When I first started homeschooling, Bee and I made great progress in math. He's good at it, he seemed to like it pretty well, and I liked explaining it. So, we would always progress in math. Eventually, it seemed like we might not be making a lot of progress in other areas.
I spent a lot of time making up schedules and checklists, but what has really helped is to pick the thing we most need to work on and make sure it gets done close to every school day. We still work in other areas, but this helps to make big strides in a very needed area. The first thing (after math, of course) that I did this with was All About Spelling. We started that when Bee was in 3rd grade, and we started with Level 1, so we had quite a bit of catching up to do. We went through the steps very fast, but we really needed to do it every day for a while.
Last year, I really wanted to prioritize writing, so I made sure he emailed with his writing tutor as many days as we could. We've done science this way, as well as Spanish. We've also gone back to math at times. Right now, it's All About Spelling since with our big interstate move, it didn't get unpacked for a while.
The priority may be different for each child, or it may be the same. I'm emphasizing AAS with Bug as well right now. With a younger child, however, I typically don't feel a big rush on anything.
The main thing to remember is that any program or book that is going to be prioritized is that it has to be something that the child likes well enough. If the child hates it, everyone is going to be miserable.
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