Well Trained Mind science sections can give you a framework for a science study without a curriculum. It gives you the guideline for what to study each year, suggestions for encyclopedias and books and experiments to use, and a description of what types of schedule and output to assign.

I don't know Duolingo, so I don't know how it compares. We are doing EasyPeasy 7th grade this year. But I am adding one day a week of grammar using Easy Step by Step Spanish. Since we are doing it once a week, It looks that I will do one chapter over a month. You could speed this up to get more done in a year, or reinforce it daily in your 40 minutes. I won't even get close to finishing the book with her this year, but will probably spread it out into next year. For the daily online work with EasyPeasy, my dd only spends about 20 minutes. I don't see any grammar practice so far, but I admit I didn't look up the whole year's plans in Easy Peasy. I like the fun games and vocabulary practice and the independence of it. My goals are the same as yours= just a leg up for high school.

I am not sure what mom friendly means to you, so I don't know if I am helpful at all. For 2nd, we just preferred the WTM's science recomendations. We used the Usborne First Encyclopedia series for Earth and Space. We checked out lots of library books and watched videos. We used the encyclopedias as a guide. We read corresponding library books and did any experiments that came up in them. We narrated about the experiments and what we learned in our science journals and wrote definitions. We did art projects to go along from the Arty Facts Science and Art books to go along. We went on lots of field trips and spent a lot of time outdoors. Since I stuck to the WTM science rotation in the grammar stage for my 2 that are 2 years apart, the first second grader was in Space/Earth while the Ker tagged along, Then 2 yrs later we were wrapping up chemistry and onto physics at 2nd grade for the younger (4th for the older.) Same concept, though we used something different for physics than the Usborne guides. I had books on Simple Machines as recommended in WTM, and another guide I found online full of experiments and explanations, and lots of library books and videos.

I am adding to my review of the past month. Today we started dd12's new science getting ready for co-op. So far, we had been doing Earth science after a unit study we did over the summer. During August we finished that and did additional reading and projects and field trips. Since her co-op science class starts this week we started their chosen science book for this year: Science in the Age of Reason. This doesn't match our time period at all this year (we are in ancients. Our co-op president's personal history rotation has her in American History this year, so it fits her timeline,) but I don't mind that. It is for grades K-6, and dd12 is officially in 7th. But I don't mind that either. I am very happy not to be in Apologia this year. I am tired of drilling one subject for the entire year. This book touches on all kinds of branches of science, which means we will touch on things we haven't with Apologia at co-op over the last few years. And I am adding in notebooking and the Usborne Encyclopedia of Science. Today went really well. She read the first page of her lesson, then wrote definitions using the encyclopedia. Then we read the corresponding encyclopedia pages and notebooked about that and then watched all of the links online. dd12 enjoyed it so much. I have been wanting to do science using the encyclopedia as our main science for awhile. Since the co-op's book choice is at a lower reading level, we will finally have time to do science the WTM way if not on the WTM rotation. And I have missed experiments, reading, definitions, Usborne links, and notebooking with her doing Apologia the past few years. So yay! And another bonus, dd will do the experiments at co-op, so I don't have to gather supplies and do that. I enjoyed doing it over the summer when I didn't have the time constraints of all of our extracurricular schedules and volunteer responsibilities. I am thankful during the year to outsource that which is why I have stuck with her doing Apologia with them, even when it isn't my first choice at all.

