For me, it is kind of easy to start a new schedule after a break, so a perfect time would be to write up your ideal schedule for the start of your new school year or after a winter break if you do kind of typical school years like I do or after any extended break if you break up the year differently. When we are coming in fresh and now you are a 3rd grader when last time you were a 2nd grader, they seem to adapt well than if I switch things up too much once we have established a routine. I start pretty strict, maybe even a bit rigid with a new "perfect" schedule, but see how it works in reality and kind of adjust a bit on the fly as we go from there. It gives us a starting point that is acceptable to everyone, even if in the end it is too much and I find I had too much planned for reality and have to take a bit off.

Science projects? Museum trips. (We are headed to one today!) Zoo? Read lots. Do art. Make a my favorite books we read this year poster?

My kids have done the Exploratory Latin Exams, National Lawday art or essay contests, science fairs, contests put on by museums as they come up, places we frequent. We like art contests too. We do the state fair creative arts comps every year and our zoo's Pepsi vending machine contest. I have no idea if it's still around, but with my olders we did a PBS book contest where they wrote a book each year, but that might have been related to Reading Rainbow.

All of the above are good. I read books on everything about teaching, homeschool, education, specific subjects, and parenting, learning disabilities, etc, anything that came up, every year, every summer, non stop. I attend homeschool conferences and educational workshops still and I've graduated two. I am doing all subjects. I need refreshers. 🙂 I take notes and make outlines of books I'm using. And I reread ones that particularly helpful every so often.

You are fine to not use the reading. That is why the lesson plans are broken up separately so that they can be taught separately. In 1st grade the spelling lessons are built into the plans with the phonics, and the beginning grammar and writing are all together woven throughout the reading and the phonics lessons, so in 1st grade it is harder to separate out all of the parts. But you can take out just the phonics. By 2nd grade their different parts are separated out completely. The spelling, English, and phonics are all completely different and can be used completely independently. I have never used the 2nd grade reading, but I have always used the spelling, phonics, and English. The phonics are very thorough. The English is extremely thorough, much more than anything else out there. And the writing is fine that is included, but some take out those exercises (which are clearly marked as composition sometime after 2nd grade. I am not looking at the 3rd grade book to see when that starts as my ydd is still in 2nd,) to use better writing programs at a certain point. I used both. We just worked through the English including the writing exercises that are interspersed throughout the English and did another writing alongside once they were older elementary. The handwriting I do not like. The early grades are tracing. And the cursive font is very old fashioned with weird shaped letters. I don't know the name of the font used, but it had my 2nd grader writing lower case ps that went up to the top line. It was pretty, but too formal and frilly. I used it one year then switched to another font with her, then never looked back at it with the others! The math isn't for everyone. We use it, and I like it a lot. But it is very traditional and different from other programs.

Yes, the phonics stands alone. I did first grade reading with the phonics and the full program over k and 1st grade with all of my kids, but then dropped the reading in 2nd grade and just kept the rest- phonics, spelling, and English- the best parts of Rod and Staff, imo! We are currently wrapping up 2nd grade with my last homeschooler. She is finishing up unit 3 of the grade 2 phonics, and we will just keep going with it on top of her 3rd grade work next year until we get through it. (She had a lot of medical issues this year. We kept up math and a lot of LA work, and she is a great reader. I was ok with slowing down on the phonics work each week since I know she can just keep going with it, since there isn't phonics in the 3rd grade anyway. She isn't getting behind on anything. ) ETA even though I did use the reading in 1st grade alongside the phonics, you wouldn't have to. It really would stand alone. It just worked for me as I was getting my readers going to do a reading program over K and 1st. By 2nd grade, we just fully do WTM style readings.

Mine could do Rod and Staff grammar pretty independently. It included composition. In 3rd grade I usually would do the teacher lesson book/memory work with her once a week or so and look over the lesson daily as I was handing it over to her. But mine was always strong in language, so that was an easy thing to hand off to her to do on her own most of the time.

I had one that was what I described as just a bit negative in general, not just about school, lol. So switching things up for her in school did keep it more interesting and kept the resistance down too. I didn't really switch whole curriculum, but I set things aside to work on projects a lot and contests and maybe unit studies- things that kept up what we were studying and reinforced it in a different way. Then I picked up where we left off in the English text or skipped ahead or whatever. We never finished a full textbook of most things, but the skills were all covered. Things we did were like doing a Science Fair project. That took a lot of focus and worked on all kinds of skills from science to art to research and language arts and public speaking. We'd usually keep up math and history, but put down anything else during those times. We entered all kinds of contests at museums and the state fair and wherever there was an art or essay contest or whatever we could find. The kids would get to research different topics and put together presentations. We did presentations at scouts and co-op and anywhere I could find. I would just kind of push them towards a topic that went with our current curriculum goals. Then we'd pick back up what we were working on. I never went out and purchased a new English book halfway through the year. But I would pick up lesson plans for a holiday unit study and cover English that way at times. Or just put together my own plans using resources we had around here for something different.

