There is a lot of writing about history, whether it is about a specific even or about a biography of a certain person. In every single lesson, there is an assignment to narrate the initial story either through an oral narration, written narration, or outline. There is a lot of practice retelling stories chronologically and I think a lot of the direct instruction on how to do that happened in the first couple of books (which I don't have on hand because they are on loan). So far, there has been no writing about science topics, though my son seems to keep up well writing about science since the types of writing he is practicing (expository, persuasive, summaries, etc...) apply well across the curriculum. Deciding between two really good options is always hard! Good luck!

I liked The Reading Lesson for phonics and reading. We supplemented with BOB books sets 1&2. Handwriting Without Tears is easy to use for handwriting. If your daughter knows her numbers, etc... you can probably skip any kindergarten math curriculum and go nice and slow through the first half of a first grade curriculum. Saxon and Singapore are both good and incorporate hands on learning. Starfall.com and ABCya.com have some good quality practice activities and games for all of the subjects when baby #2 comes.

My son doesn't like to be corrected either, so we've worked out a system where he corrects his own work. When I have my son correct his own work, he trades me his pencil for a red erasable pencil and the answer key and sits at the dining room table with just what he needs to correct his work. If he misses a problem, he has to erase the whole problem and rework it all in red pencil. He cannot erase part of the problem. He has to work it all out correctly from the start. There is a consequence if he "cheats" but I haven't had to dole it out. He appreciates that I worked out a system where he can figure out what he did wrong on his own.

I agree with CMama that book 6 is a very appropriate starting place for 7th grade. We've been with Writing and Rhetoric from the beginning and they are very reliably putting out books. I'm not worried at all that we will run out of books before they finish. If you get W&R for your writing curriculum, you will have to worry less about incorporating writing with the Illiad since W&R focuses a lot on writing about shorter pieces of literature. You could have her practice note taking with the Illiad. We are using the Book of the Ancient World set from Memoria Press. I think that it is a solid history program, but it would be a lot to try to do all three books in a semester, especially if you use the study guides. I have the study guides, but I don't require my son to write out all of the answers (he's dysgraphic). Instead, I use them to quiz and discuss what he read. Typing.com is online and it's free. Definitely not "kiddy" either!

I can't answer any questions about WWS because I've never used it, but we are on book 6 of W&R. In the first three books of W&R, the major writing focus is on narrative writing. From books 4 on, the focus is on essays: expository, persuasive, compare/contrast, and so on. So far, we have enjoyed every single book. Each book gets progressively more challenging, but my son has kept up just fine. Every single lesson of W&R starts with a literary selection as you noticed. Some of the writing in every lesson has to do with the story at the beginning. Students either have to write about the story or use the story as a model for their writing. If your student has a good foundation in writing, they could probably jump into one of the books for their corresponding grade level in W&R. Books 1 and 2 are for grades 3 or 4, books 3 and 4 are for grades 4 or 5, books 5 and 6 are for grades 5 or 6 and so forth.

If you are doing written narrations you can switch to oral narrations, especially for the younger children. You can also have the kids do narration OR review questions. When you narrate, instead of having all of the kids narrate, have just one child narrate and then then let each of your other children add one thing to the narration. The next time have a different child narrate and the others add details. Your seven year old may be having trouble narrating because the text is too long. Give him practice by reading the first paragraph and then let him narrate just that one paragraph. Gradually increase the amount of reading he has to narrate. When your older kids are done with their narrations, you can hand them a map and the teacher's guide and they can do the map work themselves while you work with the younger kids. Don't forget that you do not have to do everything suggested in the teacher's manual. If you want to be done in an hour, do the most important thing first, then the next most important thing and so on. If you have done your top priorities for the day's lesson, you can consider the rest gravy and move on with your day.

If she's excited and motivated, run with it! Good for her!

Sounds to me like he earned an A. At the high school I taught at, kids got bad grades in PE. If students participated every day with a good attitude and worked to improve their fitness level, they got an A. You wouldn't believe how many kids would stand on a basketball court and then not move. They didn't get As. Give your son the grade he deserves.

I have a feeling most science standardized tests are mostly "reading comprehension about science stuff." In addition to reading a science article, they will probably have to understand simple charts and graphs and know simple science concepts. For example: This chart shows the high temperatures for every day in a week in May. What day had the highest temperature? My best advice is to check out some Magic School Bus and Let's Read and Find Out Science books from the library for read alouds every week and call it good!

I think it is great that your son is into writing. My 12 year old likes to write also. Here are my thoughts: He started off the story in the middle of the action, which is just where a story should start! Sci-Fi is tricky to write because the author have to create a world and make it believable and understandable. When Kix is explaining some of the science behind what is happening, I can see that your son has thought through making a plausible sounding scientific explanation for what is going on. I like the part where Owen translates the last part of Kix's explanation and says, "So you mean...you mean you created a time machine?!" It shows that Owen is smart and it also helps the reader understand what Kix is talking about. My best piece of advice is to add in more to the exchange between Kix and Owen where Owen restates what Kix is saying in terms understandable to an average person. That type of clarification is super helpful to readers and makes the dialogue really interesting. I know that you aren't focusing on paragraph and sentence structure right now so you can get the plot on paper, and that is exactly what writers do--write first, edit later. That being said, your son may want to try adding paragraphs as he goes. It won't be long until it is natural. Having paragraphs is important is helpful to see the structure of the story. At a glance, he would be able to look at his story and see if he has too many long descriptive paragraphs in a row or if he has too many pages of dialogue without any description of what the characters are doing while they speak. Don't worry about getting the first chapter completely right before moving on to the next one. Let him write as much of the story as he can. I'm sure he's itching to get to the time travel part with the superhuman zombieish creatures. Sounds exciting! When he has writer's block and isn't sure how to proceed to the next plot point, that is the time that he can go back and fiddle with grammar and style.

