Which of your kids are you planning for? (Age-wise, it might matter.) All American History is not secular and has a strong providential history bias, which may or may not fit your worldview. The first several chapters about the explorers in volume 1 are *very* dry and bounced around a lot, which was sort of strange. If you skip those chapters or can wade through them, the rest of that book and volume 2 is better. The optional teacher guides and student workbooks are appealing for many. The simple format, black & white textbook is a plus for some, a drawback for others. Probably best for 7th/8th grade if you use the workbooks alongside. History of US has many volumes, is very wordy, narrative, however you want to phrase it. Some like that and say it is beautifully written; others prefer more succinct writing. Lots of sidebars and info on the pages along with the main body of text, which can add either richness or unnecessary extraneous details depending on your formatting preferences. Probably best for 5th/6th grade. I've seen study guides and tests published by other sources to go along with the Hakim books, if you want to add more meat to it. Personally, I prefer the new 4-volume concise version of History of US published by K12, which is secular. Same depth as the original version but with more editing. Designed to be used over 2 years but you could speed it up, especially for a slightly older student. There are teacher guides and student guides for that as well that you can buy used cheaply, to use offline (not part of K12), makes it open and go. Does any of that spark any additional specific questions you may have?

Yes, you could definitely do what you described to save some money. I would buy the instructor’s guide, review it carefully to decide which books and labs you definitely want to do, and then borrow the desired books from the library or buy them cheaply used. You might find that some books aren’t used more than once or a few times, and you might decide those aren’t worth tracking down for that reason. Also, you may not want to do all the lab kits. Sometimes the learning or enjoyment gained from them isn’t worth the time and effort you put into it. You can buy Young Scientist kits separately from sources like Amazon, and some of those kits are much better than others, so check customer reviews and decide which ones seem worthwhile.

It depends. Which package/level are you considering?

Interesting discussion. I've noticed so far that those who find it more beneficial as a learning tool have slightly older kids and/or are already using iPad-friendly curricula/materials. Makes perfect sense. You wouldn't appreciate having an umbrella unless it was raining, LOL!

Spine-worthy, narrative, non-encyclopedia, not a full program, secular, non-fiction earth science targeted to 3rd/4th graders. Hmm . . . that's a tough one. Have you looked at DK Eyewitness Earth? It is secular and less choppy and blurby than Usborne but also not really narrative, so I don't know if you'd like it. But I think it makes a good spine for organizing a semester of study. I can see why you asked . . so just consider this mostly a bump!

Our iPad it has been worth the investment from a schooling standpoint. We can definitely learn without it, but now that we have one we are finding it quite useful. Even though I’m old-fashioned in some other ways, I believe it is important to keep up with technology because this is our world now. The biggest benefit for us so far is that I put DS's Math Mammoth on it and he is always eager to do math now, which wasn't the case before. We use the Notability app, so he can write on the pages electronically with a stylus, save it on Google drive, and I can log in to Google drive and review his work on another device (my laptop). I could also print his completed pages via Notability if I wanted to. The change in his attitude towards math, now that he can do it on the iPad instead of on paper, has been amazing and doesn't seem to be wearing off. We also use other curricula in PDF format that are nice to have on the iPad (such as Ellen McHenry's science, Elemental Science, WWS, other writing curricula in electronic format, vintage texts from Google Books). We have many educational apps for math drills (SplashMath & Mathmateer are favorites), Spanish vocab (Duolingo is excellent), geography (Stack the States/Countries - excellent), vocab root word and grammar practice apps, virtual flash cards for any subject, Kindle reading app, BrainPop, CNN Student News, and portable documentaries via Netflix & Amazon streaming. DS seems to benefit a lot from these things which we didn't use before because it was too big of a pain before the iPad (except for the documentaries) and he looks forward to working on them instead of it being drudgery. Format/presentation is everything, LOL. As we near middle school, I’m excited about the prospect of all the very inexpensive e-textbooks available for the iPad. More are coming out all the time. I’m glad we got the iPad, very positive impact for us - don’t regret it at all.

OP, you've received great ideas already. Another suggestion is K12's middle school Classics for Young Readers series and the related student/teacher manuals called "English: Intermediate Literature". It fits what you're describing and much more. We don't do K12 online, I just got the books and do the offline portions. I really like the stories, the way the material is taught, and the guided discussions we've had. Very easy to implement, open and go. You can find them cheap as used books.

It's been a while since I looked at Writing Tales, but I seem to recall that it taught similar skills to what we learned in IEW's SWI-B and IEW's ancient history unit. Unless the IEW American history unit teaches skills that your DD hasn't learned yet, I'd probably skip that and start WWS next instead as long as her narration skills are solid and she has learned basic paragraphing and outlining skills. Those things need to be in place in order to succeed once you get past the very beginning of WWS. In other words, I think Writing Tales & IEW are fantastic, but our goal is to move past those to the writing taught in the WWS series.

Mostly a bump. Can you tell us what the objective is for the poems? Memorize and recite? Read and analyze/discuss?

