I am already starting to plan next year.
This year I really liked the MCT series for English, but I wish I would have only bought the teacher's manuals instead of all of them. I am not sure if we will be ready for the next batch of everything next year or not. But, I think I will continue to use them. I use all of it for my fifth grader, but use the poetry and part of the others with my second grader as well. However, I will be also ordering Easy Grammar grade 3 for next year. I like the foundation it plants for identifying the parts of speech.
I really wish that I wouldn't have purchased Language Smarts by the Critical Thinking Company.
I did like the Brain Builders book from Critical Thinking Co. as well as Building Visual Perception Skills and Balance Benders.
I love how I do science but wish I was more organized about it. I use BFSU as well as spontaneous experiments. My older dd needs something more. I will get the sequel to BFSU to use with her, but if I could find a cool co-op science class with lots of hands on stuff. . . that would be wonderful.
I also like how we hit history/social studies (library and connecting activities) but as with science I need to be more organized with it. I want to have structured plan for myself for next year. The past two years we have focused on US history and our state's history. Next year, we will start world history. My 2nd grader got the kits from "Little Passports". She liked them, but we won't be doing it again. It was nice though because we used it's topic of the month to expand on from a social studies/culture perspective.
Math is fine. We use Singapore with 2nd grader and a combo of Singapore and LoF for 5th grader. 5th grader recently did a free trial of ALEKS math and really likes it. I think she might go with that next year and I might supplement with math mammoth or whatever.
We are using Meet the Masters and it meets our needs. I will also be buying some clay from the local pottery place (my kids love pottery) and we will rent kiln space.
Amy
This year I really liked the MCT series for English, but I wish I would have only bought the teacher's manuals instead of all of them. I am not sure if we will be ready for the next batch of everything next year or not. But, I think I will continue to use them. I use all of it for my fifth grader, but use the poetry and part of the others with my second grader as well. However, I will be also ordering Easy Grammar grade 3 for next year. I like the foundation it plants for identifying the parts of speech.
I really wish that I wouldn't have purchased Language Smarts by the Critical Thinking Company.
I did like the Brain Builders book from Critical Thinking Co. as well as Building Visual Perception Skills and Balance Benders.
I love how I do science but wish I was more organized about it. I use BFSU as well as spontaneous experiments. My older dd needs something more. I will get the sequel to BFSU to use with her, but if I could find a cool co-op science class with lots of hands on stuff. . . that would be wonderful.
I also like how we hit history/social studies (library and connecting activities) but as with science I need to be more organized with it. I want to have structured plan for myself for next year. The past two years we have focused on US history and our state's history. Next year, we will start world history. My 2nd grader got the kits from "Little Passports". She liked them, but we won't be doing it again. It was nice though because we used it's topic of the month to expand on from a social studies/culture perspective.
Math is fine. We use Singapore with 2nd grader and a combo of Singapore and LoF for 5th grader. 5th grader recently did a free trial of ALEKS math and really likes it. I think she might go with that next year and I might supplement with math mammoth or whatever.
We are using Meet the Masters and it meets our needs. I will also be buying some clay from the local pottery place (my kids love pottery) and we will rent kiln space.
Amy