You are getting a million great ideas, and I am probably a less experienced hs mom than you, so I won't add my two cents with additional suggestions. But, the following blog post might be an encouragement when contemplating going off-curriculum. It sounds like you have very similar plans to what she describes, but it's always nice to have some affirmation. http://blog.aussiepumpkinpatch.com/2013/08/lets-talk-math.html

An Evangelical friend gave us a copy of The Jesus Storybook Bible. We love it! The illustrations are colorful and engaging, and ALL the stories bring it back to Jesus and God's salvation plan. Even though it's written in a storybook style, they do reference the particular scripture passages (by book and chapter) so you can go back to them. We read that every night to our daughter from the time she was 2 to 4; she knew those stories backwards and forwards.

We talked about St. Patrick with the Celts of Britain chapter in September. For us, it underscores the fact that St. Patrick was a real person and gives some context about the times he lived in. He is a patron saint within our family, so we always have some sort of special recognition on his feast day. I became really impressed with Patrick after listening to How the Irish Saved Civilization on audiobook.

As the teacher, WriteShop tells you what you need to do when, which I liked. My kid was not enamored of it, but YMMV. She did not want to be told she what has to write about, and did not like the guided writing exercises. She has been resistant to any kind of writing guidance at all, aside from editing sorts of thing.

We loved Understood Betsy.

2. Could you incorporate more games into your curriculum? Like perhaps look up some games on Pintrest or you tube and see if anything would tie in well with what you are planning to teach him that day. That's where my shortcomings are - I am just not a very creative person that way. In my experience, the games do not have to be complicated. To adult point of view, they can be down right tedious, BUT highly entertaining for a 6yo. There have been times as we were playing a simple roll the die, go around a really simple board sort of game where I thought to myself "I cannot believe this game is that much fun," but here is my child clearly enjoying herself. Themeasuredmom.com and thisreadingmama.com have a lot of freebie games in reading and math if you sign up for their newsletters.

We use Math-U-See, which is not exactly inexpensive, but does the job. We use MEP as a supplement and I agree with HomeAgain's comments about it. I like it because it is such a different approach from how I was taught and from our regular curriculum. It is also very affordable. We also do Life of Fred Apples (which I believe is the easiest/earliest volume), but I would definitely save it for a kid who has some grasp on addition. My dd did not enjoy it in 1st grade last year, but loves it this year. I have used Math Mammoth just a little, as a backup for additional help with regrouping addition. It's nice they offer books that target specific skills, as well as a regular curriculum, and it's affordable. I am loathe to change curriculum if something is working well enough. If in the future Math-U-See stops working, or if I could time travel and counsel myself two years ago, I would tell myself to seriously look at MEP or Math Mammoth.

I just got an email from Bravewriter where they make you guess what the 30% off code is. I am not really into the whole writing-as-a-lifestyle thing - I detest puzzles and riddles, and will definitely not be visiting their Monday sale. For those of you that have been thinking about Bravewriter and love puzzles, this might be worth your time.

I have plenty of time to do some research before we get to that. Thank you so much for taking the time to look at old plans.

You are right to want to keep up over break. We did not do much spelling or math practice over summer, and it took over a month to get dd up to speed. Everybody talks up Yahtzee for math practice but we are fond of Triominoes. It's great for first graders to practice addition with the tiles. My second grader keeps score now and it is perfect practice for what she needs right now. We also use MEP as a supplement to MUS because it is such a different approach (and free!) We are in the middle of the Year 1 book. We also play Appletters and Hangman.

Vol. 1 of SOTW seems too easy for a 5th grader, so The Catholic Textbook Project looks like a really interesting option. The samples are definitely well-written and engaging. Would you mind sharing what parts of SOTW you discuss, skip and/or heavily supplement? I'm a recent convert and am afraid I'm going to miss something.

Huh. I never ran across this curriculum, not that that it means much. :-) It appears to wrap up a bunch of LA aspects in ways that have intrigued me - but all in one place. Language Arts curriculum is the bane of my existence. This kind of looks like it might work and I might not have to think about it for awhile. Thanks for mentioning it!

This is something I am still working on. We do MUS Beta, but because my dd usually does a worksheet in very little time, I started using MEP as a supplement, but we are currently using about the middle of year 1. On Fridays, I plan for a more relaxed day. We skip the MUS and MEP and instead read a chapter from Life of Fred Apples, and a living math book from the library. We also do some kind of game that includes addition or subtraction. Yahtzee is a favorite with dd.

My DD, like yours, is definitely not into the discussion part. She is almost 7 and this is our second year going through Vol. 1. However, I think this curriculum is excellent in the way it presents topics and how they build on one another. I would use it even if she totally hated it. That being said, there have been some great ideas already posted on how to tweak it. There was a another thread awhile ago where someone mentioned writing an outline of the lesson first and presenting from that instead of doing it directly from the book. I have tried this with better results. I am also in the middle of trying to present lessons through the books listed in the back of each chapter. Apparently, we have a great library system because I can usually get at least 75% of the books. There are usually a lot of overlapping topics, so one certainly does not need to use ALL of the books suggested.

