I wish I could have just sat more and read with him, or gone to the library programs more, or museums. I have 4 kids now, and the youngers don't get as much 1-1 from me, but honestly neither did my oldest as I worked full time from home with him back then, with an ancillary mother's helper. It is harder to do museums with such varying ages of my kids. Go now while you just have 2 relatively close in age/level and explore! :)

I don't think you need to be connected to the internet to use Homeschool Tracker after you have downloaded it and installed it. It resides on your PC, or at least it did when I bought it a few years ago.

I haven't thus far (only our church's VBS), but I'm considering it this year as the other church has very very similar beliefs, and the differences are very technical and not likely to come during VBS for the elementary school crowd. :)

We encounter the same problems. Our solution is to go home, but that is feasible here. We have also had the boys change in the van - not ideal at all. Does the pool have a male lifeguard or instructor? Could he be present in the locker room for the boys for 15-20 min afterward for safety? I realize that doesn't help those with dexterity issues on their suits, but might help the danger fears. Our pool is a community pool, open to the entire community during lessons and afterwards. There is no possible way I'm letting my 5yo (6 very soon) in an open locker room where absolutely anyone can be in there. People here routinely change under a towel poolside too, and there appears to be no rule against it that I know of. They do it on the beach and in the beach parking lots too, dozens of surfers at any time of the day or night. We're probably a bit more relaxed about here in So Cal though. :D

Frankly it's hard to beat Amazon's prices, and that comes with free shipping with Amazon prime, which gets here weeks before media mail. For me, it often means I would pay more for used than I would new. I do a lot of sewing too, and the same phenomenon happens - people want to sell fabric (unused obviously) but by the time you tack on expensive shipping it is cheaper to just buy it from a retailer for "full price" but free shipping. I personally also use a charter school. They buy a lot of my materials for me, and deliver them at the start of the year. I don't have to buy a lot of it. That helps us stay a one-income family. What that doesn't cover and the library has, I often look there too before buying. Times are tough.

My kids have so far loved Sonlight in the early cores. I'm switching next year, but we will continue to likely use Sonlight pre-K/K level as it is little writing and lots of good stories.

I drive 1/2 hour now to get to the next library system over as ours stinks sometimes.

We gave up on the DVDs. Most of the materials would be easy to get locally, but some would be a tad challenging or take a bit of time driving around to the hardware store, etc., to get. The books at the library shouldn't be a huge problem if your library has them. Depending on the level though, some are used most weeks throughout the year. I'm thinking K here with the Children's Encyclopedia that we have been doing for weeks and weeks.

I would if it were free, or even just significantly cheaper than it is. I did but a unit to try, and there is a ton of info in there. But it is just too costly for my family for one subject. We have been using Sonlight with lots of library resources, two cores at once right now. Next year I'm trying out straight recommendations from TWTM and combining kids in one history cycle. We'll see how that goes. I love TOG for combining, but it was just too pricey for us to maybe like and maybe not in the long run.

We had this too, and I liked it. It is not nearly as good as the SOTW activity guides, but it does have some similarities in the activities part in the back. I had my son fill in the blanks for the outlines after we read and discussed together as reinforcement. He looked the answers up in the chapter to get the visual learning component as well as the auditory.

Stack the States is okay, a little easy for my 3rd grader, but he is poor in geography so it works. He also plays Words with Friends and Chess with Friends with us and with his grandparents.

I like the Daily Language Review better because it covers a wide range of topics each day. Yes, it only does take about 5 minutes max, but for my son it works so well for review of topics covered. He forgets really easily.

That is fantastic! We have done the full cores so far (through core 3), but we're next year going to just use the books and not the IG. I have used the IG less and less, and this year the cost is just prohibitive for what is offered for our family.

What are the learning styles of the children? That should have a good bearing on how you teach. Past that, I would say this is a very good time to show your kids how to compromise and come to a workable agreement as adults.