We have completed 5 weeks. It went really well. This is probably our best start to a year in at least 3 years. I did a lot of planning this year to make sure that things were very realistic. I have a good schedule and flow going for the days. I have good materials. We have had our first weeks without much out of the house activities on the calendar. This week, as everything out of the house starts up after Labor Day, will be our real test with time management. This month is going to feel like our first of the year. I am very happy with the materials I have chosen for dd12. Very happy. I have never had such a good start with her. I am confident with the planning I have done for her, her good attitude, and the materials we are using. We wrapped up week 5 with a project day. She lives for art and projects. Her writing and spelling are already improving a lot this year. We have started high school officially with dd14. I like the materials we are using, mostly WTM recommendations. She is making progress in her writing with us focusing on it a lot. She isn't super excited about anything like her sis, but she is in general a less excitable person, lol. She has a lot going on for electives and extra curriculars which will encompass things that she loves. That is where her excitement will probably stem from. We have done well with keeping up read alouds. We are enjoying getting outside for part of every day. We are doing art and field trips and one music lesson. Both kids are still playing around with piano, keeping up a bit of practice on their own which they like. The preschooler is adjusting as well as can be expected to being home more while the kids study. She is finding the routine in our day and keeping busy. We always like to get in art. This week our focus there is on the state fair coming up. We are selecting projects to enter from some of their favorites of the past few months and creating some new things. We love going to see how they placed and just that whole day we spend at the fair in general that we are anticipating soon. We have the month scheduled out neatly with our field trips, scout activities, and co-op and dance classes coming up. And we are planning a well earned family retreat for our fall break. Lots of good things going on here. :)

We are just wrapping up week 5 with it and the WTM's and WEM's Great Book study. We are just doing it as in WTM, not using the study guide. So I figured out she needs to do 4 chapters a week to finish it by the time I want her to. So she has two periods a week for reading it and taking notes. There are four questions to answer for each chapter in WTM. She answers those on paper. That's it so far with HOAW. We file in the WTM Great Books notebook as laid out. Then she does WTM work with her lit studies to go along. So she researches from the Timetables of History book and writes a summary on that to go with her lit book and reads from a History Encyclopedia. ( of course there are notes, discussions, and summaries of the lit to go along with that, separate from history,) But that is the main work for WTM history using it. We are finding it pretty easy to implement without the study guide, though I did just request it from the library to see what else it offers as far as discussion of the history. The history work with the lit on top of the readings and notes from HOAW is adequate I think, though we are reading some additional non fiction and some related fiction lit aloud as a group because we always do. I will probably do the history paper in the spring as suggested in WTM for a longer paper, and maybe the occasional outline for something different.

We did phonics based spelling for years. My dd can say all of the phonics rules, but never applies them. When I help her and start a rule, she can finish the rule, and then apply it to her word that she already misspelled when we edit. But when you misspell everything, imagine trying to think of every phonics rule there is for every word you are trying to put down. It wasn't working. So this year we are trying some new things. I researched dyslexia techniques, and am adding those techniques. I read books, watched videos online, and made an appointment with a developmental optometrist to get her eyes checked out differently and to see what they recommend specifically for her. The things in the books I read lead me to think this is more her issue than true dyslexia, but I am still using the techniques I have learned to work on spelling with her. I am seeing a lot of improvement after only a month. Along with that, we dropped our phonics based spelling for now, and I am using some workbooks from Dyslexia Games and Thinking Tree this year. I just read an article, and another homeschool curriculum was mentioned. The way they described her materials was similar to what I have been reading, so I am going to start looking at her stuff next. But I can't say the name off the top of my head. I don't know that your child will struggle as mine did, but my child has tried her best, and is just not making improvements doing WTM suggestions for spelling. So I had to try some new things. I kind of wish I had started earlier, but I do think that all of the drill in phonics from her Rod and Staff spelling over the years was useful information too. It certainly comes in handy as we work through these other books. I just wish I had had the info I have now to incorporate into those books as we were going through them when she was younger.

We used everything I could find: Crayola broad and fine tipped, highlighters, and sharpies. Be careful with highlighters and Sharpies of course. Both stain, but they add something to some works that are great. Let the kids have a variety of choices. Some of my all time favorite homeschool memories are doing DWC with my kids around the table. Have fun!

