We bought 4 Lego Classic sets last year during the Christmas sales. All total, we got over 1000 basic lego bricks for around $50. None of the pieces are super specialized, most are regular rectangular pieces of different sizes plus plenty of wheels of different sizes, transluscent pieces for windows and glass...our 5yo really likes the ball hitch pieces to make trucks that can pull trailers. We have also purchased sets that have the specialized pieces as we have found them for a price we are willing to pay. So far, 5yo ds puts the specialized sets together with dad and then the pieces end up mixed in with the rest. He uses his imagination with those special pieces to put them together in ways I would have never thought of! Left to his own devices with Legos, he makes some pretty amazing things!

If you have a valid college email address with a .edu on the end, then you can get a discount on Amazon Prime. You can also get a discount on the Prime membership fee if you receive food stamps or Medicaid health insurance. You just have to take a picture or scan your EBT card or Medicaid card and send it in to them. It is really worth it for us because we live extremely rurally so even if what we need costs a little more on Amazon than it would at the store, the store is typically 100 or so miles away and a full day trip. So when we compare gas costs to spending a few dollars more to have it delivered, it typically is more cost effective to order it unless we know we will be going to the city soon. But since we only so to the city once a month or so, we order more often than not. I also order used books alot on Amazon, more and more online sellers are taking advantage of Amazon fulfillment which means it usually qualifies for Prime shipping. Prime Day is fun and we usually do order a few things but we get more than our money's worth out of Prime so Prime Day is just a perk, not a reason to get Prime for us.

I agree with the others. Focus on getting your first grader off to a good start in reading, writing and arithmetic. Everything else is gravy. She can listen on Big Sis's history and science. It is amazing how much they can pick up from an older child's lesson from just listening in. I f she wants her own science, how about a monthly subscription box of experiments like Steve Spangler Science? It should be fun and exciting for her without overwhelming you. You could even save the experiments for the weekend or after dinner as just fun science exploration. Science everyday doesn't necessarily have to be curriculum everyday, does it? Get some experiment books and let her choose a few to do each week. They don't have to have a theme, they can be different experiments from different areas of science if she wants. If she wants to do a certain experiment over again on another day, let her go for it. Science should be fun and hands-on if at all possible at her age. If she wants to deviate from the instructions and test her own hypothesis, more power to her! Make her a science kit with simple experiments she can complete on her own. Read the Zoey and Sassafras novels to her and help her understand the scientific method. Give her a notebook and Thinking Goggles like Zoey so she can be a scientist. My science minded, slightly advanced kindergartener is loving Zoey and Sassafras right now. I just see no reason to have two science curricula this year just so she can have science everyday. I also agree with the others that a first grader does not need to learn to type. Once she can write and spell decently then you MIGHT try adding typing. The whole point of typing is speed and accuracy but it is hard to have either when you are still struggling to spell the words you want to type. Getting the skills of writing and spelling in order before starting keyboarding will make things go much more smoothly.

Does your husband know that many universities do not just welcome homeschoolers but actively recruit them and often have scholarship money that is set aside just for homeschoolers? Does he also know that homeschoolers can take community college classes in junior high and high school so that enterance into university is easier and less expensive? Your child does not have to be gifted to do these things. Many public school children take advantage of dual enrollment at the community college as well. Not only will it take some of the pressure off you for teaching and grading in the junior high and high school years and give your dd a place to make friends but universities will be able to see that she is capable of university level work. Entering a good university as a transfer student with some or all of her general education credits taken care of is usually an easier process than trying to compete with the incoming freshman. Universities are taking a chance on a freshman with no college credits under their belt. A transfer student with credits has experience with college level work and is less of a risk both in terms of scholarship money (again there is scholarship money just for transfer students too) and they tend to have lower attrition rates than incoming freshman. Perhaps going around with your husband and your daughter to a couple universities and your local community college and asking them what they expect of homeschoolers applying to their school and any programs they have for homeschooled students would ease his mind. Sixth grade is not too early to think about these things and start preparing yourself and your daughter.

