I've seen the letter group sent responding to this (but can't find it now) and they have changed that. I don't know what the original text was, but it said something like there was one instance that could be mis-interpreted as referring to Africa as a country. The thing about slavery...I've heard of several instances where kids, as part of history in school, were asked to take place in a mock slave auction (in at least one only the black kids were "auctioned"). That hit a raw nerve for many parents. I usually like the play-acting feature of Group's VBS (our church used it's Holy Land Adventures, which recreate Biblical stories living history style)...but I can see where imitating slavery could be over the line.

Does anyone know where I can find a free cursive font (like, school cursive). Or one of those places where you can make your own worksheets using their fonts and such. I know those sites are there but now that I'm looking for one I can't find it.

Wow...3 HOURS for an 8th grader is a LOT. You still get 1 1/2 hours in after that? Is it interest based stuff?

These aren't multisensory at all, or made for that age group, but I stumbled on these today and thought of you. Might be some nice "slip this into history" stuff in these.... http://www.ancientworldalive.com/greek-and-latin-roots?fbclid=IwAR1wiSQf6B1bv9_ddW0dUz57iaqisbG_eeDdfRIIVNthp62gT1oiQU4pnJI

This site has suggestions of easy reading activities you can do at whatever stage you think he's at... http://www.charlottemasonhelp.com/2009/03/reading-lessons.html I'd also play games where you let him make silly words with magnet letters and sound it out for him. That can help him see what the sounding out process is like. (It also helps them learn the necessity of vowels as you explain that you can't sound out a word without them). ProgressivePhonics.com has free readers and little lessons you can read to him that explain the phonics (the letter sounds, but also the phonics beyond that like blends and such) in a really fun way (personifying the letters and such) and are super short so would be easy for a 4 year old attention span (an you read with the child...it's color coded so he reads some words and you read others). If it doesn't work, no loss just let it go cause it was free anyways. I will say one thing though, we started using it at the intermediate lessons, not the very beginning lessons, and like 100 EZ lesson there's some capitalization issues with those. Not with every book, I think but with some, so you might consider subbing out something else for the ones that have that problem. The later ones are great though, and I haven't noticed any problems like that with them. Mouse Makes Words is a fun little book to read at this stage. You read most of it, but you can have your child read the BIG words the mouse is changing letter on and let your child try to guess what the new word will be when the letters are swapped out. 🙂

STEM to Story combines writing and science...and has writing projects for various levels from grades 5-8. So, I'm not sure which of these contain writing assignments, but I have a list of resources that combine history and science here: http://imaginativehomeschool.blogspot.com/2017/08/resources-combining-history-and-science.html I think many of these would be easy to add a writing assignment to even if they didn't specifically have a writing assignment attached. There are resources for several eras labled "Idea Web" on those lists, and those all have questions that connect history and science, which though I think initially intended for classroom discussion could easily be used for writing assignments. I've listed a lot of his resources in the link above, but it's hard to tell them from the rest. This teacher has cross-curriculum units that often involve writing, science, history, and various other subjects. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Portable-Gifted-And-Talented/PreK-12-Subject-Area/Social-Studies-History

The Lost Kingdoms of Africa videos are good (I'm having trouble linking to the one on Ethiopia directly for some reason, but here's the playlist with all of them and Ethiopia is the 2nd one). Can't remember though what era this covers (whether it covered past Axsum).

The Addition/Subtraction/Multiplication/Division Facts the Stick series has short lessons followed by a week of games. You can play against your child because, while the games require using the math facts, they all have elements of chance that make it just as likely for you or your child to win. I've listed some other educational games I like. You could get together with other homeschoolers at his age or level to play these. Silly Sentences Kingdominoes (when he gets to multiplication). Zeus on the Loose (mythology and math) Monopoly (it's long, but very competitive, and good for money math). Race to a Dollar (free game) https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Race-to-a-Dollar-a-Coin-Exchange-Game-Freebie-1162939 Prince Padania has a lot of fun learning games, many free (https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Prince-Padania) Pokemon card games have a lot of addition/subtraction in them. And of course anything can be made into a game. I use dice and gameboards like the ones below and I put tic-tacks and small coins (pennies, nickles, dimes) on some of the spaces. Then I made cards for all my kids (each kid has a different color of cards, and the cards have questions that are at their level, so they can compete against each other but it's not unfair). The kids can only move on by answering the cards correctly (so they answer a question before moving). If they land on a candy or coin they get to keep it, and then there's a slightly bigger prize for the first one to reach the end (maybe a quarter, or two candies in stead of one...but everyone who reaches the end gets something). My kids love it. I got them to play it in summer before we were even homeschooling. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/FREEBIE-Blank-BW-Game-Boards-2604845

Mind if I ask what state? Just curious. Might be useful to know at some point.