We've had three field trip days this week, lol!! Lots of reading, art projects, and library visits and classes in there for my 8 yr old and some reading, a little math, a scholarship interview, and a couple chemistry labs for my senior, and of course lots of church history and services this week. We've also done some history podcasts and a documentary to go along and kept up with current events. We needed a fun week. It was all still school, but we needed it before getting back to box checking next week!

I follow the The Well Trained Mind's recommendations and timelines for science and history for the most part, though science is definitely more open ended. But I do try to cover the topics in the WTM order because I like things to have some sort of overall order. So for 2nd grade this year it was a medieval history/ space/earth science year. I used Story of the World Vol. 2 with Activity Guide and The Complete book of Maps and Geography. We did a field trip to a Medieval Fair to watch a joust, and dd was a medieval princess for Halloween. We've done all kinds of crafts and activities from the SOTW A.G. We use Dover Coloring Books on certain topics to dig deeper. I have a collection on topics from Knights, castles, the Celts, Vikings, etc. But the Heraldry one has been a favorite with all of my kids. We read though picture books on all of the literature from the A.G. (Augustine Came to Kent, Robin Hood, The Canterbury Tales, etc. ) For science this year, my dd did an Oceanography class at co-op once a week for the first semester. At home we did a daily weather calendar workbook from Christian Light Education that had a different weather related thing to track each month (clouds, rainfall, temperature, wind, etc. ) and graphs to fill out at the end of each month. She did a once a month STEAM class on Zoom with kits from the library. And we began our Space unit in there somewhere. For Space we used the Funschooling Space journal for notebooking and just read a lot of books and attended whatever programming we could at museums- we found several. We also followed NASA events and headlines. She attended an Astronomy event with girl scouts. One of the topics they went into in depth was on the phases of the moon, so she entered two science fairs after creating a large exhibition on that topic. She won a ribbon in both. : ) In between there, she has read plenty of books on whatever caught her interest like animals. The space/earth are just my two main topics for 2nd grade. We are wrapping up the year with a rocks, soils, minerals unit. We are using an Usborne Encyclopedia, the Funschool Rocks and Minerals journal, and a thematic unit book I bought over a decade ago with activities. I once again signed her up for a girl scout event to kick off our study that had geologists speaking and several hands on activities for a day. I bought her a kit full of rocks to examine with activities from our study guide, etc. The rocks and minerals study was always a big hit with my olders. My college teen just came over last night and was looking at all the rocks with her sister and helping her sort them. She did activities from the same book way back when and she volunteered at our rock and gem show a couple of years as a helper at our state fairgrounds in her teens. For 3rd grade it will be Story of the World 3 (when we finish 2. We are only about halfway through it so far.) and an introduction to chemistry year. I will use the book, Adventures with Atoms and Molecules, do the hands on experiments, and do whatever written work WTM suggests. It has been awhile, so I will need to go back and look it up. I know it is writing about the experiment and probably definitions.

I just realized that this is all about the Kingfisher encyclopedia, and I have the Usborne which is what I've been referencing. I'm sure the Kingfisher is similar. I have the Kingfisher history encyclopedia and love it. I have the Usborne Science and love it. Sorry I confused them in my mind. Just wanted to let you know!

I have let my kids talk me into doing some classes that I was excited to do on my own and that I would have done differently. But in the end, they liked them. They had good experiences, and as long as I was working on it with them at home, they still were successful in these once a week classes. One thing I do though is I volunteer to teach co-op classes of things I really want to do, so that they get done the way I want them done and so that I assign the homework, but my kids are happy and do better because they have a class of kids doing the same subject and studying and working with them. Latin is one class I always did in co-op. My children definitely got more out of than just doing at home with me, because they had friends in class to play games with, do plays with, study with, etc. over the years. And for art, we did as many outside classes as were available and affordable to us and still did what I wanted to at home because my artsy dd always got something from somebody else. I know she loved getting other project ideas and tips from various teachers over the years. And we still do lots of art at home too. Anyway, we have had good experiences in co-ops over the years.