I haven't read the Classic Starts adaptation of Oliver Twist but I've never really been too disappointed with any of the Classic Starts I have read. That might work for your younger two. The eighth grader, unless they are extremely sensitive to characters in books mistreating each other, would probably be fine with the Dover Thrift edition.

Great Expectations is about an orphan boy who wants to be a proper gentlemen so he can marry the girl of his dreams. There is all kinds of criss crossing of relationships (similar to maybe A Midsummer Night's Dream) but in the end and after many tragic circumstances, he gets the girl. Of course that is a very simplified overview but it is the gist of the story. Oliver Twist is about an orphan boy but he lives in a work house which he escapes and falls in with a gang of pickpockets. When a robbery goes wrong, Oliver finds out more about his family history. There are murders and hangings but the "bad guys" in the end are punished for their crimes (maybe a bit excessively for our modern society but this was to have taken place in the 1800s when hanging was the go-to punishment, would be a good discussion point through about how times have changed) Oliver is adopted by a kind man who is friends with his biological mother's family and he lives happily ever after. Again very simplified but it is the basic plotline. I've read both, I love Dickens, and my choice of these two for middle school, or junior high, would be Oliver Twist. Yes, it is dark and some may be distrubed by the fact that most of these characters are mere children suffering but it is not all that unrealistic for the time period and I think the story is more relatable for a younger audience. Great Expectations has more of a soap opera feel to it where as Oliver Twist has more of a scrappy orphan child gets a happy ending. I think high schoolers who are in or closer to pursuing romatic relationships would be able to better relate to Great Expectations.

Your plan certainly looks doable for most families. You have about one read aloud a month, if you follow a typical 36 week school year. Some families might do more, some may struggle to get through one a month but you can always throw in extras if you get through one faster and skip some if you feel like one a month is too fast. You have them reading one reader every 2-ish weeks, again if you follow a 36 week schedule. That kind of schedule is going to be highly dependant on your child. I do question your choice of Dickens' Great Expectations for middle school. Have you done Dickens with them before or is this their first exposure? What made you choose Great Expectations? I honestly wouldn't attempt Great Expectations until high school at the earliest, especially not as an independent reader. Dickens' works are dark and melancholy and the stories so... twisted is the only word that comes to mind right now. I read Great Expectations in high school English class and I was one of the only ones in the class that had no trouble understanding it. And we did it as a classroom read and discuss, not an independent read. I would serious consider doing something like A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist or The Pickwick Papers instead as they are easier for a middle schooler to grasp and arguably less dark than Dickens' other works. All your other choices for independent readers seem to be pretty solid middle school choices which is why Great Expectations kind of surprised me.

Remember when your children were infants and everyone would tell you to do a running commentary of everything you were doing so your child would hear tons of language and hopefully talk soon and have a larger vocabulary? I do the same thing when I do example math problems when they are older. I may even model more than one way and show that no matter what way I do it, I still get the same answer. I say outloud, every step I have to go through to get the answer mentally. So for example, if I wanted to show the correlation between 21-16 and 20-15, I would say something like, " If I take one away from both numbers, I get 20-15 which is much easier to get the answer for in my head. I know it is the same problem because I took the same amount away from both of the original numbers. So I know the answer is 5." Other thing I often did was have them do a problem and explain to me how they came up with the answer. Then ask them to show me another way they could have solved it. As someone else said Cuisenaire rods are fabulous for seeing the correlations between numbers.

Gaps are not failures; they are learning opportunites that present themselves in real world context.

