Eons ago I really wanted LoF to work for my oldest kid. It flopped. Hard. My experience with him and the younger kids was none of them could learn new concepts well with LoF, but it could be an entertaining review for some of them.

Ancient history can count as their world history. 🙂 None of my highschoolers did a proper history rotation. When the next schools nearly all expect to see one world, one US history, and one government/economics, the rotation didn't make sense. My most recent graduate did history of aviation (world), US history, gov/econ. One of the older ones did a year of ancient world history and medieval world history (because he just really liked them), then a year of US and one of gov/econ. I used Oak Meadow for a year of high school geography with my now Marine. She really enjoyed it. They may have redone them since then. We had a standard textbook and an OM guide that scheduled the textbook, and gave several options for output at the end of the week. She could choose if she wanted a more creative project or a simple essay.

Something of an update for anyone following: Build Your Library's level 7 update with zoology has been delayed. Textbooks: The Integrated Principles of Zoology by Hickman is solid, dense, and very high school level. Zoology by Miller also seems high school level, but much more approachable for younger or lower interest students. Having a high interest 5th grader and an always indifferent 8th grader, I'm going with the Miller text. Neither of them will be working straight through the textbook, but we'll use particular sections in age appropriate bites. Encyclopedias: Animal: The Definitive Visual Guide to the World's Wildlife (by Smithsonian) and the National Geographic Animal Encyclopedia are conveniently organized similarly. After the intro sections the animal groups are in the same order. My 8th will use the DVG and my 5th will use the NG, and I think we'll roll the rest of the books around these two. Other: I've collected a ridiculous amount of Scientist in the Field books. Zoology for Kids. Marine Science for Kids. Attenborough. Some Sy Montgomery titles (especially for the older one). Netflix and Disney+ have piles of documentaries. This is not counting literature tie-ins, which I put in their lit piles instead of scheduling with zoology. Build Your Library's "Darwin and Evolution" unit study looks great for these ages and I'll give it a mention for others (also uses Calpurnia Tate!). We decided to just go through Evolution: The Story of Life on Earth (Hosler) instead, which is a graphic book, to start the year off. Making an animal field guide in Google Slides is another output idea for those who think they're allergic to pencils. (Mine!)

You can get a basic workbook for the Crash Course videos on Amazon too. 🙂

Just addressing this part; I couldn't do better than others have with the rest. My oldest graduates used CW. You really do need all three texts. The core came first and taught how to teach the program. Then the workbooks were created later to make it much more user friendly, and the TMs are only what you need to use the workbooks and it links you back to the core regularly. It's not independent nor written so the child can run it.

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I really enjoyed using Writing With a Thesis with younger high school kids. Patterns for College Writing was a good follow up. My recent graduate really enjoyed They Say I Say this year. He's a classic "why use five paragraphs when I can sum it up in five syllables" kind of kid. He grinned big when he saw fill in the blanks. 😆 (This one is or was a strong recommendation in TWTM.)

I'm in that stage with my youngest. He just finished the last volume of Story of the World. (*sniff) For fifth grade this year he'll use Oh Freedom from Woke Homeschooling (US history from the non-euro perspective). Loosely planning he'll do Build Your Library level 7 (world geography) for 6th and level 8 (history of science) for 7th. Or if he has a random strong interest for next year or one of those years we could bump these levels around as needed.

There aren't any that I'm aware of, but I found them fairly obvious if I'd read the book beforehand.

An average kid with previous exposure to basic grammar would be fine in FLL level 4. If this is his first grammar year or you're worried about 4 moving too fast he could totally start at 3. There's really no reason to need literary terms in 5th grade but that one is more gentle. It's a Scholastic book. If you're leaning toward more organic literature with them, maybe instead get the book Deconstructing Penguins for you to read. 🙂

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I think I'd reach for Writing With Skill level 1, which is a four days a week book. Then I'd use the unscheduled fifth day to do basic prompts and maybe Wordsmith.

