Big River Academy has an online high school Italian class. I was planning on having my daughter take it this year but at the last second she decided to go with Spanish.

We did use the activity guide and it was wonderful. My children absolutely loved everything we did, as did I. I highly recommend it.

I would also recommend going over to the Sonlight forum. They are a non-secular sister company to BookShark. Their Core H is the equivalent to BookShark 7. You will be able to find out a lot of information over there.

I had the same experience with SOTW1. My kids loved it but it just wasn't enough by itself. I could have added things in myself but I wanted something already scheduled out. So we switched over to BookShark 6 this year and it's been great!!! We are already looking forward to BookShark 7 next year. The literature selections have been great. For me, that's been the best part of BookShark. My son liked to read before but that was always last on his list of things to do. He has now turned into an avid reader and reading is at the top of his list of things to do now. He doesn't do well without a good night's sleep. A few weeks ago he was a real bear in the mornings and I couldn't understand why. He finally came clean and admitted that he'd taken a book light out of my room and had been staying up late reading books! I couldn't be mad at that. :-)

I have not used any of these resources but have them bookmarked in my photography folder for future consideration. Fotofinch.com Photographycourse.net Bestphotolessons.com

My daughter is using Writing With Skill and my son is using IEW. My son also likes Paragraph of the Week and Essay of the Month, both found at Teachers Pay Teachers. They really broke the process down into very small chunks which he needed at the time. I actually found Paragraph of the Week online as a pdf. Here is the link. http://www.thomas.k12.ga.us/userfiles/452/Classes/24257/ParagraphoftheWeek.pdf

We will be starting our third year using this curriculum. I really like it. My kids are able to do this fairly independent. They will read the lesson and if they have questions we discuss. The lesson is followed by a short Practice section and often there is a More Practice section if they need it. There are then 30 questions for the kids to do on their own. It's in typical Saxon fashion with the constant spiral review. A lesson usually takes my children about 30 minutes to complete. This curriculum is thorough!!! My children know grammar like nobody's business. :-) It only goes up to 8th grade or Book 8, but I wouldn't worry about that. Just go at your child's pace and if you hit Book 8 in 8th grade or 10th grade that's fine. My daughter (13) can easily complete a book in a year. My son (11) needs longer. (He's more of a math/science guy.) A lot of the concepts repeat book to book. Some people say the books can be similar. I don't mind that. I have found that it has just solidified the concepts for my children. I like that there is some vocabulary incorporated into the program. There are journaling prompts and dictation passages included if you want to use them. I tried the writing portion but ended up dropping it. It was my first year homeschooling and I felt it just didn't have enough instruction for me as the teacher to teach my children how to write. I needed more handholding than what they offered. My only suggestion would be that if you're starting this out with a child who really hasn't had any grammar GO SLOW! Take two years if you need to. Once they get through that first book and understand those concepts the rest of the books won't be a problem for them.