I haven’t found much that I’m thrilled with, honestly. It seems everything trends really young or much older. RSO Chem is light for a 5th grader, but with some tweaks it could do & hopefully it’ll be bulked up naturally by your 8th grader using ACS & immersing the family in a year of chemistry books, videos, & discussions. We’ll be skipping the songs & condensing RSOs Periodic Table, Element Flip Book, & Element Book into one bigger, ongoing activity - a “Building a Periodic Table” project that produced an almost 3.5’x2’ tabbed poster. Then fill in the missing elements with either Theodore Gray’s books or Ellen McHenry’s Elements. Home Science Tools has everything you’ll need that isn’t a grocery item (there’s quite a bit of “kitchen chemistry” stuff).

We’re in the midst of the Middle Ages & are going to Medieval Times next week! Such a fun experience! ⚔️🛡👑

We are incredibly fortunate to be in a position where we will eventually be able to travel pretty frequently. It’s taken a long time & a lot of work to get there, but we’re really looking forward to it! I’m going to steal @Slache’s format above. In-State 1. Dallas World Aquarium. We plan to visit next month since DS is currently studying marine biology! 2. Moody Gardens Galveston. This has a trio of massive pyramid-shaped buildings: an aquarium, a rainforest habitat (with butterfly enclosure), & a STEM discovery center. I hope to plan a weekend trip at some point to stay on-site so we’ll have time to do all three! 3. Big Bend National Park. This is going to be one looooong road trip, so we’ll probably plan to go when we can camp for several nights. I’d love to go in early spring to see the wildflowers bloom & do some stargazing! Nationally 1. Washington D.C. There is such an incredible amount of history here; so many museums / exhibits & the majority don’t even cost! 2. New York City, NY. Particularly Ellis Island & I’d love to see a show on Broadway! 3. Yellowstone National Park. We hope to see many more parks, but if we had to choose just one it’d be Yellowstone. Internationally 1. Rome, Italy. We were all set to go on a 2wk vacation here. Hotel with a view of the coliseum. Gladiator training. Cooking classes. Then we found out we’d be moving back Stateside with only a month’s notice & had to cancel everything. 😭 2. Galápagos Islands, Ecuador. This is the one place would professors weren’t able to work into the college trip I took. An incredible destination for studying high-level biology; especially evolutionary biology &/or zoology. 3. Chiang Mai, Thailand. I would love to be present for the Spring Lantern Festival, &then take a sleeper train to the Elephant Nature Park in Kuet Chang which is regarded as a premier global elephant rescue / retirement sites. It is only for observing; the elephants do not “perform” & are not ridden.

I am waiting with bated breath for this!! DS has always needed a clean, organized, quiet learning space. He struggles with maintaining his attention if we take lessons on the go, though he is slowly becoming more adaptable. We can now take a chapter book, a review game, a video, or an easier workbook on the road. It may take him a bit longer to get there, but I would really like to be able to take school on the road more!

I was very descriptive & explicitly mentioned that the focus would be on mathy art, tabletop games, hands-on projects & group activities. No mention of any competitions. ETA Anyway, it seems we’ve gotten decidedly off-topic. Back to curriculum trends… What are the biggest changes people have seen in homeschooling middle school? I hear quite a lot from parents of elementary ages, since that’s where DS is & HSing in general I think trends younger. The high school kids seem to be largely independent & most dual-enroll at least part-time (many full-time) at the CC. I don’t hear much about the in-between set.

Not knocking anything; simply stating where I am? I’m sure there are people, I just haven’t found them among the elementary set. The university math circles are ages 12+. I absolutely plan to reach out at that point, but it would be nice to find something similar for the several interim years. 🤷🏻‍♀️ ETA: While I’d prefer in-person, I have found an online course that blends DS’ interests in both Mathematics & Poetics, which we’ll give a try this fall. If that goes well there are a few other mathematical offerings on that platform that he may enjoy & they aren’t age-restricted.

