This is going to be my first year homeschooling my 5 year old twin boys. Their 3 year old little brother will be listening in I'm sure. :) A friend of mine recommended using a devotional for "Bible" which I think is a great idea! Anyone have any good devotional recommendations for boys of this age group? They will turn 4 and 6 pretty early on in the year.

ok good! im also just seeing the placement test, so ill have them take that.

Hi! This will be my first year homeschooling. My 5 year old twin boys are gong into kindergarten. I was planning on Math U See for them, but I just came back from the teach them diligently conference and was surprised to find myself most drawn to Saxon out of the things I looked at. I love the script and its the program I learned in school so its just familiar which I like. The thing is, I cant decide if we should start with K or 1. The boys know the calendar (months, days of the week), can count to 100 by 1s, 10s and 5s, count backwards from 20, and all the shapes covered in K. We could use more practice with patterns, and haven't covered graphs, pictographs, tangrams, or money except for a cute money song they know. They also cannot write the numbers yet, but we are working on it and I see thats a Saxon 1 skill anyway. I also recently read that a local private school starts kindergarteners with Saxon 1 so I'm wondering if we should just start there? Anyone with experience with Saxon care to chime in? thanks!

I guess theres one subject/thing for every family and every kid! Hopefully we will both figure out ways to make it more fun in the future!!! ahhh :)

So, i'm finding i'm having an interesting reaction to some of the responses because 10 minutes or even 20 minutes a day for each of the subjects I mentioned sounds like no big deal to me. My kids enjoy "doing" and as long as there's a crayon or computer or activity or they are actively participating they are pretty easy. But SEVERAL HOURS of storytime? We can't get through one book without disruptions. We even tried our first audiobook in the car today, it was 13 minutes and they did not like it, even my easy guy. OUr picture book last night did not go well either, only one heard the whole thing, the other two disrupted two different attempts. I think because auditory-only input doesn't work so well for two out of three of my boys... they are incapable of sitting still and paying attention. Which I think is normal, and I don't mind movement, but talking/disruptions I do. It's like they cant help themselves (really its just one, but then the 3 year old follows along because, fun) and I don't doubt that he legitimately can't, he is very kinesthetic and well, a 5 year old boy. So I guess I need to figure out how to make storytime multi-sensory, or exercise them first, or get some kind of fidget toy/weighted blanket maybe. Which all seems SO daunting to figure out... much more daunting then a science coloring sheet. I think I'll just do the best I can, and hope I can find some books they really like or figure out his sensory "keys" to unlock for calmness, because we just haven't been one of those super-reader families up to this point, its too hard. I'm in the car 3 hours a day commuting to and from (and to and from) school, and with mealtimes, cleaning, etc i'm busy enough right now to have a hard time fitting it in, especially when its like pulling teeth to get them to pay attention. But this is a huge reason we are homeschooling - more TIME. I'm just overwhelmed now. Feeling like I have this all backwards...

this is helpful, thank you. :)

Thanks for all the advice! I know we will probably end up taking things pretty slow considering the baby and 3 year old, but I am feel like maybe the twins are ahead of where they should be. At least one of them is... and they enjoy learning so I want to make sure they are being challenged. Not frustrated, but that education is keeping their attention. They have been in 4K at school this year and the school keeps teaching them things that I had planned for next year lol. Between that and what we have already started learning at home, they know all their letters and letter sounds, can recognize capitals and lowercase, can count to 100+, skip count by 10s, count backwards from 20, know the concept of 0, greater and less than, and I have one who is picking up beginning CVC words. And we still have 8 months until I was going to start, so who knows what they will learn in that time. I want to keep going in this direction and at this pace if possible. They talk about the pilgrims, etc at school and that is what I mean when I say "history" - maybe we will try to learn the 50 states song or start it, or do coloring pages and crafts based on american history but nothing crazy. Same with science. In other areas they are clearly still only 4, like fine motor, handwriting, and attention span. And following directions/listening - especially to me. Reading and Math are definitely my priorities. And I want to keep learning fun so I appreciate the suggestions, and I'm sure I will come back to this on days I don't feel like we did enough. I've also been assuming they'd want to or need to look at the pictures to pay attention to read-alouds, so finding time when everyone is able to sit down and pay attention is rare - but it seems like may of you aren't showing the pictures? I have one twin who will listen forever and wants to see the pictures and one who CANNOT SIT STILL and just starts wrestling with the three year old and being disruptive, even talking over me. And they all fight over my lap and the ones who don't get that spot then pout and don't listen. Post-mealtime energy doesn't seem to be conducive to read-aloud time for them now that I am paying attention, but maybe during mealtime would be better. I just assumed that was when I would eat too lol. Anyone have suggestions to make storytime more fun (or easier to NOT disrupt at least) for two wiggly willies?? Is that why y'all do it during mealtime?

I like that idea :) Then my 3 year old could listen in right before his (hopeful... doesn't always happen) naptime. But most of the books on our list aren't chapter books so we could probably get through at least 2 a day if we count bedtime.

It is interesting to me that y'all do audiobooks at 5 - I hadn't even thought of that! What are some good resources for where to get them? Do you do an audible.com account? Do they have books categorized by age? Also are you opening the hard copy of the book for pictures to go along with the audiobook or do your 5s actually sit and pay attention to audio only? I have one who would be into it, especially in the car, but I have another who is a wiggler and Im wondering I can see him listening for 0.5 a second and then start wrestling with little bro. lol

Hi! This is my first post on the forum. :) I am 99% sure we will be homeschooling our almost 5 year old twin boys starting in late summer for kindergarten. We also have a 3 year old boy plus I'm having a baby over the holidays, so I'm giving myself permission to change my mind after she gets here. But I really do want to go for it. What I'm wondering is how to approach read-alouds/incorporate them into our curriculum. I'm interested, what do you all do in this regard? Do you read one book per week? One per day? Multiple per day? Or do you read one book every day for a week like Five in a Row? I think we could handle one per day, especially since books for this age group are pretty short. And if we are having a busy day we could just do the discussion after and skip any planned art activities, etc that may have gone along. And if we are having a REALLY busy day it could be our bedtime story. I just want to make sure I'm not overdoing it. I'm still narrowing down curriculum options, but my list seems long for how long I'm expecting our day to last realistically. I'm looking at programs for Reading/Phonics, Math, Language Arts/Handwriting/Spelling, and Bible for every day. History and Science will be 2 days a week most likely, and then I'd like to add in Keyboarding/Technology, Art, Music, and Spanish occasionally, maybe 1x per week each. Adding story time + discussion time + an activity every day to all of that seems like it could easily make our day way too long... but I guess if we are keeping each subject at about 20 minutes or so it should be ok? I'm I being naive? Should I aim to do less? Thanks!