Thank you for all of the suggestions. We did a week long trial subscription to discovery education science techbook and I might add that in for next year. It was arranged in a way that would be easy to use it with BFSU books. They have videos, reading passages, interactive stuff all arranged topically and DD likes anything that's on the computer. Also, I picked up DK's Science Encyclopedia for $1.99 at the local reasale. We do make weekly and sometimes bi-weekly trips to the library, so I can always add in-depth books whenever needed, but I wanted something on my shelves that we could grab for at least some basic information. I'll watch for Kingfisher and Usborne as well.

A question about the college texts - are they conducive to opening them up and reading an article on a particular topic as you would in an encyclopedia or do you think they are best used in order. I ask because I like the flow BFoSU threads but want to add in sources for further readings for DD, so wouldn't be using them textbook style. Thanks!

Thank you for all the suggestions, I'll look into the college texts. Good to know that the Britannica volumes are geared for youngers, since my youngest is 11 it sounds like it wouldn't be worth the investment at this point. I signed up for the free trials on homeschool buyers coop for the discovery streaming lus and their science techbook. So far, I really like the looks of the science techbook. We're going to try some lessons out of it this afternoon and I'll report back on how they go.

I'm looking for a good science encyclopedia that has up to date, accurate information in either one or multiple volumes. We are going to use Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding as a sort of outline and I want to add in an excellent reference book. DD is heading into 6th and I would like to use this through 8th, so I'm hoping to find something that has rich content with excellent illustrations/photographs. I wouldn't mind purchasing something that has multiple volumes if it fits our needs. Both Encyclopedia Britannica and World Book both have series that look excellent, but they are very pricey. Any suggestions? I would also consider something on DVD or an online subscription if it were a really good source (I've looked at Discovery's subscriptions multiple times). Basically, I want to follow the threads in the Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, and then add in a notebooking aspect where DD is doing a bit if independent reading or researching and then recording her findings in a science journal. I could check out books from the library, but I like having some sort of a spine at home that we can always grab off the shelf in case we go off on a tangent or don't make it to the library.

I just saw something at a conference that might be what you're looking for, called Philosophy Adventure. You can find information, samples and a video at www.homeschooladventure.com Here's their description: Philosophy Adventureâ„¢ is designed to help students 6th-12th grade cultivate and defend a biblical worldview by teaching them how to write skillfully, think critically, and speak articulately as they explore the history of ideas. I liked the way the student text was laid out and am considering it for next year. It looked like the student text could be read together or independently by an older child and the CD contains teaching materials to be printed out. Each unit on a different philosopher is presented in a consistent manner including: Philosopher's Story Assignments and articles to read Information about the geography and life of the philosopher The philosopher's school of thought Contrasting his ideas with the bible using primary source material.

The Boxcar Children - lovely language but not too difficult to read - both my girls loved them. Animal Ark series - I don't think these are in the stores anymore but you may be able to find them at the library or on Amazon. Both the "Bad Kitty" and "The Wayside School" book series have short chunks of text mixed many illustrations in a chapter book format - plus they are full of antics. Ralph and the Motorcycle would be a great read aloud.

We're finishing up American History and I think it went really well! I bought BF's booklet and was disappointed so I outlined a basic list of events and people I wanted to cover instead. Each week began with a library trip to collect a variety of books on the topics and then I would create notebook page elements and projects based on what captured Dd's attention. For example, the dwellings of Native Americans were most interesting to her during those studies so we mapped the region, studied the dwellings of that area, made a drawing of the dwelling and recorded facts for the notebooking page, and then she crafted her own models of dwellings. The areas that we ended up delving into more deeply were often surprising to me. I would have thought learning the structure of our government while studying the constitution would not have been of high interest, but DD was very fascinated. It lead to a full-on household presidential campaign including creation of campaign materials, speeches, a debate, creation of a household constitution, three household branches, and our first set of amendments. It was an awesome experience that I couldn't have planned out if I tried. Not much of it ended up on a notebook page but but we have lots of campaign posters - LOL. If a person was interesting to her, then I would find outline clipart for her to color and added things such as a timeline, important accomplishments, interesting facts and such. DD also loves to be in the kitchen so we prepared meals from a time period to share with the family and she was responsible for explaining what we were eating and how it related to that time period. I feel like we were all over the board and it wasn't what I had really planned, but we had so much fun exploring history and I think she's got a pretty good basis to build on in the future. Plus, she's really excited to begin world history next year - mission accomplished!

