We used MCP with my K'er this year. DD liked it, but she is a very good reader. I think it could work with a struggling reader IF you do the additional activities that it suggests. But if you just use the workbook, I don't think it would be enough. I think I would look for something that addresses different learning styles. I was looking at Happy Phonics until I realized that dd didn't really need phonics at all. It uses Explode the Code and adds lots of fun activities to it. Tracy

:iagree: If you have to report your school days, then you had school today. But if you have no reporting requirements, then you just do what you can and move on when you can. I also have a K'er, and when we are sick, we forego the daily worksheets. If possible, we still do our cuddling-on-the-couch programs. Sometimes, we make things up later, and sometimes we just skip, depending on the nature of what was missed. Tracy

DD will be 1st grade in the fall. We do a lot of mapwork here, because dd loves it. But I don't think it always necessary to mark everything we do on a map. Sometimes, we just look something up in an atlas and we are done with it. Sometimes, we don't even go that far if dd is already familiar with the place. Every time we come across a story or other reference to a place in the world, there is some discussion of where that place is. Tracy

:lurk5:

Wow, some of you ladies are really setting the bar high! I try to read the lesson thoroughly, but then we just do one activity for sure during the week, usually a suggested experiment or game. Then I take note of things that we can do as we go about the rest of our lives. (We did the discussion of solids, liquids, gases in bathroom while dd brushed her teeth. We did the energy activity using cards someone else made up and put in the BJSU forum's files section. As we drove, we talked about how communities are organized into different sections.) If a lesson is divided into parts, we stretch it out to cover one part per week. If dd really likes something that we do, she does it again with her dad when he comes home. (She likes to pretend she is the teacher and he is the student.) I try to order books from the library, but I don't sweat it if we don't get to them, because we read all the time, anyway. I think that you can take a really laid back approach if you can keep in mind to have discussions in the car, at the grocery store, at the doctor, etc. I loved my science-in-a-box curriculum, but then it wasn't always getting done. With BJSU, I feel like it enables me to do science while I am living the rest of my life rather than stopping my life to do science.

I just bought TOG to use with dd5 starting in Aug. I was a little nervous, because I saw some recent threads which warned about using it with only one LG kid, but dd is a social studies freak, and I was confident that it would be great for her. Now that I have it, we are so excited! :party:I listed for dd some of the suggested activities, and it is all we can do not to start now. I was going to rearrange the lessons to start with the Creation, but now that I have read the full explanation of why they start with Moses, I am sitting on the fence now. I kind of like the idea of reading the creation story, Noah and the ark, and Abraham's family in light of it being received by the Israelites while they were in the wilderness journeying toward the promised land. But I can't ignore the practicality of just keeping it simple with a 5yo. Any thoughts? Tracy

I used to have a very narrow view of narration--that it was just regurgitating the story, preferably in one's own words. But there are many ways to do it. This list really helped me to see that: http://simplycharlottemason.com/timesavers/narration/. Tracy

For a child who loves music, I think it is very important. My dd was only three when we got her a Schoolhouse Rock CD, which spurred questions about kings and queens, which led to a study of US History and studies of other countries that have monarchies and some that still do. She will learn anything if it is set to music and run with it in a unit study sort of way. My ds, however, really couldn't care less about music. As a toddler, he would cry every time I tried to sing to him, and cry even more if I tried to add motions and movement. Totally depends on the kid.