I have never found a planner I like, so I make my own. After having used it for a year, I am still tweaking it. I only print off what I need for a month, because, I will probably want to change it. We have a laser printer. It gets frequent usage and the toner lasts well over a year for us.

I attempted doing a writer's workshop a la Lucy Calkins et al, and just felt lost. I had no clue what to teach or what topic I should be focusing on - I hate flying by the seat of my pants. So I ordered WriteShop C. So far, it seems to be working, but we haven't finished the first Lesson yet. Some of the subdivisions of the lesson seem a bit long for DD, so it is taking us a little longer to complete. Somebody posted something about MEP and I am giving that a go as a supplement to MUS.

This is what we do. On Fridays, we go to the library about every other week, which I count as "school." Math and spelling/language arts are done in the form of games, and not the usual lessons. Everything is just more relaxed, so it's a day every week that we look forward to. You could do a one day unit study on a book you're reading aloud. Or find a day to celebrate. For example, this past Tuesday, we celebrated Ada Lovelace Day. She was the first computer programmer, so everything we did was math, logic, or computer related. And I pretty much managed to squeeze in all the subjects we usually cover, only from a math perspective. It was a fun break from the same old, same old.

We tried Life of Fred when DD was in first grade, and it was not a good fit then. We are going through it now and she is having a lot of fun with it. We do Explode the Code online, which takes all the handwriting out of it. We got it from homeschoolbuyersco-op.org for about $35 per year.

Our daughter is almost 7 and has very little sense of beat. So, it is something I have tried to incorporate into our Music studies. We have been clapping to the beat and alternately to the rhythm of Hickory Dickory Dock for a month (about once a week). She's shown a little improvement. Below are some resources I've found on the topic that might be useful to you. http://www.letsplaykidsmusic.com/rhythm-and-beat/ https://musiconnx.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/developmental-progression-of-steady-beat/ http://musickit.com/resources/beat3.html

I struggle with this, too. Perhaps one of the first things you need to decide is your philosophy. There are a lot of threads through this forum with folks who are wringing their hands over a grammar curriculum for their first grader, and then there are those who don't bother with formal grammar until kids are in 5th or 6th grade, or even later. The folks in camp B say that kids brains aren't adequately wired to understand much of it until that point anyway, so why waste time with it until they are ready. On the other hand, one could make the case that there are a lot of academic subjects kids aren't fully capable of handling until that point, but we expose them to it anyway, even if they don't completely get it. I haven't fully figured out where I sit in this argument. Our daughter is the first child we are homeschooling and only into year two. I imagine that five years from now, I will have a more concrete opinion. :-)

I adored the Alfred Hitchcock collections when I was about 12. You should pre-read the stories before reading them to a seven year old. I remember one that was about a parent chopping up his 5 or 6 year old daughter. Probably not a good choice for before bedtime.

I can't help with the books or pastels, but one thing some families do is play a specific song for 4-5 minutes before morning time that lets everyone know what time it is, and it gives them time to finish up whatever it is they are doing at the moment. I heard that on one of the Your Morning Basket podcasts, I think. It's not an issue for us at the moment, but I keep it in mind for when it does.

On the offhand chance someone else is interested, I did some brainstorming and came up with a few ideas.... We can read the biography and do a narration (to get a little language arts in the day). Play Robot Turtles, a game that introduces basic programming Play Trionimoes or Yahtzee!, because dd likes them I found this nifty paper doll of Ada There are some printable math puzzles at math-salamanders.com Playdough to Plato has a rainbow addition snack game. If I am really lazy, I will use Froot Loops, which would be a real treat in this house. There's always tangrams. And for an afternoon matinée, we can watch Phantom Tollbooth. It's the only movie I can think of that has any math in it. I am not math-phobic, but coming from a set of parent-artists, it is not my thing. Personally, I hate math and logic puzzles, and riddles in general, but realize this is a thing I should try to avoid passing on to my children. This seems like a good excuse to explore math in a fun way. Also, it's nice to have a day off from the same-old, same-old.

Our dd is almost 7, and her middle name is Ada, in honor of the first computer programmer. I found this picture book biography of her at the library, but was wondering if anybody did other activities with their kids or had fun ideas for this day. All the STEM things for girls online seem to be directed towards middle school age.

Well Trained Mind is a great resource to learn about a classical curriculum. Most of the libraries in my area, at least, have a copy of some edition of it. We had a similar scenario to yours last year in terms of kids. My daughter really enjoyed SOTW Vol. 1 and the activities from the accompanying book, and I spread that over 3 days a week. We also really enjoyed Kids Art Works! by Sandi Henry. The projects in it are very manageable, produce nice results, and yet still look like kids made them. We didn't do it every single week, but a few times a month anyway.