Oh, I like the idea of a state history book!! Great thought, thanks for sharing it :)

That seems fast to me, but I guess it depends on how quickly you'd like to cover the material and how thorough you'd like to be. Will you only be reading through the books, or will you be doing the activity guide and tests as well?

We've been doing spelling u see, and for this year it's been good (not a single fit about spelling, so that's nice!). I need to re-look into All About Spelling. My oldest still is a terrible speller, so I think we're going to need to focus a bit more on it next year. This is helpful, thank you. I'm wondering then if FLL won't be challenging enough for my daughter who will be in 1st grade next year. Maybe I'll just order FLL 2 and see and judge from there if my 1st grader will do well with it or if I should get her FLL1 and see if my oldest will need FLL3.

Thank you! This helps immensely. I started looking into both of these because my husband and I both value a strong foundation for english grammar and writing. We want our daughters to learn how parts of speech work together, how to diagram, and how to write well. Reading the description and some reviews on blogs helped some, but this is wonderful!

Awesome! My girls will move mountains for chocolate chips, so that's brilliant :) Thanks everyone, this is really helpful. I need to go back and look to see if there is a placement guide. My youngest does pretty well knowing her nouns, verbs, adjectives and is starting to understand adverbs. My oldest thrives on repetition, so it's good that we'll have it as she needs it and can skip it when it becomes unnecessary.

Note: I tried searching for a thread that discussed this but wasn't very successful, so feel free to point me in the right direction if you know of one :) I *think* that FLL & WWE will be good fits for my girls next year (1st & 4th grade) but I'm terribly indecisive and am just not sure. I would love to hear what others like about it, what you haven't liked (or why it didn't work for your student). My oldest is a bit behind in her language arts/writing so we'd probably do her a level behind her grade. Thanks!! Anna

Thank you, that's very helpful. She doesn't tolerate frustration very well, so maybe if she really wants to try BA we'll just use it as a supplement to stretch her tolerance for challenge--as you so aptly put it.

That's good to know. We would do BA3. That's interesting that A was harder! I'll keep that in mind if we do decide to go this route. She saw me looking through the BA samples and got so excited. I told her she couldn't do it unless she could pass the pre-assessment test and she asked to do it. She barely passed with 12/16....so, maybe by the time she finished her Horizons book she'd be ready for 3A. I want her to be excited to do her math, or at the very least not to hate it :)

Yes, it is primarily multiplication. We have slowed down some and focused more on multiplication memorization. She does alright with most of the other concepts.

Thanks for the link, for some reason, I couldn't find that one. She did get 12/16 so by that measure she'd be okay to start with it I think--if we decided to go that route.

My oldest (8) has had a love-hate relationship with math. She loved it when we first started homeschooling. We did Horizons for Kindergarten, but then first grade we switched to the K12 charter school which she loved--except the math. I think it made her cry every day. So, we ended up withdrawing in the spring and resumed with Horizons 1, and she loved math again. For second grade, she attended the local Lutheran school and thrived. This year, we moved states and so we have been homeschooling. We went back to Horizons and found that although she was in the top percentage for math among her peers at school, she was behind when it came to Horizon's grade levels for math. So, we had to skip back to Horizons 2. She has worked really hard and this year has completed Horizons 2 (both books) and is now half-way through Horizons 3, book 1. My plan was to have her continue through summer with math so by the start of next school year, she'd be at Horizons 4, for her 4th grade year. The problem is that I don't think the spiral approach is working for her anymore. When she was younger and had trouble focusing, the spiral approach kept her interest. However, as things have gotten more challenging, the spiral approach isn't giving her time to master concepts that are more challenging for her and she totally disengages. I'm not sure I want to continue with Horizons next year, but I'm not exactly sure where to go from here. Beast Academy looks promising but I'm not sure? I did have her do the pre-assessment for 3A and she did get 12/16. Part of the reason it appeals to me is that she remembers concepts and facts she hears from narrative. I've looked at Math U See and Life of Fred, but I'm just not sure.

I agree. We did K12 for my daughter's 1st grade year through our state's online charter school (Ours was Oregon Virtual Academy ORVA). The provide a teacher, online classroom time, etc. Because it was a state charter program everything was provided for free. My daughter loved it--except the math. The math induced tears upon tears. If we could have continued with K12/ORVA and just done a math alternative it would have been perfect for us.