Have you heard of the Thinking Tree Fun Schooling Journals? They are an excellent way to set kids up for independent delight driven research time, especially with a new baby (I even bought myself one because I loved the kids’ so much)! I buy them on Amazon, but the author’s website (I think it’s dyslexiagames.com) has a listing of all the journals broken down by age- their own interests and books become the curriculum! They occasionally go on sale on Amazon if you are hunting a good deal.

I got the whole Fred elementary series, and my 8 year old carries them randomly around the house, reading. There’s probably a couple in each room of the house. Those, The Way Things Work, and a library book on making 100 things are his current facilities favorites. . . I think that last one’s going to start lots of fun messes!

Your experience echoes ours. When I pulled my kids out of school to homeschool I was sure that I could “make” math interesting. We included it in unit studies, took it outside, played math games, etc. This worked fine for three out of my four kids. But that one child was extraordinarily resistant to anything that smelled like math, at least when it was imposed on him. Yet he used pretty sophisticated math for an 8-year-old to design his own balsa airplanes and rockets. It took plenty of nagging, complaining, and resisting (from ME!) but gradually I stepped back. I researched. And I finally learned to do all I could to let him own the math he was learning. It worked!

Here’s some research on how math instruction can actually shortchange deeper ways of learning math. http://lauragraceweldon.com/2014/11/19/the-benefits-of-natural-math/

And here’s a post with 100 ways to incorporate math into your lives.
http://lauragraceweldon.com/2014/11/26/natural-math-100-activities-resources/

I’m replying very late, but maybe your question is still relevant or is similar to what someone else is wondering. I’m a huge planner. We also love unschooling. I think you can do both.

As for the SATs, attending a test prep course is usually very helpful in preparing kids for the test. There’s many study guides as well.

As for your yearly plan of instruction, I think it depends on how specific you need to be. If you’re required to be very specific, why not sit down with your kids, show them what general topics they’re expected to study (history, English, etc) and help them devise their own plans based on their own interests. They’re old enough to be involved and it could be a great learning experience.

As for quarterly and yearly reports, I do those on my own although I’m not required. I just like making what we did come together. I keep track in my daily journal what we did each day. Any field trips, books read, projects completed, important questions asked. I can go back and see things like, “wow, my son’s interest in community helpers (firefighters, paramedics, etc) translates into a great social studies unit.” I can compile all the activities and books we completed based on the topic, add in things he wrote or drew, add pictures of our trip to the fire station, and so on. He also learned a lot about how rescue vehicles work so I can look at all that and create a science unit based on the technology and engineering information
he acquired along the way. This is all done after the fact. Unit Studies in reverse. You can compile all your reports into an end of the year report. It’s kind of fun to see how much they accomplish looking at it this way.

Love it – thanks for sharing your story, TMG!