Maybe he could benefit from having a real audience. Can he read his finished assignments aloud to siblings or grandparents as entertainment? That might give him motivation to put more effort in. I help my kids edit their sentences for grammar and spelling, and if they made more than a couple errors, I have them copy a version I have rewritten correctly. I don't present copying a corrected version as some sort of punishment, but rather as a joint effort to produce decent writing that they can be proud of.

I have used Hey Andrew levels 1 and 2 with my kids to learn the alphabet. After trying a few other resources, Hey Andrew is my favorite, and at just one work page a day, it is very easy and painless to add to our day. I would start an 11 yr old in the level 2 book. It teaches the alphabet at a faster pace than the level 1 book, but gives more attention to it than does the beginning of other programs (like Elementary Greek). We use Elementary Greek after Hey Andrew 2. I got really confused in Hey Andrew 3. That was maybe just me and not a specific fault of the book though.

I used CLP History for Little Pilgrims, also.

I make a time budget and put it on a spreadsheet to make sure I haven't skimped on individual time with a kid. If you choose resources that are easy to implement, it isn't too hard to work with multiple kids at the same time, even if they are doing their own things. For example, Climbing to Good English instead of First Language Lessons, and Adventures in Phonics instead of All About Spelling. (Just an example from our family -- not bashing curriculum in any way). I combine a lot of work too, like for history and science. I also like to work from youngest to oldest when possible. That way the littles can get their mommy time first thing and then be content to play the rest of the morning.

My DH had the blood thing happen once from taking too many supplements and drugs that thin the blood. He was taking garlic, Ibuprofen, fish oil, tumeric, and ginseng, which all together added up to causing blood in his urine. (He didn't have the sugar issue though). Hope your DH gets a quick diagnosis!

I have my kids play with a US map puzzle a couple of times a month, and they memorize the states and capitals when they are about eight years old. We add two states and capitals a week until they are all memorized. The kids also like to play on Google Earth and "visit" different cities. My kids pick up a lot of US history from literature, and from watching documentaries. I figure we will cover it more in depth when they are high school aged and can read primary sources and such.

No pen pin merger here, but I say long ee in -ink and -ing. Short i sounds like the i in "if".... "ef" is short for a bad word. Haha

For my first four kids, I started them at around 4 yrs old, and it took anywhere from 1 to 5 years for them to read "Little House in the Big Woods" alone silently. Two of them took 3 years. Hope that helps. :-)

A Gathering of Days by Joan Blos

I am a native Northern Californian and they all rhyme and have a long ee sound. I love learning about regional accents!

I have Reading Hebrew: The Aleph-Bet for Adults, as well as Time to Read Hebrew 1 and 2 with the teacher's guide from ARE/Behrman House. I have been sitting on them for a long time but I think I finally have my act together on the Greek enough to handle adding Hebrew. We will see how it goes!

Ooo, cool! We are planning on adding Hebrew to our day soon.

Ruth Beechick had some good ideas for teaching writing without curriculum.

We really liked the Tales from the Green Valley, but your kids might be a bit young for it yet. The episodes are not short either but we loved it so much I just had to mention it.

I think it is good to have homeschooled kids practice reading aloud and to keep reading aloud to them, throughout their whole childhood. One reason is to make sure they know how to pronounce new words. I know because I was homeschooled myself, and it is a popular joke among my adult friends who were also homeschooled that we had/have bizzare pronunciations because we seldom heard certain words growing up. We just always read them silently to ourselves. Nobody can model or correct pronunciation you only hear in your own mind by reading silently. It is not a comprehension issue. Also, oral reading is a skill in itself. I work with my kids on reading aloud probably once or twice a week. I generally use McGuffey readers for that purpose. We practice reading for the benefit of the listener (speed, volume, intonation, emotion, etc).

Perhaps you can make a list of three or four of your favorite low-prep meals, and just eat those on all school days. Save your tacos for the weekend. Make weekend cooking for "feast days" separate in your mind from "ordinary" days. I like to think of my cooking as "humble" cooking and "feast" cooking. Every day can't be a feast day. When I had twins a few years ago, we ate the same dinner every day for weeks. It was a bag of mixed salad greens and dressing ($3), A loaf of whole wheat sourdough bread ($1), and Cheese ($4) And that fed 2 adults and 4 small kids, for $8 per night. We had soup for lunch and eggs or oatmeal for breakfast. Nowadays, I have more time to cook, but I still keep things very simple. Like, we eat cabbage almost every day. We usually only do one animal protein a day. Lots of beans. You can make beans once a week and have it as a side all the time. Stuff like that. I did once a month cooking for a while and it was great when I could do it. Circumstances are such that I can't right now, but if you can set aside a couple of days a month, you might like to try it.

