I know this is an old thread, but I am having a similar dilemma. Does anyone have anythingvto add? Any updates or new opinions?

Thank you for the sympathy and the comments :) . My husband works in the ER too! I should have mentioned the kids I am planning this for are my grade 1 boy, grade 3 girl and grade 5 boy. I am planning to do oral narrations with all of them and sometimes written for the oldest.

I am planning my curriculum for next year. I am thinking of using guest hollow ancient history or wayfarers. I really like the idea of literature based learning. I just worry about sticking to the schedule. My husband works shift Work and we go out of town a lot and host out of town guests often. So whenever I try to use a pre-planned daily schedule it never works out. I am thinking about just reading a chapter of SOTW every history day and then letting the kids read a bit from a book of their choice (from the wayfarers / guest hollow list). We also often go on road trips and listen to audio books, so I was thinking of listening to SOTW vol.1 all at the beginning of the year and then on history days just letting them read whichever books from the list that they want. I would read some aloud too. Do you think this would work? Do you foresee any problems? Would doing this work well for science too rather than following the daily schedule (again, either wayfarers or guest hollow for science)? Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Real science 4 kids has an astronomy book you could use,but it is not a full year curriculum. I would probably use it all year and supplement with lots of I retesting books on the topic

On the Guest Hollow website, there are several lists of science books for different ages, and they all look pretty good.

I have also been looking for something similar to Sonlight, and I found a couple of options that I am really excited about. One is Wayfarers, which is good for preschool through grade 12, and you could definitely combine a 7 year old and a nine year old for history and science. Another is Guest Hollow. They offer several free curricula for history, geography and science which would work well for combining your children. The book choices look great too! Here are the websites: http://barefootmeandering.com/site/wayfarers/ http://guesthollow.com/homeschool/curriculum.html

Thank you for all the input. I am likely going to use a combination of wayfarers booklist and build your library booklist. I don't really even want to look at bookshark anymore. We actually used Kinza Academy about nine years ago for kindergarten. I haven't looked at it for a while. I will have to go check out their new website. Thanks for letting me know about it :)

Thank you for all the input. I am likely going to use a combination of wayfarers booklist and build your library booklist. I don't really even want to look at bookshark anymore. We actually used Kinza Academy about nine years ago for kindergarten. I haven't looked at it for a while. I will have to go check out their new website. Thanks for letting me know about it :)

Yes, that makes sense. Thank you for the info. Hmm, if they are owned by the same people, that still makes me uncomfortable. And it makes me wonder if their book choices (especially in fifth grade which is a lot about Muslim countries) would be biased against Muslims as well.

I was seriously considering going with Bookshark's reading with history for next year for some of my kids. So, I was looking for reviews of Bookshark and came across a thread on here that mentioned the fact that Sonlight has a campaign to convert Muslims to Chrisitianity and that a large percentage of their profits goes to this campaign. I would never support a company that does this. Are Bookshark and Sonlight the same company? Ie. by supporting Bookshark, would I also be supporting Sonlight and their campaign to convert Muslims to Christianity? I find this whole thing shocking and very disappointing.

We really like popular mechanics for kids.

Thanks for all the comments. This is very helpful!

Which program do you prefer for grammar and why? I am planning for next year for grades 3, 5, and 7 and I am having a hard time making a decision.

I am too ! :)

Your struggles with your son sound a lot like mine. I have registered him for one of the Well Trained Mind Academy online classes for writing next year and I am also considering registering for a grammar course too. I am hoping this will give him some accountability and make him answer to someone other than me for a change.

I am having the same issue here. I would love hear ideas. So far, I signed my son up for one WTM academy course. I also looked at Oak Meadow online. The main issue is that these online programs can be very expensive.

Great! That is what I was hoping to hear. Thank you!

I started a thread trying to compare ELTL with WWE/WWS. I want to ask this in a different way though. I was planning to use WWE for writing for my grades 3,5 and 7 kids next year. I have been looking for a grammar program as well, and I really like the looks of ELTL. ( I just ordered term 1 of Wayfarers ancients too). Since ELTL is writing and grammar, would it be sufficient to just use it alone, or would you recommend also using WWE along with it. I think it is three days per week so I was thinking of doing WWE on the other two days and stretching each WWE over 2 years (2 days per week instead of 4). However, if ELTL is a good writing program on its own, then I'd rather just do that without adding in the WWE ( most of my kids hate writing). Any advice or experience is appreciated! :)

Yes, I do think this is the case. I know he needs to work on the basics more, so I am trying to figure out how to do that without getting even further behind. Thank you for the suggestion, you totally understand where I'm coming from. :)

I used New American Cursive with my second grader and we liked it a lot. It was easy to use, and I think it looks pretty nice.

Thank you! I will look into both the Key to series and Lials BCM. I have never heard of Lials BCM before, and it sounds good.

I am thinking of using English Lessons Through Literature next year for some of my children. I am wondering if I should still use WWE along with ELTL or if there is enough writing in ELTL that I wouldn't need to use WWE also. And, how do the writing lessons in ELTL compare to those in WWE? When the children are finished WWE 3, I want to be able to register them in Expository Writing 1 at the WTM online academy (equivalent to WWS 1). Do you think if they finished ELTL level 3 that would be equivalent to finishing WWE 3, and they would be prepared for WWS 1? Thank you!

I have a son who is just finishing grade 8 and he is not yet ready for pre algebra. He just does not like to do his work, and has been getting more and more behind in his math. I wanted to register him for the WTM academy pre algebra online class starting in September, but I can see from the placement test that he is not prepared for pre algebra work. He does not know how to multiply or divide fractions or decimals for example, or how to add or subtract fractions. Starting grade nine next year, he should be starting algebra. I want him to at least be able to do pre algebra. Do you have any suggestions for how I could get him caught up quickly to at least a pre algebra level? Thank you!