We have been using it for a few weeks. We break up some of the lessons - we basically work for 20mins, so we may get through a lesson, or we may get through 1/2 a lesson, or get through the teaching , but not all the exercises. It varies from lesson to lesson. We did all the FLL & it is good to have some background. My son is Grade 5. We will continue to use this. I feel it is a step up from FLL, whether it is presented in a more mature way - not sure exactly, but we don't mind the programme and so far, so good!

It sure does - thank you. I have ordered the texts & tests over the weekend, so they are winging their way to Australia as we speak - well will be! Thank you again for your assistance,

Thank you so much Caia. That is good to hear. We do parent-led math and so I am fairly involved. I have looked as much as possible at the online samples for BJU 7 (Fundamentals) & I do feel this is the way to go for us. Most of this year (5th) has been a bit of coasting ride for my son. There have been a couple of areas that he had to actually think about, but overall it has been a fairly painless maths year. If you have any further advice about how you handled the year (Fundamentals), or anything in particular that you found challenging or things to watch out for, I am certainly open to suggestions :rolleyes: Thank you again for the feedback you have already provided.

Perhaps? Although the 6th Grade is 3rd edition which has been out since 2011. Something to ponder? :confused1:

Thank you. Yes, interesting that BJU advised me to skip 6th & do 7th. I wonder why?

Thank you for that info. Interestingly, I emailed BJU late last week & they told me skip 6th Grade & do 7th because 6th Grade is virtually a repeat of 5th & they advise if we are going to skip to skip 6th.

We used Phonics Pathways. When my son was able to put together the simple c-v-c words, we started on readers and continued working through Phonics Pathways. Of course in many readers there are sight words, so we just introduced sight words when they appeared. I was a crazy reader purchasing mummy & we owned a lot of variety & our local library also had a number of sets of phonic readers, so I just introduced readers as they suited with what he knew. We would work through as many readers as we could that suited where we were at. This wasn't an easy task at times as each group introduces words in different order so I was often juggling resources. I also had my son re read some readers a number of weeks after he had mastered them, so we just kept the practice up. I think it is encouraging to children to be able to open a book & read it easily, so having him read something a bit below the level he was working at gave him great confidence. Once he was reading at a particular level I introduced readers from the "whole language/sight word" stable for more variety. We still own a lot of our readers as he looks upon them fondly. We used Fitzroy Readers (Australian set), Jelly & Bean (UK sets), A Beka reading programme, & as I said we Phonics Pathways was our primer. I would consider that we used a phonics approach as our mainstay & used sight words in context of what we happened to be reading. ETA: We also read a lot in the early days (we still read aloud now, but not as much). In fact in his early years I would read aloud hours every day (often 4 hours a day), so I think that helped with language development & reading.

We have used AAS from L1 & now have started Level 5 (about 3 steps in). The spelling errors in your daughter's writing are the type of words that are addressed in later levels of AAS. My son is finishing Grade 5 (we are in Australia) & although each year I notice some improvement in his spelling, it has only been since the end of the third book I started seeing bigger improvements. In fact the last six months (we were half way through Level 4) is where I have seen the biggest leap in improvement. I did find at times I was thinking "When is all this spelling instruction going to pay off?" Finally I am seeing some light. Something else I noticed, my son would spell certain words correctly in "spelling", but it didn't always transfer to writing & I think it takes time to get into the longer term memory of the brain/automatic recall. I think when he writes he just wants to get it down, so the spelling when writing, doesn't get the focus it does in the spelling lesson. I am finding this is slowly improving.

Thank you OhElizabeth. I have read many of your posts on this forum over the years of home ed - some on BJU Math stick out & I have always appreciated the advice you give.

I realise this is an old post, but I wondered if I could ask your opinion on something please? My son is going into 6th Grade next year & we have used BJU since K, so he is working through the Gr 5 book. We are not in the US & our school year is from end of Jan - beg of Dec. Also, here calculus is taught in most maths classes in Gr 12, so therefore we would need to be doing Algebra in Grade 8. I had some advice that some schools & home schoolers skip the Grade 6 book & go into Fundamentals for Gr 6. The advice was that Gr 6 didn't advance the maths taught, more solidified it. I wondered if you had an opinion on whether the Grade 6 or the Grade 7 book was the better one to skip? Thank you

Thank you AdventuresinHomeschooling.

Thank you for your replies. I appreciate you took the time to respond & have provided thoughts & ideas for me to ponder.

