I don't think it's necessary at all. I taught all my children to write without a curriculum. That said, now with 4 in school, I bought them all New American cursive so that it actually GETS DONE. I think a lot of people use a curriculum to make sure it gets done. I swore I'd never use one but already it's proving to be worth my money. But if I just had my two oldest or my oldest, I wouldn't bother. I do think something like the Startwrite computer program would be nice if I were doing it myself. It'd make it easy.

Have you looked at Writing With Skill (SWB's new book)? You can get the first 7 weeks for free to download.

Do you teach and remind him of the spelling rules? Oftentimes people talk of struggling with SS on forums and they aren't doing a lot of "teaching" to go with SS, just doing the list (not saying you aren't but I see it a lot with SS threads). If you see him start to struggle with a word he's writing, gently remind him of the RULE associated with that word ("how do we add ING to a word ending in Y?" or if he doesn't double a consonant, "does that es make the vowel before it long?") as he's writing and see if he can't correct it before even turning around.

My 10yo isn't dyslexic. She's just not a great speller. We're continuing on with Sequential Spelling for years to come :)

We do something different for writing. For youngers it's SWB's recommendations and WWE and WWS. For olders it's Potters School classes. I do make them do occasional odds and ends like writing a formal letter, writing a poem, etc.

This year was the first time I heard of it but it's on all the maps I've been printing for our tracing exercises so we're learning it as truth :) :)

I wouldn't do TOG and the history cards. I'm taking a year off of TOG to do a whole year of geography cards. I WOULD do the science cards with TOG and even music/composers.

Are you doing any narrations with her? I'd be doing LOTS of narrations from history, science as well as general readings with her. If you want guidance, doing the narrations out of WWE are varied and short enough to do regularly.

I dropped Spelling with my natural speller in 2nd grade. He can spell pretty much anything :) Go ahead. If you find your speller struggling, you can always pick it back up.

I ordered on 8/9 and received mine today. I'm rural and have very slow mail service. So I considered that fairly quickly. Now if only Memoria Press would hurry with my two packages from them (sure would have been nice if I would have made up my mind and ordered them together lol).

I was always told writing was the biggest weakness with homeschoolers as well. It's why I'm such a writing nut with mine lol. I'm super paranoid about raising homeschoolers who can't write.

I'm taking a break from TOG this year but I'm doing the CEP task cards and I think they'd be super simple to do alongside TOG and would be child-driven.

I found this tidbit in the FAQs addressing Catholics but it seems like it might answer your question. I don't have any history cards but it sounds like aside from the creation cards that they would work fine in a secular homeschool environment. http://www.creekedgepress.com/FAQs.html#Catholic

Is your son an early riser? My oldest wakes and does his math and grammar early on our town and scout day. Everything else we do the 4 other days of the week but math and grammar are done early in the morn on town day.

Those music and composers cards are killing me! I had no idea they were THREE years worth! My 6th grader could do them all the way until high school. Sigh. Time to tell hubby that I need another $25 for school LOL.

Write down her narration and have her copy it for handwriting.

Nothing important to add other than I am continually inspired by your journey Hunter. I have started doing some work alongside my children after realizing that the education they're getting is NOT the one I got. They're not sure what to think of mom doing Frankie's English but whatever LOL.

I would definitely go for more non-writing exercises. Those paint bags I've seen on blogs, etc. look great. The ones with paint inside the ziploc and they write through to the table through the bag with their finger. The sand writing boxes from Montessori Services. White boards. Shaving Cream on the table.

Why get off a standard Biology in 9th schedule? I know some do Physical in 8th but I much prefer and even back in my day my private high school preferred Biology in 9th grade.

Ooohh the Book of Eli was the movie? I'd have been quite unhappy to have read that before seeing the movie!!!!!! I didn't know the ending and loved the twist of it. Ooohhh.... naughty. Bad bad.

I have a friend who SWEARS by TPS math. All of her high schoolers do TPS Math for all their high school classes. One went on to major in aeronautical engineering and did smashingly well.

We LOVED Serenity. I saw it twice in the movie theater when it came out :) Yes it was darker but it was still light hearted as well as dark.

Read what I wrote again. My ENTIRE POINT was the copywork was for the mechanics of writing. Copywork cements the mechanics. Narration the act of developing an idea of formulating the sentences. Dictation the act of holding those words in one's head until able to write them. Exactly what SWB teaches and what I said in my post. And exactly why WWE is much more than a handwriting program. I think you're just not understanding what everyone is saying. Everyone is saying almost exactly what you're saying yet you are disagreeing.

I don't think that's the voice of dissent in terms of what SWB teaches. If you listen to her writing lecture, copywork is used for teaching the mechanics of good writing more than anything else, not that copywork leads to good writing. She breaks down the pieces of writing (mechanics - being able to physically write well through copywork, coming up with the the ideas - narration, holding those ideas in your head - dictation and then moving on to integrating all of those in older children). It is part of composing good writing in that being able to write quickly and well aids in the process. A younger child who still needs to focus on every letter is not developmentally ready to not only come up with those ideas, hold them in their head, focus on proper letter writing and spelling, all at the same time without having been TRAINED to do so through copywork, dictation, and narration. And I think that that has been exactly what most have been saying here, not that copywork leads to a good writer in terms of learning HOW to come up with ideas, use better words, etc.

This is why we use MUS for 1-4th grade. They then have mastered all their addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. Then we move to a different program that suits them (one went to Saxon, another is going to TT). And I supplement with LOF :)