We use, love and highly recommend Reasoning and Writing at grade level. Both of my kids write superbly for their ages/stages. Since you have an older class, I recommend you investigate the Older Student, remedial condensed version called Expressive Writing I and/or II. You could give the placement test and then get the level that the majority of them need. If it's like the elementary series then it's a scripted program with very well done exercises for the students to practice and grow on.

What all is in Morning Basket? What's the rotation like there? Could you use a portion of that hour as individual reading time? On days that they don't have Russian class, what are they doing from 3:30-4:30? How severe is the dyslexia and dysgraphia respectively and is a challenge for one child (which one?) or for both? Do y'all have time for physical exercise most days? What's your lunch time look like?

So, we don't learn Italian in our home, but I've used these resources in a different language and had a good result so I'm tentatively recommending the Italian series below. These are all appealing to a child and doable by a Non-Native Parent+Child Team. Italian for Beginners by Angela Wilkes First 1000 Words in Italian Berlitz Kids Italian Pack Let's Learn Italian Picture Dictionary Italian for Children by Catherine Bruzzone We enjoyed the Paul Noble course for French so check out his Italian materials as well as Pimsleur Italian for a gradual Audio course that will get you read for Italian 101 down the road. If you can get through Pimsleur Italian in the 2-4 years (it's 150 Audio Lessons in total) then that'll put your child in good stead I think to speak and string words together in Italian with more fluency.

What kind of Italian course are you looking for? Gentle exposure Exposure to Vocabulary and Grammar in preparation for "Italian 101" down the line Conversational Italian Italian-language materials suitable for an 8-11yr old Something else entirely

No, I will compile a list of movies that are acceptable to me--clear it with Hubby and then we will allow him to choose freely from among them.

Sky High and Forbidden Kingdom have made the short list.

I'll take a look at Forbidden Kingdom, it seems vaguely familiar.

Nah, we want a Stand Alone film. Star Wars is out because it's 1) part of a long (and growing) series, 2) includes weird romance plots throughout and 3) includes cross species sexualization which is just...weird.

He definitely wants fighting in the movie--he'd like to watch it with some friends so it needs to be "a cool movie". Maybe a Kung Fu Movie would be good? Would maybe one of the Jackie Chan films from the 80s or 90s be a fit?

We're very media-concious in our home and don't allow the kids to watch anything violent or gory. Jr. wants to watch a Live-Action, Action Movie for his Birthday next month and if we can find a good one, we'll probably allow it. We want a stand alone Action Movie that has Interesting Plot, Decent Acting, Fighting and Battles. What are some good Action Movies for age 10-13ish? No gory violence nor graphic sex. So far, I have found: These might be Too Cartoony: Mighty Morphing Power Rangers Spy Kids Sonic The Hedgehog Sky High Might be Too Much of a Western: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Too many whores in the first hour, and when Sundance goes to visit his girlfriend, there is tension because from the viewers POV an armed man has broken into a womans house and is holding her at gunpoint to get her to undress for him--it's revealed at the end of the scene that she knows him and was expecting him, but that's way more than I want my son to see at his age and stage in life. Not Sure If This Has Any Action-Fighting In It: National Treasure

I suppose that it could be for a child with established pencil skills (Drawing + handwriting), but I don't advise it unless your child's already fairly good with the pencil. The drawings require around 10 steps to complete and writing about 4 sentences (about 20ish words). If your child's not (nearly) fluent with a pencil it could wind up being too difficult to be instructive. Try it as written, but if your child struggles, back up and modify how you implement it. I feel it's most beneficial at the PreK-1 or K-2 stages that you need to be at their elbow and (mostly) attentive while they're working/drawing/copying If she struggles, then to use DWN as an instructive tool with a beginning Kindergartener you could try it like this: Repeat 1 drawing for the whole week: Each day guide her through how to do that weeks drawing, and guide her through copying one of the sentences until she's gotten the picture drawn as best as she possibly can, and copied all of the sentences. Then draw the picture once more and cut out all of her sentences and paste them on to the "best" picture. When she's doing copy work, pre-teach and preview with her the correct formation of the letters that her particular sentence will need. Point out the capital at the beginning and the period at the end before she starts. Make sure that her one sentence of daily copywork is instructive and done well. Once you're some months in, guide her to draw the picture and copy 2 of the sentences each day so that she's building up that stamina. By the end of her KG year she should be drawing the pictures well and copying 2 sentences with good penmanship and obeying the capital and period reliably. For 1st grade, start with 2 sentences a day, then start doing 3 sentences a couple of times a week, then start doing 3 sentences a day and finally 4 sentences a day so that by the end of 1st grade, she should be able to draw the picture well and write all 4 sentences with good penmanship, capitalization and period as well as proofread for her own errors on those two points.

