No advice, just commiseration. My 13 year old loves science and loathed General Science last year. This kid reads science encyclopedias for fun and just couldn't get into General Science. I'm looking forward to seeing what else is recommended!

Stack the States and 10 Days in the USA.

This one looks interesting. http://www.rainbowresource.com/product/sku/018258/e3143d5fb236b6a63ecfeef9

I was going to suggest Ju-Ju-Be until I read your whole post :laugh: Then I was going to suggest a 31 bag, until I read the rest of the thread. Now, I've got nothing. LOL. Anyway, if you could stand the Ju-Ju-Be fabric, I think it would be your best bet from an organizational standpoint. Oh, look at the Super Be. That one may be a slightly different fabric than what you're used to in the Ju-Ju-Be bags. I've looked at Thirty One bags a few times, but I've seen several recently that were fraying badly. I tend to be hard on bags, so that turned me off. I'll be following this thread to see what anyone else suggests. I love bags and organizational tools!

I am using First Form Latin with a 7th grader with great results.

We have the whole set, other than the grammar charts. We used the dvd once, and then never used it again. When I have this new baby though, I may have them watch the dvd for a few lessons. My kids like using Quizlet.com instead of the flashcards. They do it on their iPods and on the computer. I do wish I had the grammar charts though. I plan on getting them in my next Rainbow Resource order. I also wanted to add how much I like this program. We're on Lesson 10 and the kids from 5th grade to 9th are doing amazingly well.

I highly recommend at least trying Teaching Textbooks. It has gotten a bad rap on these boards, but in my mind the math that gets done consistently is the best math. My oldest is absolutely thriving with Algebra, which is something I never thought I would say. I have my 5th and 7th graders using it as well. I actually stopped my 5th grader who was using Math Mammoth and switched her. She had to go back to TT4, but finished it quickly and moved on to TT5. I don't think its behind, but if you need to work at an advanced pace, do so. Then once you get through all the levels, find a higher level math to fill up the jr/sr year.

We are using Math Mammoth for my 2nd grader. The other kids from 5th grade up are using TT. I think she'll be able to go into TT3 just fine next year if we choose to move her over.

I think you've gotten some very gracious words of experience and wisdom. I won't pretend I have everything perfect in our home, but there are a few things I have to do for my sanity. 1. I combine wherever possible. Does it make their schooling exactly like each of them would like? No. But it makes it doable for me. We end up compromising quite a bit. So, we'll do a science one really responds to, an English the other does well with, the history another likes, etc. What has happened here is we combine Science, History, Logic, Latin, and English with different combinations of kids. I highly recommend combining where possible, even if it means some are more challenged and its easier for others. 2. BFIAR is fine, but I found we would just read the books and not worry about the BFIAR suggestions. I do however love the printables I found to go with some of those. I think they were from 1+1+1=1, but I'm not positive. They were great for my then 4 year old last year to do while I did school. He really enjoyed the cuddle time with a book and mama. 3. I personally feel that most of kids boredom comes from being entertained or occupied all day long. It may make it more stressful for a few weeks, but they will learn to occupy themselves very well. 4. The thing I feel that has made our days go smoother than anything else though is swim team practice daily. My kids just completely go bonkers if they aren't getting that scheduled rigorous exercise every day. It also provides a social outlet for those of my kids that need it badly, and forces the ones who are anti-social to come out of their shells a little bit. Hang in there! You're doing a great job homeschooling and parenting. Now you just have to figure out how to take care of your own needs in there too.

The Brother printer is on sale at Office Depot this week.

I've had good luck lately with homeschoolclassifieds.com.

We print and proclick a half year at a time. I have a laser printer that doesn't automatically duplex. It works well, but an auto-duplex printer is on my wish list. We tried it on the iPad today, as she was starting a new book. It was a lot harder for her. With the stylus it might work, but I ended up just printing it.

I've tried various things over the year with my current 9th grader with poor results. The best thing for us so far is R&S done together as a group. I have the oldest 3 (5th, 7th, and 9th) doing R&S 5 with fabulous results. It's a tad on the easy side for the 9th grader, but 8th (the other book I have on hand) was way too advanced. I like FLL, but found it too teacher intensive in the 3rd and 4th grade levels for us at this point. For 1st and 2nd grade though, I love it. I've looked at Analytical Grammar and may combine the oldest into that next year. I'll probably stick with R&S though.

For the past several years, I have taken more of a hands off approach with my older 3 and assigned work and graded it. With the younger one in school, I was more hands on. This year though, we've taken a different tack. I'm doing a few subjects with the oldest 3, and they're learning so much more! I have them all doing R&S English 5, as the high schooler just hasn't learned grammar in spite of doing it every day for years. We also do First Form Latin together and once again the older 2 that have done at least 2 years of Latin already on their own are learning it. I'm going to start Writing With Skill with all 3 of them next week and I do Critical Thinking with the 5th and 7th grader. All told, it takes me about an hour to get through everything with them. It has been very, very effective. We have switched to Teaching Textbooks, and they need me to be available for questions, but I don't have to teach it, so I use that time to work with the younger 2. My 2nd grader is great at working independently, so I don't have to do much with her, except FLL and WWE. The K'er of course needs all of his school time to be one on one. I do combine everyone but the 9th grader for history. We have the SOTW audio, and it's worth its weight in gold. We listen in the car most of the time. My oldest will do the review questions with them in the car and then they'll do their map work at home. Even the K'er enjoys it. Although I know they should be transitioning to more independent work, my 7th grader really needs someone to direct his attention back to his work. The girls are better, but it's working out well to have them there too. The added competition amongst each other really doesn't hurt in this case. I don't encourage it, but it really motivates them.