For CLE, I just have an answer key not a teacher's manual and I haven't needed anything more then that so far. I think the reason the instructions are so brief is because they present new information in small chunks. Each lesson starts out with a new concept, a few practice problems, a second new concept and then a few practice problems for that. Next comes the spiral review problems. It's feels very gentle because the new information is chunked into easy to understand bits and the constant review is a scattering of lots of kinds of problems so that you aren't doing 30 of say, long division, all at once but you do get that practice in over the span of a few lessons. I really liked the way long division (something dd was stuck on no matter how many times we went over it) and also fractions. For example: first they are adding like fractions and making equivalent fractions - but not both at the same time. Then they are working on finding multiples of numbers. Once those skills have been practiced through the next few lessons, they begin with adding fractions with unlike denominators but give the common denominator so that the student just has to find the numerator - all this is happening while they are still practicing and getting more proficient at adding like fractions, making equivalent fractions and finding common multiples. Eventually it all comes together and students are adding unlike fractions. And because you're working on and practicing lots of operational math skills all at the same time, it doesn't feel tedious. My DD is actually very mathy in terms of concepts - she tends to get them quickly and needs little instruction plus she has excellent mental math. She can't stand having to do many of the same kind of problem (she's ADHD), but will forget without continual practice. CLE seems to provide exactly what she needs and I can't believe how fast she moves along and how far some of her skills have come in a short amount of time. Good Luck, it seems like math is a challenging curriculum to settle into! We had to play with multiple curriculums before we found that CLE works for her.

My fifth grade dd went through singapore 4b and 5a by the end of March. I was going to order 5b except that she really hates it. She took placement tests in multiple programs and we settled on CLE. We went with level 500 because, although she understands concepts well, her division skills were still lacking. I'm VERY happy with CLE and how they break new material into little chunks, explain it in very simple terms, and build in lots of review in a way that isn't tedious. It keeps her sharp on past skills without feeling bogged down and moves along with something new each lesson. I skip over some of the problems that I know she is solid on, and she can finish up two lessons in about 30 minutes. She's clipping right along and should be finished with the 500 level before the end of summer. Best of all, she scores at a 90% or better on the unit tests, feels far more confident in math, and we have no more arguments or tears. It wasn't the approach I thought we'd be taking, but it works for her so we're sticking with it for now. You can order just one booklet at a time if you wanted to test out the program for very little money.

and it feels SOOO good to be done with that decision! We are very fortunate to have a library with a homeschool resource room where you can check out curriculum materials for six weeks at a time. We've had the opportunity to try out some different programs and she seems to respond best to Writing with Skill. I'm backing her up a bit into WWE level 4 narrations before we delve into WWS level 1, as narrations are new to her. She is responding better to this material then anything else we've tried, and it's the only writing work that hasn't elicited tears - yeah!! Now to choose what we're doing for history, literature, and math.

Our middle school has three tracks: 'regular' = math 6th, math 7th and pre-Alg 8th 'accelerated' = math 6th, pre-Alg 7th and Alg I 8th 'advanced' = pre-Alg 6th, Alg I 7th, Geo 8th The issue with not going through the advanced track in our district is that students aren't prepared for the honors science track at the high school if they don't take advanced alg with trig their freshman year. The HS honors science progression is honors bio for 9th, honors chem for 10th, AP physics for 11th, and a choice of AP bio or AP chem for 12th. Students need advanced algebra skills to get through math portions of the honors chem their sophmore year, but some of them are taking the advanced alg w/ trig the same year they are taking honors chem (my daughter included). Many kids in her class aren't doing well and I suspect it is because of the math component. She is going to step out of the honors track and take regular physics next year - she easily understands the science but needs more solid math skills. In the meantime, this year has been a beast. She is interested in a STEM career, so doing well is very important to her.

Thank you!! A long but good read. THIS, this is what I'm looking for. If she has pieces she can figure things out all on her own - I want to capitalize on that skill and deepen it. She is good at math, but she is bored, frustrated and somewhat belligerent about the whole thing. She has a unique way of thinking and finding answers without being taught and I want her to be able to capitalize on that. Off to Amazon I go.