In brief, we stitched together a few things, many of them free, but we liked the idea of doing long-vowels first, so we used the vintage Open Court scope and sequence of sounds/patterns stuff to get started, we supplemented with Ultimate Phonics Words and Sentence List (actually, this is also a software that you may or may not like, now that I think about it). Throughout and as the kids progressed, we literally just searched online for "[pattern] Word Lists" or "X-syllable words" and printed/used any words that we needed. We read so much each day and sometimes, we pulled word lists from a vocabulary program and from a multisyllable word programs too since we could.

I will be the first to admit that the teachers guide to 100 Easy Lessons is a beautifully, masterfully written document, and that it had a profound effect on me and Hubby and how we approached home education. We didn't use the 100 Lessons in the book, but we applied the technique to a better scope and sequence and it was amazing and we've been nothing but pleased with the results. The Direct Instruction materials (outside of 100 Easy Lessons) are almost invisible in the Home School circles that I've run in and run into. However I find that many of DI programs (when I say DI/Direct Instruction I mean as developed/popularized by Zig & Co, or written to the DI guideline developed/popularized by Zig & Co) are wonderfully designed and include a ton of highly intelligent lesson exercises that are not included in many other programs that I've looked at. The DI authors market (and price) the DI materials for the school market so obtaining the DI materials can be cost prohibitive for some homeschools who may not even realize that more of the DI materials exist. Anyway, as far as "Gamey"math and whatnot, I think you're on the right track: Since the reading site is more gamey than you care for, I will encourage you to finish reading and once reading.com is completed, and over with, wait a short while and then investigate the FUNNIX Math program. I suggest waiting a while to introduce FUnnix Math so that the reading.com gamey-ness is out of her system because you don't want FUNNIX Math to be the more boring on-screen activitiy, you want FUNNIX Math to be the way to get the screen.

No personal experiences. You might do some research into the Scope and Sequence of Funnix Math by comparing it to the DISTAR Arithmetic series which is also out of print, but probably closely related. I personally don't expect FUNNIX Math to be very gamey, but I'm not familiar with this resource, so I could be wrong. I also think that it being an older program and having been compatible with earlier versions of Computer OS's is possibly why it's not as popular, but I don't know. When you and your kid are ready, you might enjoy teaching your child some gentle mathematics in short sessions using a couple of home made manipulatives (ie, literal beans or buttons) and a vintage math book on your device of choice, (which would be 100% digital and have the same benefits for you as reading.com).

Well, I would look for ways to try to train myself how to teach and develop various ELA skills (Reading, spelling, handwriting, writing/composition) and take some time each day (or most days) to really familiarize myself with some of the things to look for in Language Arts learning and teaching that aren't curriculum/program specific because you may wind up wanting to use specific materials, various materials or no materials at different seasons throughout her ELA education. For our elementary years, Hubby and I definitely strive to give our kids high levels of quality exposure, but we lay a solid foundation of actual skills so even with our Word Nerd eldest, we definitely leveraged direct instruction of skills that kids need to know in order to be able to read, handwrite, spell and compose essays (ironically, we used an actually Direct Instruction program for writing stories/essays, lol). One things that kind of arose organically when our eldest was young, but grew into something so powerful for our homeschool is we made an effort to create and provide as many highly visible references as possible so that independently, they could access whatever he might like to know for his own efforts. We hung educational reminders throughout the house so he didn't have to always come ask how something was spelled if he decided on his own time that he cared. So, a 15 minute lesson on multi-syllable words/spelling patterns/sentence patterns could be hung up and displayed around the house. It was "schoolish" but has been super effective for our kids and after a few years they've got a certain canon of skills down pat across multiple areas. We were big on language development and language rich environments for the young kids, but we didn't feel that it alone was enough. We chose to also teach both ourselves and our kids what was "needed". The result is that my Word Nerd is empowered to tackle pretty much whatever he wants to create/read/write do.