I used Torchlight level 1 with my daughter this year for her first grade curriculum. We followed the provided schedule, but throughout the year, Day 1 did not correspond to Monday every week, if we had field trips or other non-school weekdays that shifted the days. We started the curriculum at the traditional early September beginning of the school year and it will take us through mid-June to finish it.
I ended up buying more of the spines than I had for previous levels because our access to library books was still impacted by the pandemic. Our libraries were operating on curb-side pick-up only through the winter. Books were also quarantined for 1-2 weeks and people were not being fined for overdue books. That resulted in an unpredictable flow of books. I was able to get most of the weekly books and many of the extension books by requesting them a couple of weeks before we needed them. However, the library system only had a couple copies of some of the spines, so I opted to buy them, rather than hoarding them or missing out because someone else was hoarding them.
We enjoyed most of the book selections! My daughter was a little disappointed that there were not as many different daily books as she was used to from PreK and K. For many of the books that are part of a series, we read the sequels at bedtime for weeks or months after the first book was in the curriculum. We still have a few that we need to read over the summer.
My daughter loved the cipher puzzles in the appendix! We did a few activities with different writing systems from the Curiosity Chronicles as well. We tried some of the Minecraft activities as well, but she just went off and built her own stuff in Minecraft with her brother and the neighbor girls. We tried a few of the other Curiosity Chronicles activities every once in a while, but I let those go eventually as well.
We kept up reasonably well with the Vocabulary Spell book, completing as least a few words for most books. However, Our Book of Myths resulted in tears! My daughter and I wrote a few of them, but then she refused to try to think of any more deities or myths, no matter how long I waited before suggesting it again.
As art is always the last priority for me, I started off with good intentions to do all of the clay projects this year. I had a good run for a few months, but my daughter is very artsy and was creating with various other media, so I let the clay go. The Barefoot Book of the Opera was also a dud for us, as my daughter got scared by the devil in one of them. She was okay when I read the stories to her, but listening to the CD terrified her for some reason.
We added REAL Science Odyssey Life and completed the body system sections along with their scheduled counterparts in Torchlight. Toward the end of the year, I started planning the animal kingdom parts on days when there was no other science scheduled. We will try to finish RSO Life during the summer.
We continued to use Logic of English for a coherent phonics/writing program. We will be finishing D in the summer. I may hold off on starting Essentials until the new school year. We also continued with Singapore Primary Standards Edition1A & B for math. We finished that math curriculum in May and then moved on to Beast Academy 2A. That is going well so far, but I also have level 2 of the Singapore books in case we need to slow down for more practice. My plan is to continue math throughout the summer.
My other reviews:
Secular Home Education 