K-8 looks like history as described in The Well Trained Mind. That is volumes 1-4 of SOTW in grades 1-4. In 5th we added the Kingfisher History encyclopedia as the main reading, and used some chapters of SOTW as readalouds, added a lot more readalouds from longer nonfiction books from each time periods and major events, diaries and journals, continued memorywork chants with each cycle including art cards from Memoria Press, did SOTW projects from the Activity guides, even when we weren't reading from the book in middle school, added a map coloring book, outlining, and did the full history notebook for summaries on different topics. We used an old blog called the Classical House of Learning Literature for their lit readings in middle school to go along with the time periods vs just reading the books from the SOTW activity guides as we did in elementary school. And we read from the Tiner Science books to go along with history from Memoria Press. For the modern history year in 4th and 8th grade we did state history and American history with it, for what I call our heavy history years. We did field trips and kept a separate state history notebook. We did more of American History the 8th grade year going deeper into Am. than we did in the 4th grade year and used some more original sources.

I have never bought a bundle, so I don't know if that has an actual schedule in there or not! Good question. It does have good books on a variety of subjects suggested in the Well Trained Mind's 1st grade topic of Life Science, so they are books worth having for a life science year! As for the "schedule" I was referring to, as the PP said, I was talking about reading the grammar stage science section of The Well Trained Mind. It walks you through which topics to study in what grades (1st grade- life science,) and gives you suggestions for good books to use (the ones in that bundle for example,) and gives you an idea of the kind of input and output to require for the subject. If you want to know if it gives some type of schedule in that bundle I would contact customer service before you buy it.

Learn alongside them, but also read as much as you can, even if only ten minutes a day like pp said. Follow these and other boards for what others are doing and look into it. As your kids get older you will be able to read a bit more. I carry a book bag wherever I go. If my kids were in dance class for 30 min, and the baby could play on the floor with toys for ten of those minutes, that was ten minutes I could look at a chapter in my book. And when we needed to learn Latin, I did the whole program just as if I was a student. I tried to do a chapter or two ahead of my kids and kept up reading over the summers when they were on breaks. For things like art and history we just all learned and worked together. I love nothing more than when we are all doing an art project at the same time and seeing our four different interpretations of a lesson or prompt.

I think math would be the hardest part here. Every curriculum will have a different scope and sequence, so picking that starting point will be hard, because obviously the beginning of anything will be a lot of review, but it also sets up how the program works. So I don't have a lot of advice there. I have never had to do it. I think I would just pick a grade level book of some sort (and since it is only for a few months, I might even just buy a store workbook of some sort, not a full curriculum,) and work through it, maybe starting half way, maybe just trying to work through the whole thing. As for the rest, there are SOO many options of what you could do. Pick what you like and go with it, like pp said, and just work through what you want. If you picked a 2nd grade textbook class for English like Rod and Staff (the one I am using,) I would probably do the reviews at the end of the first couple of sections to make sure she has those skills about what is a noun and a verb, etc, then just jump into unit 3 about midway through the book. If you go with a unit study or literature based approach where the lessons are built into learning about the story, just choose a story and go with it. If you want to learn some great history and do some amazing projects, get Story of the World and the Activity Guide, start at the beginning and work through as much as you can until she starts a new school. You guys will have so much fun with it. Read the Well Trained Mind for how to use it to teach writing skills (at least the grammar stage sections.)

This is so true for all ages- my senior and my 2nd grader both join into and learn from whatever I am into at the time. Sometimes we do these things and they just pick up things and enhance what they are doing with me as free time and study breaks. Sometimes we get so into learning something new that it becomes a class we create and use for school because of our interest!

I agree with this. For us, these extras come in through co-ops and scouting. It is a new semester at co-op, so after a Christmas break (which for us this year was extra long because of a medical procedure and recovery,) of baking, Christmas books and crafts and movies and Bible studies, etc. which is a whole different kind of learning, but still learning, we move into the change of classes at co-op and back into scouts. Scout badges and field trips give us all kinds of interesting things to learn about and focus on. So even if our core classes and books at home aren't changing much it feels new to pick them back up after a break and with the new stuff coming up to look at.

