Thank you to everyone that took the time to give me your two cents! 🙂 I appreciate the feedback. I asked the kids what they would prefer (novel concept) and they both wanted to keep doing math with me. I feel comfortable teaching them, so at least this next year I'll just stay the course. I do think I'll have to outsource eventually though - it's really a time thing for me. Having four kids requires a lot of figuring out how to stay on top of them, right? Maybe someday I'll feel like I have a good handle on it.

The impossible burgers / beyond meat burger patties are actually quite good. I also love veggie kabobs! I've been trying to eat vegan for cholesterol reasons as much as possible, and I really don't miss a regular burger patty when eating an impossible one. However, I think the best answer is to ask your friend, because everyone is different. My sister is vegan 100% and doesn't care for any of the meat substitutes! 😅

Hey everyone! I have a question for those who have outsourced math - looking back on it, do you wish you had just done it yourself? What reasons did you have for outsourcing? My twins will be in 6th grade this coming year and I keep going back and forth on enrolling them in an online math course like Mr. D Math or Math Dad's 6th grade course OR doing another year together in Singapore Standards Edition 6A/6B (we have done Singapore standards for K-5 with some Beast Academy supplementing). They are both testing about a year above grade level on the NWEA MAP test. I feel comfortable teaching them math - for me, outsourcing is a time issue. I have 2 younger children and trying to juggle everyone is getting progressively harder as I add more students. That being said, I think I could manage math this next year. Anyone who went the online math route have any advice? Am I feeling reservations for no good reason - outsourcing math went great for you? Or the opposite - you wish you had kept doing it yourself? Thanks for the advice.

This year my 5th grade age twins read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and Tuck Everlasting. They also took a Poetry course at Lantern English, so I'll count that. I read aloud How To Eat Fried Worms, The Sign of the Beaver and The Mysterious Benedict Society. We also have a constant and revolving set of picture books and chapter books for science and history that they choose and read, but it would be harder for me to quantify those (our library checkout list up to this point in the year is about 100 books, but they pick and choose between the and don't read every one. I also BUY a lot of books.) So... I'd say you're doing really well, and reading more than my family at least! 🙂 We do use audible a lot, too so they definitely are still hearing a lot of books. But this encourages me to get back into the habit of reading aloud more! I'd also say that this next year going into 6th I'm leaning toward ramping up their assigned independent reading more by enrolling them in an online literature class that will have them reading a novel each month.

My eldest two will be 6th graders this year (boy/girl twins, 11 years old July 1) and I'm in denial. Here's the (best laid) plan: ELA: Figuratively Speaking with readings from here! At least two Lantern English classes (tbd) OR Center for Lit Elementary Literature w/ writing AND Phonetic Zoo (for spelling) Math: Singapore Math 6A/6B finish up Beast Academy 5 books Hands on Equations? Keys to... fractions/decimals/percentages? AND Daily Mental Math 6 Latin: Second Form Latin from Memoria Press History: Ancients for the 2nd time Story Of Civilization Volume 1 Beautiful Feet Books Intermediate Ancient History Science: Going to try Chemistry with Science Mom in the fall Probably Outschool classes in the spring (for 5th we did classes with Ms. Cribbs on outschool and really liked them, if anyone needs a recommendation!) Extras: Advanced Scratch Programming at John Hopkins CTY Computer Science Discoveries on Code.org (with mom) EE.ME Electrical Engineering Typetastic for typing practice Continue practicing cursive handwriting Possibly joining a co-op for some fun extras as well. Likely an art class or two at a local art school. Plenty of time spent at the zoo / science museum and some fun extra field trips as they come up.

Ok, I hate to recommend something that I don't really have experience with, but I'm going to anyway. 🙂 I've been eyeing Blackbird and Company for my soon to be 6th graders, and I like that while they have whole year bundles they also have plenty of shorter options. Here is their a la carte 6th-8th grade resources page: https://blackbirdandcompany.com/product-category/a-la-carte/grades-6-8/ If anyone has used their materials and wants to chime in with a yay or nay this, it would probably be more useful than my lack of actual hands on experience suggestion here.

@ElizabethB Thank you for the recommendation! I appreciate your contributions. This does look interesting and might be a nice add-on for my 1st grader.

