I was taught, and subsequently taught my children, that kn is "two letter /n/ that we use at the beginning of words" and gn is "two letter /n/ used at the beginning or the end of words". So they were taught as letter teams just like three letter I or igh. The only silent letters I remember being taught were b at the end of words like lamb, thumb and bomb and p like in pneumonia and pneumatic. I'm sure there are more but those are the only ones that stick out in my memory. I was also taught Silent E's had 5 jobs it could be doing at the end of the word. It could be there to make the vowel say it's name or long sound. It could be there the soften C or G. It could be there because English words do not end in U or V (blue or have) It could be there because every syllable must have a vowel (little or table) or it could be a No Job E or and Odd Job E which just means that there isn't any easily discernible reason it has a silent E. It might be an old English spelling (are) or it might be to prevent the word from ending in s and looking like a plural (please).

Dh's grandma really does wash and reuse ziploc bags and bread bags until they get a hole in them. I know I read about doing that in the Tightwad Gazette years ago but I'd never seen anyone actually do it until I met her. I'll reuse a bag now and then if what it had in it didn't get it dirty but I refuse to wash out a disposable baggie. Before we insisted on trash service and volunteered to pay for it (we share a property with her) , she would also empty her trash from the bags into her burn barrel so she could reuse trash bags. Luckily, the trash service will not take loose trash or I would imagine she would still just empty the bags into the collection bin so she could reuse the bags. If something nasty gets on the bag, she takes a water hose to it and puts it on the clothes line to dry. SMH

Just got an email from Hoffman Academy today. Lifetime membership for Black Friday will be $299. ;-)

I vote both by working on phonemic awareness in little bites with the 5 year old without worrying about getting him reading this year, if it happens it happens but just spend 15 - 20 minutes a day, broken up into 5 minute increments if need be working on phonemic awareness. Then work with your 4th grader on writing, also in small bites. You have gotten some excellent advice on how to teach writing without adding much to your load so I really don't have anything to add to it but I would prioritize teaching writing to the 4th grader over teaching reading to a 5 year old who still needs work on phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness work is easily accomplished with games and songs and can (and in my opinion should) feel more like play than work. Learning to read will go so much more smoothly when he has phonemic awareness in place.

My youngest will be 6 next fall when he will be "in first grade". But like the others said, that's just something we teach him to say when people ask him what grade he is in and not what I use to determine what he is ready to learn. I suspect he will be reading by then as he is very close right now to passing that milestone but who knows how fast he will take off with it and where he will be next fall. Likewise, he is already moving right along with first grade math this year so I suspect he will be doing, at the very least, typical 2nd grade math when he's in first grade.

I find it interesting that she uses the "it takes a village to raise a child..." angle. When I started homeschooling, almost 10 years before her oldest was born, one of the biggest homeschooling mantras I heard was "I've seen the village and I don't want them raising my child."

Oh, I know we can start without the membership, we have a free account that I fiddle around with and every 6 months or so I try to have ds sit down and see if he's ready, so far he's not lol! Thanks for the information, I've got a ballpark idea of what it might be now... looks like we might have to ask Grandma to help chip in for lifetime piano lessons but we might be able to come up with enough if it isn't too far off from our estimate. Thanks for the heads up! ;-)

Any idea what the ball park price might be? How much was the kick starter donation to get the lifetime membership? Just trying to get an idea of how much I need to budget for this.... I've been eyeing Hoffman Academy for my almost 6 year old for a while now.

Dh's grandma refuses to use anything other than flip phones. We get her the SmartTalk flip phones and the cheapest plan they have. It's usually around $20ish for the phone (we've had to replace her phone several times over the years when she accidentally washes it or drops it) and then $25 or $30 a month (I can't remember off hand which it is but it is in that ball park) . We've looked at putting Grandma on our Tmobile plan since they do sell flip phones but I haven't investigated that all thoroughly yet. It's getting harder and harder to find non-smart phones that will work in our area. I don't know if they have flip phones or not but Republic Wireless has great cheap plans if you are always near wifi access. You can choose to have no data on Republic Wireless. When we lived in the city and had decent home internet access, I had Republic Wireless and it work fantastic for me. I would use them again if we had high speed internet in our area.

