www.math-drills.com ?

You might get some ideas from the free Guesthollow chemistry schedule. We LOVED that plan. My kids were older when we used it, so we dropped some of the younger looking books and added some more challenging ones here and there. You could do the opposite.

Personally we enjoyed WP far more than MFW, but I haven't used either of those specific sets. MFW's history felt like it was spreading itself too thin trying to reach too many grade levels, and not getting any of them particularly well. One spine would only hope to hold the older kids, but left holes filled by another spine that the little kids liked but the big kids felt was babyish. There weren't many hands on projects and the notebooking pages were underwhelming. In the end the big kids moved on and the little ones finished it. I passed it on and didn't buy from MFW again. When I bought WP it was only for one kid to use and he was in the middle of the grade range they listed it for. There was a LOT of reading, but we liked nearly all of the suggestions. We love lit heavy anything. The notebooking pages weren't exactly meaty, but they were engaging and enjoyable. He was able to do many of the hands on projects himself, and he chose which ones he'd rather skip on his own most of the time. He finished the whole set, still thinks fondly of it years later, and it's sitting in the closet waiting for little siblings to grow into it. This is just one family's experience with one year from each of them. It may not be very helpful since it wasn't the specific years you are looking at, but at least it'll give you a bump? 🙂

If I recall correctly we did loads of the R&S writing lessons orally. There were good lessons like staying on topic, etc with worthwhile exercises that didn't NEED written out. We would have skipped most of the actual writing assignments. I took it on a case by case basis.

We used Rod and Staff English 5 and 6, and I made no attempt to line them up to the lessons in CW. We did most of the grammar work in CW and I don't recall any problems. Seems like once we did look forward in an R&S book to help explain something. My CW Homer kids are both graduated now and the memory is a foggy...lol.

SO cute. Thanks for sharing! Maybe my youngest will humor me and read it with me...lol.

That sounds pretty normal in my experience. My 8yo couldn't spell his way out of a box and he has a wicked sharp memory...lol. Not counting those kids who naturally get spelling, with my sample size class of six kids it seemed like spelling was just a developmental milestone like reading or potty training. When they're ready it will make sense to them, whichever age that is. And before that nothing much was effective. In your case, if I wanted to work on it intentionally, I'd grab my deck of Spalding phonogram cards and start working through them every day until they're memorized. When a situation like "what" arises you can discuss the differences between /w/ and /wh/ and he'll know what you mean. He will very likely still need a reminder tomorrow though! LOL

Once in awhile, whenever I think of it, *I* go back through something like that and recap, making them tell me something about the major events and seeing where the discussion goes. Probably right before a read aloud since they're there and waiting. The SOTW cards and VP cards were fabulous for this. My kids would not pick it up on their own and "study" it. LOL

We just read and discussed, using the schedule in Build Your Library 8. That was a couple years ago. I have a foggy memory of a boardie saying they were underwhelmed by the TGs so I didn't bother. Fwiw, Googling with site:forums.welltrainedmind.com as a term is far more effective than the board search.

We used the Usborne book, but it was just an addition to our geography studies and not a main course. It could be a spine?

Yes, I have. It's a fabulous roots based vocabulary book. If you need actual spelling take a look at the 6 book. 7 and 8 are sturdy vocabulary books and only graze actual spelling instruction.

We did the textbook and workbook every day, and the enrichment book (more challenging work) randomly.

I used Guesthollow's free chem schedule with a grade spread, but not nearly that wide. If memory serves it'd best fit the middle two, the little one could maybe tag along absorbing whatever they absorb, but I wouldn't use this alone for an 8th grader.

We haven't been running for too long. Our dance life hogs the summer and after Labor Day seems to be the best we can start anymore. Our favorite "win" is actually loosy goosy American history. This really only works because I've been doing this long enough to have loads of resources on our shelves already; my current high schoolers have the benefit of two siblings going before them. The littlest two (2nd and 5th graders) started it with the Liberty's Kids cartoons, and all the high schoolers AND the graduate heard the theme song and plopped on the couch with them. We added books as we saw fit, some different movies for the bigger kids (John Adams, 1776, etc) and it just evolved from there. Instead of making a schedule I started a notebook where we track what we've done after we do it. Random books, lots of random movies, pulling a stack of them and letting them choose, rabbit trails this way and that way. The 9th and 10th graders say they're loving it and don't want a schedule. The little ones were slated for medieval history this year, but they're so carried up in this that I've quietly left it on the shelf. No flops really. Yet.

My oldest two had courses built around Great Courses series and extra reading, with the appropriate pieces of a world history textbook. It worked fabulously for them, they enjoyed it and did well. They're humanities kids. My third kiddo is not his older siblings. We created our own history of aviation course for 9th grade and it was his absolute favorite last year. We had a few main spines that came from different viewpoints, a pile of extra readers, some drawing books, some physics tie-ins. I took the time to draw up a formal schedule for him spreading all those sources out in small bites throughout the weeks, as per his preference. When I asked him what worked and what didn't worked for each subject at the beginning of this year, he had nothing negative to say about it and asked if he could take some of those books to his room instead of leaving them in the family bookcases. LOL