I don't use reading curricula with mine beyond learning how to read. We just read high quality children's literature and discuss it. If you really must use something, Teaching Literary Elements by Tara McCarthy is a better fit for a fifth grader than Figuratively Speaking. 🙂 I use Figuratively Speaking with my 7th and 8th graders generally. A younger kid surely could do the activities, but they'll get more out of it at an older age. Mine also don't have a separate vocabulary work. My oldest kids had some but it felt like busywork combined with everything else they did. We did enjoy English From the Roots Up, but it was the catalyst that had us starting Latin and it was shelved. 😄 My rising 5th grader will use: Spelling: Megawords Grammar: First Language Lessons 4 (we skipped it this year in favor of light review, so now we're going back to it) Writing: Writing & Rhetoric from Classical Academic Press Literature: a pile of really good books to read and discuss, many tied to his history and his science but plenty are just good books He will be starting his first year of Latin with Latin for Children level A. I did consider Junior Analytical Grammar instead of FLL, but I'd rather have the small lessons throughout the year for this boy this year. JAG takes a bit longer daily, but only lasts for 11 weeks (22 I think if you do both levels). (Otherwise he'll be in Beast Academy for math, Oh Freedom for history, and a homemade zoology course for science.)

Math: when she finishes precalc, something for calc that doesn't involve me ✌️ English: diy, another Shakespeare and... no lit ideas yet 😆 She's already done British, US, and world. She's hinted that she wouldn't mind a Shakespeare based year. They Say I Say for composition. Economics: Crash Course with the workbook and extra readers on the side (very "git'r done") Half her days will be dual enrolled at the culinary program she's had her sights on for years. That's it. I'll be going from five kids home full time to two and a half next year. I might need my own classes. 😄

Mine all came from Amazon and eBay. There are bum sellers on any of them though. In general avoiding sellers with low counts and low ratings helps. I also avoid sellers with cut and pasted descriptions of what may or may not be wrong with the item and favor the descriptions that appear to have been custom written for that exact copy. Obviously this isn't foolproof, but I buy loads of books this way and total duds aren't common. 🙂

I'd start by ruling out a learning disability too. ✌️ Otherwise, I did use Writing Road to Reading on a fast track with an 8th grader (older... 4th edition maybe). It's very phonics based. There are flashcards to memorize and then we worked down the spelling lists, marking each word as we went. I jotted down any words he didn't do well on and we started every day with that list before starting down the big list again. I let his ability set the speed and ignored the suggested schedule. After a few months his spelling was light-years better and he cared more about getting them right. It was parent intensive the entire time but so worthwhile for that kid.

I can't think of a full program with both of those, but I don't use literature courses below high school. We read and discuss high quality children's literature. The elementary Don't Forget to Write book has fun creative writing assignments. Each lesson stands alone so you could easily pick and choose your favorites. STEM to Story from the same publisher could likely work for those ages too.

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 books, print and organize all the worksheets, make schedules if needed, read the literature, and just pour yourself into getting to know everything they're going to use. When the fall hits you'll be a more efficient and confident teacher ready to hit the ground running.

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 replacing characters with cartoon characters, but it sparked something. As his rewrites improved he started getting irritated with the boundaries of the curriculum, which had him making his own on the side. It was a process.

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 drawings and designing fonts. His writing being good enough to not need redone was his only goal at 4th. #4 would have whipped out paper for anything. Random fairy tale, food menus, names, copied fancy writing, tried to write pieces from memory, etc. #5 is 13yo now. She has a fancy leather journal she fills with "enderman" notes. It's a different alphabet from a Minecraft character. The pages could be her brother's full name or a random paragraph. They're just all in enderman.

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 aversion to a pencil of any of my crew. His Build Your Library schedules copywork 3 times a week. He seriously checks it first thing to see how many lines today has. If it's not a small one he staggers a couple lines between his readings so he doesn't have to do it all at once, and he literally hisses like the cat when it's larger than usual. 🤷‍♀️😂 (I let him type for his actual writing lessons, which are still fairly small, but huge compared to what they'd be if I made him write it out.)

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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. 🤣