Bumping for the daytime crowd. Thanks for posting this, because Book Samaritan really does provide a valuable free service for those who need it, and they need all the help they can get.

Each test has different requirements. For ITBS you need to have either a Bachelor's degree in any major (not just education) *OR* be/have been a "conventional" school teacher. You can become a tester just for your family if you meet the criteria, or you can use (or become, if you meet the criteria) a test administrator who has agreed to test for other families. If you meet the criteria, you just fill out an online application and watch a brief training video online. It's easy nowadays because you can do it all online. Here is the relevant link on BJU's website. There are other testing sources too, like Seton and Abeka.

OP, have you tried listing out how long you think each item will actually take him, to come up with a daily or weekly total time? That's what I do to see if I'm being reasonable. IMO, a 5th grader should have around 5 or maybe 6 hours of work per day, not counting sports and music practice.

Would you mind sharing the title of the book? Or perhaps look for it on Amazon, maybe the "preview" feature there, or perhaps some of the customer reviews might give some insight?

Here's another Scholastic page I had bookmarked, which includes much of the same info as above and also gives you similar books if you want a book like another that you previously enjoyed: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/book/farmer-boy

Here's one that allows you to search by title or author, and provides genre, reading level (by grade and lexile), and a brief summary. It doesn't highlight objectionable content but it does provide an "appropriate" interest level (grade level) so it might help in that area: http://src.scholastic.com/bookexpert//detail_title.asp?UID=BEF4591F642040350A8341A53930F238&subt=0&item=51791 In the link I searched for "Farmer Boy" by Laura Ingalls Wilder just to give you an idea of what it provides. Listening for more ideas!

I'm not the OP, but I really enjoyed the way you explained this! Thanks!

Here's our list: Math Mammoth + Math Minutes daily, Life of Fred once per week, sometimes Rocket Math app for fun facts practice (tried lots of math facts apps but Rocket Math is the winner for us) IEW's SWI-B followed by their Ancient History theme book, continuing narrations and just added outlining in history (instead of just the "list of facts"), just added Paragraph Writing Made Easy (covers paragraphing and outlining explicitly step-by-step, I'm *loving* it as prep for WWS1 in 6th grade) DS learned to type in 4th grade using Dance Mat Typing, and now, in 5th, his speed and accuracy has greatly improved through simple daily practice. I'm so glad he learned to type early on. Typing, along with IEW's program, completely turned around his previous reluctance about writing. Hake Grammar Wordly Wise 3000 workbook reading from various lists like Sonlight, WTM, Kolbe - we alternate book selections, some align with history lessons, others are just his choice, we discuss some via SWB's method, the rest I just let him read and he tells me the funny or interesting parts Human Odyssey 1 and (white cover) Kingfisher's Illustrated History of the World with timeline and writing skills practice as noted above - plus documentaries and Prof. Thompson's World History DVDs (The Great Courses) World Geography & You (used textbook I got for 25 cents at the library sale and he loves to read it for fun!) Elemental Science logic stage biology alternating with ES logic earth/astronomy in blocks of several weeks each, TOPS kits, previously finished Galore Park's So You Really Want to Learn Science 1, Ellen McHenry's The Elements and just purchased Carbon Chemistry, Harcourt Health & Fitness (another used textbook he wanted as an add-in) - this looks like a lot, but we do science every day at his request, LOL Visual Link Spanish daily - he chose this after trying a couple of other programs, and he LOVES it! - I'll also see if he'd like to add DuoLingo, thanks to a recent thread here about it Various electives: Brain Pop app, CNN Student News app, Cave Paintings to Picasso, Perplexors, Scratch programming, The Story of the Orchestra, Mark Kistler online drawing lessons With the exception of starting WWS1 next year in 6th grade (took a year-long break after WWE4 in 4th grade to do IEW), we'll be continuing with everything listed above for next year, just moving up a level as appropriate. I think we've (hopefully) finally found our groove! ETA - A few things we started this year but weren't a good fit for us: - Getting Started with Spanish (OK but Visual Link seems to fit DS's learning style better) - Evan-Moor Daily Science 6 (frustrating to have questions asked about certain topics before the lessons on those topics were presented, due to insufficient editing/poor organization) - Builders of the Old World (great vintage book but too simplistic for 5th grade) - Zaccaro Elementary & Middle School Challenge Math (mostly too difficult for DS just now and he ended up feeling defeated, so I'll save it for later, but the Primary Grade book was too easy)

By "real" science curriculum, I'm not sure if you want something like a textbook to use as an open and go spine, but Galore Park's Junior Science might work great for the ages of your DC. They follow the British method of covering the major fields of science in increasing detail each year, instead of just one field per year. They are secular, though, and since you mentioned Apologia, I'm not sure if you'd prefer something Christian-based. You can often find Galore Park used on Amazon and there are teacher guides if you want them. In the past we used Galore Park's So You Really Want to Learn Science level 1 and I was really happy with it. I've also purchased level 2 of SYRWTLS to use later. You could also add a few TOPS kits if you want hands-on lab activities. I think they are excellent and each one covers a range of ages. HTH!

