We’ve always set aside equal amounts monthly. How much varies along with our income & needs. We count “electives” (outsourced classes & lessons) as part of this expense, but “extracurriculars” separately.

DS is entering 6th grade: Language Arts: WWS I, leftover bits of MCT Voyage (1/2 of CE II, Search trilogy), misc literature & matchbook summary posters (by DS’ request) Math: Finish AOPS PreAlgebra, then either a fun extra unit or roll straight into Intro to Algebra. Science: RSO Biology 2, Sex Ed History: BookShark American History Computer Science: Intro to Microcontrollers Extracurriculars: Scouts BSA, FIRST Lego League, Violin (possibly youth orchestra), Art, Programming, Tennis, PE

They also have supplemental Puzzle Books for levels 2-4 just for fun 🙂

My 2E DS11 completed RightStart A-C, Miquon Orange, Singapore IP 2-3, & Living Math Ancients in the PK/K years, then Beast Academy 3-5 & now AOPS PreAlgebra. We’ve also enjoyed a number of mathy novels, games, & supplements along the way. BA / AOPS have been a great fit for him. He isn’t particularly fast, so we use the books at home. He appreciates the discovery method & has developed an excellent frustration tolerance. He’s definitely well-suited to fewer, more rigorous problems. I don’t know that he’ll ever move quickly enough for AOPS’ text-based classes, but after the Intro series of texts I plan to have him take the ones offered here on WTMA.

I typically assign a chapter - or multiple, if chapters are short. In the rare event of a super long chapter I might split one across two days. Something that really helps here is to have DS read in the car en route to extracurricular activities; may as well get it done then while you’d otherwise be bored! He enjoys reading, though.

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Language Arts: WWS I. Previously we’ve used IEW, MCT, Killgallon, & NaNoWriMo. Hoping to streamline for middle school. Not sure whether we’ll continue NaNo; if so, it’ll be in addition to our regularly-scheduled composition, rather than taking its place. Math: Continuing AOPS PreAlgebra + “Fun Math Fridays” (games, Orbiting with Logic, Murderous Maths, Numberphile, etc). Science: RSO Biology 2 History: Bookshark I - American History. We’ll return to BYL the following year, but neither of us is interested in a 2-year US History course. This seemed simpler than condensing BYL 5/6, & I think it’ll pair well with WWS. Electives: Intro to Microcontrollers (Arduino), possibly Creative Writing? (NaNo + poetry) Extracurriculars: Scouts, Violin, FIRST Lego League (robotics), programming, art classes, board game club, tennis, PE.

FIRST Tech Challenge uses Pitsco Tetrix kits, which can be purchased here: https://www.pitsco.com/Shop/TETRIX-Robotics/&TXredir=1 There are various competition-specific kits as well as individual pieces available, as well as the accessories you’d need for programming & control. ETA: This is an unofficial “getting started” guide for novice teams. Some aspects won’t apply to someone not participating in the competition, but a good chunk is useful basic knowledge for anyone getting started with the types of systems that are used in competition robotics. https://gm0.org/en/latest/

Ramona Quimby: She always seems to get into mischief / trouble, but she was never malicious or trying to be difficult. She just saw the world differently. Hiro Hamada (Big Hero 6): Dislikes the idea of “hard work” on academics but is very talented & when something captures his attention he totally dives in, a la “I have GOT to go to that nerd school!” Seth (FableHaven): Mischievous, curious to a fault, slightly stubborn, very caring but sometimes gullible / taken advantage of, learns from his mistakes. Tulin (Zelda): Ready, FIRE!, aim… 😅 (impulsiveness)

Chiming in to say my DS (11 in Feb) is moving at a similar pace. We exclusively homeschool, so this is his full-time curriculum. It’s likely it’ll take him 1.5 academic years to complete, so I’d say your son’s pacing as an after-schooler is excellent. It’s funny that you mention the writing, as mine has been writing quite a bit as well. His style is less verbal / conversational than your son’s, but for chapters 1-2 he wrote out every single Problem *and* every Exercise. It slowed him down quite a bit but developed good habits in regard to keeping his work organized, working systematically, & showing all steps. I think it’s a valuable process. In Chapter 3 he switched to only writing out Exercises unless he felt a particular Problem might come in handy to complete the Exercises (such as a table of the first x squares). BTW, Alcumus (mentioned by @quietgarden) does still exist & is still free. We haven’t used it yet, but I plan to have my DS work through the chapters he’s completed this year over the summer to keep things fresh, then probably finish it out next school year after completing the textbook.

Target audience & overall length. A novel contains a minimum of 50k words & has a target reading audience (not necessarily listening audience) of fluent readers. A chapter book has 5k-50k words & has a target reading audience of transitional readers - or is intended to be quick / light for fluent readers.

Thank you! These are all great ideas. Right now he’s a little bummed because he was aiming for a middle grade novel, but at 7-8k words, practically speaking it’s looking more like a chapter book. It was originally drafted as the first of a trilogy, so now he’s mulling over the idea of moving forward after this revision to create a single novel from the parts (he’s read a few structured like this). He is doing well so far with looking critically at the dialogue & not taking critique personally, so fingers crossed the process continues to go smoothly. I will be super impressed if he follows through with it!

DS participates in NaNoWriMo’s Young Writer’s Project (YWP) annually. This year he has decided that, rather than embark upon a new novel, he would like to revise his work from last year & “publish” it. This change was made on the fly & is something we’ve never attempted, so I thought I’d crowdsource ideas a bit! 🙂 We began by discussing his end goal: whether he wanted to publish only for himself, a few copies for friends & family, or for the mass market - as well as what each level of publication would entail. During that discussion we covered the different levels of revision: proofreading, copy editing, line editing, & developmental editing. His work is being proofread / copy edited while getting typed up, so we are starting our discussions from a line & developmental editing level. We worked through the YWP Workbook prior to writing, so his story does have a clear plot with reasonably fleshed-out characters and settings. He hasn’t looked at it in over a year, so he’s coming to it with fresh eyes to identify awkward or unclear areas & we are reading it aloud as we go, so he can hear the flow. Those will be covered in small bites as the full story gets typed up. We’ve started with dialogue. The YWP has a section on dialogue that outlines the differences between casual daily speech vs how authors use dialogue in writing, so we are going through each block of dialogue in his book to ensure it’s advancing the plot, revealing something about his characters, &/or building tension. Next (or maybe alternately with the dialogue) we’ll work on show, don’t tell to further draw the reader into his scenes. Eventually we’ll do a sweeping check to ensure he stuck to his plot & that loose ends are tied up. What else? ETA: We will dedicate approximately an hour per school day for 5-6wks to this project, which is what I had originally set aside for NaNoWriMo.