Thanks! 🩷 Zumdahl would be harder than Suchocki if I recall correctly? The Suchocki text is Conceptual Chemistry. Guesthollow is not secular but I'll look through the booklists. 👍 I've never heard of Libre Texts and it looks interesting. I'm not sure why CC never crossed my brain but he'd probably do well with them. He's definitely ready for some high school concepts but he's not ready for high school level work or dense textbooks. There seems to be such a huge gap in chemistry curricula between highschool and anything lower. Searching the board archives showed this same complaint. 🙃 He needs more hows and whys. I did see Radium Girls has a young reader version now! We already have Itch, The Disappearing Spoon, Napoleon's Buttons, The Periodic Kingdom, etc.

Nationalism, racism, xenophobia, and transphobia are not mere political views. He's teaching against the existence of one of my kids. I'm not paying him to teach math to any of them. 🙃

You might look at the spines for Build Your Library level 7, which is a world geography year. I'm planning on using the lit and readers with my youngest this coming year; he'll also be a 7th grader. I really like the look of DK's Where on Earth; Geography as You've Never Seen it Before for a supplement. There's a World Geography & Cultures textbook on it's way to me but I haven't seen a good sample yet. If we use it we'd just be reading and discussing like any other book and not just working through the textbook.

My youngest, rising 7th, is heading into chemistry this fall. We already have a pile of books to read through, though they were collected for kids who have already graduated. I'd love to hear of any more recent treasures! Or maybe there's a fabulous older one we missed. 🙂 We also have not settled on a secular spine. The middle school ones seem... shallow. But I'm not sure he's ready for the Suchocki text. The high school "big fat notebook" and DK's Chemistry Book are on my list to check out at B&N.

Maybe the Stewart English books? They were recommendations in older WTM editions. It's three slim, easy to use workbooks that put the grammar straight into writing. Here's book 1. The Stewart English Program: Book 1 Principles Plus . . . https://a.co/d/eALt7cS

Yeah... 🤢 DO was my plan for alg for my dysgraphic kid. This puts us back to Thinkwell. I agree that it's just the old school books and paper homeschoolers who are still mostly religious. There's a definite void trying to find secular lit based science ideas, blogs posts with book lists, or anything for middle and high school. Zillions for religious.

I have a 9th grader taking ancient history this year. For a spine we used the ancient portion of Ways of the World by Strayer, which is well written and enjoyable to read. It's more globally focused than the books my older kids used and I'm definitely keeping it for the youngest. We're not Usborne fans and Kingfisher didn't really grow with my kids. I do like the DK Smithsonian line with "Definitive Visual Guide" in the titles if I wanted an encyclopedia format for this age. Other resources we've used are: The Black History Book, A Concise History of Australia, An Indigenous People's History of the United States, Myths and Legends (DK), Vandiver's Classical Mythology, Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid lecture sets. We're moving into Voth's Great Mythologies of the World now. He's not the biggest fan of documentaries but I did get Lost Kingdoms of Africa in there. I listened to Barnhart's lectures on ancient North America, South America, and Mesoamerica myself. I've covered some of it orally with him but won't be assigning those lectures. And of course a pile of literature. Build Your Library level 10 was a starting place and we made the booklist our own. (This is more than a History credit fwiw. He'll get a credit for ancient world history and one for world mythology, and the lit portion of his English 9.)

The Gattegno books perhaps? You'd need some Cuisenaire Rods to go with them. Gattegno Mathematics Textbook 1 (Study of Numbers Up to 20) https://a.co/d/4lLFoCm Or view them online at https://issuu.com/eswi/docs/gattegno-math-textbook-1 .

My kids each picked their own. None of them matched, which I rather liked. 🙂

My kids read it in 8th, along with a Black authored book to compare/contrast.

I used GPB with two kids at the same time. One barely cared but took pride in rocking all the math and the other was pretty interested in chemistry but not great at sticking to a schedule if left to his own devices. It would not have worked well to just hand it to them. They didn't need me daily but often enough. I remember one spot about halfway through through the stronger math student was properly stuck and took us all down with her. 🤐 We used Crash Course and/or Boseman videos to get over that hump, iirc. I don't have a suitable replacement to offer though. The last ones aren't there yet. The updated CK12 book seems to get decent reviews? I don't have any experience with it. That would be a free download.

