Maybe some Lauri toys? My DC always enjoyed the pegs.

My two oldest DC do soccer in the fall & spring and basketball in the winter. We used to go to Gym & Swim at the Y once a week, but we're taking a break from that this year. We may start back in September. We're active in our church, so our kids participate in Sunday School there. This school year we're also attending a monthly enrichment class about Africa. I teach piano to my oldest.

The good news is that she understands what she's doing! I usually have to look ahead at the word problems in level 2 to make sure I can do them before DD tries them. Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing with the bar diagrams. Heaven help me when I get to level 4!

My DC both loved Bob Books.

My husband works at Duke, but we live in Alamance County instead of Durham. It seems that homeschooling is very accepted around here. There are over 4200 homeschools in Wake County (that includes the Raleigh & Cary area) and over 700 in Durham County. Cary is a very nice, upscale area. The times I've been there, though, I feel like the whole area is run by a massive homeowner's association! On the other hand, I know that parts of Durham have high crime rates. The homeschool laws in NC don't require too much--attendance records and yearly testing. PM me if you have any questions about Duke that maybe my husband can answer.

My DD7 struggles with narration. It's not that she doesn't understand what she read or even that she doesn't know the details. She knows all the details. She just has trouble condensing the information into a summary form and giving it to me in a coherent way. WWE2 works on giving summaries. (You're in WWE1, right?) In over half the lessons in WWE2 summary questions are given to help them find out what's important in a passage. Towards the end, they're supposed to at least try to give a summary without the summarizing questions. This is probably the most difficult thing my DD has to do every week. And if she's reading a book on her own and I ask her what happened in the chapter she just read, I get blank stares or some incoherent mumblings. It's just a skill that has to be learned.

Then both of you did the problem the exact same way. You just used visuals, and she didn't. I'm only in CWP2, but I have read that the bar diagrams are not useful in all cases (as others have mentioned). So far I've found them useful for problems that I would otherwise solve via algebra, and in those cases, it's pretty cool how the bar diagrams can be manipulated to find the answer another way.

I would have done it like your DD. It's intuitive and quick, and apparently she thought so, too. I'm confused by your description of the bar diagram. You said your bar diagram consisted of 13 threes and then you marked off four. Four what? Four threes? That doesn't make sense. And then how can you "divide the rest of the threes into 5 groups of 7?" That would be a total of 35, which isn't a multiple of 3.

We use Harmony Fine Arts.

I would suggest searching for threads (or starting a new one) asking about homeschool laws in South Carolina and how others have planned their kindergarten curriculum to adhere to them. Many have gone before you! We used Sonlight's p4/5 when my children were 4 yrs old and we used Core A and Science A when they were in Kindergarten. The p4/5 core would also work fine for kindergarten, and it would cover social studies and science in a gentle way.

:iagree:

The teacher's manual is the student book with the answers filled in.

I chose Prima Latina because I'm interested in using Henle Latin in the future. (I like how Henle teaches grammar with a limited vocabulary.) The Form series by Memoria Press breaks Henle down into four courses and makes it more user friendly. So I thought I would just go with Memoria Press from the beginning. Also, my DD doesn't need a curriculum to be "fun" in order for her to enjoy it and do it willingly. Even though PL is dry, it gets the job done. I also like the prayers that are included. Now when my DS starts Latin, who knows what I'll have to do!

What?? (to the bolded part) I don't understand. The church pays people to fill up the choir?

The activity pages are also on your loom CD that comes with your print version. So you can either print directly from there, or if you have a copier, you can just copy the pages from the teacher's book.

I went with the paper version because I hate reading off the computer. I have Writing Aids, but since I'm not currently using TOG's writing element, I'm not using it. I would definitely get Map Aids. I've found Pop Quiz to be a nice audio overview of the week, and as such, I've used it at times to prepare myself. The lapbooks are nice if you're into that sort of thing. We did the lapbooks last year, but this year we switched to notebooking instead. If you go with all the books, then the planning would involve choosing which days of the week you want to read, do the geography assignment, do a project, etc. There are several options usually listed for activities, and you are free to pick any or none of them.

I think purchasing the student pages is a matter of convenience. You are free to print/photocopy what you need for your family. Some choose to have that work already done. Since I have a LG student, I've only copied the literature pages of the SAPs and occasionally the geography assignment if it happens to be long.

My DC play soccer in the fall and spring and basketball in the winter. We used to do the Gym&Swim class at the YMCA, but we are taking a break at the moment due to the difficulty of keeping my toddler entertained and out of trouble throughout the class. Hopefully next year we'll be able to start back.