I used LOE Foundations & my very active / kinesthetic kiddo had an absolute blast with it! I loved how hands-on it was. I did not love their approach to spelling, though; the word lists felt very disjointed. We ended up abandoning that portion & using AAS once he had completed LOE Foundations. He blasted through Level 1-3 the first year & is now working steadily through one level per year. It’s quick, easy, & gets the job done with clear improvement in his spelling beyond the lessons themselves (in independent writing, etc). ETA: Sorry, didn’t realize this was an older thread. I’ll leave our experience in case the new poster (or anyone else) finds it helpful.

You are not alone. I added one more book to my box of stuff to pass on. Friday there’s a “Swap ‘Til You Drop” that coincides with Park Day so hopefully some progress will be made then… ETA: I was super excited to find Killgallon materials on my local Freebie group, though! We already have SC for Elem & Middle, but now I have Story Grammar for Elem, Getting Started with SC for Middle, Grammar for Middle, & SC for High School as well.

We’re in Texas.

Nope. For a couple thousand per class I could enroll him in the local AOPS Academy. He might meet a few mathy kids, & would certainly meet mathematically-inclined adults… but he’d have to drop soccer, tennis, swim, and Scouts to do it. That’s our entire annual extracurricular budget. It’s as much as (if not more than) we spend on an entire year of curricula, books, games, & supplies.

@stripe Unfortunately, our experience with non-mathy homeschool moms in real life has been largely the same. I am in the largest inclusive HSing group in our metro area - over 150 families. I looked into putting together an elementary math circle / math club. Inquired about kids who enjoy math. Asked at park days, on field trips, via the message boards. Crickets. Not one reply. Outside of that, in a FB group covering an even larger area, I managed to find a whopping two people whose kids might be interested.

Thanks for linking; I really enjoyed reading through this! I love these forums. Here our structure of learning primarily at home, with a parent actively involved, using primarily physical materials is pretty standard. Locally, it’s less common (even before Covid).

Yep. I was “cured” of wanting to become a veterinarian at age 9 when one of our kittens had an unfortunate encounter with a crayfish & lost an eye… My own DS8 has no idea what he might one day be interested in & absolutely HATES being asked. He doesn’t like being asked to pick a favorite color, let alone a favorite career! ETA: That said, we did have a fun one afternoon playing with a “career aptitude” questionnaire. I could see that being an enjoyable exercise to repeat from time to time.

This looks fabulous! Saving for our next romp through the Middle Ages 🙂

If you wanted an expansion upon your approach from this past year & literature-based study with nature exploration was a good fit, you could look into the One Small Square series. They explore a variety of biomes above, on, & beneath the ground within a one-cubic-meter space with highly detailed illustrations & tips for replicating the study yourself, if that biome is accessible to you.

I tend to favor having a “spine” curriculum that provides a general roadmap for exploring a topic, but leaves plenty of room for me to tweak & add. My DS is not suited to a literature-based approach; he enjoys books (I believe he’s read every Magic School Bus ever written!) but also has an intense need for interactive, hands-on learning. Real Science Odyssey has been a good fit for us. If a topic is something DS is particularly interested in & already has significant background knowledge of, it can be on the light side - that was the case for us with Astronomy this year - but even then I prefer building off a framework to starting from the ground up. We’ll be using Chemistry 1 for 3rd grade. There are introductory readings, labs, demonstrations, & hands-on activities. We’ll add additional books, videos, & activities to supplement. I’ve purchased several chemistry-themed tabletop games, for example, as gameschooling is a big part of our homeschool culture. I also acquired a couple sets of Molymods, for when we get to molecules. I’m really looking forward to it!