Drawing with Children isn't easy as in the lessons are planned out for you. But it isn't hard. Just read the book. Look at that thread for ideas. And maybe google for lesson plans. There used to be some free ones online. I know Donna Young is now a site that charges. Hers was free and had lesson plans, but there may be others. But it is worth it. We did it over 2 years, and still never even got to the last section on drawing people. And we did FANTASTIC art. We all did it together. Truly enriched our lives. I am such a better art teacher in general because of that book. Keeping a Nature Journal is only $11 right now on Amazon, by Clare Walker Leslie. Its a good resource for you to guide you. Just do yours and encourage the kids at their levels. But there are tons of other books. My library has this book too. I just used it from there this summer. I love the Arty facts Science and Art activities books. I don't think they make them anymore. There are a few on Amazon Prime, but mostly just used ones. I am thinking of picking up another one after looking them up just now. :) But our library has them. I would check yours. My 7th grader just did a project from the Earth one today to go along with our Earth Science unit study we are wrapping up. GREAT series for enriching science and art for all ages. Usborne makes great art books. They have all kinds from crafty ones to ones for Christmas projects. There is one on art skills, but most give easy step by step multi media projects with some skills techniques in them that encourage creativity and that come out great. Hard to mess up. I can't even give just one title. All that we have used are good. I love the Christmas one which we do one to two from each December, but also the others that we have checked out from the library. I also like the Usborne art appreciation books: Usborne Introduction to Art and Book of Famous Artists. We love the Memoria Press Art Cards. I have never bought their enrichment program, but we have bought the Kindergarten art cards and used them for memorizing paintings and genres. We would memorize a painting with artist and style. Then we would read from the above Usborne books on the artist and period and look at other art from the time period. I rotate which painting is out from our stack constantly. The What Your X Grader Needs to Know series has good poetry and common sayings that are good to know. Plus those books have art and music sections with some reading and how tos, along with book lists and a very few project ideas. But those would often lead to a good unit with library materials on the subjects and doing the projects that came up in them. For early elementary I would just pick one and do it with both girls. We just do art, any kind constantly. We take art classes at the library and at craft stores and at co-op. When my kids were little a teacher supply store had free crafts on Sat. mornings we would go to. And I took them to library craft and story times. Anything I could think of. While at the library we would check out the art and craft shelf and check out plenty. We would check out the science shelves and find things. And then we would walk trails outside and look at the ducks or the fish and pick up feathers and rocks for some nature study. At home we would read some good books and poetry, and at some point while younger was napping I would have the school aged one do some math and writing and silent reading. At least once a week that was school through 2nd grade or so. I am really trying to focus on skills and the beautiful this year too. Today my 7th grader did 3 projects to wrap up her first 5 weeks of school. She did the Arty Facts mountains painting with lots of different things in the layers of the earth like sand, painted bubble wrap, soil mixed with paint. She did a Matisse style cut out poster after our recent visit to an art museum and reading about him, and she did a travel poster about Egypt because of her history studies this past month. We are reading aloud daily from about three different books, and she is reading poetry at least once a week from What Your 7th Grader Needs to Know. She does Nature Journaling once a week. I am very happy with how our first month of school has gone too. :)

And don't want to forget my 7th grader. She does still have an hour a week of a co-op Latin class. She works through translation work at home. Latin is our main focus. But I am having her do Spanish too, but still just for an introduction at this point. Right now she spends 15-20 min a day on EasyPeasyAllinOneHomeschool's 7th grade Spanish curric. It links to vocab games and such. I spend one day a week going over a grammar lesson from a textbook on it with her. I still don't know in high school which way she will go, modern, ancient, or both, so I am doing both with her. But Spanish isn't serious yet.

For my 9th grader with latin, she has always had an hour of co-op class once a week, then worked the rest of the week at home through her Form and Henle books. We also did an hour a week of Latin club for several years where we covered culture, did fun activities to do so, went to plays, performed plays, memorized a lot of subjects over the years by focusing on certain aspects of Roman Culture. I used the special subject of the Exploratory Latin Exam each year and their regular syllabus for this. And then for a couple of months before the exams each year, we met together with a few others for another hour a week to study together. So we had up to three hours a week of talking, memorizing, reciting, practicing, and lesson time, plus 4 plus hours a week of book work/translation work and listening to CDs. This year, for 9th, she will be working totally on her own with no outside classes. So it is mostly translation work for an hour each day. We will add at least an hour of studying for the exams for a couple of months later in the year. Later for Spanish, I plan to use a dual enrollment class for at least one year of a modern language on top of her 2 of Latin. I think she will do fine with that since she has had so much latin.