We used them in Sonlight core 3 this year for an 8yo. My opinion is they are good for practice reading something and answering questions about it, limited use actually teaching something cold. How much writing do they require? You could probably do them orally if needed. But if you do them, there are paragraph type answers as well as fill in the blank, matching, choose the correct answer, etc. You need to write well enough to explain your answer in several sentences. When do they begin? (Vikings? Native Americans? Columbus?) I'm stretching my memory here of the first book. Hope someone steps in. They do some explorers in the beginning, but not Vikings. Would it be enough to use these as our big picture text, supplemented by period-specific literature and hands-on activities? Or do we have to buy a "real" history textbook? I personally would no rely on these as our spine. IMHO, they are quite a bit dry and textbookish to begin with, and not enough information given about any topic to inspire interest. You go from Columbus or wherever it starts (puritans maybe even?) to the Civil war in two workbooks that are less than 100 pages each, and more than half of each book is the question part, so 100 pages generously to cover a couple hundred years of history? That said, you don't need a "textbook" -- you could probably use these as a topic idea and get all kinds of interesting supplements on the same time period? Me though, I would take the easy route and use some type of logical history spine to go along with them.

Yes, we have SHARE here but no Angel Foods. Link: http://www.wholesaledistributorsnet.com/SHARE_food.html

Mine is of little value to me, so I absolutely would sell it without a second thought. I actually gave it to DH to take to sell at some point. It just isn't meaningful to me.

I'm not an unschooler. My worry in the younger years has always been that I believe you need to build the scaffold, the base support for learning later on, or the little bits about lots of things. Plus of course how to read, do basic math and so forth. My degree is in Cognitive Science, and I recall studying how people categorize and "learn" new information by tagging it and relating it mentally to things already learned as the optimal situation. But at some point you have to create the solid beginnings. So that has always been my worry about unschooling the grammar school years. That is a time of building scaffolds to me. I can totally see unschooling high school and beyond (probably middle years too). Our entire adult lives are basically unschooling, following interests and passions, at least if we are at all fortunate. :D We are classical in our theory, but I try with each progressive year to turn a little bit more over to my kids in following passions and not being too overly controlling (as is my nature!) on the exact topics all the time.

How old will your oldest be in the fall? And do you think the maturity level will come up by then? A lot can happen in a summer. We did core 3 this year with my oldest (8yo, turning 9 tomorrow), and it was a great fit. I also had a K age this year though, and he didn't want to listen in at all, zero, not interested. So he had his own core this year.

This was debated quite a bit during the court case a couple years ago now (?? time is moving fast). The local list, composed of quite a high percentage of charter users, rallied together to discuss, write letters and prepare for a fight, as homeschoolers not little factions of charter versus private ISP versus PSA filer. Here, it appears that the charter user percentage is growing, but I think charters are also an entrance to homeschooling for those who would not have made the leap from a traditional school to independent homeschooling, thus increasing the percentage of homeschoolers as a whole. That makes all of us stronger, if we stop bickering among ourselves. My park day group has several who feel the security of a charter is what they want or need at this point, considering perhaps independent filing in the future. It is good to see new families homeschooling, charter or no charter ... the homeschooling percentage continues to grow, and that IMHO is such a fantastic thing.

No, unfortunately not recently, but I did see it about 6 months after I got mine so perhaps they have it periodically? I notice some types of books seem to recur in cycles.

We also use the Standards Edition.

I find my Cuisenart mini chopper is good for blending baby food. I got it at Costco, though I'm certain Target would have a similar idea. These things are what I use in the freezer. My baby is 10 months now, and it still holds a decent amount for her. They are also handy for dry items in the diaper bag/finger foods. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000CQXYCS

But you don't sound like you are weak in poetry so that you are feeling overwhelmed and asking for help. ;) I think CDs are a great way to ease into it and give it a fun feel for mamas who might not be feeling strong in poetry. The hip-hop one ... I could have never done it justice. :lol:

We like Sonlight's recommendation in core 3: A Child's Introduction to Poetry by Michael Driscoll We got ours at Costco actually. It is a book with a CD. It gives a bit of intro about the poet or genre and then the audio CD has the poem of that genre read aloud, with the text in the book to follow along. I really love it, and prefer it over the just read a poem a day type of method, probably because I myself am not strong in poetry. Our library also has several books now with poems and CDs of the poems read aloud, including one that had modern poems set to hip-hop music [child friendly lyrics]! That is such a fun intro for the very young or poetry phobic.