I can totally see where you are coming from. But I just want to say that you do not have to do it all. I have just been focussing on the games and activities and talking about it with dd whenever I can (in the car, for example). I do get the books, but they often do not get read. Even though we are not doing everything, she is getting a better science education with BFSU than with the science-in-a-box curriculum that we were using before. But I do think that it might go by the wayside if I had a baby in addition to my 2yo. Tracy

We are doing FIAR for K this year, and we love it. We do the vocabulary suggestion from the teacher's manual, and I keep a running list of what words we do with what books, because dd likes to look back at them now and again. We also use it for copywork. (But if your child is not writing yet, you might want to do a handwriting program. We just used Kumon books and then moved to copywork.) We also do narration with FIAR on the last day, sometimes as a Q&A and sometimes we do it more like a skit. Science is FIAR's weak point. I don't think that you necessarily need science in K, but if you want science to be part of K, you really can't count on FIAR. We are using Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. For less than $30, you get 3 years worth of very meaty but age-appropriate science lessons. (Review on my blog: http://myfamilyiseternal.blogspot.com/2010/02/review-of-building-foundations-of.html) IMO, you shouldn't do grammar in K, even if the child is capable of it, UNLESS the child has a particular passion for it. There is lots of time for that later. Also, I don't think that you should do both spelling and phonics. Do phonics until the child is beginning to read write things on his own. That is when a phonics-based spelling program can be substituted for phonics. As for social studies, I think that FIAR has enough for the average child. My dd4, though is very, very passionate about it (she is giving her friend a hand-drawn map of Angola for her birthday!). So we add in our own unit studies. She picks a place or a person, and we get books from the library. We mark them on our map, along with the FIAR places. We have studied everything from Bach to Pakistan this way, and I am amazed what wonderful books I have found at the library. Best of luck! Tracy

My dd4 likes to act out the stories. We sometimes get out the dolls and stuffed animals to play different parts. Tracy

I was recently reading The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. A wonderful book on this subject! He suggests for children of all ages, from the time they can read, to have silent reading time. They get to read anything they want for the time allotted. The important part of this, though is that the adults must also take part. He maintains that the adult's example is very powerful. There are a lot of other ideas in the book about getting kids to read, so I highly recommend the book. Tracy

:iagree: I could not get dd4 interested in chapter books, at all. I reasoned that she just wasn't old enough. Then we read a Dr. Dolittle beginning reader book, which she loved. Now we are making our way through the original book. I don't think that the adaptation had any impact at all on our enjoyment of the book, because it was almost a different book entirely. But it was most definitely the reason we are reading the original now. We are not even done yet, and last night, she was already talking about when we are going to read it again. Tracy

I do grades for my K'er, because I loved getting report cards, and I figure that dd5 is lot like me and will feel the same way. Mostly, she get points for work completed. Even in a subject like math, I make her correct mistakes, so she always gets full credit. I use Homeschool Tracker, and she generally gets all of the points on everything, except, she sometimes misses a word on a spelling test. I don't use letter grades or percents. I do it like they do in public elementary school, giving her and "E" for "excellent" rather than an "A," and so on. She likes to take her report card and decorate it with stickers and put it up on the bulletin board. Tracy

Those are all I used. She was 4yo when we were finished, and we started Kindergarten at that point. I started off just letting her practice writing by doing phonics and math worksheets, but I found that what she needed was less writing in the subject areas and to practice with copywork. She likes it when I take the copywork from books that we are reading and gets it done in just a couple of minutes. Tracy

I have seen so much talk about BFSU that I decided to write a review in my blog. http://myfamilyiseternal.blogspot.com/2010/02/review-of-building-foundations-of.html Tracy

I was very intrigued with the Cursive First program. But my dd was already writing at age 3 before I was researching all these things. After researching and pondering for some time, I decided it was not a good idea for an early reader/writer. A typical child would be learning to read and write around 5yo, at a time when their physical body is ready for more writing. That child is also just learning the alphabet, so he would be learning upper case, lower case, cursive (and even phonics) all together at the same time. If I had taught Cursive First to my dd at age 3 (when she started writing), she would not have had the fine motor skills and stamina needed to learn cursive, and she would have had to learn a new alphabet that she had already mastered more than a year before. I just felt that this would be too much for a 3yo. I thought about doing it at age 5 for our fall curriculum, and I decided that I wanted her to have some time to just be good at writing. She has worked really hard, and her handwriting is beautiful now. If she asks to learn cursive before age 7, I will teach it to her. But in the meantime, I want to let her enjoy the fruits of her labor. Tracy