No, just start with Ancients. You could do something like: 1st/4th Ancients 2nd/5th Middle Ages 3/6th Early Modern 4th/7th Moderns Then start the cycle over. Your high schooler will have an extra year somewhere. But you can use that for State History or in depth Government/Civics when that time comes. The older still has time for 2 cycles through history, the younger for 3. There are some pages that describe "starting in the middle" and combing more than one child in WTM history sections somewhere.

We're in 9th this year too, though we aren't going to start rhetoric studies until next year. I want to use this year to cement the skills in WWS and other areas. I find it hard to believe how close we are to the end, but also realize how fast it is going to fly by, considering how fast the last 4 yrs have flown by! Congrats to all of us. We are in the home stretch! My 9th grader never wore princess stuff, buy my 7th grader, oh my. She was always dressed up, even while sleeping. I have pics of her sleeping in her crowns, lol. 11 yrs ago my 9th grader was obsessed with dinosaurs and was going to be a paleontologist when she grew up. sweet memories. At some point she informed us dinosaurs were for little kids, and that ship has sailed.

My middle schooler and high schooler are supposed to be up a little before 8. We send them to their rooms if they are still hanging around downstairs between 9-10. I want lights out by 10. We're not fanatical about it though if they are still doing stuff, as long as they are settling down and getting there. 8:15 sounds very early if there is no reason he needs to be up at 5:00. (It would be normal on a farm, LOL. )

This is exactly what I did. I read SOTW to both (all when I had babysitting kids.) Then logic stagers read the KHE, outlined it, did their timeline books and geography coloring books. Later, after additional reading, they wrote a summary for their notebooks. We did lots of reading aloud from library books along with SOTW, and I assigned literature from or about the time period for the logic stager's silent reading.

This is my dd too. She has no learning disabilities. In fact, she's quite bright, probably gifted if I had ever gone that testing route. But she also has ADHD- inattentive. For the two programs you are talking about I have the same issues. We only aim to do about 1.5 to 2 lessons of Lial's in a 4 day school week. (and she still usually has homework from that over the weekend.) The first day we read through the lesson and work the examples. The second day she is supposed to complete the odds and all word problems of a lesson. But it never happens in one day. That usually takes another day. Then the last day we start the next lesson and get started on it. That equals about a chapter a month, which is enough time to finish the nine chapters in the book in a school year. WWS, I don't stress it at all. Some lessons really take her a long time too. She gets like a writer's block. Nothing I can do helps that. But she is a good writer. She writes for R&S English and for other classes and we do it across the curriculum ala WTM. So we only use WWS when we aren't working on other writing projects. And it is slow going. I would consider it getting done in 2.5 hours ok. That would be an hour of our daytime schooling, and an hour and a half of her evening on her own in homework time. We have homework time EVERY night here. I switch subjects after an hour during the day.

I bought ours for logic stage biology too. I ended up not using, just because of what/how we ended up studying that year. DD took a co-op class where they did a ton of experiments and hands on there. And at home we did a bird study. So it was barely touched except for when it first came out of excitement. But she used it weekly for high school biology, and I have found myself getting it out recently for my younger dd and a babysitting child, and they really enjoyed making their own slides and seeing them. I still have two more to get through biology, so I do feel it's worth it.

My sister used Vol 1 for teaching 6th grade social studies in public school, though it is marked as for grades 1-4.

Over the summer we did a unit study from ReasonstoBelieve that was around Psalm104 and covered a lot of Earth Science. We learned a lot about Hebrew poetry and how to read the Bible. I learned a lot. My dd12 can quote quite a bit from the Psalm 104 after it. So that was good. I recommend it for anyone who is looking for Old Earth Christian resources. For this school year we are memorizing a verse about once every two weeks from Character Concept's website. It is a list for preschoolers around character traits, but it is good for all of us. We will also be practicing our books of the Bible for memorywork. on their own: 7th grader: We are in ancients, so I am having her read from the Golden Children's Bible for some of her silent assigned reading. That is really all I am doing with her this year. She draws or writes a short SHORT sentence about what she read after. She just needs an OT refresher. We will discuss and do some other readings from supplemental books that I have on hand as they come up like the Ancient Israelites and their Neighbors and Jesus and His Times. 9th grader: She is doing a Great Books study of Ancients ala WTM, using WEM. Her first book of the year is actually Genesis through Job. She is taking notes every chapter and will have a final project due on that the same as with all of her readings this year. Later in the year on the list of WTM books are some other books of the Bible she will cover. No big curriculum or anything. I feel our SS is really light in Bible education too. They spend more time on how to apply it (which is hard if you don't know it IMO..) so I always want to go over it at home too.