I agree. Hake 5 and 6 are *very* similar. I compared the topical grammar lessons in Hake 5 and 6. Out of approximately 110 lessons, Hake 6 introduces only 8 new topical lessons that are not in Hake 5. So there is a lot of repetition between those two levels. In fact, I've read that some people spread a level of Hake over two years, due to it containing so much review, using level 6 and then skipping to level 8. HTH!

Lots of ideas posted here: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/448836-6th-grade-plans/

LOL, great minds . . . posting at the same time! :coolgleamA:

Sonlight's combined core D+E covers American History in one year. It has readers and worksheets for your 5th grader, with both kids listening in on the read-alouds? If you don't want the entire package, maybe you could buy the instructor's guide, which includes the worksheets + answer key, and buy the history books separately?

My DS learns quite a bit on civics/government topics from BrainPop videos, in a very quick and painless way. We subscribe to the 5 videos per day deal and he watches them on his iPod. It costs $1.99 per month and includes the related quizzes. Might be nice if you're not looking to add a full curriculum. ETA - to post the correct price

Those do look like a good option. I knew I had seen those covers before, then I finally realized those books are Prentice Hall textbooks. So I guess Timberdoodle is now selling Prentice Hall books, minus the online interactive bells and whistles that Prentice Hall normally sells to public schools? That's what I gathered from reading Timberdoodle's blurb about them. Quite a bit less expensive than Amazon's current price, too. Cool!

I agree, I wish ES had more coverage of those topics, but it's still the best non-textbook science we've found to fit our needs and preferences. ES is doing what a lot of publishers do, trying to fit the needs of as many users (secular and non-secular) as possible. We read additional pages on the topics we wanted from ES's secular spines since we had them out already, added a biography and documentary about Charles Darwin, some Neil deGrasse Tyson, things like that.

I see evolution as more of a life science/biology topic than an earth science topic. Did you look at the biology course?

urpedonmommy - I hear you, and I know you're just venting about the cost and the legwork required. We probably don't do as many science labs as we should here, because sometimes the supplies are a pain. I just wanted to point out the facts so as not to be mis-leading to other posters/readers. :coolgleamA:

I agree with you re: leaving things out. FWIW, both ES and RSO have the same policy about teaching those topics (evolution, Big Bang, age of earth, etc). Both avoid those topics in their grammar/elementary stage but include those topics in their higher levels. At least that's what both say on their FAQ pages: RSO and ES.

Homeschool Buyers Coop had a group-buy for individual users to purchase Science Fusion a while back. I just checked and HSBC is currently not offering it, but you could keep an eye out for it there. FWIW, I've never used Science Fusion, but some of the opinions I've heard about it is that it's a great classroom concept that so far hasn't translated very well to the homeschooler market (i.e., difficult interface, hard to navigate, etc.). But maybe they'll work on that aspect, and you could definitely check it out. HTH!

To be fair, the supply kit for ES logic stage biology contains quite a few more items than just "felt squares, coffee filters and q-tips". I counted more than 30 items on the contents list. Granted, the retail value of each item certainly doesn't total the $65 list price for the kit, but as in many situations, I see this as an issue of "your money or your time". And I agree it isn't fully complete. However, I don't think ES's kit is any different from most (nearly all?) other sources in these ways. I don't know of any truly complete AND inexpensive science kits. You could certainly gather the needed supplies yourself for less than the ES list price, but would you actually do it? Or would the labs just not get done? I recently purchased a small preserved frog and a student frog dissection kit (student kit, not even the "regular" scientist level), and including S&H, those two items cost almost $25. These are just two of the items included in the supply kit you can buy from ES. Science labs are messy and supplies are required. You can do the dirty work yourself or pay extra for someone else to do it. :)

Just FYI, evolution and The Big Bang are taught in the logic stage materials of Elemental Science, in the secular science encyclopedia spines upon which Elemental Science is based. We didn't use ES in the grammar stage - although we've used two years of the logic stage - but we do science secularly and I haven't found anything that felt to me like ES "catered heavily" to creationists.

Elemental Science? It uses secular, evolution-teaching encyclopedias as the spines, very open and go, scheduled, organized, written to the student, includes weekly labs for which you can also buy a supply kit if you want. We really like Elemental Science here and it happens to be one of the lower priced options, even though I would be willing to pay much more for it.

Have you looked at History Odyssey?

Yes, the ones with task cards are designed to be used much more independently by middle school age and up. The intended grades are denoted for each kit on the TOPS website.