I am late to this discussion but wanted to mention a book that helped my daughter, "Mistakes that worked" by Charlotte Jones. She got it for Christmas and I never said a word about it, just let her explore without my pressure. She started reading it and not very far into it, she was running to me with all of the interesting things that famous folks had messed up. But yes to everything above. There are some great ideas there. And sympathy for meltdowns and encouragement.

I just wanted to chime in bc it is likely that your gifted kiddo is bored. Mine needs constant curriculum changes and way less repetition than an average child. If i ask her to do too much of one thing she procrastinates or zooms through making careless errors. If i switch things up regularly i get attention to detail and good work. We skip over lots of stuff and let her have tons of free time. She fills it reading and recently started writing a novel. Lol. As long as i limit screen time, she learns all by herself. Good luck!

We are on book 6 or maybe even 8 in the "Dragon" series. No romance so far that has triggered a need to discuss anything. My girls are just turned 8 and 4. I have only read the first two in Percy and no issues there, but i think it has the potential to have some.

Writing and Rhetoric by CAP sounds right up her alley.

I read Deconstructing Penguins. Very useful ideas. We discuss literature here and there for comprehension. We hit the library every 3 weeks. I pick a few books from the Mensa list for her. I ask her to pick a few books of her own, including non-fiction. DD is a very motivated reader, so I do not worry much. I work in a few Arrow editions each year (Bravewriter). I bought the Mud Trilogy for later this year. I am going to go investigate The Wolf and the Octopus and The Reading Detective now!

I am using it with my 7 yo this year. We are also using RS4K as a spine. I am pulling in several other books from the library and The Elements by Theodore Gray and Janice VanCleave's experiment book. I have a minor in chemistry and I am absolutely amazed at the wealth of online resources for chemistry now! I think my peers in chem 101 might have had an easier time of it with all of the videos for explanation. Check out Kahn academy, guest hollow and there was a thread on chem videos recently by Hunter.

My experience in public school did not include much grammar beyond the basics. I don't recall ever needing it on any upper level exams. I scored a 5 on my AP English exam. I have a hard time convincing myself that it is critical. I imagine that we will drop it as soon as DD demonstrates that she can write well. I am very interested to see what others say.

I have gotten the Prismacolor 24 pack 3 years running. They are so nice. I had no idea that quality was important in colored pencils until i tried these! Kids have never broken 1 and they get manhandled.

Thank you fir the NBC link. We are doing a chemistry study this year and this will be a fun addition.

My DS is the same. IF you hit a plateau, move sideways. Examples from my experience: FLL and WWE were way too much repetition for my kiddo. We jumped to MCT and W&R Fable. She wasn't ready to handle the writing in Fable so we did a bunch of it orally. There are plenty of work-arounds. We are doing a huge in depth chemistry study this year because we are hitting the ceiling with grammar (I do not want to take lots of time to teach something NOW that might be easier if I just wait). We are doing 6 novel studies (i would estimate this is 5th grade level, and she is 7). Learn typing. Start Spanish. Do logic work. Philosophy. Try some Bravewriter projects like a photography journal. Explore TedEd talks. Go off the path! Holes will exist, but they are so easily filled if you have an accelerated learner. My goal is to keep her excited, interested, engaged and challenged. Good Luck and stop worrying until there is actually a problem!

GrammarLand, MCT (we did over 1/2 of level 1 last year) and DailyGrams.

I have been working from the teacher's manual only. So I would say no.

If you have any specific questions, i would be happy to help. My daughter was 6/7 last year so a similar age to your oldest (if your signature is up to date). We did MCT for me, i was very drawn to it. It is clever and pretty!

I have been very happy with the poetry books by MCT. I ended up getting a scaffolding workbook for poems by scholastic to supplement. My daughter is excellent at reading poetry and enjoys it, but she needs more support at the creation. We use Music of the Hemispheres at our Bravewriter poetry "Tuesday Teatime". This combo works great for our family. I would add that we only use 1 book; you could just buy the Teachers Manual, IMO. We dropped FLL after level 1 and started MCT in first grade. I think MCT glosses over some of the mechanics. My DD has some holes, but I think it will be easy to close up with increased writing time/ ability this year. Anyway, depending on the level of your DC, FLL1 might be super easy. Especially if you are already in WWE2. But there is a considerable jump between FLL1 and MCT (i would consider fLL a gentle first grade curriculum and MCT a rigorous third grade curriculum). That said, we did it in first, but took it slowly (finished Grammar Island we are about 50 pages into Sentence Island) We will continue this year. We also loved Building Language.

I am giving OneNote a shot this year. Is there a good calendar template that anyone has? I noticed Onetastic has one, anyone have experience with that add on?