Thank you for all the links, I will definitely be checking them out. I didn't turn up much in my search. For those of you who use this... I see the suggestion is that you spend 2 weeks on each unit, Mon-history Tue-geography Wed-science Thu-art Fri-free day/catch up. How do you 'cover' a history topic if you only talk about it twice? I like the idea, my kids got burned out on history reading 3x every week. Is it that you spend more time on history in a big block? Or is it just a brief overview and then the kids are supposed to read related books every day for the two weeks? What about science? For years I've just been books, books, and more books. But that's not working for us anymore. My younger two boys have added a level of noise and rowdiness to our read aloud time that makes the extended read aloud time not work for me anymore. ;) I personally just can't handle it, so I'm finding myself skipping it if I'm in anything less than a super energetic upbeat mood. LOL. I still want to read aloud, just not for hours and hours every day. My kids do really enjoy hands on, and now that I have no babies underfoot I'd like to do more of that.

Does anyone use this and can review it for me?

My 6th grader is using Brave Writer stuff. He is actually enjoying writing for a change! This year it's Arrow guides and Partnership Writing. Next year I'm thinking of alternating in some Boomerangs and using Faltering Ownership. For 8th grade I'm thinking WWS1.

My 6th grader is doing EM daily Science (to get some vocab and also a little non fiction output) and doing a physics focus with: RS4K focus on middle school physics textbook only, World of Physics, and TOPS units on electricity and magnetism

Hits: brave writer! My oldest reluctant writer actually likes any and all BW projects we've done. My third kiddo, tho young enough I wouldn't make him do it with us every time, loves it too and wants to do everything too. My daughter, the reluctant writer slash perfectionist, is still complaining. But she's actually doing it. I think the fact that it's all done as family projects helps. Everybody else is doing it, so she does it too. Right start math B this is a big hit with my two youngest boys. The study Time preschool books. My 3.5 yo loves these and happily does 'school' while I work with my first grader. He's doing the pages over and over with different colors. Doing school on the front room floor is working waaaaay better for my first grader than working at the table. BF geography and CA history HWOT for my first grader. He says he 'hates' it, but it's working and there are no tears. Jury is still out: Apples & Pears spelling. My daughter has been the sample from book A for only a couple weeks. She doesn't love it, but it seems pretty easy to use. I'm going to give it another week and then decide. I have AAS on my shelf to try with her next, but I'm dreading it. Spelling You See G for my oldest. He doesn't like it, but I like what it's teaching him. CLE and MM. I have a kid in each. They seem to be going ok, but not a definite hit yet. EM daily science. I'm not sure whether this is great or just busy work. Lol. Time will tell. Misses: Spelling You See for my daughter. There were tears every day. Apples & Pears spelling. I thought it was pretty painless, but it was causing tears every day. Next up... Spelling by Sound and Structure 🙄

Yup this is the kind of thing I meant. It's a sweet deal. Lol We are under the poverty line for this area so it makes a huge difference.

We currently used a charter school here in California, but are considering a move to Tucson Arizona to be near family. Are there any similar type homeschool charter schools in Arizona?

Barring any other problems... What helped my careless math student was giving him MORE work if he missed lots of problems. In addition to fixing the wrong ones. It wasn't a punishment so much as a consequence. You must need more practice at that. To make it more positive, I assigned more pages but told him he only had to do half the problems. If he got them all right, great he was done, but if he missed problems then he had to do the other half. Being able to skip problems was very motivating for him. I don't still do this, because he became much more careful. He still gets some wrong for careless errors, but only 0-4 instead of half the page.

Thank you so much. I've been designing our own and It's getting harder to keep our family all together and our schedule not overloaded. I've been trying to figure out how to combine different age group Beautiful Feet guides for American history next year. Sounds like maybe SCM would be a lot less work for me. Lol

I used first edition RS A a few years ago with my daughter, we did enjoy it, tho I had a little issue with not knowing why I was doing something and where it was headed, but moved on after that year because it was too many pieces, required too much Mom time for games, etc. I am considering it again for my youngest next year. He's a very social, wiggly little boy and I can RS being a great for for him. Am I crazy for thinking I will like it better this time?