The fact that AoPS and Saxon are very different from each other might be helpful in figuring out which best meets her needs. I think I understand it as Saxon being incremental and spiral, with lots of practice problems - I'm not sure that I understand exactly how AoPS works. My instinct tells me she isn't going to like Saxon. I've printed out the AoPS pre-test for prealgebra and looking at it, I think she can probably complete all of the problems with the exception of two word problems - so I think she's ready even without using singapore 5B. Looking at the Saxon placement tests, she would fall into the 7/6 level and not be ready for algebra 1/2, but some of it would be repeat and some new. I'm leaning towards AoPS. If we come across a concept that is foreign to her then we can always use Kahn as a backup. AAHHH :willy_nilly: - sometimes I think it would be easiest to order it all, let her try everything, and go from there. Don't think DH would be very happy with that!

We are using the U.S. edition. I'll take a look at the standards edition, but after today's math lesson I'm thinking that moving into prealgebra is probably the best option. Maybe I'll look for a used copy of both Saxon and AoPS to see what works best. Here was today's lesson: To prepare, I cut paper plates up into fourths and had a stack of 10 sitting ready for her. I told her we were going to start multiplying fractions - something she has never done before. I wrote 10 x 1/4 on the board and started to hand her 10 of the 1/4 pieces so that she could physically see what I was asking her. Before I could cross the room, she says "it's 21/2" I'm like, how did you know that, we've never worked on multiplying fractions before. "I don't know." is her reply So I continue through the entire section of multiplying fractions and each time she can give me the answer within 30 seconds, doing all of the work in her head. I think that what happens with her is that once she has a solid conceptual understanding of the parts, she can put them together on her own. She understands multiplication and she understands fractions - so she can figure out how to multiple them without any help from me. It will be interesting to see how it goes with division of fractions next week, since she seems better at adding and multiplying mentally over subtracting and dividing of which she needs to do on paper. I took a good look at the TOC for 5B and the only two concepts she hasn't work with yet are average and rate, the rest she has a good understanding of. Jumping into something new seems like a bad idea, but I can't see continuing either. This is when I feel unqualified as a homeschooling mom, I want to give her the greatest opportunities to excel but just don't know how.

We pulled dd from public school last year at the beginning of 4th grade, where she was in their gifted math program. I purchased what she had been using at school, McGraw Hill's My Math and we worked through it for the remainder of the year. I felt like the lessons were over complicated, pages were littered with distracting graphics, and the pace didn't move quickly enough with lessons breaking concepts down into more steps then she needed. For 5th grade, we switched to Primary Mathematics, starting with 4B and we've almost completed 5A. I use activities from the parent's guide to present new concepts, we practice a few problems together out of the textbook, and then I assign a handful of problems from the workbook. I have her complete all of the reviews and most of the word problems in the workbook. She finds both the practice problems following lessons and the word problems easy, but doesn't always do well on reviews. She picks up concepts almost instantly and completing lots of practice problems would frustrate her because it would feel like busy work, but not practicing enough means it isn't staying with her as well as I would like. It's almost like she already understands what I'm showing her even though it hasn't been presented before, but then a couple of weeks later when we hit the review she needs me to guide her a bit with a hint before she remembers how to do that kind of problem. She'll say, "I don't remember how to do this" but with just a word or two from me, it comes back to her and she can successfully complete the problem. I considered pushing her through 6B and building in my own more frequent review problems by cutting apart the workbooks so that it is a bit more spiral and I may still do that. I like the simplicity and ease of using primary mathematics. DD REALLY wants to use something else, she just doesn't like it - lack of color is a complaint, but I'm sort of like, tough, we're not picking a math program based on the prettiness of the pages. We also have Life of Fred that we'll pull out when she needs a break from PM, but I feel like it jumps around too much. She goes on Khan academy for fun because she likes the mastery challenges and earning badges and points. I *think* the perfect program would move through the content quickly, ask students to push their knowledge with challenging problems, provide more frequent review problems but not with a kill and drill sort of approach. Suggestions? I feel very lost about this and I don't want to jump around. The other thought is to throw her into AoPS Intro to Prealgebra to see how she does and then add in extra stuff when she needs it. She seems to have a gift for math, but it is her least favorite subject which doesn't sit right with me.