I think if she learned Latin first, Italian would be a lot, lot easier, as would all of the other romance languages. Latin will be useful in life in many aspects, but I wanted to address the Italian specifically.

I haven't read the replies, but my first suggestion always for large families is combine history with Story of the World. If you want to beef it up you can, but there have been several years where we listened to the cd, did the coloring page, map, and discussion questions and called it good. If I'm having a really good week, I'll get library books for the older ones to read about the topic independently. The thing about the CDs is that you can be doing something else at the time, for example caring for the littles. I think everyone from your 4 year old up could color while the CD is on. You may find that even the 2 youngest are happy to color along with their siblings while they listen. For science, we like Apologia, as everyone can be combined. At times it gets overly preachy for us, so I just edit it as I'm reading. With our large family, a lot of times we don't get to the experiments, but that's alright with me. At least they're getting something! This year, we're meeting with another family once a week to do the experiments. It's working well so far, but I think its been fine for the years we haven't done experiments. For kindergarten, we keep it simple. I do Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, something for handwriting, and Developmental Math. I also have Cuisenaire Rods that he can play with when we do school. Your 3& 4 year old could do that as well, even if just to keep them occupied. Finally, we try really hard to limit screen time, and so I've found if I need to carve out time, the littles are pretty happy to watch Signing Time or the Leap Frog videos for a few minutes while I work with the older kids.

The prices look to be about 40% off of retail. I'm finally going to buy How to Teach Art to Young Children. Here's my referral link, but feel free to go straight to Zulily.com. http://www.zulily.com/invite/Tengo6

If your son is already having a hard time in math, I would definitely go with Pre-Algebra. He may be able to handle Algebra, but for his confidence level Pre-Algebra should do well. As far as Teaching Textbooks itself, we love it! I resisted for a long time, due to reviews on this board of people who hadn't used it. My dd who has struggled with math forever is getting Algebra easily and is actually learning the material. My 7th grade math bright ds is using Pre-Algebra and doing very well.

With my oldest using R&S 3, I never used the teacher's manual. We didn't really like it and used something else from there. With my next 2, we're working through English 5 and I use the teacher's manual daily. I love the oral review, and I like knowing what they're supposed to be learning in that lesson. We have the worksheets and the tests, but I've really only used the tests. I've discovered my kids are competitive enough that they pay attention much better knowing there will be a test on the subject matter.

My 13 year old DS doesn't really enjoy the reading, but he doesn't mind listening to the audio. Maybe try that instead of scrapping the program altogether?

We use FLL and transition to Rod & Staff in 5th grade. We do Rod & Staff orally though. I also sometimes make a photocopy of the page and let them write directly on it, instead of write every exercise out. So, instead of writing the nouns, they just underline them. It works really well for us.

I like to use Cathy Duffy's 101 Top Picks for this reason. I try to choose something that will fit both of us. I have so many kids, that I can't do something time-intensive for every student and every subject. However, if I know something will fit them perfectly and its been a tough subject for them, I'll usually bend myself a little to fit their needs.

http://www.quill.com/pacon-quadrille-ruled-paper/cbs/253734.html My kids who need it use Mathnotes. On one side it's 2 squares per inch. On the other it's a slightly smaller grid, but I'm not certain exactly what the measurement is. It has helped tremendously.

I know you said a workbook, and I hate when people do this to me, but what about the Sequential Spelling dvds? They're self-taught and self-contained. I'm seeing good results here in my one kid that didn't do well with Spelling Workout, which would be my other suggestion.

I would go with something like your option number 2. For History, I really like Story of the World for combining. It has the activities your DS needs and the stories your DD needs. There are also some workbook pages other moms have made to go along with it. We personally like to listen to the cd version. At that age, my kids would color the page that goes along with it while listening. That helped with their retention quite a bit. You could also tailor the extra reading to each of them. Assign short books for your DS to read and longer one for your DD to listen to. Again, we love audiobooks. We listen to a lot of them that go along with our history while we're in the car. The Story of the World activity guide has great literature suggestions to go along with it. For science, I've had good luck combining with the Apologia elementary series. The notebooks that go along with that could be good for your DS. I have my K'er through 5th grader working on the sea animals book. They also get extra books at the library that go along with the chapter of the week. They get to pick out which ones they want to read. There are easy experiments for hands-on kids. Finally, for Bible I really like the Bible Study Guide for All Ages. We just did the workbook pages, but the kids all have enjoyed them. It seems there's something for everyone there; the memorization, the workbook page, the Bible story, and the character lesson. Its well worth the reasonable price.