I agree, I'd use documentaries and specific books on particular subjects rather than more encyclopedias for at least some of the topics. You don't have to go deep on every spread. You can probably Google for websites for children on many of the subjects too. The Usborne has links too to explore more. I do think it's enough for a spine.

I absolutely love Funschooling journals, but I don't just hand them to my kids to do on their own because they would do the bare minimum. I generally have an idea of how I want them to use each page in them. For example, on the film pages, I usually have picked out a series of documentaries they'll be using to go with whatever we are studying. One tip I have is that I do one with them. I personally love the mom journals, so I pull mine out and do one of my film pages at the same time. One year I bought each of my high schoolers and me the same one that we worked through all year. I had an elaborate morning journal time all set up. On the reading pages with four squares, I did one history read aloud, then they each got one square for silent free reading, one square for their individual assigned literature book, and one square for Bible. On the travel pages, we'd research places we were studying about or cities we were planning trips to. We have never used them as our core curric. We did journal time in the morning and did one page a day instead of doing a full day's worth of work using the journal as the center of our curric. The coloring pages were used during our read aloud time while I read. If it was a math page day, they each had extra math, outside of curriculum to do, either games or an online practice app or something. We all like the thinking games pages which are just pages from the Dyslexia Games series. They are good visual discrimination work for my dd with dyslexic symptoms which is why I started using these to begin with. On the spelling search pages I had my child with spelling issues do the spelling as it says, but for my older, amazing speller, I had her find the words, then look up definitions, so it was a vocabulary exercise for her. It was kind of our morning basket time. We each had our basket with our books and colored pencils and journals and did this to start the day, but it varies since we did whatever page was next. On the planner page, we used that page as a time to break open our calendars and update goals and projects and to do lists together. Another way we used one for my mdd in 7th grade was that she got an hour for journal time every morning on her own to work as much as she wanted. She designed her own unit study that year and picked the encyclopedia she read and drew from, the video series she used, etc. She is the one who fell in love with these. It was a really good way to start the day for her before we jumped into skills subjects that she always struggled with. In high school she used the fashion journal paired with a unit study on the history of fashion and did an entire year of American history paired with the History of Fashion for two full credits. Another I really liked was the Money one for economics. It was actually really good for high school economics. For my ydd who is only 8, I use a very beginning one only as an occasional thing. It's one geared at ages 3-7. There are no instructions or explicit teaching, and I think at the young ages it is just adding extra work on top of the necessary skills subjects, whereas for olders they can be notebooking pages, used however you need them, paired with whatever resources you want. So for her, I just pull it out to shake things up sometimes, like we'll spend a day reading a book and do some copywork, drawing and coloring about that story for a break from regular LA topics. I did buy the space and the rocks and minerals ones for her science only when they were on a very discounted sale. They are much too fat for her to need that much on one topic at her age, so I wouldn't have paid full price. I actually glue photos of our projects into them and use them for her written narrations about topics, instead of the WTM blank paper notebook for ekem science. I assume I'll use them again in middle school for notebooking pages on those topics when we cycle back through. I have one digital download of the Dino doodle one for her. I like it because I just print off the feelings pages and the thinking puzzles pages to start our mornings. I got that one free. It wouldn't have been worth it just to use those two pages only. But I do think I'm going to print it in full for morning journal time for 3rd grade next year. And, as I said, I love the mom ones. I'm in my 5th one I think? I use them for planning, taking notes in church and from meetings and seminars, to take notes from my own readings, and some pages I do with my kids as noted. I'm a big journaler though, always have been, so they're right up my alley. I actually use my Instagram to post photos of some of my art and junk journals, and have posted a few of my mom pages from my Thinking Tree. One last thought, look at YouTube for complete flip through a of different ones. There are tons of videos on them. That's how I pick which I want.

I think this plan would work very well. The Kingfisher science encyclopedia is great as a spine. It even has a few activities on some of the pages, not many, but a few. It's good for reading, outlining, and as a jumping off point. The Tiner books are great as read alouds and as the history aspect to the science. They generally give a narrative to the scientists or the branches of science and the discoveries. We always used them as read alouds with whatever sciences we were doing in middle school years. We particularly enjoyed the Medicine one. And then your other units would give you the hands on, I am assuming. I've never used them. I always wanted to do our science like this using my Usborne. It just made sense to me. But alas, our co-op was always doing Apologia, and my kids liked doing class and experiments in the group. But with my last kiddo, this is exactly how I'm planning upper elem-middle school.