Another thing to consider is that many homeschooling materials are written by homeschoolers. Very often they are self-published or limited run published by a company like Lulu. Hiring a photograher or buying stock photography would eat their profit margins in a heart beat not to mention they must pay out of pocket for these before they have even sold a single copy. Even if they know how to create their own graphics, it would be time consuming for them to create pages similar to modern text books. Textbooks have financial backers, teams of people working on the material to be presented, different teams of people working on the layout of each page and more teams working on copyright and photography handling. There is no way one person or even a two person team could turn out something even close to what a textbook publisher could. I do find that many homeschool materials are excessively verbose but then I've heard other people complain that short, sweet and to the point materials that I love lack enough detail to use it effectively. I personally find pages with sidebars and lots of graphics and bulletpoints to be distracting and difficult to read. I think it is something where you will never please everyone which is why the variety available now (as opposed to 15 years ago when I started homeschooling my oldest son) is such a lovely thing.

Oh yes, the infamous teenaged toddler stage, I know it well and I'm not particularly looking forward to my youngest ones going through it. LOL Just the way the OP described the 16yo and These two selections from the OP make me think it's more than run of the mill teenage attitude problems. During that teenaged toddler stage, I sound like a broken record, "You may disagree with me but you may not be disrespectful to me." Yes, they tested the boundary more times than I care to remember but there are no excuses around here for not being kind and respectful to others, both those above and below you on the totem pole. It's my hill to die on I suppose.

My observations as someone who has homeschooled with teens and littles in the house at the same time... Respect seems to be sorely lacking all the way around. Your daughter is allowed to just get up and walk away and isn't disciplined for her actions (notice I said disciplined, not punished). If she had asked to get up and go play for a while and you decided she could wait on the rest of the seatwork, that would be completely different but the way you described it in your first post, it sounds like she just got up to go play and refused to return when asked. Your younger son lacks respect by continuing to talk when you've asked him to stop. He's ASD, I get it, but that's why you need firm boundaries and alternative discipline plans for him. Give him outlets for his issues while still teaching him to be respectful to others. That is a life skill he needs to learn BECAUSE he is ASD, not excused from it. If he walks into a meeting at work as an adult refusing to listen to others and only listening to his need to talk, he's not going to last very long if he cannot respect his supervisors and co-workers. He is being homeschooled, he's not going to go to school and learn these skills, so it is up to you to teach him these skills in addition to academics. And where on earth did your 16 year old get the idea that he has any say in how his siblings are raised? He doesn't have to like it but he still has to respect that you are the parent to him AND his siblings. You may ask him to be responsible for their welfare in your absence occaisionally but that is not the same as being a parent! I asked my older children to watch or supervise their siblings from time to time but they had NO authority to disciplined their siblings, that is a parent's responsibility. They could tell me about their siblings behavior when I returned and I would decide how or if they needed to be diciplined. And they younger siblings could also tell me about their older siblings behavior and I could decide that they may be disciplined for not being kind and respectful to their younger siblings that were in their charge. If your 16yo doesn't like how he and/or his siblings were/are being raised, that's fine he can still be respectful to you and raise his future children differently. Since the 16yo can't seem to understand the difference between being asked to keep his siblings out of danger (don't let them play in traffic, don't let them drink cleaning agents, don't let them play with knives...) and being a parent, I wouldn't ask him to supervise until he can tell the difference. The guideline I gave my older ones when watching the younger ones was that if it threatens their life or someone else's, by all means do whatever is necessary to stop them. If they are being annoying or making a mess and won't listen to you, tell me when I return and I will handle it. I also didn't ask them to help their siblings with school work. Sure sometimes they helped each other, but I never asked them to do so. Again, it is my responsibility to homeschool them and I won't delegate that responsibility to just anyone, but especially not to an arrogant teenager who doesn't respect my parental authority. Will all this get better when the older children return to school? I doubt it. They will still be there in the morning before school and could easily get your homeschool day off to a bad start and they will still be there in the eveing on the days when time got away from you during the day and some of the homeschooling carries on into the evening. Until the respect issues (respect for you and respect for each other) are addressed, I think you will continue to have different iterations of the same problems.