For those ages, I like the videos on http://foreignlanguagesforkids.com/ . You'll have to follow it up with something more but its a great starting place.

Thanks for clarifying. Hadn't answered earlier and I'm glad I read this first. Being by themselves most of the time is very different than for a few hours 2 days a week (might help stave off other misunderstanding comments to go back and edit your original post to add that). If the child's autism is mild that doesn't sound too bad (I've known some kids with mild autism that could handle that at 9, and others with more severe Autism that couldn't). I would suggest asking for free/cheap recommendations for writing curriculum that would be easy for a new homeschooler to manage in the the Learning Challenges board on these forums. I started writing late with my son and was still looking when he returned to school this year so have no recommendations there. If spelling is also an issue, I loved All About Spelling for my kiddo who struggled in nearly everything. It is not "cheap" but it is easy to find the books used (and are not too expensive), and all the words on the cards are also listed in the chapters so they can make those themselves, and the letter tiles you only have to buy once and they'll even replace I think up to 5 of them free if you loose some (or they could get the letter tiles app in stead, since he likes doing things online). It's hands on but easy to use (pretty open and go...not a ton of prep). Here are two places with lists of free curriculum, but I can't say which would be easy for the parents or good for him. I've only used, on the 2nd list below, Progressive Phonics (which he's likely to be past) and the Experimenting With the Vikings unit study (which is great, especially if he likes science or Vikings, but is hands on), and Kahn Academy for math, which is great but I feel like at that age maybe not enough on it's own. http://imaginativehomeschool.blogspot.com/2016/07/complete-curriculum-for-free.html and Another thing for them to look into is if there is any way that he could continue to get services. Sometimes it's possible. Here in California it's sometimes possible to homeschool through a charter, and get both services and funds to use for tutoring and curriculum. That's not available everywhere but I have heard of some states where if you are homeschooling a child with a special need you can get services for them without having to send them to school.

This tracks a little with my own experience. When my youngest was struggling in school, and I knew he needed something different, the first thing I looked into were private schools. I didn't feel confident enough yet to try myself. But they were more expensive than we could afford at the time. If I were here in California I MIGHT have gone the full time charter school route (MIGHT, because working with him over the summer to "catch him up" built up my confidence that I could teach him, and convinced me only one on one teaching would do, at least at first).

If I was homeschooling year round and not just in the summer, I would absolutely buy the Charlotte Mason STEM and HISTORY bundle. "California Out of the Box" I've heard is a good curriculum, I've ALMOST bought the Explore Medieval Kingdoms curriculum before to supplement Story of the World. The graphics from the Nature Science website would be useful, I've been curious about Math Mammoth, and I've supplemented with Mystery of History before (it was my second choice to Story of the World, and I used something from their free sampler to cover the Maccabees, something SOTW skipped, in Volume I). BUT, even though I'm doing some afterschooling and homeschooling during the summer, and we're going to keep doing SOTW and are in the middle ages, I am really having to cut down on supplementary stuff if I'm going to get very far at all in just 2 months, and we already have a math curriculum I can use, and they covered California history in school this year, plus I have a free curriculum that would be fine just for adding a little CA history to SOTW, so I'm resisting the temptation to buy a bunch of stuff I probably won't be able to use.

That is really interesting! But I do think that NOW Texas is friendly to homeschooling. I rarely see proposals to restrict or regulate homeschooling there, but since I've moved to California I've seen homeschooling restrictions hit our state legislature constantly (though we've done well in thwarting them). Meanwhile, in Texas, there were moves to try to make it easier for homeschoolers to participate in sports (there's an acronym...UIL or something like that, for the body that governs most school sports, and their rules make it hard for homeschoolers to participate). It was the HOMESCHOOLERS (or a good portion of them) who fought against this bill that made it fail because they wanted to keep the "no help/no interference" status of homeschooling in the state, fearing that it would lead to regulation on homeschoolers. That's more understandable now, actually, considering what you've shared about the state's history. I always thought it was a bit paranoid at the time. Still, I think overall Texas is, TODAY, extremely friendly to homeschoolers...even if it wasn't in the past.

