Math U See - How does a fourth grade math program make a middle aged woman with a degree confused about division??? Spelling Power - Spelling should not be a major subject that takes as much time as math or English! Oak Meadow K - the hippy in me LOVED it - my son...not so much Spelling Workout Growing with Grammar - Son loved it because it was easy - and retained exactly...nothing. Meet with the Masters Art - So. Very. Boring. and the art projects were really lame.

RightStart Math B,C,D (Best Foundational Math Ever) Teaching Textbooks Math (I no longer have nightmares about how I can possibly teach my son preAlgebra) SOTW with Activity Book (Yes, we mummified the chicken. Awesome!) MCT Language Arts (Teaches a true love of language) Sonlight Readers/ReadAlouds (Turned my reluctant reader into an eager reader) FLL 1&2 (Lovely, organic intro to grammar) Homeschool in the Woods Time Travelers (No other craft/games/hands-on history resource needed)

Hi OrganicMom - you might just be my twin. :001_unsure: I LOVED FLL and WWE, but I just couldn't stop feeling that WWE just wasn't enough, something was missing, blah, blah, blah. Looking back, I think that I had a bad case of "keeping up with the Jones". The classical approach to early writing is so different to what they get in public school. And when I was reading WWE and doing the work with my DS I knew in my gut that the classical method was the way to go - but every time I went to a soccer game or a scout meeting and the other Mom's were talking about the book reports and the essays that their second and third graders were writing - I would panic and question my own intuition. Result - I kept trying new things and my son got very confused, we got very behind in WWE and eventually dropped it altogether. Now as we end 5th grade I have a son who is very weak and insecure in writing skills, and as he struggles it is so clear to me that if I had stuck with WWE - just stayed the course - that he would have had the strong foundation he needs to move on to the level of writing that he should be doing now. If the classical approach is the one for you - you just need to trust it. As far as writing accross the curriculum, I think I remember SWB saying in the grammar stage that if you utilize her workbooks, that is sufficient writing work. If you're not using the workbook, then you can take their dictations/narrations/copywork from their other subjects. Also, just a note to folks planning to supplement FLL with MCT - do be careful. We switched from FLL to MCT after FLL 4 and there was quite a relearning process for us. The two programs approach grammer very differently, in a different sequence, with a different focus, and often using different terminology for the same things. I could see using the two at the same time as possibly getting pretty confusing for kiddios. Just my two cents :001_smile:

Level E is where RightStart lost us - well, it probably began with those drawing lessons, but Level E sealed the deal. It felt scattered to both my DS and I, almost disorganized. Neither of us could find the flow of it - it didn't seem logically connected from one lesson to the next. Whereas DS had found Levels C and D to be almost too repetative at times, Level E felt as though they were trying to stuff too much into one level and DS wasn't grasping the concepts at all. We switched to Math U See which was a BIG no for both of us and finally to Teaching Textbooks. We had to go up a grade level to find our correct placement with TT, but DS loves it and his retention is excellent.

We used FLL 1,2,3. I thought retention was its strong point. My DS loved FLL1, tolerated FLL2, but unfortunately by the middle of FLL3 grammar had become a subject that was literally greeted by a meltdown daily. I fought hard for FLL because my DS was learning and remembering his grammar. I gave the old "not every subject can be fun" speech. But he didn't just think it wasn't fun - he HATED it. I managed to get him to finish FLL 3 but we had to move on to something else for 4th grade. We tried Growing with Grammar - he loved it; whizzed through his lesson daily, got every answer correct. Only problem was he couldn't remember what he had studied from one day to the next. The day I said "OK lets do a quick review - tell me the definition of an adjective" and he looked at me like I was speaking Latin I realized he was not only failing to retain new info, he was actually forgetting things he'd known since first grade! :eek: Then I stumbled upon MCT language arts. I underestimated the fact that it was made for gifted kids and got the Town Level - we should have started with Island Level - so we just took it slow this year. Even though I bought the full set - grammer, writing, poetics, and vocab. - we just worked our way slowly through grammer and about 1/2 of the vocab book. Something magical happened. Even though it was WAY challenging for him, he seemed almost entranced by it - like it was a storybook. Even on the days when the sentence work was obviously very difficult for him, he was completely engaged. As we close out 5th grade I can honestly say that he knows a lot more about grammer than I remember knowing even in Junior High. We are going to do the Town Level again next year at the correct pace, finish the vocab and add in the poetics and writing. And he's excited about it. Can't beat that :hurray:

I believe it is essential to learn cursive, but the time and effort to learn "beautiful" penmanship is a luxury. Although we are some distance from being a completely digitalized society, we are also Very Far Away from the society that actually judged a person's worthiness and quality of character from the beauty of their penmanship. My son hates to write. We are using HWOT - no muss, no fuss. I want him to be able to write in cursive legibly and to be able to read it fluently. That's it.

When we started homeschooling we were WTM purists and we used FLL and WWE and Spelling Power. Fll 1&2 were a great foundation in grammar and I don't regret it but the upper levels bored my son (literally) to tears. We've evolved, eased up and become a lot more flexible since then :laugh: Now we use the entire MCT(Michael Clay Thompson) Language Arts program which includes grammar, writing, vocabulary, literature and (yes, here it is) poetry. My son is not a great speller, so we also use Sequential Spelling. We love SS! We tried Spelling Power (WAY too much! Spelling should not be a full time subject!) and Spelling Workout which we found a bit too random. Sequential Spelling is logical, takes us maybe 10 minutes a day and it has noticeably improved my son's spelling. We absolutely LOVE MCT. It is made for gifted students which my son is not, so it sometimes takes us longer to work through the lessons, but the beauty, logic, and effectiveness of the program have hooked us. We've decided that a program that actually stands a chance of teaching my son to love words and language is worth the extra effort. I don't believe I have ever come across any one curriculum that teaches ALL the things you are looking for - especially spelling and vocabulary tend to be separate subjects. I have heard good things about Voyages in English which includes grammar and writing, but I think you are always going to need to go with separate curriculums for Vocab and Spelling.

We loved the AGs, we used all 4. I am not a very crafty person either but the AG made it easy. We certainly did not use them all, but we would go through them together and if my son saw one he thought was cool, we'd do it. As everyone else has stated - the maps are awesome, I would never do history without a little map work to make it tangible, and we also loved the narration questions and guides. Honestly though, it is SO easy to find a craft now and then for free on the internet and we have done that often. Just type in Ancient times history crafts or Medieveal times history crafts, etc. and voila! You will find most of the crafts that you will find in any of the craft books right on the web for free with very little effort. We've also used the Homeschool in the Woods resources but for us it was too much - it became almost another curriculum. They do have some great crafts and lapbooking/notebooking ideas though.

We used Bob Books and the readers that come with Primary Phonics. We thought the Primary Phonics books were awesome. Scholastic has great emergent readers series as well - some organized by the sound being studied. We used their SpongeBob Readers and Scooby Doo Readers.