:lurk5:

I see your oldest is only 4yo, like my dd. We do vocabulary as part of Five in a Row, and I think you don't need FIAR to use the same principle. We read a new book and pick out half a dozen words dd doesn't know. We talk about what they mean and put them in a list. Then each time we read the book, we read the list first and then find those words as we are reading. This is working wonderfully for us. Dd loves to read books over and over, and I didn't have to spend money on a vocabulary program. We have been doing it this way since August, and dd still points out vocabulary words that we did months ago.

We are doing K with my 4yo, and here is what we are doing: Five in a Row: Our favorite! A very gentle way to get a little of everything in each week. We also use it for vocabulary, copywork and narration. Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding for K-2: A very in-depth science program but with gentle, age-appropriate activities. An outstanding program! The author really understands how people learn, particularly children. Spelling Workout: We ditched phonics, because her reading level is accellerating faster than her phonics program can teach her. So I am doing the writing on the worksheets, and she takes tests on www.spellingcity.com. Horizons K math: An okay program. It is advanced but gentle at the same time. But it involves just giving the child a worksheet, and dd doesn't like to work on her own. So we are switching to CSMP next year in the hopes that it will give me more opportunity to work together with her on the games and read her the stories associated with the lessons. For social studies, we do unit studies. This is dd's strength, so I let her run with it. She chooses a country or a person, and I get books on the subject. She started reading a year ago with the Nora Gaydos books. We did those for about 4 months, and then she was on to library books. We also do some memorization. And she is learning piano. I give her a short lesson every week (5-10 minutes), and I ask her to practice for just a few minutes about twice per week (which she usually does on her own). Tracy

I take sentences from dd's Five in a Row book for the week. I create the copywork here: http://www.worksheetworks.com/english/writing/handwriting.html

I am using Spelling Workout with my almost 5yo. I had a problem with it being so writing intensive. So I am doing the writing for her, which is working out okay. But had I realized this, I might have searched out a less writing-intensive program for her. The other thing that I don't like about Spelling Workout is that sometimes the way they group the word lists don't make a lot of sense. For example, they may be working on a specific blend. But they use words that tricky in some other regard. For example, in a group for blends with R, they include the words "grow" and "broke," making the child struggle more with the long O sound rather than focussing on the blend. Tracy

I am thrilled that this is being used by anyone! I have long felt that strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin. My DH and I were both bright but arrogant little brats. And we both had siblings that lived in our shadows, something we both greatly regret. I believe that there is no gift without some corresponding struggle. Tracy

When my dd was about 3yo, she did the same thing. I wanted to make sure that she wasn't forming any habits that would be difficult to unlearn later. I bought the beginning handwriting books from Kumon. These are so wonderful for that age. It actually starts with just drawing lines and moves to drawing letters that are similar to the lines that were being practiced. The letters are so large that if I gave her a page to do, she would have to write 3-4 letters and was done. So we did one page per day. It took us about 8 months to go through the upper and lower case books. Her handwriting is beautiful now, and I have never used any other formal program. Now she is almost 5yo, and we just do copywork to try to increase her stamina. Tracy

I know the curriculum research is really daunting! But especially if you are going to invest in TOG or Sonlight, you really have to do it. A little less so with FIAR, as it is not so expensive if you get your books from the library. I spent about $35 on the first volume to see if I liked it before buying the 2nd and 3rd volumes. If you decide to go with TOG or Sonlight, you won't need a history program. For science, you can get suggestions here if you can narrow down what you are looking for--a boxed curriculum that does it all for you, something that lets you go deeper into a subject, something that integrates other subjects, like reading. We just started Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, and we just love it. As for spelling, you will find some good suggestions in WTM, but if you post the specifics of what you are looking for here, lots of folks will chime in. Do you have a natural speller or a child that struggles with spelling, for example? Tracy