How are you asking him to narrate? I've found some kids (and even some adults) need the act of narration broken down into the most basic pieces before they can be just asked to narrate, or tell back, and give a coherent answer. Instead of saying "Now tell back to me what I just read." I would try asking him even simpler questions and see if he can answer those. Tell me who was in the passage I just read. What did they do in the passage? Where did this passage take place? When did this passage take place? (If applicable) Does the passage tell us why this character did what they did? It can be helpful to write their answers down for them to see. Then the first few times, you may have to walk them through putting all that information together into a narration. Write this down for them to see as well. Most schools do not teach narration so it is entirely possible that the child has just never encountered this type of teaching and just needs a little help to understand the goal. If breaking the act of narration down and modeling doesn't work, I would go down to the sentence level and see if they can tell you the 5 W's of a second grade appropriate sentence. If they still cannot do it, then I would say it is time to start seeking evaluations.

Can she "teach" her little brothers to read? When my oldest daughter learned to read around age 6, she liked to play school with her younger sister who was 2 - 3 years old at the time. Both girls benefited from it because my younger dd got exposure to phonics well before I would have introduced it to her and my older dd was practicing her phonics and reading skills without even realizing it. Of course this assumes she was taught phonics at school. If she was only taught sight words then I would get a phonics program and have a daily family reading lesson. The younger brothers get to participate if they want to but I wouldn't force them. Let your older daughter help teach her brothers if you are going over a concept she already knows. Even if none of the instruction sticks for the younger ones, your daughter is getting valuable instruction and reinforcement.

((Hugs)) Such is the curse of being a homeschool mom. ;-) If she doesn't like manipulatives, would she tolerate drawing pictorial representations? Bar diagrams and such? I still remember that 8x8=64 from I think it was Times Tales when my oldest son was memorizing his multiplication facts. There is a silly picture of two number 8s on roller skates and spilled soda on the floor with the caption of "skate times skate is sticky floor". I still use the finger trick for 9s though I can visualize the trick in my head rather than use my actual fingers lol. It doesn't sound like math is her strong suit. While it is still important for her to learn math, I would focus on accuracy more than speed with her. Math fact memorization promotes speed, not necessarily understanding. If she needs to use a facts table or manipulatives or tricks or even a calculator, I would let her do what she needs to do so she can understand the mathmatical concepts presented without struggling with the basic facts. It may never be clear why she struggles to memorize them but that doesn't have to hold her back in math.

I don't mean to speak ill of your friend but just from what you have typed here, she sounds quite gullible. As the others have said, HSLDA is a legal defense agency and homeschooling law lobbyists. Many, MANY homeschoolers do not agree with their agendas and opinions and I would wager the majority of universities do not even know it exists much less care if an applicant's parents chose to be members while they homeschooled their child. That would be similar to putting on a college application for a public school child that the parents were members of the PTA. The universities don't care about that. Your friend seems to enjoy drinking the kool-aid and raving about how wonderful it is without giving it much thought in my opinion. Don't feel bad about not drinking the kool-aid with her and don't be afraid to limit time with her if her enthusiam for kool-aid is causing you grief.

With all her issues, I wouldn't say she's behind. She is where she is, one of the great things about homeschooling especially for children who are not neurotypical learners is that you can go at their pace without the pressure of keeping up with arbitrary goals set by someone else for the average child. Just teach the child in front of you. Don't worry about being "behind". So many things in mathmatics are dependent upon a child being cognitively ready to learn it. Her brain may not be wired to learn at the typical pace and sequence that public schools use and that's ok because she's not in public school. Celebrate that she finally understands addition with regrouping! Rote memorization and brute force practice didn't make the math facts stick so try something else. Look into some right-brained learning techniques that pair the facts with pictures or stories. Work on number sense, the ability to manipulate numbers and see the patterns in math. Sometimes it isn't endless practice that they need to make a concept stick, they just need time for the concept to float around in their heads until it cements into place. If she at least tolerated the MLFLE lessons, or which ever program she at least seemed to even slightly enjoy, I would stick with that one. A child that is frustrated with an ill fitting math program or that is drowning in practice problems won't have the time and energy to play with the concept in their head until it cements.