We don't even do thanksgiving any more here. Grandma is taking our youngest to a friend of hers house for thanksgiving dinner. Our ds is like her friend's surrogate grandson and she wanted to at least have him over if we didn't feel up to having thanksgiving dinner. So we agreed he could go. Dh and I will probably have some kind of microwave or toaster oven dinner. I made turkey breast for dinner just a week or two ago because it sounded good. We had mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and rolls with it. I really see no reason a Thanksgiving meal needs to be any more complicated than that. I make potatoes from scratch just because I don't care for instant potatoes but there is no reason you can't do instant if you like them. The gravy was from a packet (boil water and add powder, done), green beans from a can and I had some rolls that I had frozen the last time I made bread dough but I would have used brown and serve if we didn't have that. Turkey breast was the kind that is preseasoned and bakes in a bag. It didn't take me any longer to prepare this meal than it did to make dinner on any other night. Add a pumpkin and/or pecan pie from the bakery at the grocery store or buy a frozen one and bake it the day before or morning of thanksgiving. However, I also wouldn't be opposed to doing any of the non-traditional suggestions others have made like pizza, chili... taco bar is another idea, if we had a group coming to our house on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is just another day on the calendar. There is no reason to stress out over it. Since divorcing my ex-husband, I haven't had a Thanksgiving day with my kids from my first marriage. Since my second oldest son loves turkey (and they don't make turkey at his father's house for thanksgiving, they make prime rib...) I always made a big turkey dinner for him the first weekend in December when they were kids. The turkey didn't taste any different on that day than it would have on Thanksgiving day ;-)

I think it is both important to talk about more than just likes and dislikes with children from about k or first grade on AND to not destroy the magic of every book by over analyzing them. Pick one maybe two things for young children (under 8yo) per book. But read a few every week where you just read to enjoy it and don't analyze anything. From 8yo to high school, I pick at least one thing, if not more, for every literature school book but we still read books outside of school for enjoyment without analyzing anything as well. At this age, I find they are so used to thinking about these things that they usually start pointing things out to me instead of me pointing it out to them. Some of their school writing will be a short analysis of some sort instead of a summary. Especially when they are younger, I will write down what they tell me when they point out literary elements and then have them copy it or take down dictation of their own words. They are still usually at the age where their brains think faster and more complex than their writing skills can keep up with so I try to help them put their insights on paper, but of course, not every time they have an insight. Some times we just have a conversation about the book and that's fine too. Susan Wise Bauer's audio recording recommended above is a good one, I will second that suggestion. Also Deconstructing Penguins by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone is a good book for the parent to read on the topic of introducing children to literary analysis.

Can she articulate why she doesn't understand why finding a fraction of something makes a multiplication problem? Does she understand that all whole numbers are understood to be "over 1" to convert them to fraction form? For example, you can solve the problem thus: What is 1/4 of 40? 1/4 * 40/1 We show the understood one to make both terms into fractions 1/4 * 40/1 = 40/4 Multiply across 40/4 = 10 Now we simplify by completing the simple division problem Some kids need to see that extra step of an understood 1 for a while before they can synthesize automatically as most adults do that you divide the whole number by the denominator of the fraction. If she needs to know why we understand whole numbers to be over one, ask her what 40 divided by 1 is. You still get 40. You haven't changed the number at all. You just made it into a fraction so it is easier to work with when dealing with fractions. It's not that much different than representing 40 as 40.00 when adding and subtracting decimals. Does she understand that she could also solve the problem this way? What is 1/4 of 40? 1/4 = .25 When we divide 1 in 4 parts, we get .25 .25 x 40 Now we can simply multiply both terms .25 x 40 = 10 You still get the same answer as before Does she understand that when you multiply a decimal and a whole number, the whole number gets smaller? Could she understand that 1/4 of a dollar is 25 cents or one quarter? Could she figure out a problem that is worded like this: 4 friends went to an arcade and have 40 tokens to share. If they split them equally, how many tokens does each friend have to spend? I'm pretty sure she could quite easily see how each friend would get 10 tokens but have her show you the math to prove her answer and then show her it is the exact same problem as what is 1/4 of 40. Help her see that by splitting anything equally, that is the definition of a fraction, something that is split into equal parts. If she needs to, she can make any "what is <fraction> of <number>?" problem into a word problem if it makes it easier to visualize the problem. As long as the numerator of the fraction is 1: <insert denominator here> friends shared <insert number here> things equally. How many does each friend get? What is 1/5 of 110? 5 friends shared 110 things equally. How many does each friend get? If the numerator is not 1: <insert denominator here> friends shared <insert number here> things equally. <insert numerator here> of the friends decide to donate their things. How many things were donated? What is 2/3 of 60? 3 friends shared 60 things equally. 2 of the friends decide to donate their things. How many things were donated? Yes, it takes longer to do the math that way but if it helps her to understand the big picture to do it this way for a while, she should eventually see that it is easier to skip all these steps and just multiply to get the exact same answer.

