, although I have a weekly timetable I am not the kind of person that you stick to it and that is it, if we do as it says for maybe 3/4 the time I am happy, if one day we are busy or want to do something else that is fine as I know the well roundedness of my overall plan will carry us through in the end.

We used it last year with my 4 and 5yo's, (preK and K), it was a great year. Obvoiusly you adapt the stuff to suit them but you would do that at any grade. I would say GtG woudl be great for ages 5-10 maybe, we did a lot less of the LA suggestions than we would have done if they were older and focussed on lapbooks, hands on projects, cooking and art.

I would not hold her back seeing she is doing great with all other subjects, I would only hold her back if she was struggling in more than one area. Maybe spend the summer working on reading and hopefully it will just click. BTW, my DD is just turned 6 and about 1/3 the way through 1st (we school by the calendar year), she is ahead in all subject areas except reading but she is still not at all fluent at all with reading. I am hoping it will just click over this year, of not we will be moving onto second next year regardless but making reading a bigger focus until she gets it

I started an education degree, could not finish it! I cannot believe how bad the education system is. Our decision to HS was largely because of me experiences studying education

I would start back where you identified the first stumbling point and move quickly through until you hit a point where it is more difficult. With a good reader the lessons would be very short so you could get through quite a number each day very easily and you would quickly get back to his current skill level while also filling in any other unidentified gaps.

We are supplimenting with Beginning Geography which in my opinion is mapping skills rather than geography, a very important skill in its own right. Also, we look up region of the map in SOTW on a large world map, i feel they are so zoomed in that is it hard to get an overall idea of geography and location but we just grab our large map and look it up, puts it in perspective for the kids

Thank you all, think we will need to talk about this. Loving that quote about school being for learning, exactly what i need her to be getting right now.

Sigh, so hard when that article describes me to a T as well. And yes I fully agree with it being best to hit that math wall earlier and not later hence i am allowing her to accelerate (well I am holding her back a bit, it is a compromise between zooming ahead at her pace and me being thorough), I myself only hit that math wall in 3rd year uni, boy was that a shock lol. No she did not hit a wall, it was not even really perfectionism (although she usually displays that too) this was a simple matter of i explained the question and she did not instantly have the answer hence it must be too hard as math is not something that you need to think about. End of story for her. I am thinking it might be time to let her accelerate a bit more until she needs to think just a little bit more every day but after yesterday I do not know how to approach it, i don't want a melt down every day. In this instance the question actually ended up being really simple for her, it just took a little bit of thought.

My just turned 6yo is advanced in math, spacial and logic areas. She is currently working 2 grade levels ahead in math and it has always been easy for her, too easy it would seem. Anyway, this week for the first time EVER she came across something in math that she did not immediately "get" or did not already know. She lost it, full on melt down, threatened to quit math and never do it again becasue it is "too hard" (honestly I had to laugh, full on tanty over not knowing one answer). Anyway, we stopped the lesson and cooked lunch instead and she had already mastered the concept before we were ready to eat, it was in no way too hard for her it was just that she did not get it instantly and had to think. So now to the question, how do we proceed from here? Clearly there will be times in the future that she will not get something instantly, i need her to understand that sometimes we have to think about things and (gulp) even work through a problem to get the answer instead of just knowing it. She is used to working through logic problems but apparently math never needed working through and she did not cope well with the idea that it might. Any ideas or suggestions? I just want her to be ok with not knowing how to do it immediately, if it is too hard clearly we will leave it and come back at a later time but if it is just something she needs to think about for a few seconds she needs to understand that this is ok.

I waited until partway through 1st to start WWE1, we were (and still are) working on letter formation still and i wanted her to have a better grounding in this before starting on copywork.

I have a 4yo (prek) and 6yo (1st) and they are combined for everything except math and LA and have been right from the start. As my 4yo is not yet officially school age she is not required to participate in anything but she enthusiastically does the lot and then begs for more

looks good to me, quite similar to what we did last year. My only suggestion would be more art/craft. We did one or more small craft projects per country, this was the best part of the week and the girls loved it.

Yep keep going, we started LOF at 5 the plan was to stop and backtrack when needed however i do not feel the need to hold them back. (we have not needed to backtrack yet though)

I did a different activity. My girls made a timeline of their own lives using photos. I made a timeline up which was 1 year per page, printed the relevant number of pages and handed them a heap of pics. They had a blast looking at how they have grown and changed over the years

We have taken this entire first term of 1st grade to focus on letter formation and will be starting WWE1 after the easter break (term 2, calendar year schooling). I looked it over at the start of hte year and decided that our time would be best spent perfecting letter formation first rather than slowing down writing if issues in this area are still present

We use and love both math mammoth and MUS here, my DD(5) is in 1st and is in MUS beta and MM2a.