This is for my daughter's first year of kindergarten. She just turned 5. Reading: Finishing Dancing Bears Book B, hopefully completing Book C (and finally be finished with phonics!). I have Megawords waiting in the wings as backup. Math: Finish Saxon K. I'm not planning on starting her with Saxon 1 until she's 6 because math at that level takes around 45 minutes a day (at least it does with my son!). Handwriting: Finish the 4 CLE preschool books for prewriting, then transition to Cursive First (and eventually New American Cursive) Language Arts: MCT Poodle level; Royal Fireworks Press Aesop books Geography: Evan-Moor Grade 1 Daily Geography Practice Science: Nancy Larson Science K; interest-led books (currently felines and astronomy). She wants a telescope for Christmas... Enrichment: Jazz and gymnastics, weekly visit to the botanical gardens, theater shows twice a month. She wants to learn the flute, but that will need to wait a few years!

My 4-yr-old: -- She was set to finish Phonics Pathways by the end of the month, but she keeps getting tripped up on ph as /f/ so we're backtracking in OPG. If we continue with OPG, she'll finish that by the end of May. Then I plan for her to finish the last fourth of AAR. She is also currently in Explode the Code! book 6 (used for spiraling review) and Merrill Reader "Lift Off." After that, we're starting MCT Poodle and then Island. -- For math, I first tried Mathematical Reasoning K (not explicit enough for her) and then Singapore Essentials A (the "Sets" chapter annoyed her). So, instead, she's going to do CLE Kindergarten 2 and Saxon K, before I move her into Saxon 1. -- Pre-writing is currently a Kumon "how to draw" book. In January, once she's 5.5, I'm going to start New American Cursive with her. My 6-yr-old: -- Phonics is Rod & Staff, 2 days per lesson. He should be finished with all 6 units by Christmas, especially now that we just stopped with the spelling lessons (which would add an extra day to each lesson). For spiraling review, we also do Explode the Code! (he's finishing up Book 4.5) and Merrill Reader ("Get Set"). -- After MUCH trial-and-error -- and trying literally every single first grade math program out there (no easy feat living as an expat!) -- we're now using Saxon 1 and loving it. Our upcoming lessons cover the exact same concepts as so-called conceptual math programs (ha ha, ask me how I know), but in tangible, explicit, bite-sized pieces. He went from actively avoiding math to now requesting it as his first class of the day. I can't speak highly enough of Saxon. -- Pre-writing is currently CLE preschool workbooks. Once he finishes CLE Kindergarten 1, I'm putting him into Getty-Dubay Italic (kindergarten). For both: -- We visit the botanical gardens weekly. We're also making our way through the Burgess Book of Animals. -- Planning to do Nancy Larson Science (k). -- Every night I do 30-45 minutes of read-alouds. We had finished the complete "Winnie the Pooh" and "Charlotte's Web." We're currently reading "Trumpet of the Swan" and we'll do "Stewart Little" after.

My son has a June birthday and he's a 2E child, so I would technically consider him an older kindergartener, though he's doing first grade work in some areas. My 4-yr-old daughter joins him for some of these classes. Math: MEP book 2, Beast Academy 1A-1D, Singapore IP 1A/1B and CWP Reading: AAR 1 and 2 Spelling: AAS 1 and 2 Literature: Braidy the Story Braid (story grammar marker stages 1 & 2) Geography: My custom curriculum covering 40 countries in 2 years, incorporates art, music, food, culture, and literature Speech: SPARC for Grammar, HELP 2 Foreign language: Japanese (informally taught by me, basic vocab) Handwriting: GriffinOT pencil grasp program, HWT "get ready for school," Write from the Start Science: part of geography (animals, biomes, habitats, climate and weather) Nature Studies: repeat of my custom curriculum from this academic year

Has anyone here successfully used Gattegno (Words in Color, The Common Sense of Teaching Reading and Writing) as a standalone program or combined with multisensory OG programs (AAR, LoE)? As background: I started homeschooling my 5-yr-old son in August. Math took a few trials and errors, but we successfully used Math with Confidence and are now using the MEP reception materials. Through MwC, I learned how to accommodate my son's dysgraphia, and while it's a chore for me, I can teach math with games, handmade and purchased manipulatives, etc that eliminate the need for him to ever write. Teaching reading has been significantly more difficult, in part I suspect because of my son's speech delay. The earlier programs I had tried were a dismal failure, and what is working now is combining the pre-reading levels of AAR and LoE (plus some HELP 1 for fun). We are now at the juncture for truly, actually reading, however, and I don't think I can sustain combining multiple reading programs. Rightly or wrongly, I have decided to go with combining AAR and AAS. I guess if it's also a flop, I can try LoE instead! But (bringing this back to my initial question), I was disquieted to see that both AAR and LoE encourage students to guess at which sound a particular phonome is making in a word while sounding out the word. So these OG programs teach kids all the sound U can make but then have them guess at which of the four sounds is could be in any given word. Huh. A similar analogy would be having a child guess at what 4+4 equals in a math class. I don't understand why guessing should be part of any reading program, especially an OG-based one. I had come across Gattegno's works earlier, and his "common sense" way of teaching reading by using color-coded phonograms makes so much sense! Almost...too much sense... I personally cannot understand why AAR adopted the simplistic Montessori red/blue letter tile scheme when Gattegno's way seems far superior. My poor son will be the lab rat, but I plan on using the color-coded phenome tiles (+ a reference wall chart, like Gattegno's Fidel) with AAR/AAS. Like any manipulative, it will provide short-term scaffolding until he has internalized how to encode/decode on his own. Does this approach resonate with you? Any potential pitfalls to consider?

I started homeschooling my 5-yr-old son in August. I didn't know which math level to start him at, so we began at the MWC preschool level. He finished that in less than 2 weeks. We just finished the kindergarten level last week, and we're going to finish the basic addition/subtraction facts in the first-grade book soon before switching him soon to MEP. The second-grade MWC book isn't out yet, so the switch was necessary. We also supplement with the first-grade level of Beast Academy. I agonized over my decision for weeks. While I really liked MWC, in the end it was too gentle for my son and not as in-depth as the other programs. Believe me, I've reviewed them all! I was unable to find a program the matched my needs/wants 100% but I think MEP, with minor modifications, is close. I didn't like Singapore -- I couldn't get my head around their strange mental math model. I didn't like how RightStart spirals (and I didn't want to spend all the time de-spiraling it). Math Mammoth expects students to teach themselves based on worksheets (which wouldn't work for my son, who can't yet read or write). Rod and Staff was painfully slow and dull. I will miss the games of MWC but I hope to add them in later using Kitchen Table Math and other math game books. But, overall MEP incorporates all other elements I was looking for -- the systematic introduction and review of math facts, oral drills (which I will turn into jumping games), working with rods and number lines, etc. I will turn the worksheets into kinesthetic materials and manipulatives to work with. Please let me know if you have any questions about MWC. I'm going to be starting my daughter in the preschool level soon. I hope this helps!