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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I pulled my son out of public school where he only had a 504 plan and homeschooled him this year. He was in 5th grade and this is what we used. He did the bare minimum at public school and I felt he had so many gaps even though his teacher said he was doing great.

Math: Online Pre-ALgebra course with Derick Owens
https://www.derekowens.com/samples.php?page=PA&page=PA
I decided to just have him take pre-algebra because these classes got good reviews. I sat there while he watched the videos and we discussed what he was seeing and I prompted him to solve the problems in his book. 
$58 a month

Reading: Even though he tested above grade level in reading I think he rushed through reading long multisyllabic words, so I bought the Secondary Level of Rewards Reading- a researched based program. It was $120 dollars.

Writing: IEW streaming lessons. I can't recommend this program enough. My son's writing was rambling, off-topic, had run-on sentences, etc. This drastically improved his writing.  You watch the videos- about 30 minutes a day and there are specific writing assignments. It is fantastic. We also did the Fix-It-Grammar program $169. 
https://iew.com/shop/products/structure-and-style-students-year-1-level-basic-plus-forever-streaming-or-dvd

That is all we concentrated on. Reading, writing, grammar, and math. He took breaks in between doing work. 
We did fun science experiments (dissected fish, owl pellets, made slime, etc.)
For history we listened to Story of the World and did some of the activities and watched Liberty Kids. 
When we went places we listened to audiobooks or I read to him after lunch. 
He took some art Outschool classes.  He is active in sports so it was great that we didn't have to worry about homework in the evenings. Everyday I made a checklist on the whiteboard and he would check off the activities. He loved that when he was done, he was really done for the day.

I encouraged him to read at night and told him he could stay up as late as he wanted if he was reading a book. He went to bed at night and for the first time in his life actually read books himself.

It was really the best year of schooling he has ever had. He went from saying he was not smart, he sucked at school, etc. to saying he was good in math, was proud of his IEW writing assignments, etc. He was not longer stressed in school. It really was a good year for him.

[/quote]

Great, thank you![/quote]

I wrote the above post and I wanted to add that I really emphasized QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. He was the type of kid who did just enough so he wouldn't miss recess or the teacher would make him re-do his work (which almost never happened even if he just scribbled)!  I bought a pack of the white latex erasers and sat there and anytime he copied incorrectly, was messy, didn't capitalized, I erased and made him re-do (within reason).  I told him I didn't expect him to do that much in comparison to a normal public school day that ended at 3, BUT I expected him to do quality work. We also took some trips Thursday night through Sat morning so we had all day Friday at fun places. We went to Orlando for a week at the end of September. Costa Rica mid- January.

The poster who is writing the long posts is doing a fantastic job of summarizing what many homeschool parents are using that are quality programs. Look at her list as well to find what you need. Many of them can be bought through Rainbow resources- a huge homeschool company.

I also should add that after doing Reward Reading secondary, which took about 8 weeks to finish, we moved on to focus on spelling doing Apples and Pears Spelling books B and C. His spelling was awful. He isn't good at visually imprinting how to spell words even though he reads well.  I think what exacerbated his awful spelling was that teachers NEVER corrected spelling. Once he misspelled words like because, where, they're, doesn't, couldn't, sure, etc. literally hundreds of times I think the misspellings just start looking correct. 
https://www.soundfoundations.co.uk/en_US/learning-to-spell/

I really didn't worry about other subjects like history and science because we go to museums, zoos, we watch non-fiction videos, etc. It also isn't something I stressed about because I realized by allowing no independent screen time between 1 and 3 he often came up with his own projects. He built a salt water aquarium after watching youtube videos in the evenings and learned about salinity of water,  characteristics of fish, etc. We rented chickens and a coop for fun. 
https://www.rentacoop.com/
He didn't really consider it part of school, it was just fun for him but he really was learning about science. Just worry at first about getting in reading, writing, grammar, and math. We spent a lot of time on those subjects.
  9-10 was IEW and Fix it Grammar, 
15 minute break
10-11:15 was math (sometimes it took and hour and sometimes 90 minutes, depending on topic- if 90 minutes he took a quick break after 45 minutes)
11:15 to 11:30 break
11:30 to 12:15ish Rewards reading or apples and pears spelling or sometimes Reading Detective
LUNCH
1 pm to 3  Listen to Story of the World, Read Aloud, Science Activity, sometimes meet up with other homeschoolers we met, sometimes there was a fun morning homeschool activity so then worked got pushed to afternoon.

I can't say enough how much his attitude toward school changed and his self-concept. I didn't realize some of the snarky comments teachers and other kids made to him. He never told me when he was in public school but working with him at home he started telling me stories. He had friends at school and wasn't disliked (I think because he is good at sports) but I had not idea some kids would roll their eyes or say outloud they didn't want to work with him, or his teacher would hold up his work and say this is how NOT to do a paper.

Some days the first month were hard because he tested whether he really had to do the work. Booking the Disney trip late September was helpful to motivate him because I told him if he didn't finish doing all his work we wouldn't go. It got him into a good habit of trying. I pulled back if he was really frustrated some days or if it was a tricky topic in math we went slower.

I would try it because worse case scenario you just send him back to public school. [/quote]

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