Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is the book that jumps to mind from having read it about that age as a child. It certainly helped me understand history better and I think would fall under the "classic" heading as much as anything written about the last century could.

I read through it just now and found the dilemma interesting. On the surface is the discussion of whether that particular book is a good fit for that particular class, but there's also this broader problem that I've seen. Some people in our world seem to be doubling for a fight, while others will do anything to avoid one. Naturally, there's a broad swath in the middle, people who want to go to the teacher and say, "hey, there's a tough issue in this book and I'm wondering how you will handle it" and actually have a discussion. It's a pity when that door is slammed shut, either by immediate appeasement (sorry, we'll drop it) or aggression (you'll have to sue me because I won't ban books, you fascist!). It makes it hard to speak up because one fears being a party pooper or suddenly in a fight. In a setting like a school, teachers are more likely to take the first route, whether they just don't have time for such a discussion, because they haven't thought it through enough to have the discussion, or because they fear/expect parents not to be reasonable in such a discussion. It's a shame, and I don't know the solution. I imagine you might end up with some enormously long, though interesting, school board and curriculum committee meetings, with the result of better community between parents and teachers, if we could just find a way to make extremists take a moment to listen and to make capitulaters grow a spine.

I have an old friend,a wonderful woman with an adorable toddler, in the hospital right now as she was suddenly attacked by a dog and had to have her lower leg amputated. That's going to color how I feel about loose dogs for a really long time. I'd catch a dog I know and hold it for the owners, but that's about it. My husband's feelings are more strongly anti-dog than mine. Both of us have lived in environments with dangerous packs of feral dogs. I'm glad he and I are in basic agreement on this as it would be hard if one of us thought it immoral to not help while the other found it irresponsibly dangerous to help.

Since someone mentioned Rod and Staff, I would say that falls squarely in the "not fun" category. My daughter was charmed by every exercise being either extremely domestic or extremely biblical for a while, but then it wore off. The example sentences often sound stilted, so she complained she wasn't even learning "real English," just "weird farmer English." The grammar instruction seemed pretty solid, so I can see why it works for many, but if your child thinks it's especially fun in the long term, your child is quite different from mine.

There's a book called English Grammar for Students of Russian. That wouldn't be fun on it's own, but if you thought your kid would enjoy one of the cuter grammar things, like MCT's, maybe you could read Grammar and Writing Town, then work together to make similar funny stories to illustrate the ideas in EGfSoR.

Attached is a good example from the concise edition of how it approaches controversial topics, in this case the 2000 Supreme Court decision that made George W Bush president. The basic approach is the same as in other places in American history where people disagree. "Here's what one side says and why, here's what another side says. Here's what the nation seems to have learned. Thankfully we are in a great nation with a strong form of government that is able to be face problems and work to correct them." This particular chapter isn't in my 10 volume set because I guess I have an older edition that ends with Clinton's impeachment. In the chapters I skimmed, I could not find any substantial changes of attitude or perspective between the two.

I'll grab them and look over a few sections to see if I notice anything.

I have both sets. I just haven't looked at the concise too closely after I decided the longer wouldn't be too long for us. What kind of information do you want? Like, difference in total length? What is left out? I can do through some, but I'd rather give info that will be useful to you instead of whatever randomness I happen to notice.

I wish peace and comfort for his family. I've been dreading this. Recently my grandparents and so many of their circle and generation have passed away, and to me, he's very much a part of that circle even if a distant part. He's so well respected even by those who disagreed with him in the governor's and president's office. I hope we can learn from his example.

In our state that would absolutely be a domestic violence charge. A police officer not arresting someone in that situation would be in serious trouble. I don't know laws there, but I think most are similar. You aren't allowed to violently break even your own property in a way that terrorizes someone else.

There's probably a better definition, but generally it refers to non-fiction that isn't text books or reference books. Books that educationally-minded people read for fun.