Hello My son is almost 11 & will be in Grade 6 next year. (We are in Australia so our school year is basically Jan to Dec). We have been using IEW materials for a few years now. I feel that my son has a reasonable grasp on the structure of reports, stories, 5-paragraph essays and the other structures taught in the IEW -SWI -A & IEW SICC-A. He has also completed ATF&F and we did parts of PAL Writing earlier. He is writing reasonably well most of the time - particularly stories using the story sequence plan. His reports are also quite good (particularly if the subject is of interest to him), but it just feels that something is missing. IEW has certainly increased the amount of writing he is doing. Therefore, what I feel is that we need a bit of a break from IEW, (maybe 1 - 2 years before we do the SICC-B), but of course I want the break to be filled with things that will make his writing grow. There are a couple of areas that I feel he needs to develop and that is more interesting sentences (of course he adds in the IEW dress ups & openers) and I think his outlining could be improved. I was thinking of combining Killgallon (not sure which one) with WWS (probably 1?) and I wondered if anyone had done this well and how did you structure it? My other thought is to do WWS 1 over 1 - 2 years because of the reporting requirements in our state - we are required to provide examples of written English work (amongst other things) that show progress, so I need to have him write over different areas of the curriculum to fulfil this requirement. Therefore his writing load is quite reasonable. ETA: This year the writing samples we are submitting are a historical journal (1.5 written foolscap pages) & a story told from two points of view (3 written foolscap pages) - so we don't necessarily need longer pieces, just something that shows his writing skills are progressing. I have also looked at CAP W&R (probably Chreia & Proverb) as another possibility of combining with Killgallon. It is something different that we haven't touched on. I don't want what we do to be just review of what we have already done, however I understand that all programmes would have repetition/review of sorts. So if WWS 1 would have a lot of repetition of what we have already done in IEW then maybe WWS2 would be a better choice - however I note that in many discussions it is considered that WWS 1 is most suitable for starting Gr 6 - 8. If anyone has used both or have used WWS after IEW - did you find that there was a lot of repetitive/review of what you had already completed or was it different enough that it provided a different level of instruction that progressed your child? Thank you in advance of any replies,

I'm not in Canada, but we aren't in the US either - lol. We are far, far away in Australia. We have been using SOTW 1 & 2 & this year going into 3. It does increase in US history, but still appears to have quite a bit of English & other world history scattered through it. We add in a little Australian history when I feel it is needed & our plan is to do a year of Australian history after we finish SOTW 4, allowing us to explore our own history, some of the explorers and other things that occured. We will also cover the wars from the Australian point of view at that time. We will (hopefully) coincide our Australian year with a visit to our nation's capital and visit federal parliament, war memorial etc The reason I thought of doing this, is I see SOTW as an overview - it covers alot of area and we would need to delve more deeply into our own history and placing that in world context (having covered this with the overview provided by SOTW) will put it in perspective. (Australia wasn't settled by the British until 1788 with the arrival of convicts, so our Western history is fairly recent in the context of world history - obviously there is our Indigenous history which we also cover aspects of each year) We do cover the main "events" as we usually have public holidays (Australia Day; ANZAC Day) for those - lol. Anyway, that may not be of assistance, but thought I would my 2c worth in from someone who is not based in the US & is using SOTW. Best Wishes

We used PP. I mainly chose this because our local library had a copy & I could see it first hand, rather than just samples on line. We found it did what it is meant to do and have been very happy with it. We finished last year, but did a bit of review beginning this year. My son is 7/Gr2 here in Australia. I introduced RP towards the end, which was easy at first, but was great to help with multi-syllable words prac. My son went through a stage with PP, where the amount of words on the page were an issue, so I covered or gave him only small parts at once & that solved that issue. He moved through that and it was no longer an issue. He really enjoyed the sayings - he didn't always understand them, but I would explain & he looked forward to these each day. I would say, that with any reading phonics program, that review is important, so what worked for us, was to often go back over what we had done, quite consistently. After a short holdiay break, beginning of the next section or times when I thought we needed to review. It might take a couple of minutes each day, but I believe this was an important part of our phonics reading & it paid dividends. Best Wishes with your decision,

The craft projects weren't in our version either, so I would think you have a new edition. When we did Biology for GS last year - we completed some projects, we did the narrations & the experiments every week (they were my sons favourite part) & we also added books each week on the different animals. I think there were some additional projects - ant farm or other observation projects & a bird feeder from memory. I would suggest do what suits & leave the rest :-)

We do a 2 pages a day, so each "lesson" takes a week, with doing 4 days. We are about to start book 6. We complete 2 - 3 books per year. Was planning on going all the way through, but wondering what book 7 & 8 are like?