Loved these. The light-switch of Motivation: Can't Stop or Can't Start. Yeah! (That's me, not just my ADD child, big time). And The doors where "minimal effort" and "overly ambitious." MY KIDDO ALL THE WAY. Like, for science fair project it's either "learn how animals talk and figure out how to communicate with them" or "well, lets not even do a project then." UG.

One Small Square Backyard by Donald M. Silver comes to mind. It's about the whole backyard habitat, but covers the plants (and earthworms, as well as snails, common bugs, fugus, ect.) in a very child friendly way. And even though it's a picture book (beautiful illustration) it has activities builtin. I've used one of his other "Small Square" books as a spine for a unit study.

Hm... I'm not sure if Story of the World would be too young for a 6th grader. I know some who do it but they usually have younger siblings doing it to or started when they were younger. But it does have very good audio CDs of the material, and I know people who mainly use just that. It doesn't cost that much.

So, I've gone from homeschooling full time to just homeschooling during summer, since he's in school now. My son loves marine biology so in addition to a week camp, we're doing marine biology from library books and other books we have and I have some experiments I found planned out. I really want to try to do a little bit more of SOTW...we ended right after the Crusades in Volume II so I'll keep going in but probably won't get too far. Well also just continue in All About Spelling...just do a lesson a week, so however much of that gets done. Will review Multiplication/Division with the "Facts that Stick" books. He's still iffy on those. Reading will be a mix of progressive phonics/ and a little Explode the Code to help with multisyllable words. Not doing any writing...I'll let him take a break from that.

It's funny, where I am now in California has some of the opposite reasons for a large homeschool community than Texas. 1. Lots of charters that do "independant study"....we call them "homeschool charters" even though technically they are public school. They range from programs that choose your curriculum and where kids go to school part of the week and sort of have "homework" the rest, and charters that give you funds and nearly complete freedom teach how you want (so just like regular homeschooling, only with state money and the requirement to submit work samples to a teacher regularly). I think this has opened up homeschooling to many people that wouldn't have considered it usually, but with that extra support decided to try it. Once they've been introduced to homeschooling through a charter, some of these eventually try the PSA route (declaring yourself a private school...and getting rid of the support but also the reporting requirements of a charter). 2. Independent spirit (ok, that's the same as Texas, just in a different way). In Texas it was more of "rugged leave-me-aloneness" and in California it's more of a culture of individualization and everyone wanting to take their own path/do their own thing. 3. There's not as large of a Christian community out here, but the schools are much more liberal, so that pushes many Christians to homeschool. 4. Anti-vaxxers and CA state law about public school and vaccinations. 5. Just a lot of people in one place (at least where I live) so it's not hard for a homeschool community to become "big."

Actually, not seeing why the "border thing" would have much to do with it. In Texas I think it has a lot to do with a few things: 1. Strong Christian culture in Texas, which is why many people homeschool (that wasn't our reason, even though we are Christian...but we homeschooled for non-religious reasons). 2. Strong independent spirit in Texas. Granted, they like their traditions...but they do like the freedom to do things their own way too. They are big on "leave me alone and let me do what I want." 3. LOTS of farming communities in Texas. For some reason, farming and homeschooling seems to go together (not sure why...maybe the need to have kids help out and therefor have a more flexible schedule). 4. Not a lot of alternative options for schooling in many communities (so, if your local public schools aren't great, or you have a child who doesn't do well there, there may not be a charter school or private school to try to get them into...so homeschooling is the ONLY other education option in a lot of places).

So, I started tutoring a little girl who just finished Kindergarten recently. They said she was "good in math, a little behind in reading." (No, she really wasn't) Whoa, what a difference from working with my son who has ADHD + probably an additional learning disabilities we're still figuring out. I was worried about how she was going to do with an hour of tutoring (brought lots of fun stuff and games at first). She BLEW through that hour...felt like she could have done a second EASILY. My son, at a year older than her, would have had to have several breaks during that time, probably would have been in tears at least once, and before half the things we did I would have to spend time encouraging him and nudging him to start. And usually, even with big long breaks, he seemed to burn out if I tried doing more than an hour a day. It's like his brain just said "done, no more" and if I kept trying to make him continue after that point it was tons of prodding and encouraging and trying to get him to focus for very little learning sinking in. I mean, I know some of it is that I'm someone "new and exciting" right now for the girl I'm tutoring, but still. WOW.

