Our house is on a lot that backs up to a large stream (one of the cleanest and best in the midwest, or so I'm told). We bought the house when our youngest was two and our oldest was five. There's a fence that prevents easy access to the creek. We're also on the 'high' side - when the water is high, the opposite shore floods leaving a good 15 feet of safety elevation on our side. The house is 120+ years old, and hasn't been flooded out yet. If the water gets high enough to endanger our property, the entire state would be under water. The kids absolutely love playing in the creek, catching crayfish, watching the turtles and fish, the wood ducks and herons; there's a beaver dam right behind our house since last winter. The creek is part of what sold us on the house. We watch the kids like hawks, and they have never gone down there without us.

Definitely go to a Lego Store if there's one anywhere near you. My Ds is a long-time Lego-lover. When we went to Orlando this past winter, we visited the Lego store, and he was absolutely in HEAVEN. He filled up one of those plastic cups with all the little, obscure parts you don't see every day. You know the expression "Like a kid in a candy store?" This was way beyond that! They also have these plastic bags of assorted mismatched pieces - sort of a Lego grab-bag - and he bought two of those (something like $7 a bag). He had a terrific time finding out what all the pieces were.

Wow. Y'all are so nice around here. That's one of the encouraging things we took from the HS Convention in Cinci we went to this past weekend: Here was an enormous convention center, packed to capacity (or so it seemed) with people, so crowded you couldn't even breathe freely (or so it seemed) and yet everyone was so dadgum NICE! Thanks again for all the encouragement and advice. I'm sure my DW and I will be stopping in here frequently as we cautiously work our way through this first year.

Thanks, all. Our initial thought was to start them both with the ancients book, keeping them on the same time period in order to avoid confusion. I like the idea of going through the ancients over the summer. I'll certainly check out the video link. Thanks again for the quick replies and the encouragement. I'm sure you all remember what it was like first starting out, worrying that you're doing the right thing, worrying that you're messing up your kids, things of that nature. I appreciate the help!

DW and I have been preparing to start homeschooling in the fall. Basing our strategy on WTM, and the curriculum recommended therein. DS is 8, DD is 11, and are coming from public school. I'm looking for some direction on how to smoothly transition them into the classical homeschool approach. Specifically, if one looks at the 4-year rotation of ancient-middle ages-early modern-modern, and we start at the beginning (ancient), then dd will have only seven years (she's finishing 5th grade now) of study before graduation. Similarly, DS will have 10 years. So, it seems this method would work best when you're homeschooling right from the start, and would really work optimally if you can stagger the birth of your kids to occur every four years! Is there a book or source where one can explore how other parents have navigated this mid-stream transition from ps to hs? Thanks in advance.

My wife and I attended all three days. We're completely new to homeschooling (to start this fall). So, as a first-timer, I can say that (for us) it was very ENcouraging, not discouraging at all. It was encouraging to see that there were SO MANY people who are choosing to educate their own kids. I guess mostly what we wanted was to be affirmed in our choice. We're planning to follow SWB's WTM method (to the best of our ability to do so) and it was helpful to be able to sit in a room with her, to see that she's competent, authentic, believable (probably sounds silly to say that, but if we're trusting our children's education to her philosophy, it helps to know she's capable). We had a wonderful time, picked up some of the curriculum we were needing, heard some great speakers, and were just generally impressed. We'll definitely go again next year.