The Secret Life of Homeschool Moms Exposed.... I have taught a lot of math and Latin in the bathroom while waiting for a toddler to poop.

I know how you feel! I used to let the kids go naked underneath with a long shirt for about a week until they learned what was happening, while I closely watched. (I don't have carpet). YMMV, but I also made a big deal out of staying "clean and dry" rather than rewarding for going in the potty. I have one last kid still finishing training and then I am done! Just in time to start dealing with puberty in my older kids. Hahahha

I potty trained several kids at 18 mo. I put a diaper on them when we went out, in case we couldn't make it to the potty in time. I just got in the habit of taking the toddlers to the bathroom every couple of hours, and right after meals, whether they said they needed to go or not. They could climb on the seat by themselves, but needed clothing assistance and wiping help until they were three or so. I never had the money to keep kids in disposable diapers for too long, and I got sick of washing cloth diapers too. So we just potty trained as early as I could. I have a friend who potty trains her kids from birth. She really saves money on diapers!

I personally do best with books that have the lesson material all there in front of the child, but not scripted. I like to be able to pull a book out, open it, and immediately start going over the lesson with my child, without having to think much about it. The exception to this is science, which I teach as a group subject. I learn the lesson myself and then teach it to all the kids together. I am also big on "circle time" so I can do a lot of little things all at once together (Shakespeare, Bible, recitations, etc). I also rarely use materials as written, and do a lot of lessons orally instead of having the kids write answers. It saves time for us to do some things that way. So here are some of the things we are using right now.... Rod and Staff English for grammar (4th grade and up) CAP Writing and Rhetoric for writing (4th grade and up) Copywork for younger kids, integrated with memory work or reading McGuffey and AlphaPhonics for reading Singapore math Climbing to Good English 2 or 3, as a prep for R&S English and CAP W&R (CTGE is very independent) BFSU (all kids together) SOTW (group also) GSWL (short lessons) Lively Latin (fairly independent)

I still have my mom's copies of Beechick's You Can Teach Your Child Successfully, How to Tutor by Blumenfeld, and even Math-it. I just started my kids on Math-It this past week, in fact. It turns out that it works ten times better than a modern computer program. Hooray for old-schooling! Haha

Omnibus seems like a great concept... in spite of some disagreements in the content, I had planned to use it. I hope someone more reliable produces something along the same lines, but more respectable. In the meantime, I will skip Omnibus and instead will stick with SWB's recommendations and history materials, and Roman Roads video lectures and study materials.

With as many kids as you have, I think it would be tough to follow the book exactly. In my opinion, the book has the maximum amount of work possible detailed in the schedules, and I don't know that anyone folows them. I teach history and science to all my kids together to save time. You can all do the same memory work together, etc. Don't try to do separate topics for each grade every year. Go through the history cycles as a family, for example. Maybe that is already in the book, I don't remember. Hope it goes well for you!!

I use both Writing & Rhetoric and Rod and Staff... but we do a lot orally and they do the written assignments on their own. We alternate resources each day. I would encourage you to not think you need to do poetry, music, geography, nature study, etc., all every year. You can just pick nature study to focus on here and there one year, and then the next year, focus on geography. You can have a song of the month to listen to on Sunday afternoons, instead of trying to fit in composer/music study every day. Or you can have 10 minutes set aside every day for those things and you just put them all on a loop schedule. You also may not need to do lit guides. Or maybe just use them as a discussion guide on Fridays instead of doing Latin that day. I hope you are able to find your groove quickly and painlessly! :-)

My 4th grader this year does main school stuff 4 days a week and then a different set of stuff on Friday. It kind of goes like this: Starting at 8 am sharp, work on memory work for about 10 minutes, including copying it. Then he does 45 minutes of music, a couple of pages of math, 15 minutes of math facts practice, and 2 pages of Latin. We do our Morning Time, for maybe an hour, where we cover read alouds, singing, Shakespeare, Spanish, and more memory work (capitals of countries this year). Then we do an English lesson for 15 minutes or so, and he reads to me aloud for another 10 minutes. He does about 10 minutes of work on Greek. We also fit in a 15 minute spelling lesson most days. He does some sports training for an hour, and then we spend about 30 minutes to an hour on science or history or more music. Once a week we go to the park instead. During lunch I play audio books for him to listen to, and he reads on his own a little each day. On Fridays, he works on computer stuff, art, and cooking, or we watch a documentary or something. Eta.... sometimes an English writing assignment will take a while, so he works on that in the afternoon before dinner, but it is only once a week or so. The rest of our English lessons are done mostly orally, with a bit of diagramming. We do not do everything the books suggest. I pick only exercises that are truly needed for that kid on that day. There is a lot of overlap between Latin and English grammar, so it can get pared down quite a bit from the recommendations in the English books. Perhaps you will need to evaluate your resources to be sure you are not doubling up on skills.