Life of Fred definitely falls into that category, too, but some people don't consider it a full curriculum on its own. RightStart Math is also that way, but you have to be involved; it's not a curriculum you can hand over to your kid.

My ninth grader used MM through 6b and then started Jacob's Algebra and Life of Fred Algebra. We're going to start Foerester's Algebra II this January. However, I'm going to do MM 7 for ds who will be in seventh next year before she does Algebra I in eighth grade. I don't see the point of lots of advanced math earlier and earlier. Unless you have a truly gifted math student, it is much better to have a great math foundation than a bunch of higher level math classes that just brush the surface. I used Saxon when I was in high school, finishing my senior year with calculus. I got into every college I wanted to get into and had ACT scores to get into lots more. I just don't believe that all these kids in public school are really doing Algebra in 7th grade. If they were, we'd be seeing different outcomes in testing.

We just finished Psalm 23. We also did parts of Genesis 1, Psalm 1, John 1, and Luke 2. I'm trying to get back into Scripture memory which I'd somehow let slip for awhile. I love all the suggestions!

I plan my life on iCal, but not my homeschool. Homeschool planning has been my nemesis because I tend to plan in a detailed way then realize that I'm just doing school at home. It must be because I was a classroom teacher, and I planned the whole year in detail so I could keep my class moving and cover everything. But homeschooling is different (and better in my humble opinion) because I don't have to stick to some universal plan - I can change directions, review, or mix-it-up when I need to so my kids get the best education, not a generic one. Anyway, to solve my problem I had to come up with a system that made it less overwhelming. I just know that I'm not going to sit down and plan every week or every day. And then somehow I always end up being the one responsible to make sure it all gets done! I ended up putting a weekly schedule in a page protector which my kids are responsible for. They have to check each thing off every day with a white erase marker. At the end of the week I can see at a glance exactly what they did (and did not) do. It's brought a lot of freedom to my life, that's for sure! I'll have to look at the online programs just for fun. Maybe I could digitize my system? (I made my system into an ebook, but I'm not going to link here - if you're interested you can PM me).

Fifteen minutes, five days a week for my elementary school student, half an hour for my highschooler. When we did Latin, it was another 15 minutes of that, too. If we could, we'd do more!

I used WWE for a couple years and then started pulling my own copywork and dictations from the fiction my kids were reading. I used the same concept though as WWE. Whatever curriculum you end up choosing, none of it will make any difference if your kiddo doesn't internalize complex and beautiful language structure and logical thinking. To get that, they need to hear lots and lots of it over the years. As a former high school writing teacher, I'm a firm believer that you could have kids who have never written a paragraph in their life become great writers in a short period of time if (big "if") they already have the language and great ideas in their head. (Just a thought - the worst writers I had in English 111 at the local university (I taught two sections of ENG 111 when I was working on my masters degree) were kids who received A's in public school composition. They knew all the right forms but couldn't think to save their lives! I'd rather teach grammar and punctuation to someone who can think than teach thinking to someone with perfect style.) If you are reading aloud to your kids and they're listening to audiobooks for a couple hours a day, your kids will be better writers than if they had the perfect writing curriculum to keep them ahead of the public school.

I second what everyone has said! What a wise bunch of parents around here. One thing that has helped me is realizing that learning can also happen in spurts just like physical growth. You can "jar" (maybe "prepare" is a better word) your kids for the next learning spurt by changing things up for awhile. Have your kids narrate with a drawing or on video. Or try a unit study instead. Maybe take your school on the road and go to the library for several hours. Whatever you do, don't stress over it. It's winter, almost Christmas, and all the kids everywhere are driving their teachers crazy!

My fourteen year old boy still likes Hank the Cowdog. I know, I know, not particularly "classic" literature. He especially loved all of the Redwall series by Brian Jacques (might be scary to some, not to others). Sign of the Beaver is another adventure/survival story he listened to at that age. He liked 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea at an even younger age.

What about comedic speeches? You could find some great funny speeches on Youtube, dissect the telling of great jokes and stories, and practice public speaking at the same time.

We memorized the CC cards on our own. I tried to make a timeline on the wall or in a book, but it didn't work for us (translation: I didn't ever feel like it so it didn't get done). We like to play the game Timeline to stay sharp and place other events into our basic framework.

Typingweb has been awesome for us. My sixth grader is already into the advanced levels. It's free, simple, and not babyish.

Another vote for Right Start. You can find videos on Youtube that demonstrate the AL Abacus and the counting approach. The Right Start method of counting teaches place value at the beginning. I have to admit, teaching math from this book helped me with my own number understanding tremendously.

My kids have assigned reading either by number of pages or amount of time. We choose those books together so that they are enthused about what they are reading. We talk about those books once a week, maybe twice. I am always reading aloud a novel to the kids. We talk about it everyday, narrating or just musing about characters and plot and what we are thinking about it. We listen to audiobooks in the car, and the kids always have a bag full of audiobooks from the library to listen to at night. The point is to get enjoyment out of a wide and constant stream of good literature. Now that my eldest is in high school, as soon as I mention a particular literary device, he has a large bank of examples to draw from. He is doing One Year Adventure Novel for his English curriculum and is finding what he is learning in every novel now. He's making amazing connections without having to do the busywork that is so prevalent in reading curriculums.

Do you read aloud to her and have her listen to lots of audio books? Sometimes kids need to hear many, many great sentences to be able to produce great sentences. You could pull some sentences from her reading and, instead of having her copy them, have her write a sentence with the same pattern but her own words. That way she has to think through agreement between subject and verb (or whatever she's struggling with) but doesn't have to invent a completely new pattern which adds a level of frustration.

We always do the hardest things first or second so we have alert minds. If you have a kiddo that struggles to wake up, you might want to wait an hour before doing hard stuff. I have used RightStart Math with all my kids for the first two years. The lessons are short, with lots of variety, but they also have lots of mental math and number understanding. The emphasis is not on writing and worksheets, which I think are real stumbling blocks for lots of younger children. They transitioned quite easily to a combination of Singapore math and Math Mammoth. I'm a proponent of short, sweet, and not too much fine motor control in the early years.

I think every time you read a book, you are "outsourcing" to someone else; so using another teacher or class than yourself is just a higher magnitude of "outsourcing." I'm sure I'll move my 9th grader into college classes as soon as he gets into higher level math and science, but I'll be very selective about the teacher and setting. I think in the older ages, it isn't so much about your teaching every subject as about getting to choose who, where, and when.

I second the comment on homeschooling high school so it isn't just checking boxes. We seem to have lost some of the love of learning this year (9th grade), and we're just getting the subjects done because we're supposed to for a good transcript. Makes me crazy!

I homeschool because it was important to me that my children learn and risk and love to think. I wanted them to be home with me and get to experience books and the ideas in them for what they are, not distilled to bolded font that they memorize for tests. And now that I'm creating my own business, I realize that the public school system (which most private school systems adopt, too) are really bad at preparing children to be generous creators and innovators in life. Creators and innovators have the most fun and do the most good in this world. So, homeschooling fits hand in glove with my Christianity and with my philosophy of education.

This has been amazingly helpful to me! Thanks for all the hard work, Dicentra, and comments, everyone. My ninth grader has been doing labs alongside the Great Courses DVD lectures, but I knew it was not anywhere near a full course. I've chosen to do Dr. Tang's honors chemistry with the Chang textbook after reading through everything. If anyone has tips for using it, I'd love to hear them!