I just flipped through my copy of Essay Voyage. In the second half, most of the sample "student papers" have block quotes, while the good examples from literary essays do not. I get the impression that he includes so many because it's one area that students tend to make mistakes around. I saw at least a couple of "fix the mistake with this block quote" assignments. I think it'll be a useful tool for us next year, but I'm glad I have lots of additional good essays to give as reading/analyzing assignments, also.

Hakim is, in my opinion, great for families who are patriotic but not jingoistic. The central thesis is that America is a great nation with wonderful ideals, and it is our patriotic duty to be constantly fighting to make us do better to achieve those ideals, that speaking out when people are oppressed or treated unequally is the American thing to do. It doesn't vilify or deify the founding fathers and takes time to discuss women and minorities in a more than token way. That being said, it is long! I'm not sure you could cover American history to any satisfactory depth with a short program, though. Perhaps you could choose a time frame of American history that you haven't covered much or are very interested in and use Hakim or something else for that.

I had a friend from church in about 2nd grade that was neurodivergent (I only knew after the fact) and her parents tried different combinations of private, public, and home school to find a good fit. They moved a few years later and I'm not how long she was actually homeschooled for, but she enjoyed it and we definitely talked about it in a way that made me want to do it. I asked my mom to homeschool me in middle school because middle school was awful. She later told me she would have been fine with homeschooling me , but she didn't want to constantly fight my younger brothers is if she was homeschooling them. She's probably correct it wouldn't have gone well. I knew lots of people who homeschooled in different ways, and met more in college. I think it was really growing in popularity in the 90s and early 2000s. I still have a knee jerk reaction against debate club and Latin because it felt like all the most obnoxious homeschoolers talked about the two incessantly. There was one family that wore matching, home made clothes. They said it was their school uniform and were proud of it. I'm pretty sure they were anti-birth control as well. They were the most stereotypical "weird homeschoolers" I met, and I wish I'd had the maturity to be more sensitive and friendly. They were at our church for a while, but the kids were younger enough than me that I would have had to seek out interaction with them. They were likely sewing shabby clothes out of deep poverty rather than a desire for uniforms, but I didn't see it then. All in all, I had a fairly good attitude towards homeschooling, but plenty of "that particular method is not a good way to do it" thoughts by the time I got to college.

These would be easy ones he would fly through, but Scholastic Branches has a ton of boy-oriented series that he might enjoy. I have a son reading through the Firehawk series, and I suspect the dragon one, I think called Dragonmasters, will be next. They aren't great, but enjoyable for kids, good at building fluency, and positive in tone. Also, there are lots and lots of books in each series.

We have Math Mammoth that I pull out when we need more/different practice. We also circle back to earlier Beast chapters and repeat some things. Online makes this easy. If you look at the chapter overviews in the planning documents section of the website, there's a flow chart that can be helpful to see where to go back to for more practice. Sometimes, I do have to tell a kid, "it's obviously not math time. Go think about this while playing/eating lunch/taking a shower/doing handwriting and we'll try again together later "

I want to say this carefully to avoid accidental offense, but when you say you want a Christian College with a strong science program, you and your child may need to think through your thoughts on evolution. I went to a strongly Christian school where the Christian biology professors taught evolution. Some students found this anathema and had such a strong moral block they found themselves unable to learn/see other perspectives. Other students were able to respectfully talk with the professors and make their own decisions about how to reconcile differences between a literal interpretation of the Bible and mainstream science. Some of them changed what they thought before, others stayed the same, but each grew in spiritual maturity due to the conversations. Other Christian schools do not allow evolution to be taught, which might be unpleasantly surprising if you are from a background in which Christmas faith and mainstream science are reconciled.

I asked my Army National Guard husband and he says the key is figuring out, with the recruiter's help if needed, the specific location/unit that will work for him and make sure that it has places for entry level people in the job he wants. It's miserable to have to do weekend drill at a place 200 miles from home, and the gas will eat up his earnings. If there aren't any openings at his preferred location when he goes to MEPs but there will be later, he can wait until something opens up. It wouldn't be unusual for them to then move people around the rosters to make space for him right away.

