Also, those kids are old enough to help cook. Mine get assigned one night a week that's their responsibility to get dinner on the table. Of course I'm right there to help as needed and they can ask siblings. They tell me what they want to cook before I go grocery shopping so all the ingredients are there. They can all fix their own breakfast and lunch as needed as well. (My ten year old does most days.) And household chores are clearly assigned and finished before anyone gets free time after school. 👍

This year has been quite a ride around here. I'm homeschooling 4th, 7th, 11th, 12th, and have an extra distance learning 12th home too. Thanks to COVID we've done it almost entirely without the community we're used to having. (Dropping them all off at a class wasn't just for them!) Next year will only have the little two and three courses with the current 11th (she'll dual enroll the rest). I keep practicing my Little Engine That Could as often as needed. 😂 There are already some great posts above. I'll add, make this summer YOUR schooling. Dig into the books, teacher's guides, student bo

It was just that, a list of plots. What if these guys faced this type of villain in this setting. Some had fine details like specific weapons and others were just a sentence or two. He only actually wrote up a few of them but collecting the ideas was his joy. 🙂 Finding his voice... we were using Classical Writing then, which had them analyzing a fable, myth, fairy tale, etc, and then rewriting it. At a certain level it said they could start changing details in their final rewrite as long as they stayed true to the moral and skeleton of the original. At first his were really cheesy, like just r

Junior Analytical Grammar perhaps? Or maybe something light like Daily Language Review (Evan-Moor; I'd go up a grade) or Fix It Grammar (from IEW) to keep the concepts fresh.

My graduates were the kids that asked for blank paper and could fill volumes when they in middle/high school. Around 4th they would have written wishlists, Pokemon teams, recipe cards, menus for dinner or lunch... the Marine kept a journal sporadically. The eldest kept lists of story plot ideas. The Marine would have had pride in her writing in 4th. The other didn't really discover his writing voice until 5th-6th. Kiddo #3 is the classic "why write five paragraphs when I can sum it up in five syllables" kid. If he wrote much at all he kept it private, but he has filled reams with drawin

I was going to say "absolutely nothing" for my 10yo 4th grader, but then you said text. He will text me things we're out of while I'm out, tell me how much school he's done, or ask if he can play on the ps4. He will text chat in games (Minecraft, Among Us, etc), in as few words as possible, often asking anyone around him for spelling help. Actual pencil to paper.... letters to Santa is all I can think of. Fwiw he's "ahead" in most areas and struggles with spelling and writing. It's not that he doesn't have anything to say. He's totally a "chatty Cathy" type. He's just had the strongest a

I'm using Latin for Children with my rising 5th grader and have used it with my graduates. The big kids also used Latin Alive. I can't compare it to the Form series though. We were going to do LFC with the 4th and 7th kids this year but.. I'll blame the pandemic for never getting it off the ground. 😜 I enjoyed the weekly rhythm of LFC (with the big kids). Everyone knew what to do by the days of the week. IIRC... Day 1 video, extra chants, general silliness Day 2 read the lesson together, chants, one activity page Day 3 worksheet, chant Day 4, other two activity pages,

For HP with my 4th grader, we just put the movie on after he finishes a book. He loves yelling at the tv about all the things they got wrong, in a very Hermione tone. He's definitely comprehending. 🤣

My fourth grader discusses what he reads with me and it's easy to tell if he understood what he read. It's totally okay if some of it is over his head though. It still adds "pegs" to his memory wall for hanging later information. This is so much more effective than any reading comp workbook. 🙂 For English/LA he's used Writing Tales, copywork from his literature (ala Build Your Library level 4, counts as penmanship/endurance), Daily Language Review (Evan Moor), Writing Road to Reading for spelling, and a pile of high quality children's literature (also BYL 4). Next year for 5th he's going

Bookshelves instead of wallpaper Coffee - Attempting to follow dr instructions and reduce it, and no more chocolate. He's mean. 😐 Good printer Personal size whiteboards, and a big one in the kitchen Specific to this week: a large Snap Circuit set- The teens and ten year old pull it out daily to tinker.

I've used this plan with multiple ages. You might want to reduce some reading for the youngest. We LOVED all the movies tied in. http://fundafunda.com/prodpage

I don't use a cycle or list of anything. I do try to make sure each kid has covered at least some physics, chemistry, and biology at their own level, but my focus is on keeping wonder and curiosity alive. The youngest is fourth grade this year. He's done mostly general science with a heavy focus on animals when he was small. He had a Bill Nye and Wild Kratt's year, and probably a Magic School Bus year. He's read piles of nature books that teach (Thornton Burgess, Jean Craighead George, etc) and other random living books. This year he's doing physics because it's already scheduled out in

Crash Course has a fair amount of short videos (10-15 min) based on common high school lit choices. CC videos are usually quick moving and entertaining, with a few dad jokes thrown in. thecrashcourse.com And both of you may enjoy the Thomas C. Foster books, like How to Read Literature Like a Professor. The chapters are small and interesting.

Literary Lessons from the Lord of the Rings. It's pretty fabulous. 🙂

If he can make solid paragraphs without help, I might consider it. If he can't, I'd focus on that this year and start WWS in 7th. Fwiw my youngest girl just started WWS 1 in 7th this year. She's not writing phobic, just stubbornly independent and needs specific assignments to her her moving forward, preferably from a book and not me. 😄 At first there was wailing and gnashing of teeth and she argued at the ridiculousness of the assignments.... but then she fell into a comfortable groove. Now, ¾ of the way in, she rather likes that book and I haven't heard a complaint in ages. She probably