I don't 'get' phonetic zoo. Lol. I've looked at it a couple times. It looks like memorizing a jingle with a rule and then spelling ten words from that word family? I'm torn about SYS... I feel like the repetitive nature does/should help. I mean lots of repetition is what she needs to remember. And I felt like last year when I did as they suggest and had get write and rewrite a word different ways to see which looked right (with hints as needed) she did start figuring a couple things out. But otoh because it is the exact same passage, exact same markings, every day... I feel like she zones out and copies without thinking about it. Eta: I probably need to sit and do SYS with her for it to work. Problem is, she's rather independent and just does it without me. Except the dictation. I guess I could lock it up so she can't get it and do it on her own... Something like A&P which HAS to be done with me might help.

You've pretty much described my 10yo. :D For math we've tried a number of different things, this year she's using CLE (started back in June) and that seems to be going really well. For spelling, we are using Spelling You See. She did level B the last half of last year, and as much as she complained about it (the dictation mostly), I could see that it was helping her spelling and her confidence. So she's doing level C this year. What didn't work about SYS for you? I have AAS 1-3 sitting on my shelf, but I really don't feel like using it. Lol. I'm not convinced it'll be the best fit for her anyway because we used AAR and even after doing all 5 levels, including half of level 3 twice, she still doesn't know the phonogram sounds with flashcards. Or just refuses to. She gets majorly upset when spelling rules aren't true 100% of the time, so I don't think an approach that emphasizes rules will be good for her. I've eyed Apples and Pears, but haven't wanted to fork out the money (our charter school pays for SYS and AAS). But then that's also what kept me from using CLE math for a long time, and now I wish I'd tried it sooner. Now after reading this thread, I'm off to look at it again. ;)

I keep looking at this, it's very tempting. But I already have my science plans set for this year. Lol. My oldest send beyond the range it's intended for anyway. I need to remember it for in a couple years when my two oldest kids are doing their own middle school and high school stuff, and use it with my two youngest boys!

Well we started last week, so things are pretty much set now. Math: Math Mammoth 5 LA: Spelling You See G. Brave Writer Arrows and Partnership Writing, as well as the whole 'lifestyle'. Everything BW has gone well so far, so I am excited to give free writing a try. He will also read classic literature, I don't have a list made, will just pick as we go along. First up is Treasure Island. I also have in mind Sherlock Holmes, a Zane Grey Western, and Tarzan. History: Beautiful Feet California history Geography: Beautiful Feet geography combined with Thinking Tree's United States journal Science: Evan Moore daily science 4 plus a physics focus; Real Science 4 Kids Focus On Middle School Physics (textbook only), Tiner's World of Physics, TOPS electricity and magnetism. Extras: piano, drawing, nature study, in August we did a unit on Shakespeare, and in January we will do one on a composer.

I have a first grader, as well as two older kids, and a preschooler. He already reads fluently. He wakes up around 7/7:30, makes his bed, wipes the bathroom sink, and then plays till breakfast. After breakfast he takes out the recycling and then runs off till I'm ready to start. School starts somewhere between 8:30-9:30 depending on the day. The older kids get started on their math/copy work/science on their own. My 1st grade son sits at the table with me. He has a weekly checklist just like the big kids, but I sit with him and help him go down the list and do his work. He does a page of Thinking Tree's brain games, math, HWOT (once this is finished he'll pick up where he left off last year with spelling you see B), EM Daily Science, and then we buddy read the 2nd grade Pathway readers. This takes 30 minutes, tops. Then he gets a recess. Around 10:30/11 everyone meets together for our morning basket stuff. This takes two hours and includes: Bible, picture books, Brave Writer Arrow read alouds and discussion or a BW writing project, Beautiful Feet history or geography. He plays quietly while I read, but he does do a scaled down version of BW and history notebooking. Then is lunch. After lunch, he has to check the dogs water and then do his independent reading. Which is two books, assigned by me. Right now it's a section in a vintage science reader and a Billy and Blaze book (he usually takes two days to read one of those). So technically his school day is 3 hours, but those 2 hours of morning basket he's mostly playing and listening to me read. Outside of our school hours, he will take a 45 minute early music class, a private drawing class with his siblings and one other family, and we do poetry tea and nature study each once a week.