Checking back in about the Torchlight K... I still like it a lot, however I don't use it as written. But I rarely use anything as it is written so you can take that for what it is worth. Most of the books have been big hits with ds. He has requested a few to be added to our personal home library like the Zoey and Sassafras books. I like that the geography lessons are dead simple to implement but my ds loves them so much that we have gone through a lot of them for the whole year already. They are very age appropriate and aren't overwhelming for the child or mom but if you have a child who is a bit precocious, it might not be enough to keep them satisfied for long so you will find yourself supplementing but isn't that true of most curricula and precocious children? Plus I don't mind supplementing so much when I don't have to think out the lessons and the supplements, KWIM? Anh's Anger was a big hit with ds and I thought it was a lovely book. We've only read one of the Zen... books so far and it wasn't as charming as I thought it would be and ds didn't care for it much either. Hoping the others will be better as I really wanted to like them but that first one, Zen Ghosts, just didn't resonate with me or ds. The spine book, A Year Full of Stories, is another one I want to like but it's quickly losing its charm. I preread the story (they are no more than a page or two long) and if I don't like it, we skip it or replace it and just read books about the country for that week from the library. The pictures are great but some of the stories are just not what I expected or just not the kind of story my 5 year old enjoys. As of right now, I do still plan to continue with Torchlight for first grade but I will likely tweak it to fit us just like I have the kindergarten level. ETA: I forgot to mention the Naturally Curious science units. Very light on their own in my opinion but ds loves them. I like them but we supplement them with library books. If ds wasn't so science and math oriented I bet they would be perfect for kindergarten on their own.

Some boys are just not wired to learn academic things at a young age. Their strengths lie else where such as physical prowess or engineering thinking. Girls can be this way too but it is very common in boys. There is nothing wrong with them; they do not have any kind of learning disability. They just think and learn a bit differently than what is the accepted norm. A 4 year old who struggles with letter learning is not at all unusual. I would skip learning letter names and just work on letter sounds, as a part of life not as a formal lesson. He doesn't need to know letter names to learn to read but he does need to know letter sounds. Take out the extra step for now. He will know his letter names eventually but they are not terribly important for a 4 year old. My current 5yo (my 6th child that I have taught to read) still confuses or plain doesn't know letter names but he does know the sounds. But even that has only gotten consistent in the last 6 months or so. He will be 6 in January. I agree with the others, shapes and colors can be just a part of life and he will likely still confuse them or "forget" them for a few more years. If half way through first grade he still doesn't get circle, square and triangle fairly consistently, then I would worry. Until then, point out shapes and colors in everyday life. Play games... board games, playground games and just made up games, that involve colors. He will get it eventually. Some great games for preschool are Hi Ho Cherry-O, Candy Land, Cootie, Memory Match games and Count Your Chickens. The skills needed to think of a rhyming word is beyond most preschoolers. Lots of kindergartners can't do it either. Some first and second graders can't do it but can read and spell just fine. Rhyming is a phonemic awareness skill, not necessarily a pre-reading skill. That is not to say it is not a skill worth knowing, I just wouldn't stress over a preschooler not being able to do it. Expose him to lots of rhyme. Make up silly rhymes. Sing the banana fana song with his name. Read books in rhyme and once you have read it enough times for him to know the story fairly well pause for the rhyming word and let him try to supply it. Don't stress over him supplying the "correct word" . Accept any answer he gives and discuss with him whether or not it rhymes in a lighthearted and silly way. If he supplies dog as a rhyme for cat, read it again and laugh at how silly it sounds. Then read it correctly and act relieved that it sounds better that way. I would work with him on phonemic awareness rather than reading with him right now. Listen for beginning sounds, regardless of the letters used to produce the sound in that word. Phone and farm for example both start with the /f/ sound. Don't discuss with him yet the letters needed, just identify the sounds in words. Glue and unglue the sounds in words orally... Fluffy is a /c/-/a/-/t/, cat!... Let's /g/-/o/, GO! Phonemic awareness is only concerned with sounds in words, not the visual representation of them. A child who is well grounded in phonemic awareness has a much easier time making the jump to visual representations of words than a child that does not understand the sound to word relationship.