Lots of great suggestions already. I'll also add Visual Link Spanish as an option. There's a link to it in my signature below. It is computer-based, combines visual images with properly-spoken auditory training (great for my DS), engaging, appropriate for (mid?) elementary all the way to adult, not terribly expensive, and you can try it for free. We tried several others before we found this and it is working amazingly well.

Also, just wanted to say, if your kids don't clamor for more hands-on science at this age, there's nothing wrong with BrainPop videos or things like Magic School Bus, Beakman's World, Mythbusters, etc. There's tons of learning to be had just from those!

There's also Elemental Science, Sonlight's science (easy to secularize at that age if you prefer), or stand-alone TOPS science kits.

If you enjoyed Little House in the Big Woods, how about reading the rest of that series? Especially Farmer Boy, to learn about Almanzo's family, in addition to Laura's. That's the first thing I thought of when I read your post title.

We really like Hake. It is thorough like Rod & Staff but secular. It contains spiral review (a lot, easy to skip some if preferred) in every lesson and teaches diagramming. All the teaching is in the student book - independent, complete, solid. If we didn't want diagramming instruction or needed less review, we'd still be using Easy Grammar, which I also really liked. Growing with Grammar didn't work well for us. The way the exercises are written, it is too easy to decipher the pattern for expected answers and complete the work without really understanding the concepts.

You might want to consider reporting those sellers to Amazon. It is against Amazon policy for a seller to contact a buyer to request that the buyer delete negative feedback. If you report it, Amazon will take action against the seller (suspend or cancel their seller account). In situations where I've received a used book that was misrepresented as far as its condition, I've been given a full or at least generous partial refund (and was told to just keep the book anyway) after I contacted the seller to complain. Amazon's customer service policies are very good and buyers have much better protection using them vs. some other used book websites or eBay, IME.

We liked Spelling Workout.

Definitely! I appreciate the teaching built in to the news stories. I'm not ashamed to admit, I've learned plenty from them myself.

We use CNN Student News. Free daily 10 minute videos, presented as a student-friendly newscast, available on HLN, as a podcast, or watch on their website. Here is a link that explains it. We do plenty of writing in other subjects, so we just watch on our iPad, then discuss.

I second Getting Started with Spanish. If that seems too basic for your DS, since he's already had some Spanish, you might also look at Visual Link Spanish (linked in my signature). We moved from GSWS to VL, and my DS absolutely loves VL and is learning so much from it. You can try VL for free also.

For science, Ellen McHenry has some fantastic materials. Let your DD explore, learn, do the activities. Doesn't have to line up with any other science program you do - they are all wonderful on their own. My DS10 loves them.

We're using Hake 5 this year. The student workbook contains the entirety of the writing lessons (no writing lessons in the student textbook), plus at the back of the workbook there are some "extra practice" sheets related to selected grammar lessons from the main textbook. We've never needed or used the extra practice pages, due to the highly spiral nature of the textbook material, but those pages are there if you want them. I can't remember right now, but I think around 20 of the 112 grammar lessons have these related extra grammar practice pages in the workbook. So, you're right, if you only want to use the grammar portion, and not the writing portion, you probably don't need the workbook. However, depending on where you bought your package and how much you paid, it probably isn't worth it to send it back at this point. When I bought ours, I think the package price including the workbook was around $4 more than buying the teacher packet and student textbook separately, so the workbook only added a few bucks to the total package price for me. FWIW, I also let my DS write in the student textbook - I can't imagine making him write it all on another piece of paper. Plus the pages (thin newsprint paper) just aren't durable enough for me to think passing down this book to a younger sibling would work very well. Hake 5's diagramming is a gentle intro. After it gets going, there are usually a couple of sentences to diagram in every lesson. I think that's plenty for now. However, I haven’t used it yet, but I picked up the Grammar & Diagramming Sentences Straight Forward book recently and I like the looks of it. We might use it starting in 6th grade. Sorry, I don’t have anything useful to add re: JAG.

Taking notes . . . thanks for sharing your plan!

These come to mind: Hake Easy Grammar Analytical Grammar

The teacher and student guides for the Classics for Young Readers books are called "English: Intermediate Literature" A (grade 6) & B (grade 7), if you're interested. Like a previous poster, I just got the teacher guide as a discussion guide. DS reads the stories in the CYR books and then we talk about them, no written output for us yet. He has really enjoyed the stories in book 6 and our guided discussions. We are loving K12's lit and history (Human Odyssey). I'm so glad we tried them.

My DS did SWI-B as a (previously) very writing-reluctant just-turned 10 year old (strong reader, young 5th grader) and then the ancients theme set, and I don't regret doing it that way. Personally, I think IEW's recommended ages are a bit off. Level B was fine for my 5th grader. A younger child or one who has a harder time with reading, I'd recommend level A. There are lengthy (~ 25 page) samples on IEW's website. Have you looked at those to check for your DD's appropriate placement level? There is some overlap between A and B too. Sample SWI A Sample SWI B