Thank you for all the input! For some reason I never even thought of sticks to let them hang from. 😄 I stuck them and the cabbage in the habitat and they're still alive, so we'll see what happens. We'll look outside for other cocoons once I see what they look like on the inside one.

I have a bizarre and funny wondering...we were planning to grow monarch butterflies this year for biology in one of those butterfly habitats where you start with the caterpillars. Well, my cabbages have worms that are from butterflies, so I'm just wondering...fair substitute? 😄😄 Mostly I'm wondering if cabbage is all they need to survive and then take them clear to chrysalis and adulthood or not. Does anybody know?

I had a link this morning for a video of Chris VanDusen reading his Circus Ship, but I cannot figure out where I found the link! Any ideas where the video is located? Also, if anyone knows of a comprehensive resource for all the read aloud videos that have been popping up pkease let me know! We woyld love to watch some.

I'm not even sure what to search for on Google, but is there such a thing as an mp3 type player than can handle the Audible app? Most of our audio books are on there, and I'd like to be able to hand a machine to my 4yo that he can freely pick a book from, but that doesn't have a lot of other things on it. Obviously it would need to have wireless to sync, but a disconnect option would be great. Right now we have one of my old phones, and that is working pretty well, but we have more than one kid and they're really helpful to have when I'm working with another kid on school. Ideas? Thank you so much!

I'm finding conflicting updated information in several new books- does anybody know the definitive answer on whether the continent of Australia (and associated areas) is now only referred to as Oceania, or is Australia still acceptable? My kids are memorizing them and I don't want to handicap them. 😊

...what do you tweak? Specifically, do you cut out anything, and what? My main wondering is about the very detailed lesson teaching. Is this necessary, or can you just go through the worksheet at their side and that's entirely sufficient? My kids aren't super into manipulatives and so I'm quite tempted to ignore the actual "teaching" of the lesson, but I'm wondering if that's a novice decision that is not the best thing to do long term, or perhaps that it works fine in the lower lessons but not so much as you progress through the book. Thoughts?

We pushed through on the words-on-the-whiteboard plan, and...I'm just totally laughing, kids are such nuts. He insisted on writing out the words HIMSELF (he's 4; I dictated the spelling to him) and THEN sounding them out, and he had no problem getting excited about it in that context. Now he's all thrilled he can read, and I'm just over here like-- aren't 4yo boys supposed to STRUGGLE with writing?! And this is your preferred way of processing phonics?! Kids. Always something up their sleeve. 😅

I heard on a podcast (I think it was Literary Life by Angelina Stanford and Condy Rollins) that a lot of the mentalities feminists are fighting against nowadays were actually heavily endorsed and disseminated by Rousseau! I am over-simplifying what I heard because it was just in passing, but does anybody know of any books or resources on this topic?

Great, I'll think more along these lines! I guess I was thinking if he's ASKING to read a book, then it's not a great idea to hold him to boring 'ole text and cause his interest to wane, but I think I'm worrying more than I need to about that.

Okay, thanks! I am definitely wanting to avoid any temptation to use pictures as tools for guessing the words, which is why I asked. Sounds like I just need to put readers away even if he is interested in them, until he gets a little further along! (We're using OPGTR, so will be easy to do if we ditch readers for now.)

My almost 5yo is starting to sound out words, but he is really bad about looking at the pictures and trying to use those as clues. I don't think it's conscious avoidance of the work involved, because he'll sound them out just fine if I write them out plainly on a whiteboard or whatever, but just that he gets distracted by the pictures, and without even trying he'll see the letters he's working on and jump to a conclusion about what word it is. Bob readers in particular, because the pictures are so obviously relevant to the words on the page. I don't mind doing a lot of sounding out via my writing out black and white words on a plain surface, but how does one combat this? Knowing him, this will be a problem even if I carefully look for other books that aren't quite as self explanatory in the pictures (which I will be doing). Any ideas? I do cover the words as he sounds them out one letter at a time, but he'll sound out "M-A-T...Mat sat!" just because the picture already illustrates the rest of the sentence that he hasn't even seen yet.

I did go ahead and buy the series...I found an 1937 version on ebay for $63 after shipping. It was slightly more than I hoped to spend but I have to say I am really happy with them! I love the myriads of colored pictures; those always catch my kids' attention and pique their interests.

Thanks! Rainbow Resource seems to have them, but not in stock until November. Wondering if perhaps that's an upcoming edition...

What is the most recent version of the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia? The one on Amazon is 2012, but it only has used copies available and thus I assume is out of print. ?? All other versions that come up under that title search are older publication dates. Does anyone know what the actual story is on this, and if it's worth waiting because another edition is in the works?