For my twins (5th grade): Hits - Outschool for science. Science is the subject I struggle to fit into our schedule, so signing them up for a class has made us make time for it and be accountable to do SOMETHING for science. Basically everything else that I planned has gone over well this year. I feel like I'm doing a good enough job with the twins, though I'm looking at 6th grade next year with a sense of needing to do more for middle school. For my 1st grader: Hits - Evan Moor Daily Science 1 as a spine for science, enriched with mystery science videos and let's read and find out books. Doing Story of Civilization 4 with his big brother and sister has worked reasonably well. He sits in on the audible reading of the chapters. Singapore Math 1A/1B and Math with Confidence level 1. I just wish the Beast Academy books has been published faster now that they are doing level 1! We just started Beast Academy 2A in January. Misses - READING. I'm at my wits end with this kiddo. What I used for the twins is not working as well for this kid. We've used a hodge podge of Progressive Phonics. BOB books, and Memoria Press First Start Reading. I'm switching him in January to All About Reading because I feel like I need more hand holding. He just hasn't taken to reading as well as my older kids.

We have one dog, Persephone. She was named by my twins who were learning Greek mythology at the time and liked the name because we got Persephone in the spring time and because she is black which they connected to Persephone as queen of the underworld 😅 We call her Percy though.

I just read my 3rd grade age twins an English translation of the Song of Roland, no kids version necessary. We did pause to go over unfamiliar vocabulary at times. I think I used the penguins classics version which is translated by Sayer.

I have twins who are both able to handle grade level material, so I teach them together....but that is easy, of course, because they are doing the same math assignment / concept. I do split them up after lesson to do independent problems because my daughter wants absolute silence and my son taps constantly (foot, pencil, whatever, he has to move). My twins also have a checklist for the week, and they do some math independently if they already were taught the concept and are just practicing. They usually do that in their rooms alone. They started using a checklist in 2nd grade. This year I added the 6 year old for kindergarten, but he does all his school in a morning block of time before his siblings get up. He is easily distracted so I don't think I could have him in the room with the twins for lessons. Eventually, I'll have my 3 year old along too. I intend to keep all the kids schooling essentially in different time blocks for math so I can give each child individual attention.

I'm loking at Homeschool Connections for my kids. Faith and light by ignatius press is a popular religion curriculum used by many catholic homeschoolers - but not personally by me. 😅 but I bring them up because they have an online version available to purchase that the kids would just read through and take auto graded type quizzes. My husband is the DRE for our parish and has made this option available to families this year who did not prefer in person catechesis due to covid. The students for first communion who completed the lessons were well prepared when he interviewed them. Fwiw. Here is the link for that: https://www.ignatius.com/promotions/faithandlife/mcfd.htm

We refer to our dog mostly by her name, but when using a pronoun we use she/her.

I do, I teach computer science courses for gifted youth. There are lots of opportunities to teach online remote right now. Pm me for more info on where I teach / taught if you'd like.

I am homeschooling 3 right now, with a fourth coming up soon. My oldest are twins who are turning 10 and considered fifth grade in August, though I mostly just throw at them whatever they seem ready for. My middle child is finishing kindergarten and will be first grade in August. We have always homeschooled.

Honestly, I would find it way too hard to juggle a schedule with these things. I do religion on a loop schedule for the most part - this year we are focused on the Great Adventure Bible, but next year we will probably dive into the catechism more, etc. We keep the saints and feast days all year, so we are always reading about these as we celebrate them, and I keep the bible playing in the car (along with other audio books and podcasts) fairly regularly. I see exposure consistently over time as the goal, with deep dives into particular topics during the year.

Thank you for the feedback! It sounds like we are doing pretty much the right things and should keep heading in the same direction. I appreciate the reading suggestions - we'll add some of these to the TBR pile from the library. It's also good to hear from others with similar reading levels at similar ages - honestly, I wasn't sure what to think about it when I was looking at the score report initially. 😛 I hope someone finds the HomeSchoolBoss info helpful in the future as well.

Hi there, we are Catholic and in a similar boat. It's not always easy to fit everything in 🙂 Here is what we have done: Image of God by Ignatius Press - we started Image of God because they use it for the Kindergarten religion in CHC. I really did like it, however. Instead of making the jump to Faith and Life in 1st grade like they do for CHC, we just stuck with Image of God. I buy the teacher's manual and just orally go over the lesson with my kids. I do not buy the student workbook. It works well as a sort of spine to hit basic catechism information. The Story of the Bible - TAN Press has the story of the bible, and I absolutely LOVE the audio that goes with it. We play it in the car. While I have some of the other materials like the teacher's manual and activity book I haven't really used them. I think the audio is available on audible as well, fyi. Great Adventure Bible - we bought this last year to help improve our Bible study. It looks like they have overhauled it recently and will be publishing a slightly different version that what I bought. What I bought included the Great Adventure Bible storybook and a teacher's guide. There were worksheets that went along with the teacher's guide, which I assigned to my fourth grade twins during the week as part of their homeschool, along with reading the Bible sections that the teacher's guide detailed for each unit. Then we would read the storybook aloud (including my kindergartner) which was basically an abridged version of the Bible readings and go over discussion questions at the end of the week. This has worked pretty well for us. Here is a link to their page detailing what to buy (now): https://ascensionpress.com/collections/gps-gods-plan-in-scripture Saints - we use a variety of saints books and the Catholic All Year compendium https://www.amazon.com/Catholic-All-Year-Compendium-Liturgical/dp/1621641597 and other resources (Dianne Kennedy's blog! https://thekennedyadventures.com/tag/catholic-book-basket/ ) to help keep feast days during the month. Story of Civilization - we are using TAN Press's Story of Civilization for our history. It includes a lot of information on the Church and saints along with western civ history. I really like it, especially the audio version. It does NOT cover non-western civ, though. You'd need to pull other resources for that. We used Story of the World along with Story of Civ and tended to pull non-western culture chapters from there to help fill out history in other places. I keep seeing other things pop up sometimes on Facebook groups and I'm always tempted to buy more. 🙂 I'm curious what others have used.