I agree with the others that say it would be exciting to me to spend it responsibly. Finishing the house repairs that we are having to slowly get to as we have money for it would make me giddy. Paying someone to come build the decks and re-roof the house, including extending the roof over the new decks we want around the house would be a dream come true if I could just throw a bunch of money at someone today and they would be here Monday to do it! Doing all the landscaping we need to have done so that we have a nice flat area to build a garage and workshop would be fantastic. Doing that landscaping would give us enough fill dirt to level out other areas and we could get the chickens we've been talking about, does that count as frivolous? Those things may seem boring and responsible to some but for us, being able to just blow a bunch of money on them and get them done all at once, right now, would be life changing. I can think of a bunch more things I would love to spend it on but they all involving paying things off which again, boring to some but would be huge for us and make us just as giddy and carefree as a frivolous trip (which I would totally love to do but I couldn't enjoy it knowing that the money could have been spent on things at home) or some big purchase that we don't need.

My 5 year old LOVES Art for Kids hub! That guy has a serious talent for teaching children to draw. I haven't found any other youtube channels that are quite as good as his at explaining how to make the drawings at a child's level. The old Draw Squad videos/shows are good. We had a subscription to Mark Kistler's website at one time. My older boys, who also love to draw, love getting art supplies of any kind. A new set of Prismacolors or oil pastels or chalk pastels, charcoals, fancy drawing pencil sets, a new drawing journal, fancy papers with textures for drawing, a clipboard, especially the kind that you can store things in the board itself like this one for drawing on the go, pencil sharpeners, erasers, fancy pencil boxes for storing all their special art supplies in separate from the family art supplies, books on drawing different styles... really even just a gift certificate to the local art store or Hobby Lobby or Michael's so they could choose what they want or need.

I'm using Singapore as well for my 5yo who loves all things math. Plus all the extra math activities and books I can find. He loves doing math puzzles with dh. Ds likes the Mathematical Reasoning books but I think it was more because they are bright and colorful, not so much for the content.

THIS!!! I guess it is just the ability to read a child and tell if they are simply turning the problem over and over in their mind in an attempt to understand it or if the problem went clean over their head and they didn't even catch a breeze from it. But how to read a child, or any learner, like that is very difficult to put into words...

What does this mean to you academically? It means that certain skills are not within a child's mental reach until their cognitive abilities have had time to mature. Not all children's mental capacities mature at the same rate so what is developmentally appropriate for one child might not be appropriate for another child of the same chronological age. What does it mean in your homeschool? It means that all instruction is individualized to the child in question, not according to chronological age but rather to their cognitive "age", whether that be ahead, behind or on par with the chronological aged peers. How do you as the parent/teacher determine that some academic material: concept, skill, idea, task, etc is developmentally inappropriate for your child(ren), vs just difficult? For me personally, it is easy to see when they aren't ready too grasp a concept versus it's difficult and just needs some practice. A recent example is with my 5yo who loves math. He is slightly ahead in terms of what he can understand. He can mentally add numbers that typically require addition with regrouping but when I tried to show him how that looks on paper, it was clear that he was not ready to understand that concept. His cognitive abilities need a little more time to "bake" before he can truly understand it versus rotely following the directions I give him. I don't how else to describe the way I can tell that the concept is over his head versus being just hard. He really just didn't grasp the concept at all so we will revisit it when I think he might be more ready to understand it. Place value is still a little difficult for him and we are working on that even though it is difficult, but he has 10s and units pretty much down so I thought he might be ready to understand addition with regrouping but he wasn't. I just don't believe he is developmentally ready to understand the concept yet but he will get, sooner rather than later I would imagine. How hard do you work at something that is difficult before you begin to consider whether it is even developmentally appropriate? I don't know if it's just the fact that this is my 6th kindergartner or what, but there is an obvious difference to me between a child who is resisting something that is difficult and a child who clearly does not understand a concept at all. And I'm not sure how to explain it honestly. If they obviously do not understand something, I put it away and we work on something else until I think they are ready to try again. I don't have a time table really, I'm watching the child's cues and judging what they might be ready for based on that. How long do you think that "developmental appropriateness" of a skill, concept, whatever, is a legitimate concern for a childs education? Since I don't believe that developmental appropriateness is directly tied to chronological age, I think it applies to all learners regardless of age or aptitude. If you were teaching an illiterate adult how to read, you would still teach them skills for reading as they were developmentally ready for them. You would teach the sounds of single letters before teaching the sounds of letter groups, especially the letter groups where none of the letters make the target sound like /eigh/. If you tried to start off with that, because it should be "developmentally appropriate" for an adult to understand that some letter groups make sounds where none of the letters make that sound individually, most would end up confused because they are not ready to understand that when they lack the base knowledge that other adults that can read already have . Another example might be remediating a middle schooler, let's say a 12yo, in math. Most 12 year olds are ready for at least pre-algebra but if you jump into prealgebra concepts with a child who is weak or has holes in the foundational knowledge of arithmetic, then they are not developmentally ready to handle prealgebra. You could try to force them to pull through it but I think that time would be better spent finding out where and why they are weak and work on that until they are solid and cognitively and developmentally ready in their math skills to tackle prealgebra. The 12yo could be smart as a whip but if his or her math knowledge has not been developed to the point of being able to understand prealgebra then, in my opinion, it turns the situation from "difficult" to "not developmentally appropriate for this child". Do you think that after a certain age, kids can tackle anything with correct instruction and enough support? The short answer for me is no because of the caveat in the question "after a certain age". I do not think there is a "magic age" where anyone is able to understand anything put before them. There are plenty of college students who cannot understand college level science classes, much less graduate level. These "children" are legally adults, but that doesn't mean their cognitive abilities match their peers. Yet there are plenty bright and gifted students that can understand graduate level material with ease when they are 10 years old or even younger. Yes, instruction and support can have a tremendous effect on what a child is able to understand but even the best teachers and instruction methods cannot force a child, or anyone of any age for that matter, to understand a concept before they are cognitively ready to do so. Is it teaching methods or academic skills/concepts that are developmentally (in)appropriate? It's the skills/concepts in skill based subjects. In content subjects, I think it's more about the child in question, are they emotionally able to handle heavier content, in say history? Many young kids can conceptually understand physics but are in no way ready for the mathematics end of physics. So then it becomes the teaching style that comes more into play.