I never bought the extra math worksheets. But I did occasionally buy the English and used them the same way. We do much of the English orally, and I choose the right amount of writing each day. In the later elem-middle school years, when my girls were doing quite a bit of writing across the curriculum, a grammar worksheet was often enough. They didn't need to copy out the whole grammar lesson from the text to practice the given lesson.

Oh my goodness, it's been years. I couldn't even tell you now. I do know it would have been whatever WTM said to do with it.

I haven't used most of what you are asking about, but can you skip WWS2? Yes. Mine did WWS1 in early high school, like maybe over 8-9th grades, maybe 9-10 for one of them, and that was it for one of mine. She just did writing in her content classes. The other, stronger writer did the Oxford Writing Guide and writing across the curriculum ala WTM history and lit studies and other classes and then did one semester of concurrent enrollment her senior year for an Eng. 1 writing class. Both used Rod and Staff english including the composition exercises through 8th grade, though one never made it to the 8th grade text. So they had some writing instruction there in middle school beyond my WTM style assignments before WWS 1.

Yes, I remember comparing my kids to Saxon math by having them take the placement exams every now and then, and they were right on target grade wise with those placement exams, using R&S. I probably did those somewhere between 3-6th grades to make sure we were on a standard track.

Totally agree. We never did most of the writing nor used the guides as workbooks. The year we did Christian Studies I had each kid keep a blank composition book WTM style. Then I had them do something about the lesson after we had discussed the readings with the questions and done the memory work practice. I would have them draw a family tree of a family or draw a picture and label it. Occasionally I would find something useful in the workbook and we would fill out parts of it. When we did science we often did the same, lots of reading and discussion, some writing, but definitely not all of it.

I used R&S 1st grade with all three of mine over K and 1st grade, then moved into 2nd grade at regular speed. Yes, I made the flannel board and all the suggested posters for grades 1 and 2. They are the manipulatives for this age (though sometimes I pulled in other things not in the curric for hands on too.) The ducks for the duck pond are great. I made them 15 years ago for my now sophomore in college dd for K, and just finished with them last spring with my youngest. The same went for the poster I made. I laminated everything I made and used with all of the kiddos. I did not buy their flashcards. I just made my own with index cards for each lesson. And for their cards that have three numbers listed I just did those problems on a whiteboard. In 2nd grade it calls for making a poster of boats. There are slits on the poster and the boats fit into the slots to move around. And there is a another one of clover flowers with bees. The patterns for making the posters are in the back of the T.M. They are worth it to teach the lessons each day, and go along well with the lessons and make a good visual. I did not ever make the 3rd grade learning poster for multiplication. I can't remember what I found hard about it, but I couldn't figure it out. We are about to finish up 2nd grade with my ydd, so I need to go back and look at it.

I would say try it. If you don't love the composition, then you can do something else for it instead next year. One year of their writing isn't going to hurt anything if you go back to something else later. It will just give some new tools, even if you end up not loving it. For the history, just add lots of picture books and extra readings like you would with SOTW. If you know how MP works, and you are wanting it, and the writing is the only thing you are worried about, I would say one year isn't going to hurt. I'd ignore the slogan if it bugs you, and add more books handles your other problems. And you said is it too rote? I don't think so. I have used lots of MP, and the memorization helps the subjects they are working. It doesn't seem to be just memorizing for the sake of memorizing, IMO.

Story of the World, all time favorite, with all of my children, all levels, for multiple grade levels with the Activity guide and including the related readings from the reading lists. We even adapted some of the projects for high school years. Thinking Tree Journals, on a variety of topics. My 7th grader especially loved the horse covered core journal. She put together her own unit study for the year in marine biology that year. A unit study on the History of Fashion from Schoolhouseteachers.com combined with a Thinking Tree journal on Fashion. Hands on science and art from all kinds of different places, combining them when possible, but lots of both everywhere possible. Museum visits, historical sites, nature trails, etc.

Good reviews of R&S. We used it all the way through. I just wanted to add that at some point after 5th, I think in 6th, but I'm not at home looking at it right now, it switched to more of a vocab program anyway. The language roots exercises and language history is very good. I kept my natural speller in it even though she never needed spelling practice because there was so much good I didn't want her to miss out on.

They are amazing. Ours has even had take home kits for adults each month during Covid. So each month I pick up a teen craft kit, a children's one, and the adult one. Mine will sometimes be cooler than the kids', and they'll be jealous of me, lol.