Anyone use the NWEA MAP test for their kids to gauge academic progress? My twins are finishing up 4th grade and we have taken this test twice - once in April their second grade year, and again just recently for their fourth grade year. I'll be honest that I picked this standardized test primarily because it was available online, on the computer, so I could do it at home and I was allowed to proctor it for my kids. The progress report that you get does give you both a score (and range that score falls into) as well as a "this is typical of a...." grade level. We used https://homeschoolboss.com/ both times to schedule and administer the test. It is fairly easy - you schedule it, say which tests you want to take (reading and math only for us so far), and pay for it. The day of the test, you call and get the password to start the test session. This last time we had to wait a bit to get the password - there was a wait for the person on the other end of the line, presumably because they had quite a few families calling in around the same time. When I did the test a few years ago for my twins, the wait wasn't as long. Maybe there are more people using the service now? Or I just picked a day last time that was less busy. 🙂 The person on the phone should give you a ballpark range of questions - like, it will be 40-50 questions - but the test works in part by asking harder and harder questions until the student is getting about half wrong. The number of questions that my daughter and my son got differed by about 5-7. It took my son an hour and 20ish minutes for both the reading and math test while my daughter took slightly over 2 hours. This is a personality difference. She is more meticulous and careful. 🙂 The score reports come a few days after the test and have more detailed information than the brief score information you get at the end of the test. The reading report includes a lexile level as well. They do email a bit aggressively pushing for you to take this test fall, winter, and spring. 🙂 I have found that testing every 2 years may be best for us. I can see how testing 3x a year could be useful in a public school setting for a teacher to show progress in a student's academic achievement, but I'm more than happy seeing progress over time with an every 2 year schedule. Both days were kind of grueling for the twins - after an hour of testing, they were both pretty much done with taking the test. My daughter stuck it out better than my son, and her scores kind of show that. He tended to start answering willy-nilly at the hour mark. 😄 Last time we tested, my kids were slightly ahead of grade level in reading and math (end of 2nd grade, reading at an end of 3rd grade level / mid 4th grade level and doing math at an end of 3rd grade level as well). This time, my twins were reading way above grade level - my daughter's score was typical of an end of year high school junior, and my son's was typical of an end of year high school freshmen. Their math scores were above grade level but not so ridiculously high - my son's score was typical of a mid year 5th grader and my daughter's a mid year 6th grader. If you've read all of this, thank you 😉 I have come to the question part of this post - Given how high their reading level is, what is the best way to challenge and grow their reading level at this point? While their reading level is quite high, they are still elementary school age, going into 5th grade. Not all literature is appropriate for their age! We read excerpts of Shakespeare this last year, for example, but I'm not ready for every conversation we could have about every play. If anyone has some good recommendations, been there done that type advice, I'd love to hear it. 🙂 Right now, we have been doing a combination of Memoria Press literature guides and some TpT units from Book umbrella to handle literature. For math we are just going to keep going with our Singapore math and Beast Academy combination since that seems to be working reasonably well. 🙂