We do it once a week, it lasts about 30 minutes. I spread a tablecloth, but that's it for fancying up. We will have a special drink or snack (anything beyond water or a piece of fruit counts as special here). I put out a variety of poetry books, and everyone picks three to read out loud. I do it too. I also read three poems for my 3yo, once he picked them by the pictures but usually I just read a couple from a book for young kids. And that's it. My kids love it, especially my 6yo son. Sometimes we do mad libs afterwards.

I think I waited too long. I'm checking so these places and they are all sold out!

More changes (in red). School starts next week, so I think this is it. :D

You've given me some good points to think about. The year I'd use this, I would have a 7th grader, a 5th grader, a 2nd grader, and a young kindergartener. Which means is need POE and the middle school extension and the junior version. :O As I'm looking over the middle school sample, I'm thinking that I would have him do the 5th grade work with us and the extension work afterwards. My 2nd grader should have no trouble doing the 3rd grade work, and I can adjust it a little here and there if needed. Right now I can't imagine my littlest guy being ready for the K work. He'll really only be in TK. Also, the K work is so different and definitely requires mom that then I wouldn't be available to work with the other kids (listening to reading or doing dictation) ... And that's sort of the point of doing TGTL, for us all to be working together. So I may skip the jr extension for him that year and just read and work with him when the other kids are working on something independent. Eta: I just realized all three of my old kids would be reading the reader at the same time. I can't see sitting around waiting to take turns. Lol. I guess I would need multiple copies. It looks like there are no activities directly tied to the reader? So it would be easy to substitute a different reader for my oldest? How easy is it to substitute books in TGTL? The sower biographies seem a little preachy? I already have books on Abigail Adams and Ben Franklin from the AO list, would these be easy to swap in for the sower books?

One step- thank you for your in depth review. I do worry about this part: *** 3. You can use it at the same time with multiple ages/developmental levels (although if you have kids at radically different levels of functionality you are going to need to plan ahead and modify the pacing/choices for each child). It can be challenging if you have one who zooms through and one who needs significantly more time but there are ways to modify it to work with that scenario. *** If someone finishes real fast and then I lose them while waiting for the others to finish...

Trail Guide to Learning recently crossed my path and it looks almost too good to be true. Covers everything but math? Teach all my kids together? Has anyone used this? Can you share your experience? I am all set to try Beautiful Feet and Brave Writer this coming year with my three school age kids; 12, 10 &7. BF seems great for combining two closer in age kids, but not so great for 3 (soon to be 4) students. TGTL seems like it's already set up to make it easy to combine 3-4 kids (with their middle school extensions). And the grammar seems like it might be similar to brave writer? The thought of just having individual math and then one big group time for everything else sounds nice. ;)

If you figure something out, please share it. I've been wanting something similar too. It's just way too much work to load always be loading library CD's onto my phone via computer. Plus a major memory drain. Lol

I got the Evan Moor daily science student books for my 4th and 1st graders this year... Now I'm looking at the 4th grade book and thinking maybe I should have gotten the teachers book? The electricity section in particular seems to expect either a lot of inference or a lot of previous knowledge. Is there more info on the teachers book? Looking at the samples online it didn't seem like it, but the samples were skimpy. For an older kid coming into this, would you use it behind grade level?

I know this is an old thread, but I had a question... I can't seem to find the Word Cloud books version of the Rainbow curriculum. Can anyone share it with me? We recently discovered the word cloud books, and my kids really like them.

Maybe if you need to reference the teaching notes while reading?