We read "Paddle" last year & to be honest I don't remember anything that stood out as overtly religious. We enjoyed the book so much I have purchased a couple more to read through this year. If it had been a really focus I am sure I would have noticed. Regards :-)

We also really enjoyed Elemental science and we are looking forward to moving onto the next book in the Garammar series. A couple of things - any program you choose, you can tweak to make it work for you. If you are concerned about doing the one area of science for an entire year, throw in some science kits & have a science "holiday" for a couple of weeks or when you feel you need to mix things up or trips to science centre or science shows. The first year of elemental science (which was biological sciences) we found easy to add in excursions, esp the animal section - zoos, aquariums, parks etc There are always DVDs, documentaries, science education programs that just add a bit of extra also. We didn't watch heaps, but they added some variety to our program. If you child has a particular science interest, throw in some books about that & just strew them around. If they are interested in science they will read/look through any books you leave for them. We particularly enjoyed the "Let's-Read-and-find-Out-Science series", but there are plenty out there. Back to elemental science - there are different books/series available - we used the classic series fwiw. I think they have packs you can buy that include all you want, but I would say 80 -90% of the items are things that you would have in your home. I will also agree that the experiments/demonstrations work - I think there was only one in the entire book that didn't work exactly as it should. There are samples on the website that will give you a good idea of what each week would entail so that would give an idea of whether the program is what you are looking for or whether it is not your cup of tea. Best Wishes in your choosing - I am sure whatever you choose you will be able to make work for your family.

We live in Australia so we school Jan to Dec as that is how we work here. We don't follow the school terms here though - I usually school 6-7 weeks & have 1-2 weeks off. We usually have a bigger break at some stage during the year - this year happened to be Oct as we wanted to go somewhere in particular & that time of year was warm enough for swimming, but not too hot for other activities, so we took 3 weeks. We are just in the middle of our last 6week school cycle before we break for Christmas. We only break for about 4 weeks at Christmas as this is long enough given we have plenty of breaks through the year. Traditionally in Australia, the schools start last week of Jan/first week of Feb (usually after Australia Day, depending which day of the week it falls - it is on Jan 26). They usually school for about 10 weeks & then have two weeks off & do this for four terms, with a 6-8 week break over the Christmas/New Year period which is of course our summer. Purchasing curriculum - I usually order most of my curriculum after end of financial year (which runs July-June) & if I need to top up through the year I just purchase as needed - e.g. if we start on a product that will take us 6 weeks to use I would order as I start the last book I have on the shelf. (Does that make sense?) It doesn't take long for product to get to us even from the States. HTH

Great question - looking forward to hearing some answers too. :-)

Just a note on Elemental Science - Biology for the Grammar stage, the author suggests (at the front of the book) that the narrations & experiments are meant to be narrated orally by the child & written up by the parent, so I think you can adjust the amount of writing of that one to suit.

I have used PP & although there have been times my son has rolled his eyes at it - I have found it effective. It sounds to me like you are doing a great job & teaching to what your children need. A couple of things I did, was try to match up readers that covered what we had covered in PP. We used a large combo of readers (often borrowed from our library, which thankfully has quite a few different types) - we used Bob Books, MCP, Fitzroy (Australian), Jelly & Bean (UK - these were a huge favourite & my son has said we are never to sell them as he will use them to teach his children to read!), A Beka & others as well as anything from the library that I felt was suitable. Some days he would fly through pages & other days not so much. I also did what I called review words, picked some out each day, that we had covered previously to review & it made a huge difference. We don't do that as frequently now, but still do at times. (I think someone above called it "rinse & repeat"). Sometimes we would play the games & other times I would make up some games - he likes to run & jump, so I might say read these 10 words then jump up the hallway & then come back & read some more! Silly stuff, but it just added something different. Also, sometimes just doing the book in a different room or even outside now & again just gives a mix up to the day :-) cjgrubbs - asked about Reading Pathways - my son wanted me to get that & asked me so many times I did eventually buy it July this year. As we are nearly at the end of PP, we are going through it quite easily, and he really likes it. One thing though, it seems to include words in some pyramids that don't line up with what has been covered in PP at the same time. E.G if the pyramid is based around a particular phonics sound or rule, sometimes a sound or rule that is further on in PP appears. This hasn't been a problem for us as I said we are nearly finished PP, but if you were to use it alongside PP just watch out for those oddities. Reading is such a journey & every child does it in their own way, but I found PP good.

We use Elemental Science & this year was Biology - I would say 98% of the experiments worked & mostly these came out of the Van Cleve books. that Down the rabbit hole metioned. Most of the required items I had in the house & have had to buy very few things to complete experiments. There are enough experiments/demonstrations in the book to make choices based on what you do have in the home. Most libraries hold the Van Cleve books so you could check them out of the library & decide if they were a good match for you & if you thought you would use them heaps then look at purchase or just borrow from the library as needed. For reading alongside our encyclopedia (which was really only good for really introducing the subject imo), I just picked up a couple of books on each topic from our local library & read those aloud.

Bump :-)