I don't have an 8th grader this year, but I had one last year, and I will have one next year. So I can tell you what my 8th grader did last year: She finished up Rod and Staff 8th grade math, and dipped her feet into Lial's Algebra. She didn't like it much, so we went very slowly, and are finishing it this year much better. Fourth Form Latin/Henle I. She received her first high school credit for that, Latin I. Apologia Biology w/Lab at co-op. She tested there and did work at home. Got her second high school credit for that. She has always worked ahead in science with this same group since she was little. A lot of History. We covered American History in depth w/a bit of World History at home. She took a co-op class of state history, and did assignments and classes and projects and field trips for that all year too. We used a huge variety of stuff for this: Kingfisher Encyclopedia, a Jackdaws portfolio, SOTW4, and lots of library books. She took a speech class at co-op that dabbled in debate and required a lot of writing in general. She mastered the 5 paragraph Essay. She took art at co-op and worked on drawing skills along with various other things we did at home. She did some Rod and Staff grade 7 English, Some R&S grade 8 spelling, and a bit of WWSI when there was time between her other classes. **** Didn't put literature: We did a Memoria Press lit guide for Shakespeare, As You Like It together. Then on her own she read: Johnny Tremain, Narration of Frederick Douglass, some of Don Quixote, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on audiobook, To Kill a Mockingbird, Diary of Anne Frank, and we read The Hiding Place as a readaloud. For each of these there was discussion, vocabulary to look up as she read, and a written summary at the end. And she read a lot of Young Adult Fiction on her own, with no work required.

Maybe we could trade. I could come work with yours, and you could work with my identical to yours in math dd. Maybe if they were dealing with someone else's mom it would go more smoothly?? Mine did R&S through 8th grade, and she knew that program inside and out and by the end of the 8th grade book didn't need me. She could work the examples and get through each new lesson. Once we switched to Alg. and she needs me to sit with her and work through it is like a shock to her. And if she tries to read through them herself she just stares at them for hours, accomplishing nothing, putting no pencil to paper, but keeps telling me she is almost done and doesn't need help.

We do it in Latin with the Form series all the time. We will do a sentence in Latin, then the translation in English. I think it helps them sort the grammar out for both languages better.

My 9th grader who is a decent writer and who is interested in a career in writing of some sort is still working through it for 9th grade. We will look into rhetoric studies next year.

I took a full week off,focusing on baby and dr. appointments and staying up all night with baby, but kids still had some stuff to keep up for extra curriculars, with my dh off for the week to drive them around. By week two, I was driving them to all of their extra curriculars with the newborn and had my babysitting kid back with us full time. By week three we were back to school work full time, and I taught at co-op again with baby snuggled up in the Moby Wrap. I will say we did some things gently. We didn't do as much output for some of the content subjects for a month or so. And then we wrapped up the year with a big project for history after a couple of months after delivery to make up for it.

Yes, they have grade levels on them, and 4 says for grades 4-8. The AG for 4 has outline work which isn't even introduced in WTM until 5th grade, so it is definitely intended for logic stage work. We stuck with them entirely for grades 1-4. Then in grades 5-8 we moved into WTM logic work, but we still read SOTWs as our supplemental reading. So they worked from the encyclopedias and library books on chosen topics. But SOTW chapters were used in plenty of places as the introductory readings of a new topic. Now that mine are 7th and 9th and have used them twice all the way through, we are completely out of them, but I am still using the AGs for supplemental books and the occasional project. I also LOVE SOTW. Can't wait to do it all again when my toddler gets to elementary age.