I like #4 too. Though Keys to isn't a bad idea. Jousting Armadillos could be fun there, and it's short! Prealgebra level. It's more about playing with math and deep understanding and isn't just another review of arithmetic. (Fwiw my kid who loved JA did not like the next levels nearly as well and asked to drop them. But they still think pretty fondly of JA.)

This was my first thought too. The online version has videos he can watch if the guidebook explanations aren't doing it for him. My youngest is wicked sharp at math and strongly prefers to work on his own unless stuck. The online Beast was fabulous for him. My only complaint was that he finished the series. 😜

Fwiw if the lesson volume of GftWTM is your only concern, it's not expected that you actually finish the book on the first pass. Every level will repeat the necessary content with different exercises, and you can work as far as you can this year, then pick up another level and go further the next year.

That looks fun! I tucked it into a list for fall.

We started because our oldest kids had special needs that would make a big classroom difficult enough they would be surviving instead of thriving. We kept going because it worked well for all of us. They were able to spend far more time with their dad than would have been possible otherwise. They could learn at their own pace and thrive with lessons taught the way they learn best. One kid went to a charter school in high school because it wasn't working for him or us any longer. Our relationship with him was more important than keeping him homeschooled. Our only regret was waiting as long as we did to make the switch. 🙂 The next ones homeschooled until dual enrollment. The youngest ones are thriving and have zero desire to attend a school. They wouldn't be able to dance as much as they do otherwise and that's their passion. There's no way I'd send them to the public school in our town with the ridiculous political climate. If the time ever comes we'd look for good charters.

For lit guides for more modern novels check out Teachers Pay Teachers. It's basically an academic Etsy, so double check reviews and samples, but it's loaded with treasures. www.teacherspayteachers.com

I didn't see a level or grade. Build Your Library has everything but the worksheets, and not all of them have a timeline. I handed my kids the schedule page (after going through it in advance and scratching off some entries and writing extra notes), and they used it as a checklist, marking off assignments as they're completed. Some levels we did everything and some we skipped more. The lit and readers can be tied to the science and history so we rarely skipped those.

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That looks interesting. Thanks for sharing! He's read through a few books around that level this year and done well with them.

Know of any gems? Especially for physical geography, but anything really. 🙂 I'm shopping for secular geography for a rising 7th grader. He is dysgraphic, so focusing on map drawing or making travel brochures would go over like a lead balloon. He loves good non-fiction books and videos. Searches have mostly turned up supplements, dead links, and some good book lists. We'll likely use the readers/lit from Build Your Library level 7, which will only cover cultural. The rest of the level is pretty meh.

I haven't asked the kid yet so this is subject to change. English: Patterns for College Writing and diy US lit Math: probably the next Burger textbook, it's working well this year and I don't want to jinx it 😜 Social Studies: Oh Freedom 2 for 1870-present US history Science: crawl under a rock and avoid it? It's been a rough year. 😂 I might need to revisit lewelma's physics for poets. 🫣 Language: Japanese Electives: history of rock 'n roll, anime drawing

Miller Levine worked well for three of mine. It wasn't over the top amazing, but it did the job and they learned loads. 🙂 None of them were heading into STEM fields. We used the textbook and workbook and did our own thing for labs, mostly picked from the Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments. No experience with the other one. We definitely wanted secular for biology.

I take it on a year by year basis. My 6th and 9th graders are both doing mama-made history this year. We've read piles of books and watched plenty of documentaries. I wouldn't have minded purchasing a curriculum for them but we were disappointed with the available options. 🤷‍♀️ Last year they both followed purchased curricula, one for a geography year and one for US history. We'll narrow down next year when it's time. At this point I think the younger one will likely have a hybrid of BYL and mom's diy. The older one will get a purchased US history (Oh Freedom volume 2), which is piles of books.

Yes! My teen does as well. I tried a science GC with them earlier in the year but they hated it. Vandiver has set their expectations pretty high. 😆