Hits:
*Math U See
*First Language Lessons
*Writing With Ease
*Story of the World /
*Spelling Power
Misses:
*Abeka math (it was good for kindergarten and first grade. Not so good (for us) beyond that.
*Abeka anything. Again, worked good for us for kindergarten and first grade but after that we grew weary of it.
*All About Spelling
I forgot a huge miss:
The History of US by Joy Hakim - bought all 10 volumes. We did not like them at all! So, I had to scramble for a new US history curriculum for my 5th grader!
Oh no! Can you tell me about them? I was thinking of buying the set! 
Wellā¦ Neither of us enjoyed her style of writing. It was very strange. She told āstoriesā but not in a way that was very engaging. EX: "Go ahead. Climb in the capsule and set the dial to the year 1250ā¦ Imagine youāre an Indian boy, not quite a year oldā¦ you are strapped to a board on [your motherās] back. Hold still or this could be a real cliff-hangerā¦ etc. etc. Sometimes her writing was almost laughable to us.
She is also very opinionated and shares her opinions very liberally.
Another thing I didnāt like very much was she would introduce hundreds (not really, it just seemed like it 
) of new historical characters in each chapter - so you didnāt ever get to know any of them because it was on to the next name.
But, please remember this is just our opinion! You and your family might really enjoy them. I hope this helps. Amazon has a lot of reviews on it, and 65% of the people gave the first book 5 stars!
Thank you very much for your thoughts on these! I donāt think this would work out well for us because I really like to learn/teach in depth about less people rather than learning a few details about many people- if that makes sense! I thought they would be more in depth rather than tons of people since it has a few books in the series. I hate when authors try to cram a lot in and lose the depth of the material. Iām glad you added your miss!!
I completely understand what you mean! You said it much better than I did! I also like learning about a subject in depth, and my kids seem to enjoy it more too. She has a lot of information, but it seems to just skim the surface.
I am glad I could help!
All About Spelling is a hit because each lesson is fast and to the point, not a lot of fluff. All About Reading, though, is a huge fail in my house. My kids just H-A-T-E-D it! The workbook pages are too preschool, even in level 4; they couldnāt stand the stories or pictures, which really distracted them from reading; and it just repeats what the spelling program does.
Growing with Grammar along with their spelling/vocab, and writing curriculum are big wins, while WriteShop was an unfortunate miss, just too much prep-work and the lessons seemed to take forever with more ābrainstormingā and very little writing.
Hits for 1st grade! -
Misses -
Art - I was at a loss for this, for next year I bought āart lessons for the busy teacherā and it has 36 lessons w/ objectives and a featured artist for art history and then a few projects to reinforce the objectives. I think this will work great for me - I am not an artist and it def is not my fav subject so this should be great for me as my child really really likes art and always asked to do it last year
Science - I was all over the place with this last year, I love science but was finding it difficult to make it super basic for a first grader. We tried the magic school bus science kit but I picked the recycle one to start as the easiest and I kept getting side tracked, we did enjoy the few lessons we did. At the end of the year I bought Usbornes book of animals and we went through this and really liked it, I looked up projects on Pinterest. Next year though I bought Abeka- science book for second grade and Iāll supplement with some Pinterest fun.
Great thread!
Hits:
Horizons Math - for K and 1. I bought the level 1 for my 2nd grader because I wasnāt confident that in his first year of homeschooling he was ready for the level 2 of Horizons Math. It may have been a little easy for him, but he did do well and I feel heās ready for level 2. My K son loved the Horizons K math and will continue with level 1 this year. I thought the workbooks were super simple and straight forward. I liked the teacherās manual because I do think there are things/ideas in there that you need to go through with the student. (I know some people skip the TM to cut costs).
Bookshark - overall this was a hit although we will not be repeating it. I loved how much reading we did. I liked the format/repetition of the spelling.
Misses:
Bookshark - we dropped the science portion almost right away. I was too overwhelmed in my first year of homeschooling with 4 kids to manage it. I wish I hadnāt bought it. 
I also dropped the history portion. It was just a lot. The curriculum isnāt necessarily bad, it was just too much for me too handle and these were too subjects that I thought completely optional for a kindergartener and 2nd grader.
Art - we didnāt do anything and I will be adding some sort of art curriculum this year because my 3rd grader is very interested.
This isnāt such a great thread! We are doing sonlight p4/5 with my 4.5 and 7 year old and we love it. This is our second time through and my 7 year olds least favorite book (uncle wiggily) when she was 5, is now her favorite.
We are also working through logic of English foundations and love it!