I wouldn't focus too much about where she is going to be in a few years. Just worry about where she is now. Right now, she needs to work on 4th grade skills. That doesn't mean it will take her a year to master 4th grade skills. You may find that some things she doesn't need as much work on and others she needs to spend more time on. She may be ready to move on to Math Mammoth 5 in a few months. She may be ready to move on to level 5 at Christmas or it may really take her all year to get there. Just teach the child in front of you. She will get to pre-algebra when she is ready to take and understand pre-algebra. Unless you think she will be competeing for math scholarships, she doesn't need to rush to algebra. And about the public school, they may have been teaching different topics than Math Mammoth does in 4th or 5th grade. There is more than one path through elementary math that all end up at the same end point, readiness for pre-algebra. That's why I doubt it will take her a whole year to go through Math Mammoth 4. I'm sure there is some content in there she already knows, all she will need to do is focus on what the public school didn't cover.

I would read the fine print very very carefully. I just looked around a bit at the current satellite internet plans out there and a lot of the plans I saw that offer "unlimited" data offered some small amount at high speed, around 25mbps which is what most people consider to be normal internet speeds any more, and then unlimited data at some snail speed of 1 - 2 mbps or something like that. That is an improvement over what they offered when we had satelllite internet but I'd still be leary. Videos will have to buffer constantly at the lower speed, latency is always pretty high with satellite internet but that is just the nature of the beast, .My best advice is to just make sure you read the fine print very carefully and make sure you understand exactly what you are getting in their unlimited plan. Are you getting unlimited high speed data or just unlimited data where some small amount of it is high speed and the rest is at some slower speed. What is the upper cap for data? Even unlimited plans have an upper cap where you will be told to watch your usage or risk being cut off. Most internet providers say only 1% of their customers ever reach that upper cap but we have reached that cap before just being a large family with several teenagers and lots of streaming. One provider had an upper limit of 1TB, another had an upper limit of 250GB, I've heard of some having 100GB or even 50GB upper limits on their unlimited plans. Even if you don't think you will ever reach it, it's good to know what it is.

That stinks ☹️ If satellite is pretty much your only option then just watch your data usage like a hawk. Updates to their software on their router costs you data as well. We found that out when we left town for a week and took all the devices with us and we were charged for data even though the wi-fi was turned off while we were gone and no one was in or near our house (nearest neighbor is too far away to pick up our signal) It is not hard to run up a huge data bill on satellite internet. Shut off all automatic updates to software and only update as needed and as data allows. Like I said before video, even if you only stream it, will eat your data like no other. Limit video viewing or try to do it when you can get to a library or free wi-fi location (I know easier said than done when you live in the middle of no where. We would take our son to McD's 90 minutes away to use the wi-fi. Not terribly pleasant but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.)

We live in a rural area with one internet provider that gave us no end of fits. Our first option after we decided we had had enough of the local internet provider was satellite internet. It was a complete disaster. We tried two different providers of satellite internet and both had the same problem, outrageously tiny and expensive data allotments. 25GB for a month, which was the largest that anyone offered that served our area isn't enough for one person let alone a family. Forget streaming or downloading any kind of video on a regular basis. It will eat your data in a heart beat. You can buy extra GBs after you use your 25GB at $10-$15 per GB. So even if you use 25.15GB in a month, you will have to spend the extra $10 - $15 for a full GB, they will not pro-rate you. And that extra GB you paid for does not roll over to the next month. It is use it or lose it. The solution we found that works for us is cellular internet. Dh and I each have a pre-paid phone. Our plans are a little different from each other but both are relatively inexpensive for what we get (About $140 for both of us together). We are both allowed to tether our phones so cell phones serve as our wi-fi hotspots. Dh's plan is a grandfathered plan that has unlimited streaming video at 4G speeds. My plan has unlimited data usage but tethered data is at 3G speeds. That means for me, watching videos needs to be done on my phone or I just need to connect my computer to his phone to watch videos. I don't watch videos that often so it works for me. Simply surfing the internet works just fine on 3G speeds. I could change my plan to get unlimited 4G tethering but I would have to go to a month to month plan instead of prepaid for that and I don't want to give up prepaid. It works better for us financially to have the ability to just make do without phone service if money is tight rather than juggle late fees and past due balances. Any computer can be made wireless. It cost less than $30 each to add a wireless connection to our desktop computers. Also you can just use a USB cord to tether if you don't want to mess with adding wireless. I don't know if I'm allowed to mention our carrier that allows tethering (not all carriers do) but they are a national carrier with service just about everywhere, even in our little rural area with very limited coverage from most carriers. You can PM if you want more information on our carrier or cellular internet service in general. Frankly, unless we move somewhere with Google Fiber or something like that, I can't see us giving up our cellular internet, we really really like it.

