LOL! I feel your pain. My oldest does that with his sister who is six years younger and my daughter does it with her brother who is two years younger. A few years ago, I learned to use their ages to my advantage: "Mom. I picked up way more toys than my sister. It's not FAIR!" "Fine, you are 9, pick up 9 toys. Your sister is 3, she can pick up 3 toys. THAT'S FAIR!" For some reason, he couldn't argue with that, so we kept it up until the floor was clean. I'm already planning next year's statements: "You are twice her age, so you should spend twice as much time doing school!" Kids are the same everywhere.

Trial and error is the only reliable way to know if your child responds well to one style of program or another...and things can change. My son started off in public school with Saxon and he thrived. The spiral method was a great confidence builder. He got almost every problem right and missed one problem all year long on his assessments. He thought math was awesome. So when we started homeschooling I chose Saxon again, even though he was a little less enthused about math in 3rd grade (still public school). He almost immediately hit a wall in 4th grade and we finally narrowed it down to two reasons: he wasn't getting the concrete, hands on use of manipulatives at the beginning of each lesson and the daily review was driving him insane. He'd rather move onto another concept rather than get bogged down in a review. We did a short stint in MEP math because it was a free alternative. Even though it was spiral, he loved because of the visual nature of it and that it spiraled challenging concepts that required a lot of problem solving, but I didn't love teaching it. Finally, we settled on Singapore which fits his learning style and my teaching style. Singapore is mastery approach because we spend weeks exploring the different sides of a concept before moving on.

My kids' favorites were Dr. Seuss's ABC, Bad Kitty, and Max's ABC.

We love our charter school (in California). My kids get to go to a weekly class and they have a lot of electives to choose from. It is located in a wing of a local elementary school so our kids have access to the library, computer lab, and playing fields when they are there. We also have a lot of field trips planned each quarter. Plenty of opportunities for socialization. As far as extra time commitments, our kids have to be assessed at the beginning and end of each year for reading and math levels. I have to turn in goals for each semester (I just type up the lesson topics from the table of contents of my major curriculum). We have three days of Common Core testing, that we could opt out of, but I send my son for the experience. (He likes tests anyway.) Every month we have to turn in a summary of what we covered in each subject area, 3 work samples, and a PE log (CA law requires that.) We also have to meet with a mentor teacher once a month, but it ends up being only about four or five meetings because unless there is a real need, we don't meet during months where there are assessments, or a major break, like Christmas. FWW Our stipend was lower when the school was new, but now that our school is more established and other competing charters are in the area, our stipend has doubled. $600 per kid will go a long way towards offsetting the cost of homeschooling and it will probably go up in time.

Ditto for Stack the States. My kids love it! Trail Guide to US Geography is a good secular source if you want to do map work. The map lessons are short so there's no reason you couldn't do several weeks worth of work in one sitting.

I really like Writing and Rhetoric for my son. The speaking and discussion parts are great, and would be perfect for a co-op. I wish I could figure out how to utilize the speaking section better in our homeschool. The writing sections are well written enough that my son does those pretty independently. If you choose W&R, I would suggest starting with Narrative 1. I think it would be the most appealing for your age range, even though it doesn't work essay skills. Chriea and Proverb is good for essays, but it may be difficult for your third graders.

From what I gather from my readings and conversations with my friends in public education, public schools are emphasizing the process of learning and synthesizing information. So, that experiment with the cat food wasn't supposed to teach anything other than the scientific method. The purpose of the American History unit was probably more to give her an opportunity to do an essay or presentation on something like the reasons for a war than to learn American History. The ideas is that if a student knows how to learn, history, literature, and science will be no problem. There's a lot of fault in that logic. No matter what curriculum you choose, as long as you are working on writing, reading, and critical thinking, she'll be able to transition easily into public school. Including a content rich curriculum, where she's actually learning science and history, will boost her reading level in later Jr and Sr High when background knowledge is tied to reading skills. The only adjustment in math that you'll have to make to prep for Common Core testing is that she'll have to be able to explain why and how she worked out a problem the way she did. Since it sounds like your district is moving towards all technology, you might want to enroll her in one online class for the experience, or just work on typing. You could also see if K12 is available in your state. It should be free if your state approves it as a charter school.

I don't think in terms of "seatwork" when I plan my kids' days, I think in terms of "structured learning time." Structured learning time includes anything I tell my kids to learn or practice: worksheets, assigned reading, science labs, PE, field trips, learning new life skills, handwriting, drawing a diagram, writing in a journal, history, read whatever you want for 30 minutes, brainstorming for a writing assignment, art, computer games to reinforce skills, filling in a map, learning a song, and so on. While it seems to me that it would be more efficient to sit down and get all the workbooky and reading stuff out of the way first and then move onto all of the hands on projects. My kids do best with a Charlotte Mason approach with a lot of short and varied lessons. I try to mix PE, science labs and demos, creative activities, read alouds while drawing or playing with pattern blocks, and hands-on activities in with what I consider seatwork (workbooks, assigned reading, math, and writing.) I reserve the afternoons for classes, pulling out art supplies, fun read alouds, free reading, teaching life skills like following recipes, going to the library, playing music, lego building, and other fun, informal learning activities.

My homeschool planner is called A Simple Plan and it has pages and pages of "yearly planning sheets" that I love for planning because it is so user friendly. Each sheet is basically a 9x4 grid with each square marked Week 1, Week 2, and so on through Week 36. Every time a new piece of curriculum comes in, I figure out how many pages or lessons a week I need to finish each book by the end of the year. I jot down the lessons I want to cover each week in the appropriate square on one of the planning pages. If the subject has "themes" like history or science, I write in the themes, too so I can use those pages to plan out coordinating field trips, creative projects, read alouds, and readers on other planning pages. When I plan for the year, I also make a point of scheduling in "light weeks" throughout the year for catch up days and during December when we'd rather have light days and spend more time preparing and celebrating! If I can, I try to finish certain subjects, like spelling, math drills, most of our writing curriculum, and grammar before Easter because my kids start running out of steam after Easter vacation and standardized testing, which happens to always fall a week or two after Easter for us.

A Trip Around the World and its two sequels by Carson-Dellosa publishers would work for that age group. I don't have a copy in front of me but I remember each country covered has a couple of activity pages, including a map and flag coloring page, a page of interesting facts about the country, a page with craft and activity ideas, a language page which common phrases or songs from the country, and another page with a couple of recipes. It would be enough to fill your time.

I three hole punch and staple everything together backwards from the order it was written. The final draft is on the top, rough draft next, then the outline, and finally any research notes or mind mapping. Then I stick it in a binder. The stapled packet of papers makes organizing easier for me.