One of the newer winners , which I thought was fabulous, was When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.

I totally understand the need for community -- that was why we joined a couple of years ago. But one year was enough. I don't regret having tried it or that year-- I did meet some nice moms but as others have said, that didn't translate into anything outside of class day, which was fine. But, as the year progressed I found myself becoming more philosophically opposed to memorization without accompanying education. And since parents have to sit in on the classes all of the time, by February I was ready to poke my eyes out :) It is true I could have tried to match our work at home to the curriculum to provide the accompanying education, but it seems like that would lead to a fairly jumpy curriculum with little flow/coherence, as well as being a ton of work. And I like choosing my own curriculum. SInce we only listened to the cds in the car to learn the memory work (and by spring even that didn't get done too much-- we were all tired of it) I felt like not being "all in" was putting at least one of my kids at a disadvantage as the year progressed. Her tutor was very rewards oriented for memory work, behavior, etc. I became concerned that my daughter would start feeling like she wasn't smart since some of the kids (who practiced the memory work regularly at home) clearly knew the material much better. (My daughter did retain an amazing amount based on how little we reviewed -- not sure if she still knows any of it though!) So just some thoughts, but I agree with what others have said, do what you think is best for you and your family!

I tried Apologia botany a couple of years ago with my then 1st and 2nd graders. We only lasted a few days; my kids were definitely not interested (they probably were too young), but honestly I like science and found it pretty boring as well (perhaps it was the writing style which did me in.)

I love Rightstart B, and used it with my 2 older kids and have been using it with my first grader in combination with MIF (I haven't used level C or beyond.). It is another manifestation of Asian math. BUT, the description of your 7 year old sounds like my first grader lately when I've pulled out Rightstart. He is focusing much better with Math in Focus, and with us sitting at a table with the books in front of us instead of the more oral Rightstart approach. I plan to try it again with him at some point though because I do think it is a great program.

We don't supplement. I think it is a great comprehensive program as is, and I feel like my kids are learning and retaining quite a bit. We do read some of the suggested historical fiction books though. Lately, the lessons seem to be taking maybe 30-40 minutes every day (except for test day.) For us, that is already a lot of time to spend on history, though I can see how adding some hands-on projects occasionally might be fun and worthwhile. Hmm maybe I should think more about that !

I found the lack of words in the Singapore textbooks really frustrating. Math in focus supplies words to go along with the pictures of the various math concepts; so far it is working well for us.