Remember that gifted children are often asynchronous learners. They may race ahead in one subject while other subjects lag behind and in 6 months those subjects may be flip flopped. It's ok to let them learn this way and no reason to force them to "catch up" where they are lagging at any moment in time. It will only serve to frustrate both of you. They will learn what needs to be learned in due time. Don't be afraid to let them pursue advanced subject matter on their own. They don't need a curriculum for everything. In fact, it is rare to find a curriculum for any subject that is actually a good fit for gifted learner. You can use it for a spine but let him chase rabbit trails until his enthusiam for the topic wanes and then you can go back to the curriculum for the next topic Don't suddenly raise the stakes just because you now have paper evidence that he is exceptional. Obviously what you have been doing up until this point has been working and working well. Don't go overboard trying to fix what isn't broken. If he was breezing through his work and complaining it's too easy this past year then gradually raise the challenge level of the subjects that need the challenge level raised, don't raise it across the board if he had any subjects that did present a challenge for him this past year.

Huh. We love those 1.3mm pencils. They are pretty much the only pencils we have in the house anymore. They are even my favorite pencils because they are nice and chunky and don't hurt my arthritic hands but still write well. I've not had an issue at all with the erasers getting used up. We've lost a couple that were pulled off by a curious 5 year old but when we bought the starter kits at back to school last year, they came with extra lead and erasers. We haven't even used up all those extra erasers yet. Maybe wait until back to school sales start next month and look around then? I just checked all our pencils, each one only has one piece of lead in it so no lead falling out issues. Maybe you could hot glue or super glue the eraser to the pencil so that it cannot be pulled off and just refill the pencil from the other end.

Lol, if he doesn't suggest a change to the experiment to see what it does, my husband or I usually do. I don't think we've ever done an experiment exactly as the book said and then left it at that. We are all science geeks here. I don't mind teacher intensive, since he's the only one still at home, he has both me and dh to himself and we always do science experiments as a family. I just need some more places to pull experiments that aren't middle school math level but also aren't "make a mosiac with seeds to learn about them" crafty-type "experiments". It sounds like AIMS might work for him. dmmetler, where would I find the print books? Is there any place in particular they tend to show up more often than others?

I've seen AIMS science mentioned more than a few times and I'm wondering what the general opinion on it is? Someone left a link for them (thanks Sarah0000!) and I was able to take a look at them finally. They look very classroom oriented but I don't mind that, I can adapt it no problem. The experiments I am able to see through the previews look well laid out and very relevant (no arts and crafts masquerading as science, a personal pet peeve of mine with other lower level science "experiment" books). I have a super curious, scientifically minded 5.5yo who loves experiments and I'm running out of experiment books! LOL! He understands on a pretty high level, is about a 1/3 to 1/2 through a typical first grade math sequence. I don't use a specific curriculum, he's my 6th homeschooled kid but the only one still at home, so I've been using a combination of Miquon, MEP, Math Mammoth topical books and math activities of my own design. He is definitely a math and science kid. They are a bit on the expensive side to just get one to look through it so I was wanting to know why it is mentioned so often, especially for accelarated learners.