We did this one over the summer of 2020 It had s.ome good experiments in it, and my teens had a Thinking Tree journal with a lot of notebooking pages for pandemic history in it that went nicely with it.

I personally didn't worry about logic in 1st, but that is a preference. Our grammar program includes composition (Rod and Staff English,) but in 1st grade it is mostly just learning to write sentences and copying. There isn't a lot to teaching writing in 1st grade, so I think you are fine without something specific. I agree with the above, that I don't see any music, and I would add something. I always like having a copy of What Your !st grader Needs to Know. It has suggestions for every subject, including music, little short reads on a topic that you can expand on by picking up a library movie or googling the music of composers or songs with children's lyrics to learn alongside. If you go that route, there are lots of interesting topics and reads on all subjects in the book that are nice to have on hand in one place. But anything to introduce music would be fine.

We did one every now and then when my older kids were little, using free resources. I used Homeschoolshare back then. I just checked and the website is still around. It looks very different from the primitive one they had back then, lol. And I have no experience with it in over a decade, but it might be worth looking at. I remember finding topics for the holidays or topics we were studying and specific ones to go with books we were reading.

Tried and true year here: Rod and Staff math, English, spelling, and phonics, and Story of the World do not disappoint for my 2nd grader. New: I've had a subscription to Schoolhouseteachers for years. I'm using their 1st and 2nd grades music theory as put together in their "school in a box" sections and am happy for the short easy lessons. I pair it with readings from What Your Second Grader Needs to Know and music appreciation from their lists and learning the suggested songs. I like it better than what I used for elem music with my olders.

Yes, yes, now I remember the misspelling. Not that I can say much. I spelled tour, "your" in my above post, lol. I understand the typo!

There was a thread in chat I think. I remember because the funny thing was that when that article came out was right around the time we went to your Harvard because they had reached out to my daughter, a homeschooled student, to apply.

That is brilliant!! My the time I had a boyfriend, my dad had finally invested in a phone line upstairs for us teens- there were six of us kids in the house, 4 teens at once by then, lol. It worked too though, when I got caught leaving campus during a closed campus lunch one time though. They made each of us call home so they could talk to our parents. I called my bedroom line. It put off the inevitable got a bit, lol.

We called the time and temperature number, Tommy, because one of us thought our dad was saying, "Call Tommy Temperature." So we always called Tommy, lol.

My grandmother was a phone operator her entire career from right after she graduated high school until she retired at age 63. That job doesn't exist anymore.

Anything that was stoneware for us was always prone to chipping in our dishwasher. They always clanged together unless we were very careful to put things in between them, which isn't practical for everyday use. So I switched to plain white Corelle plates awhile ago. They are cheap and easy to replace if one breaks, and they don't chip easily.

When my dd was starting college she was still 17 for about a week. When she had to take the C-19 before dorm move in, they were doing a spit test over Zoom, and when they heard she was only 17, they made her get one of us on the Zoom call to give permission. But we had to be there. Our harder problems have come in once she turned 18, and has to make her own appointments, deal with her own prescriptions and such, and they can't give us any information, even though we have to handle the insurance. So when she is having a problem, doesn't follow through on something, and I need to get something cleared up, it's a hassle trying to get everything lined up because they have to hear from her on anything, not me.

I have kids with ADHD so we have looked for intentional ways to work on emotions helpful with all of the girls. I bought lesson plans in a bundle from Schoolhouseteachers dot com before I became a member where I can access the lessons included before. They might be a place to look at? Some authors of new curriculum allow access to some of their programs there to get out there. I don't know how you could do picture books, but maybe you can think of something that incorporates them to pitch to them.