Dh was active duty before we got married, is now army national guard. Some things about it are great, some are awful. One thing to keep strongly in mind is that the 1 weekend a month, 2 weeks in summer is a severe underestimate much of the time (all the time in our experience) and can be shifted around. They can take some weekend days, tack them onto the summer days, shift the while thing into the fall, and even shift the next calendar year into the beginning of the fiscal year, leaving then with about 10 weeks at Guard stuff with strategically placed days off so they won't qualify for extra benefits. That's the worst we've had for scheduling, but he's generally gone for nearly month each summer and lots of 4 day weekends, since if which have been in the middle of the week. Schools and jobs are bound by law to work with you, but it makes college really tough and if your job is actually important to a small business or something, that's really rough on them.

My rising 2nd grader is a strong student whose main struggle is speaking up. I wouldn't say he's slow at processing, but he wants to have everything completely straight in his mind before speaking and hates to be rushed. I think a lot of our curriculum choices will help him get practice with orally answering fairly simple questions. He's number 3 of 4, so feel have a mix of individual subjects, family subjects, being combined with just 4th grade brother, and being combined with just preK brother. Reading/Literature: no idea yet. I may just let him have a year of reading lots for fun and leave it at that. He'll give since spontaneous narrations when he's supposed to be going to bed, I'm sure. Math: Beast Academy 2, likely some 2 Grammar: FLL combined with little brother Spelling: All About Spelling, likely 3 and 4 (this will be a lot of his writing, really) History: SotW Ancients with family Handwriting: may start on cursive, probably do some Draw Write Now to practice drawing and handwriting. Science: Mystery Science with little brother Probably some geography with big brother I should probably run him and big brother though some planned-out home ec Extracurricular: cub scouts, church choir, ?

My rising fourth grade is very strong in math, good at reading, and currently resisting much writing. I'd rather build slowly and let him keep having positive feelings about the writing he does so at this point than push and make him hate the very idea of writing, so that influences my choices. Math: Beast Academy, currently in 4, will likely finish that early next school year and be working on 5. Spelling: All About Spelling, probably levels 5&6 Reading/literature: Mosdos Press Ruby Grammar and writing:MCT Island series science: Science Mom with older sister history: SotW Ancients extracurricular: Cub Scouts, church choir and bells, probably some kind of sport/pe I feel like I'm forgetting several things, but since I'll be changing this a bunch anyway...

I think boosting our kids up while they tried to jump helped. Like, if he's doing the jump motion but not getting the push off right, lifting him at just the moment he would have gone up might help him get the feeling. Toddlers trying to jump are just about the cutest things on Earth.

Adding: we are Christians who believe in evolution and old earth, and we haven't had any problems with Science Mom.

I'll second Science Mom. I didn't know about Physics. I'll have to see whether my oldest is more interested in doing that live or in Biology, which she's looking forward to. We did Earth Science and now we're doing chemistry with my 3rd and 5th graders. The third grader is basically just getting exposed to the ideas, but they both enjoy it and seem to be retaining enough to make it worth while.

This is my youngest of four. I've always been very relaxed about pre K and k. He just turned 4 and we've been starting Progressive Phonics. He likes the stories and little worksheets and is absorbing the letters in a two steps forward, one step back fashion, which is just fine. He loves numbers and his siblings enjoy teaching him. I may get a very easy to implement curriculum so they will teach him in a somewhat linear fashion. Otherwise I'll do MEP reception and year one over the next year or so while they continue to teach him fractions, negative numbers, and whatever jumps in their heads. He'll enjoy SOTW ancients with a few activities and a number of story books next year. I'll probably get Mystery science for him and next year's second grader. My older two loved that and went through all the mysteries a few years ago. I'm hoping they've added some. He'll do some poetry memorization, some Bible stories, and lots of play time and read alouds. He'll do church choir and tag along to cub scouts. He just now admitted that he's not really a scout, that the Puppy Scouts were just a thing he made up. He's going to be sad to have another tag-along year.