I realized recently that I hadn't posted my fifth grade twins' plan for their 5th grade year (though I did their younger entering first grade brother!). Here is the plan: English Language Arts The easy parts: Spelling - continue Phonetic Zoo. We started this mid-way last year during fourth grade, and I feel like the results have been better retention of studied words than the program we did for 2nd, 3rd, half of 4th (Even Moor Spelling). Writing - we did a Lantern English writing course in their 4th quarter over paragraphs, and I've been happy with it. I intend to do at least two more courses during 5th grade this next year, likely the Composition and Summarizing. Literature - The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe with Memoria Press Literature guides (already purchased) and Tuck Everlasting with the Book Umbrella on TpT (already purchased). Unsure other than these two, thinking the Sign of the Beaver and one more at least. Still up in the air: Grammar and More Writing - we have done growing with grammar and winning with writing from jack kris publishing the last few years. I like that it is simple and easy for them to get done. I'm considering springing for Essentials in Writing this year, though. I have a strong goal to get them writing a 3-5 paragraph essay by the end of their fifth grade year, and I need more structured curriculum with a little stronger focus on writing. More Literature - Thinking I'll do Figuratively Speaking this year with resources linked on here! Poetry - linguistic development through poetry memorization?? I'm still thinking on this one. History Story of Civilization Volume 4 with Memoria Press supplemental reading for American history lesson plans and other additional books and movies tied in Science Scientific Connections through Inquiry? Blackbird and Company Taxonomy of Living Things bundle? Hop into Nancy Larson Science 1 with their brother? Do Florida Virtual School science (again)? Unsure as always. Math Daily Mental Math 5 Singapore Math 5A/5B Beast Academy 5A-5D Hands on Equations? Latin Continue First Form Latin from Memoria Press, likely will finish by Christmas. Start Second Form Latin. Logic and Critical Thinking Chocolate Caper (Logic) Tin Man Press 5th grade bundle Maybe revisit Philosophy for Children Religion Continue Great Adventure Bible Other Typing with typetastic 5th grade recitation from Memoria Press Kids Cook Real Food Advanced Scratch with mom (I teach computer science classes online as a part time job), Introduction to Computer Science and Engineering, maybe EE.ME starter projects Art class in person, probably enrolling in Florida Virtual School Art 5th grade as well

I'm sure I'm saying exactly what someone else has said above, but I'd group some of those into units and rotate them throughout the year. This reminds me a bit of my twins second grade year. Here is what we did: Loop Schedule: Philosophy Logic Games/Chess Music Art Old Testament We spent approximately 6 weeks on each of those topics, though some went a bit longer and others a bit shorter. For what it's worth, we used Philosophy for Children and this website to structure those weeks: https://www.prindleinstitute.org/teaching-children-philosophy/ If you'd like a copy of what I did, I have plans I could share. I wrote them up in a Google doc at the time.

I will try to remember and post once I look at the lectures for Volume 4, since I bought the complete set during the sale this last week. I haven't purchased them before, because my oldest are just now going into 5th grade and I always thought of the lectures as something I wouldn't need until middle school. Now it's right around the corner! 😛

I bought and used Plague! Problem Stories for One last year. 🙂 You can see my thoughts and flip through here.

@lovelearnandlive If you don't mind my asking, why did you switch to Wheelock's in 7th instead of continuing Memoria Press and doing Third Form? I have twin 4th graders working through First Form right now, and I'm looking forward and considering what to do with them in a few years. I'm just curious why the jump to Wheelock.

@Murphy101 That does sound frustrating! I have ordered many times from TAN, but they just updated their system (in the last few weeks, I think) and I have not ordered from them yet since then. I HAVE had the issue of getting the wrong things in my box. The first order I ever made was a copy of the Story of the Bible Old Testament and New Testament audio CDs with the teacher guide and activity book. I got: 1 copy of the Old Testament Audio CDs, TWO copies of the New testament audio CDs, the teacher guide for old testament but not for new, the test book (which I didn't order) for new testament, and the activity books. It was a mess 😛 I contacted them and they told me to keep the extras and they would send me the missing teacher guide, so it wasn't too bad. Just a lot of extra stuff I didn't order. The charge to my CC was right though. Since that first order, my other ones have come through accurately. I prefer to purchase the mp3 files now for the story of civilization, then put them into folders by chapter (this takes thumbing through the book to figure out which tracks go where as they aren't labeled by chapter when you download, though they are in chronological order), and then play each chapter with our Alexa via MyPod. It's about 10 minutes of work a week to set up, but my children can now independently listen to the next chapter each week easily. You can also get the book audio on audible, but each chapter on audible IS not the same as each chapter in the book, so I had to start/stop audible each week for my kids. The mp3 files ->google drive (each chapter in a folder)->mypod playlist on alexa worked better for us. (note: mypod does have a very low monthly cost if you don't want ads, and you really don't want ads, because they are not always appropriate for kids and they also VERY OFTEN interrupt content. But they do have a free - with ads - option if anyone wants to try this route after reading my description above) Finally, on the recommended reading... there is a Facebook group for Story of Civilization called Tan's the story of civilization homeschoolers (unofficial) which is a great resource for things like reading lists. If you check the group files there, someone in the group has already made a great reading list for each level of SoC that breaks it down by chapter. The author also posts frequently in that group.