Hokmeschool advice?

[kanga2roo]

  I'm wondering what you all use for homeschooling....Looking for feedback and suggestions about different programs, from those of you who chose to use something at home with your child. My son will be nine in the fall. TIA!

[moominmamma]

I have a newly 8-year-old. She likes curriculum in a way that none of my other children ever did at this age. However, she's fairly eclectic in her interests. Here's what we're using now:

Singapore Primary Math. She's almost done with this (it only covers 1st through 6th) but it has served her very well. Clear, friendly, quick-paced, promotes good mental math skills and advanced problem-solving skills.

Challenge Math by Ed Zaccarro. This is what I'm hoping to keep her busy with for a while before starting a true high school program. A wonderful array of interesting and fun mathematical concepts and problem-solving skills.

BC Science 6. We live in BC, Canada, and this is just one of the workbook/textbook programs they use in the schools. She loves it because it's not baby-ish and has the look and feel of what her older siblings are using for high school coursework.

Getty-Dubay handwriting books. She dabbles in these from time to time.

Rosetta Stone second language software. Japanese in her case. Enjoyable, particularly when done semi-socially with a parent working through the program at the same time via a separate user account. We help each other practice.

Editor-in-Chief workbooks from Critical Thinking Press. This is the only formal stuff we've ever done for language arts. It's a fun way to practice identifying errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation, by reading passages and doing a hunt for the errors contained within them.

Theory Time workbooks for music theory. Varied and well-paced.

She only does math and science in any regular way. The rest happens in spurts for a week or two, then nothing for months on end. That suits her. Everything else is more of the life-learning type. We are a very unschooly family, so even the curriculum use is totally driven by her. She's busy with a small craft business, XC running, photography, gardening, violin, independet reading, travel, theatre arts, cooking and baking, raising baby chicks to laying hens, soccer, etc etc.

Works for us.

Miranda

[Bird Girl]

My older DD will be 9 this summer. We use Singapore Primary math, too, along with Life of Fred as a summertime supplement. Fred is lots of fun! For literature and history, I use Sonlight cores, done secular-style (ie, we skip the bible stuff)--so far, we've done cores 1, 2, and most of 3. For Language Arts, I use Michael Clay Thompson's language series--we're doing Grammar Town, Paragraph Town, Practice Town, and Caesar's English this year. MCT., as he is known on the homeschooling forums circuit, emphasizes the patterns of language, and his books are highly readable and funny. I've never found anything I've loved for science, so this year I just started re-writing my old Campbell biology textbook from college for my DD. She's doing fine with it. I'm not sure what to use for other science subjects, but I'll be doing more experimenting this year, so we'll see what turns up.

[staceyshoe]

I've found that we need to get different curriculum for each subject because ds's skills are all over the place (at least a 5 year gap in ability level between different school subjects).  We use Singapore Math which I think is fantastic and has as little or as much review/challenge as you could want depending on the options you choose.  The other things I love are Building Foundations for Scientific Understanding and Building Thinking Skills (from Critical Thinking Co).  I'll be curious what else is mentioned here because I'm not 100% satisfied with our language arts or history.

[pigpokey]

My kids are 6 and 7 and not above 3rd grade in non-reading so I don't likely have much to offer.

We use Kumon workbooks and JUMP for math.

Rosetta Stone for Spanish

Other workbooks for spelling and writing, but nothing I researched.