Anyone finding their afterschooling plans squelched by the amount of homework your child has? My Junior higher has 2 hours of homework every night, and even though there's stuff I'd really like to work with him on that the school is not teaching, I don't feel like I can add to that load. My high schooler this semester (only semester he hasn't had an easier elective) is getting 3-4 hours a night of homwork (more than that when he's had make-up work from being sick). He likes to study graphic design on his own but it doesn't leave him much time to do that. Spanish, the one class he's struggling with (grade wise) AND is open to me doing extra to help him with (we did do extra last trimester, since he had a break from Spanish and wanted to keep from loosing what he had learned)...it doesn't give that much homework, but the massive amounts his other classes are assigning doesn't leave me any time to work on the one subject he actually NEEDS help on. He feels like the rest is mostly busy work that actually involve a lot of things that he doesn't feel he needs to understand the concepts (he actually says they take time away from him studying in ways he feel work better for him.). So frustrated...just venting.

By the way, what grade levels is this for?

I've got some good resources about various civilizations in Africa....most of these are videos but there's some books too. EARLY SAHARAN AFRICA & NUBIA These are the post I did for my series on how we supplemented Story of the World, but the movie and and other resources shared in it could be used apart from Story of the World to tell about this history of Nubia/Kush. The early people who lived in the Saharah before it dried out, some of whom most likely later became the Nubians, are covered in the first post below. The second covers the nation of Nubia (who's borders were in what is today lower Egypt, and who's people possibly later populated Sudan). http://imaginativehomeschool.blogspot.com/2017/11/story-of-world-ancient-times-chap-11.html http://imaginativehomeschool.blogspot.com/2018/02/story-of-world-chap-12-africa-egypt.html ____ NOTE: Haven't watched all the Kingdoms of Africa series, so don't know the time periods the following two these... WEST AFRICA - Kingoms of West AFrica/BENIN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je0K0BAJ1hY ASANTE Kingdom - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL2Qv_ytdp4 _________________________ MALI (Middle Ages) If you were me and lived in Ancient Africa Children's Book https://www.pinterest.com/pin/259097784795399372/ Kingdom of Mali https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkayShPilkw&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5DDhUWNT_5GWuCnXHh70Zz7 Mansa Musa (from Mali...richest person ever) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YJMaL55TM&t=3s Mansa Musa and Islam in Africa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvnU0v6hcUo _______________________ Queen Nzinga (of the Ndonga and Matamba Kingdoms - 1600s, in present day Angola) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCQU5FC7ht0 ------------------------------------------------ ZIMBABWE (Middle Ages) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quzjmZ-7s6w&t=22s Lost Kingdoms of Africa - Zimbabwe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2be1gO36Fs4 ZULU (1800s) Extra Credits - The Zulu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZLGKFWlRzY&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5BevK2pZGDi-zUMorOSn2ed Congo and Africa's World War (Modern Times) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uArRzwKHvE _________________________ GENERAL AFRICA Ancient Africa Unit Haven't tried this, but it looks pretty good. Africa is not a Country (children's book) Other African Children's Books (not all tied into history, but some are...lots of African mythology books) https://www.mylearningtable.com/read-wednesday-childrens-books-africa/ South African Tribal Huts and Homes (click and then scroll down, a lot, to find it) https://www.pinterest.com/pin/259097784789790832/ World Geography Africa Scavenger Hunt https://www.pinterest.com/pin/259097784791480413/ African Pantheons (Religion) - Crash Course https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2se_zimj40 History of African Theater https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn-ER4bL7f8 Of course Egypt is in Africa too, but I assume you won't have trouble finding stuff on that. 🙂 NOTE ON CRASH COURSE I haven't previewed the Africa videos by Crash course, and while generally excellent and ok for kids, occassionally Crash Course tells a joke that's a little crude, so just preview first.

Are you saying she has 45-60 minutes of homework OTHER than the Spanish, with the Spanish, or is that just what you want to do for Spanish? Do you speak any Spanish or are you using a curriculum? If you speak some you can insert it into regular things (teach Spanish phrases and then use them throughout the day). If your daughter still likes playing pretend, you could get a puppet or a toy and have that toy speak just in Spanish when you are playing pretend with her (when I do it, I also have a toy that speaks both English and Spanish and can act as a translator sometimes). My son really enjoyed that (he still liked it at 10 though we started when he was younger). There's also a lot of games you can play to practice vocabulary. I taught my kids the colors and numbers to 9, without even telling them I was doing it, by saying the Spanish colors/numbers whenever I put down a card in Uno (also taught them some game play phrases like "Te toca" (your turn) and "Necessito una carta" (I need a card). This site has a lot of other fun game ideas. https://www.spanishplayground.net/ We also hired someone (just a local teen who spoke Spanish at home) to come and play with out child once a week and only speak Spanish.