A summer camp counselor job was great for my 16 year old, and it provided a fall occasional job for the occasional weekend or school break camps they offer. So I agree with look for a job with lots of teenagers. Mine was the youngest, but most were college age at her work. Scouts? if he is into environmentalism, he could find outlets there that do lots of camping or outside activities. We had a new high schooler join our troop that has never done scouts before recently, and I have been busy thinking of all of the outlets available to her. Our girls that have grown up in scouts have all kind of found their niche and are busy doing the parts of scouting that they enjoy.

I am not in NY and do not have to document hours, though I do roughly for my own records. If I take my 7 year old to the fair, I log the day as a field trip day, but I will put in P.E.- hours of walking, pony riding, tried the ropes course, etc, anything she did that day that was physical. Then I will log the exhibits we visited under the appropriate subject- animal science- cow milking demonstration, visited newborn goats, and other farm animals, bee exhibits. Art- looked at art exhibits, etc. If we go home and read a book that day and do a math lesson I would put those under L.A. and math, even if we didn't do her actual LA curriculum that day, we still read books and discussed them at bedtime or whatever. If we do a scavenger hunt at a museum that would go under history. There often isn't math at a museum or field trip day, so I will add a math lesson if I need to on days there is time. And we always read everyday anyway.

I am so sorry! I am not organized enough to have things that I can access again. We set up a topic by month then each month looked for resources that fit. Sometimes I used a lesson from a government website, sometimes from a book that I found, and at least once I purchased something from teachers pay teachers.

I have not thought of that in a long time!! I need to do it with my current 2nd grader!

Thanks for the link. Mdd is still doing her ACTs trying to bump it up a little before scholarship deadlines. I'll try adding this to her studies.

So I somewhat agree with the idea, but not completely. I did both, but heavier on the parts to whole probably. But it was a lot more fun when we included the poems, prayers, songs, and readings and games. I used the Memoria Press which is heavy in parts to whole, but included the songs, prayers, mapwork, culture, etc. if you were doing it all. The daily workbook pages are just memorize, decline, translate, etc. But if you are following the whole program, you are including learning a song, a prayer, culture, maps, history alongside, which is what kept my students interested. I taught Latin in co-ops for a good 7-8 years. I found doing an hour of "Latin Club" on top of the grammar hour was the best way to do this. In Latin club i used methods from teaching a modern language to make it more fun and usable. LIke we learned vocabulary around a theme like nature or colors or family members or whatever and played games with that. We sang songs in Latin like head, shoulder, knees, and toes to learn the parts of the body, things like that, "Mother May I?" to practice numbers (speaking only in Latin.) I used the syllabi from the Exploratory Latin Exams and the National Latin Exams including the extra subject on the ELEs which is a history topic each year in those hours. This prepared my students for those exams better than just the heavy grammar programs of Memoria Press and were fun.

Funny, for us, reading was always more entertaining and engaging than math. I guess it depends on the natural abilities of the teacher. I used a math program that told me what to do daily and that included the hands on teaching methods and we did it several days a week. I had a supplementary book of games, and infused our year with math units or literature based math lessons occasionally, but those things don't come naturally to me. I want somebody else who has thought of a way to make it fun and to seem natural for me because it doesn't. We use a phonics based learn to read program at some point, but I naturally do life with reading in the real world, looking at sounds on signs, playing words games, reading aloud, etc. etc. so that always came much more easily and enjoyable to my kiddos too. So I don't know how to make it like math except to use a thorough program that breaks things down which you are doing. But I do think it sounds like you are doing too much. For K for reading, I always started with Bob books, set 1. That gave the kids 1-3 sounds a book and a book they could read with confidence. Some of mine from just a couple of books could easily move into level one readers from the library of their choosing long before we ever started a thorough phonics program because they just got it from those. We start a phonics program halfway through k, 1-3 days a week, over k and 1st and continue reading Bob books and moving into whatever other readers they are ready for along the way. That is very simple. A program made for 5 days a week over first grade, spread over a year and a half of k, leaving the first half of k very light with just reading a little Bob books for fun. They all pick it up pretty quickly once we start the the phonics program if they hadn't already (my kids and other babysitting kids I had at that age that schooled with us, boys and girls.)