4 year history cycle Pros: Since students go through world history three times, they really get a grasp of the scope and order of events in history Cons: Since there is so much history in just four years, it can feel rushed. In depth studies have to be limited. However, the student will go increasingly in depth every year. 6 year history cycle Pros: Since there are two more years to study history, a year can be devoted to the history of one's own country. There is more time to study events and people in depth. Cons: Taking longer to study the cycle of history means that when a student graduates, the last time they studied ancient history, they were in 7th grade. Since history was studied in a 6 year rotation, they may not have as firm of a grasp of the scope and order of events in history.

I second Beautiful Feet Books for first grade American History. They have an article on why they believe American history should be taught first here that you may be interested in reading.

If your students liked Tom Sawyer, a collection of Mark Twain's short stories may fit the bill. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and What Stumped the Blue Jays come to mind as stories that would be good for your age bracket.

Thanks for sharing!

Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie is super encouraging...if you are a Christian. Otherwise you may be put off by the biblical content.

I don't think that it is too teacher intensive, but I can't compare it to any other writing program. The first day, students read a story, narrate, and then there are a few discussion questions. As Clear Creek mentioned, that is the most teacher intensive part of the week. The dictation is dropped after the first few books and is replaced with a proofreading section. Both require some teacher involvement. Sometimes, I have to step in and explain a grammar point during the writing time exercises. Outside of that, W&R is pretty self-teaching in my opinion. And of course, I read what my son writes and help him with the revision part, but that is just a part of being a teacher.

We work through all of the example problems in the textbook together, but if there are 8-12 other problems before the pencil, we just work through as many as we need to until my son "gets it." Then I let him skip the rest and work on his workbook independently. We also work through one pencil a day, too. The HIG has a pacing guide at the beginning that groups lessons together into a week's worth of work. I notice that the reviews are often allotted two days and the easier lessons at the beginning of a chapter may be doubled up.

Word Mastery by Florence Akin is a phonics primer that is in the public domain here is a link to the PDF. Memoria Press prettied it up to use for their phonics curriculum. You could print up the pages that you think you will need or save it to your iPad. Reading Eggs is supposed to be a good online reading program for beginning readers, but I haven't used it. I think it is $10. Starfall would be good for your two younger kids. ABCya.com has tons of games for specific skills. For the older kids you can buy ebooks as you go. Xtramath.com is good for math fact practice. Our charter school purchased a subscription to STMath--which is a really good program, fun, and tablet friendly. It goes up to 6th grade and you could probably leave your math books at home. And of course, Duolingo for German! Seriously, if I were you, I'd do a little math, Duolingo, and reading in the morning then pack journals and drawing books and hit the streets!

Read a lot of books! I suggest Jim Trelease's Read Aloud Handbook for inspiration.

Math: Singapore 1A & B Language Arts: Lots of books. I will probably order the books for Memoria Press grade 2 through our charter school. HWOT grade 2. I cover science and history during our morning read aloud time. I may purchase the Beautiful Feet Books Early American History Primary pack. Outside art class that is just a few minutes from our house.

All of these planning threads keep popping up! But here's what I'm thinking so far: Language Arts: Writing and Rhetoric Books 7&8, diagramming sentences, selected novels and poems, maybe The Art of Argument Math: I'm debating on continuing with Singapore or switching programs Science: Maybe Apologia? or we may continue doing science with the Berean Builders series as a family and have him do some of the Ambleside year 7 science readings independently. History: Finish the Book of the Romans (Because I know that we are not getting through it all this school year!) and the Book of the Middle Ages by Dorothy Mills Spanish: Duolingo Art: Artistic Pursuits

I would suggest Tom Sawyer rather than Huck Finn for that age rage, mainly because the themes are more age appropriate, especially for the 6th graders. Tom Sawyer is just an all around fun read, too. Also, Huck Finn has a lot of dialect which makes for more more challenging reading. Unless you have a class full of superstar readers, you would probably have to either do a lot of coaching on reading the dialects or read those parts out loud to them.

I try and get most of our academic work done before lunch. That includes: read alouds, math, assigned reading and narrations in history and literature, writing and language arts assignments, reading and phonics lessons, typing, and a little Spanish most days. We often do art or science right after lunch, but we are still done with most of the school day by 1. I keep lessons short to fit everything in and have found short lessons to be really effective. My sixth grader also spends about an hour a day free reading and all of my kids spend at least an hour outside in the afternoons for PE. I think that is a pretty good day for their ages. The additional mom time I spend is twenty minutes in the morning pulling out supplies we will need for the days activities and books for our read aloud time. When the kids are outside, I flip through their work and look for areas that need work in future lessons. I also spend an hour or so on Fridays planning for the next week and some time on Mondays requesting books from the library. I hear you about the attitude adjustment. As my son gets older, we are going to both have to have an attitude adjustment about the bigger work loads that are coming with the upper grades.

My son liked to work out math in his head, too at that age, so we worked out a deal that works with both of us. I let him do what he wants in his head, but he has to show me his answers every couple of problems. That way he can't get too far with mistakes because I have him redo the ones he missed and if he redoes them he has to show his work. To help him see the value of graph paper, I also work out sample problems on graph paper at the beginning of every lesson so he can see how helpful it is when used correctly. We also get the Singapore Mental Math books to work through so he learns mental math strategies correctly.

I use the San Diego Quick Assessment. It is quick, easy, and the results seem accurate to me.