I make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and freeze them. They thaw beautifully and don't get soggy. I've only made two weeks worth at a time. They are so easy to grab and toss in a cooler with drinks, apples, yogurts, etc... Cold pasta salads with chicken, cheese, olives, and veggies are good for lunches, too.

Duolingo has a schools site that you can set up a classroom for outside practice. It's a good way to keep up with your student's progress.

If she likes the treadmill, there's nothing wrong with letting her be on the treadmill for PE. You could always throw in a challenge her and there by signing up for a family fun run or even a short trail run. A race would get her out of her head and into the action, for sure! My son is a lot like your daughter he'd rather read or write stories or play legos or draw or play video games than do anything that requires him to sweat. We found our happy spot with bike riding. He happily rides at least 20 minutes a day and my husband takes him out on longer rides, with hills, on the weekends. To

I've worked at enough California high schools to know that there may be a wee bit of misinformation on this thread. You probably want to set up an appointment to see the counselor or administrator of your charter school to see how that particular charter school makes sure their students are meeting the A-G requirements. They may allow you to write your own course description, they may not. They may allow Christian materials if you prove they meet the same standards as their courses, they may not. You won't find out on this board; you have to ask the school itself. Also a nice thing about t

If I were putting a 5th and 7th grader together, I would put them in either books 3, 4, or 5. One of the benefits of putting you kids in the same book is that there is a discussion section in each lesson. If you put your kids together, you could do the discussion as a group, instead of just one on one. There's a public speaking section at the end that they could do together, too. I tend to skip the speaking section because I have just one kid in W&R. My son spends 20-25 minutes a day on W&R. The first day he does his reading and narrates to me. The second day he does the questi

Too bad you can't use MP, our charter lets us use funds for a lot of MPs language arts and history materials because they are neutral. You can try Trail Guide to World Geography. It didn't strike me as a Christian geography program, but is from a Christian company, so your charter may blackball it. Uncle Josh's Outline maps has really good blank maps. It isn't a bad idea to invest some of that money in a really nice children's atlas.

Song School Spanish from Classical Academic Press is pretty good for that age too. It comes with a cd and an activity book.

I like the volunteering idea. She could make gifts for the children's section of a local hospital. A local charity I know of takes donations of old sheets or shirts and people repurpose the cloth to make quilts and donate them to the local police. Each officer has clean blankets in thier patrol cars to give to children during accidents. She could do flower arranging...because when the flowers wilt, you can throw them away...

Singapore is a little ahead of other programs, so it's OK to be a little behind. When we started homeschooling my son was a half year behind in math because his public school switched programs midyear to adopt a Common Core aligned program. He ended up doing the first half of third grade math twice that year. We started Singapore a half year behind. This year (6th grade) we completed 5B and 6A, and we are right on track to finish 6B sometime in May. 6A and 6B are pretty short and can easily be completed in a semester. (I heard year 6 is a testing year in Singapore, which accounts for the s

I think it would be hard to keep up the fun all the way through high school. It seems more appropriate to give high school students an education that is interesting and challenging and middle school is a good time to transition from fun to engaging. There are a lot of good suggestions above for adding interest to the curriculum. Charlotte Mason-style short, yet challenging lessons in academic subjects may free up time for ongoing academic projects that really engage your kids' skills and creativity. "Engaged" in the upper grades is the equivalent of "having fun" in the lower grades. On the

In the Al Capone Does My Shirts series by Gennifer Choldenko, the main character's sister has severe autism, I believe.

The Smartest Kids in the World and The Knowledge Gap by ED Hirsch gave me the confidence at the beginning of my homeschooling years to trust my gut and strike out on a path that was very different from the American norm. Am I fascinated by Finland's school system? Yes, yes I am.

ChristianBook.com gives discounts of 30-35% off of a lot of curriculum at least once during the year. You just have to check weekly for sales. Also, see if you local homeschool group does a used curriculum sale...that's where the best deals are! PS We enjoyed REAL Science Odyssey a lot. If I had to go back, I would buy the eBook because it was really hard to make copies out of the book or to even pull pages out because the binding was really tough and inflexible.

I use Weebly for my blog. It's super easy. Everything is drag and drop. The phone app is good, too. You can even set up a teacher account for free and add on student accounts.

My daughter has an ST Math subscription through our charter school, and sometimes I'll look at what she's playing and wonder something like, "Do I even need to teach subtraction now because she seems to get the concept."