There are certainly some solid free materials out there & I’m always happy to take a look at them. MEP (Mathematics Enhancement Programme) comes to mind as one that’s complete, well-organized, & solid. Many free curricula are religious, which does not suit us but works for many. There’s also a LOT of junk to sift through. For me personally, it’s often a matter of financial cost vs time cost. I’m fine with printing things off, but if I have to search all over to piece together a multitude of resources, or if the information within the resource itself is presented in a way that is disorganized or hard to follow, I’m not interested. I tend to use freebies to supplement, but for core curricula would rather pay more to get something well-organized & already put together. I realize I’m speaking from a place of privilege in this regard, though - that is not an option for everyone. That’s not to say I choose to purchase a bunch of shiny pre-packaged materials & don’t do any legwork. There are absolutely resources I prefer to recreate or package myself to save money, or that I find beautiful but would never spend as much as they’re asking for! It’s all a balance.

We just moved again at the New Year (move #18 for me) so we don’t have much curricula, books, or supplies to purge. What I do need to get a handle on is whittling down completed materials & putting together DS’ portfolios. We kept schooling straight through last summer due to the pandemic, so now I have two grades worth of material to sort through 😬

I wonder if you’re expecting a bit too much ownership of the exploration for their ages. Mathy games / puzzles / art projects / novels, are things we do together. Aside from initiating mathy conversations, he doesn’t just do this stuff independently. If I didn’t provide the materials & invite him to join me, the play largely wouldn’t happen. He isn’t that driven. He genuinely enjoys it while we’re doing it, asks to continue the novels once we’ve begun them, is disappointed if I try to schedule a “break” from BA, etc... but he’s still 8. Left entirely to his own devices he’d spend all day playing video games & chasing his friends with Nerf guns 😆 The same goes for his interest in poetics. He loves word play. We read poems every day & he balks if I try to exclude them. He quotes Carroll with some regularity & is slowly memorizing The Walrus & the Carpenter. He enjoys literary devices - especially puns & alliteration. But he isn’t reading books of poetry (or writing works of his own) in his free time. If you set up a math game, present a logic puzzles to solve together, leave an interesting problem up on a white board, etc... do they enjoy that? Do they like working on the math you have curated for them, or could they take it or leave it?

I’m afraid that I have to disagree with your comment that “anything will work” for a kid who enjoys playing with & pondering mathematical concepts. What drove us to find BA is that other programs (good, solid, well-respected programs) were not working for him. It didn’t matter how much I accelerated or condensed them, they just weren’t interesting. He went from being good at, but “meh” about, math to LOVING it with the right fit. He didn’t always play with concepts the way he does now or seek out other resources. That came after finding BA. It got him excited in a way nothing else had been able to. I think that’s what many who sing BA’s praises are reacting to. Not that it’s the best thing out there for every kid, or every mathy kid, or whatever. But that for some kids it changes the game entirely.

Sorry if that was unclear, I meant to quote only the ETA regarding binary (confirming that you were, in fact, correct). I mentioned the coverage of combinatorics simply because I know you personally haven’t used the upper levels of BA, & I wasn’t sure whether what was covered there was what you would have expected to be covered or not (either more or less). ETA: I will say that combinatorics are not, to my knowledge, one of the topics that is continually reinforced throughout later levels in the same way that some other topics are. If that student ever only worked through that one section & never touched on the topic again I’m not surprised that they don’t recall much.

Yes, BA introduces both binary (4A) & basic combinatorics (4B) like Fence Post Problems, Tree Diagrams, & Venn Diagrams. Those were some of DS’ favorite topics - right up there with the Logic chapter (4B) which had him doing Truth Tellers & Liars puzzles & playing Minesweeper 😅

DS8 has LOVED the Blasting off with Logic book this year. Great variety of puzzles with each section building in challenge level from one page to the next. He found Mind Benders just “meh”. I didn’t love that you have to assume gender based off of names in nearly every puzzle, especially since many were either unisex or uncommon!

My DS did Fable in 1st. It fell firmly into the “just okay” realm for him. He enjoyed the first half, but lost interest. We circled back at the end of the year & he completed it but wasn’t interested in getting the next level.

I’d like to take a look, if you don’t mind! DS was doing a puzzle with squares today (a year & a half after BA 3B) & was able to recall / use this approach, so it seems to have made an impression!