@Lori D. THANK you! That was a wonderfully comprehensive answer and hugely helpful.

I am JUST for the first time discovering the series of My Book House and they sound/look really great...but when I look into them I'm wondering if they would be a redundant purchase next to a series I already own, which is a 16 book series called The Children's Hour. Is anyone familiar with both series, and do you have any idea how they compare? Here is a link to what looks to be a generic overview for each book. https://www.librarything.com/series/The+Children's+Hour+Series

Thank you all very much! I think we have a couple good ones to work with now. Hopefully they'll suit the bill. 😄

We live in Montana and my 4.5yo wants to know more about these Lewis and Clark folks who went down the river in boats and cooked their food on the fire. 😄 Does anybody know of some books on this topic that are friendly to such a young age?

Thanks! I think I've decided to forego this program. I've printed out the longer article and am looking forward to reading it. 🙂

Instead of always wondering what books I have on what topics, and how to cross-organize them, I've finally decided to sort them by the four year cycle that WTM outlines, both for history and science. I think I'm going to be really happy with this because even if we want a book on a topic that's out of the current line, at least I know the area to look in. My question is-- have any of you done this and regretted it, and why? I'm strongly considering adding our fictional books into this sorting, but I'm wondering if that's over reaching and might backfire. So before I over haul our [large] home library...thoughts? Thanks. 😄

My 4.5yo will be doing: Developing the Early Learner workbooks (nearly done with #1) Get Ready For the Code A,B,C (he knows his letters cold but can't seem to grasp blending, so we're doing this for sound and familiarity reinforcement. He loves workbooks.) Practicing writing his letters properly on lined paper Saxon Math K and other mathy fun, like Battle or number boards, math storybooks, etc. The 3.5yo will be doing the first two workbooks as well, at a slower pace. Starfall for backup fun and reinforcement on all of the above. I suppose I hardly need state that underneath all this is the basic preschool variety of play things and time. 😄

Had anyone tried the preschool/K curriculums for Easy Peasy? I've always been completely convinced by WTM's argument for teaching phonics and not sight words, so I'm not entirely sure what to make of this lady's ideas, which is basically learning the sounds of all the letters, then a bunch of sight words, then back to phonics. I think the thought is that when they can read a book, then they are more inspired to go back and do the work phonics takes. To be fair, I can skip ahead on these lesson plans and do all the phonics before coming back to the sight words, but I was just curious what kind of feedback folks had on using this program. The simplicity and [free] price of it is definitely ideal.

We have a December and a January, by plan...and hope to repeat that, even though we're in Montana. 😄 Ours is mere practicality-- not of winter issues, but of when DH is free to help out. His summers are insane but winters he can stay home for weeks on end with minimal work, so that's worth it to us. I've never had any PPD but it's possible that that was greatly helped by having him around to ease the load! The babies never had much issue with being sick, but we do keep them home for the first 3-4 weeks. Just seems like a good simple precaution.

I'm not sure where to classify my kiddo, who will be 4.5 when the school year starts...that's technically preschool age, but we'll be doing kindergarten level work since he's plugging away at a few things already. We will likely be through (or on the latter end) of OPGTR by Sept 2019, so we'll finish that and work on improving reading skills from there on out. No real language arts/reading/English program until 1st grade, unless something catches my eye. Whatever read alouds we think look interesting. 😄 Right now the themed literature packs like around the world in picture books from BFB just don't seem to catch my kids' attention, so I'm backing off on formal topics and just reading whatever we want to, in many genres. Handwriting, we're using Zaner Bloser K and he'll likely be into the ZB1 book by then, but essentially we'll just move up whenever he finishes ZBK. Math, we're using Saxon K and that will take us awhile to finish since we don't do it daily. We'll move straight to Saxon 1 when K is completed, whenever that happens to fall. I'm not sure if we'll worry about science or history for Kindergarten- all depends on where life is at that point. I'll be teaching my now 3yo to read at that point, based on his current abilities, as well as starting him on handwriting and math, so I doubt I'll add too much to my big's schedule just to allow me the time to cover everything.

I'm curious...for those of you who do school your 4yos, what does that end up looking like? When I see a post that mentions a K4 or K-er spending 1.5 hours on school before lunch-- what does that look like? A couple long breaks? Continuous plugging along with two minute jumping jack intervals? We do phonics every day, handwriting most days (he's capable and enjoys it) and math on the days we feel like it (because he's capable but less so than with phonics/handwriting). I don't think we could spend 1.5 hours on school at this age if we tried. We essentially do 10-15 of phonics, 5-10 handwriting. And those are usually separate events.