If you go with TOG, for selecting books I would strongly recommend planning one unit at a time. You may want to read the same history books to your two youngest. Sometimes the UG book or the LG book may work for that purpose. It requires more planning that way, but it would save money if money is an issue. However, TOG is designed for LG to be read-aloud to the child, while the UG and above books are meant to be read independently by the child. If you want to go that route, then you can just order the suggested books from TOG and go with it. Regardless, I would only buy books for one unit at a time. The second part of the planning is done by the week. I don't find this planning to be all that difficult. I put the books out in front of me and decide how much I want to read aloud in one sitting (I've just used LG), and then plan out the days accordingly. I don't have a set day(s) for all the reading because some weeks are heavier than others. We always read the history, in-depth history, and literature selections. We usually do notebooking on Friday. Depending on how our week looks across the board, I look at the options of activities and see if there's something I want us to do and plan for it. I also want to mention that Yr1 has very few read-alouds. As a SL user, you may find this disappointing. Last year in Yr1 for my 1st grader, I also included some of the fun read-alouds from Sonlight's Core 1 (I think Core B now?). Some of them lined up nicely with TOG, such as the Usborne Greek myths book and Detectives in Togas.

We're in Year 2 this year with my DD (2nd grade). We use all LG books for history. For literature I sometimes substitute other titles because her reading level is at least 5th grade. Next year we'll be in Year 3 with my 1st grade DS added. My DD will go to all UG for literature. I'm not sure about history yet. I will likely read history aloud to both of them together, so I will probably use a combination of LG and UG books. A friend of mine has many of the LG books, so my plan is to go through those to see which would be suitable for my oldest. I always plan one unit at a time! I do blog at Barefoot in the Park.

We're up! Following Foundations

For kindergarten, I use many of the Laurence Anholt artist books for children. The Getting to Know books by Mike Venezia are good, too. Also, my DD really enjoyed Art Fraud Detective. It's a great way to study a piece of art, and now, even 2 years later, she remembers the paintings in that book. This year with my 2nd grader, I'm using Harmony Fine Arts, and it's working really well. At that age, I think exposure is what is best. We have a daily art calendar, and the kids really love to flip the page each day. We listen to classical music in the car. We have tickets to our local symphony's kids concerts. My current K'er loves Beethoven Wig's CDs. Anyway, I'm just throwing a bunch of stuff out there! ETA: I forgot to mention that I started my DD on piano lessons in the 1st grade. I may start my DS next year when he's in 1st. Boys are different, and I'm not sure if he'll have the attention span.

I would at least consider a traditional math program. A friend of mine's DD started Singapore in the 2nd grade, and she was in tears. She switched to Rod & Staff and things went much better. The next year her DD was able to grasp some of the mental math concepts that Singapore teaches. We use both Rod&Staff and Singapore, which I feel are the best of the both types of math programs that will work for us. Mind you, math takes up more time than any other subject, but I've been really pleased with the results. No tears around here.

Just want to give you a :grouphug: ! I think 18mon-2yrs is a very difficult age. They don't understand "you do this for 30 minutes, and then we'll read a book or play with the blocks." Instead they just scream if things aren't going their way, and then nothing can get done! My youngest climbs on the table and grabs pencils, scissors, etc. and tries to color in the math books. I'll be trying to do spelling with my oldest, and she's beating me with books! It doesn't even help if I let her sit in my lap and look at the book. She says, "Read!" and will take her hands and turn my face toward her book. It's cute, but frustrating! Uggh! It helps if I give her some goldfish crackers and let her watch The Wiggles. That may not be the route you want to go, but at the moment it makes things doable for us--not ideal--but doable. Some days are better than others.

For both my DD and DS, we used Earlybird Math A in K4 and Earlybird B in K5. As such, we were done with book B halfway through Kindergarten. At that point, they both started Rod&Staff Math 1 to start learning addition/subtraction facts. (I didn't think it best for my kids to start Primary Math 1 in Kindergarten.) In 1st grade, we combine R&S and Singapore Primary Math 1. Our manipulatives include a bucket balance, linking cubes, and c-rods. We also have pattern blocks, which are nice for K and even older. Also, once your child is starting to learn their math facts, Sum Swamp is a nice little game. ETA: We also have a 100 chart on the wall. We practice counting to 100 and skip counting by 10s, 5,s and 2s. Eventually the skip counting comes up explicitly in math curricula, but we always start it before then. Lots of repetition, you know!