This has been great for me to think about, ladies. I'm still pondering, but I appreciate all the help.

I especially feel better knowing that my daughter has a good foundation of reading and writing up to this point, even if she hasn't learned the technical aspects of grammar yet.

Thanks 4truth, for the perspective. It's hard for me to determine how much is too much. I want to encourage her in areas of interest, but not overwhelm her. She finds etymology fun and looks forward to it (keeping an illustrated journal on each word root) so we can just do EFTRU at a slow pace so as...

Another option to keep cost low is only buying the IG, then purchasing the frequently used resource books used, and borrowing the rest through the library. If you have an account with Amazon (not necessarily as a prime member) here is what I suggest. Make a 'wish list' for ECC. (you can make this pr...

Thanks Tricia for outlining your daughters workload. That is VERY helpful to me in seeing the fullness of tasks. RIght now since she is in 5th in public school, I can't *see* what she's doing all day, and it makes that hard to know what is reasonable, and how much more we could be doing at home, (Th...

Thank you ladies for your thoughtful responses! Julie, I'm glad to hear you are enjoying ECC with an 8th grader. Gratitude, you have a good point about book discussions. I guess I was simplistically equating more books = more learning. But I suppose it really is quality of what they take away, combi...