We don't use Math-U-See but my 5 year old found this video entertaining and helpful for remembering how place value works and why number use the digits that they do. MUS Decimal Street Tale We also count everyday on the hundreds chart. By 1s, by 10s, by 5s, by 2s, forwards, backwards, traditional starting places for skip counting, non-traditional starting places for skip counting (skip counting by 5s start with 8 for example)... of course we don't do all of those every day but we do probably 3 - 5 different rote counting schemes each day. We also work on place value and number meaning separately. When I looked up the url for that video above, ds wanted to watch it of course lol and we practiced reading 5 or 6 of the numbers at the end. I let him count the MUS way or the normal way but I supply the other way each time. For example, he read 115 as "one hundred one-ty five" so I asked him if he remembered another way to say that number and he didn't so I told him we also call it "one hundred fifteen".

Hmmm... I wonder if she would hold a big round Ticonderoga pencil the same way she holds a pen... the ones they market for preschoolers and kindergarteners. I know the pencil she is using in the first picture is larger than normal pencils, we use them as well, but she seems to be gripping the pencil very low and maybe trying to grip tighter? And that is leading to her collapsed looking grip and hand fatigue? It's hard to tell from the picture alone without seeing how she is moving the pencil. The pen she is using in the second picture is round and by default doesn't allow her to grip too low. Just my observations from the pictures. I have seen people with that pencil grip that can write just like any other adult but it probably is contributing to her hand fatigue. If her complaints of hand fatigue are more excessive than most kids her age or if it is interfering with her completing a reasonable amount of work, I would give her the choice of correcting her grip or using a pen for her work to reduce hand fatigue. If she's not complaining more than any other kid might and her writing is legible, I would probably just leave it alone at this point. While it's not optimal, I wouldn't try to fix what isn't broken from her perspective. Just not a hill I would die on if she can and does complete her work without an excessive amount of complaining about hand fatigue.

Tissues and toilet paper bleach snack size, sandwich size and quart size bags that I don't intend to use in the freezer parchment paper little storage boxes for odds and ends that get lost if they don't have a home The sipper bottles of Gatorade when we go on a long trip (the tall ones with the twist open and close sipper top) Big water bottles for long trips Brillo pads when our walmart is out (which is fairly often sigh) USB cords (they are surprisingly good quality for only being a dollar) Big plastic envelope things in the school supply section that can hold a letter size piece of paper without folding it (they are great for holding a day's worth of printables for school or to hold all the pieces of a cut and paste project together until we are finished with it or print and play games and their pieces) Tools for our 5yo to experiment with (hammers, screwdrivers, coping saw, level ect to build his own creations from scrap wood or limbs in the yard, if he breaks it, loses it or leaves it outside, it's not as hard to swallow when it is only a dollar) Safety glasses and safety goggles Masking tape, duct tape and scotch tape for kid use (not as expensive when they waste it) coloring books for long trips pregnancy tests (not something I buy any more but back when I needed them they were super sensitive and cheap if you feel the need to re-test multiple times to confirm the result...either positive or negative) They have some neat school wall posters and manipulatives at back to school time Edit to Add: This is all at Dollar Tree. I don't ever go to Family Dollar or Dollar General.

I have spent days writing important letters as well, complete with brainstorming, rough draft and revising. True, I probably wouldn't do that for a simple thank you note but I honestly think it is broken up like that to keep the assignment manageable and not overwhelming for the average 3rd grader. If your third grader can condense that schedule and do the whole thing in a day or two, then do it. Make the curriculum work for you, not the other way around. Likewise, if you find your third grader overwhelmed at doing the whole process at a faster pace, know that you can slow down. If you think of it like math, there was a time that you needed to count objects or your fingers to figure out a problem like 8 + 5. But as you practiced and got more comfortable with manipulating numbers, you might have been able to just visualize the physical objects instead of counting them. Finally it became second nature to just use whatever method was easiest for you to produce the answer quickly. So it is with writing as well. You start off breaking the entire process into its most base parts. As you get better at producing writing and internalize the format for each style of writing (whether it be a letter or a story or a report etc) you can condense the steps or maybe skip some altogether. Maybe you won't need to write a rough draft anymore for simple letters or maybe you can revise as you go. Some people are naturals at writing and all those steps seem tedious and unnecessary but other people need it broken down into simple steps. However there is no reason to stretch those steps over a week. If you child has the stamina to do it all in one day or even 2 or 3 of the steps in a single day, there is no reason you can't do that. If they write their rough draft and it is everything you would expect from a final copy, there is no reason to make them revise and re-copy. Again, make the curriculum work for you and your child.

I took physical science in 9th, biology in 10th and physics in 12th in the mid to late 90s. Had no problems whatsoever getting into colleges as a STEM major. Never required to take college chemistry either. Just depends on what STEM field you plan to go into. I didn't skip chemistry because I didn't like it though. Quite the opposite actually, I had studied chemistry on my own out of interest in jr high and high school. I tutored people and provided homework help in chemistry in high school and college. It kinda seemed like a waste of time and I had other interests so I didn't take it since it was not absolutely required, just strongly suggested. If I had ever needed to, I could have tested out of chemistry 101 for sure and probably 102. I was never worried about it. A transcript is just one way to prove what you know and some would argue not even a very good way. There are lots of paths to the ultimate goal of a college degree.

Our local internet monopoly, Vyve, was charging us $75 per month for internet that was 10Mb down 2Mb up that constantly had issues. We were having to have them out here weekly toward the end only for them to tell us we were expecting too much for the internet to work 24 hours a day... We ended up switching our cell phone provider to T-Mobile and now we tether our phones to access the internet. So dh and I each have our own internet connection via our phones. Dh watches more TV so his plan allows unlimited high speed streaming (his data usage is in the 200 - 300 GB range on average, the majority of it is streaming) but he has a data cap for all other internet usage but I can't remember how high it is, he rarely goes over it though. All it does is throttle his internet browsing speed when he does, no extra charges. My plan doesn't include unlimited streaming but I do have unlimited data usage. When I'm using the tethered connection, I'm limited to 3g speeds but I don't watch a lot of videos so 3g works fine for me. If I want to watch a video or download more than a small file, I do it on my phone which has unlimited 4g data. I do download a lot and have never hit the limit of "unlimited" data so I'm not sure what their limit is. Both of our plans are prepaid and also include unlimited talk and text. Dh's plan costs $65/month and mine costs $75/month. So $140 dollars a month total but it includes our cell phones and our internet. We've been eyeing the post paid plans though. Some of them have unlimited 4g tethering. I will be so glad when paying by the gb for mobile data goes the way of paying by the minute for long distance. I think AT&T still provides service in town but we live 2 miles or so outside of town so they won't service us. There is also a DSL provider in town and some parts of the county but not our part of the county. We tried satellite internet but it was even worse than Vyve not to mention expensive as all get out. When we lived about 90 minutes north of where we live now, we had Cox. If I remember right, we paid about $50/month for 300mbps. Never had issues with service or billing. It was lovely. We've tried several times to get them to extend service down here. Maybe someday....