My kids are slightly delayed almost 7 year olds (more like your typical older 5/young 6 year olds), and we are working through Sonlight's P4/5 core right now. Most things are perfect, some are a little easy. We use the schedule, but not as intended. I use it mostly to make sure we hit everything, but we definitely do not do Day 1, then Day 2. Especially with the Berenstain Bears book, and the Things People Do book, my kids are not ready to quit after the prescribed number of pages. We often read further, and I just mark them off the future schedules. Roughly, I go across the schedule rather than down. I bought the LA, but wouldn't recommend that. I also bought the Handle on the Arts supplements, and LOVE those! http://www.handleonthearts.com/cart/handson-activities-prek-4-and-5-c-24_28.html If you only want to do one, the Storybook ones are the best.

Since grades are really just for reporting, and for placement in extracurriculars, and talking to friends, we change over on June 30/July 1 to keep them on schedule with the public school kids. Grade level has nothing to do with materials we are using - we are currently using some preschool, some kindergarten, and some 1st grade stuff going at the moment! We use the material that is challenging but doable regardless of reported grade level. That may be higher or lower than the level on the material's label. :)

I have EVERYTHING that is possibly fileable in huge 3 ring binders. Every workbook has holes drilled, etc. At school time, I pull the binders out and lay them on the floor. The kids hop out of seats, file what they are done with, get the next thing, <put it on the table & crabwalk down the hall and around the island to burn off the wiggles> and get back in their seats. When school is over, I close up the notebooks & put them away. The only bad thing about this system is that the kids can't easily lift the binders. We school on the road a lot, and having everything in binders makes it very easy to grab and go and not be missing random stuff. My stuff is also in a binder, plus I have C-rods & abacuses and so on all in a humungous Land's End bag. I put it all back in there when we are done, again so I can grab and go as needed. I try to clean out, add new stuff, etc. on Sundays.

I think coloring, cutting, and glueing (squeezing a bottle, not a stick) are great hand strengthening activities to prepare for handwriting. If you have that covered in another way, great! If not, consider buying a pre-prepared craft curriculum. I LOVED The Learning Box Preschool for the crafts!

We are Presbyterian, if that makes a difference.

Suggestions for a timeline of the Old Testament? I tried Googling, but there are 8 million. Which is your fav? (This is for high school / young adults Sunday School, not my kindergarteners!)

My mom probably would have thought the same thing. But my brain was just NOT there! Your son should be thankful that he has you, to allow him to move laterally instead of forward if not ready! My mom just could not understand how her star math kid suddenly just could NOT even begin to comprehend the work. She really thought I just suddenly wasn't trying anymore, when I actually was making more of an effort than I ever had before. :(

I have a very mathy dad, and had a strong math base in elementary school. Aced 6th & 7th grade math. Never struggled with word problems. I *got* it. Completely. I never understood why other kids thought math was hard. Partitioning numbers & figuring out ways around so you don't have to memorize anything was something I figured out on my own. I was enrolled in Algebra I in 8th grade. I was young for my grade (end of summer baby that just made the cutoff). It was a complete and total disaster. I just was not developmentally ready. I ended up having to drop it and take another boring year of arithmetic that I already knew backward & forward. I tried Algebra I again in 9th grade, and it was so intuitive and easy. At the time, I couldn't understand why I had thought it was so hard the first time around. And the teacher was much better in 8th grade, so it wasn't teacher-related. I don't think I ever got another grade below a 95 in math. I just truly think my brain was not developmentally ready in 8th grade for algebra, and by 9th grade I was there. I would have just turned 13 years old when I started 8th grade, and just turned 14 years when I started over in 9th grade. I have come to think that algebra, reading & potty training are the same thing. Once the basic knowledge (be it foundational arithmetic, phonics, or the steps to using the potty) is provided, the best thing to do is wait until developmentally they are there. You CAN teach it before that, but it is going to be a lot of frustrating repetitious hard work, when it doesn't have to be that way if taught at a more appropriate time in that particular child's development.

The very first thing I'd do is focus on hand strengthening. It's something that can benefit EVERY kid's handwriting, so definitely worth a try. Manipulating playdoh is one of the easiest ways to work it into school - just hand it out while you are reading. Other ideas - squirting out of bottles or water guns, legos, cutting with scissors, tearing, glueing, picking up things with clothespins, hole punching, popping bubble wrap, playing with stress balls, moving things with tongs or tweezers, etc.

Before you change your subjects/schedule, I would focus on the kids' attitudes. 1- I would sit down and discuss the fact that we all have to do things that we don't always feel like doing. Give a little demonstration, having one of your kids ask for lunch or something, where you say "oh, I really don't FEEEEEEEL like it. Yuck - I did this yesterday. Do I HAAAVE to?" 2- I would talk about how attitudes are contagious. One bad one brings everybody else down. 3- I would let them know that you don't always feel like doing school either, but it is your job just like it is their job, and you all owe it to each other to make your best effort to have a good attitude. 4- I would come up with a signal that everyone in your family is encouraged to use when someone's attitude needs to change. In our house, it's the beginning of the "uh oh" - I just interrupt at the very first sign of a complaint with a short "uh" and a raised eyebrow, and they usually giggle and change course.

I don't want to discourage you AT ALL. If we were schooling mostly at home, it would definitely be my first choice. We are actually using mostly Miquon & MEP just b/c we are gone a LOT. But you asked for the drawbacks!

Lakeshore is more of a teacher supply. Our Barnes & Noble has a homeschool section - I don't know if that's in all of them, or just b/c we have a large HS population here. Do you have a local HS store? Most places with larger HS populations do, but someone from your area would have to help you find it as they are in individual stores, not a chain.

If you need to homeschool away from the house, it's not a good fit. There are a LOT of manipulatives, so it is not easy to pack up and take with you. If your kid likes worksheets, it's not a good fit. Most is done with manipulatives. That was a bit of an issue for my DH. He wasn't that keen on homeschooling, and he wanted to come home from work and SEE what we had done! We're past that now, but just know that it can look like you aren't doing much to those who aren't there during the lesson! If scripted programs bug you, it's not a good fit. You can easily put it into your own words / do your own thing, but despite that I know the scripting irritates some. (I like it, b/c I can't screw it up!) If you want to focus on one thing at a time, it's not a good fit. RS is spiral, so you will do one thing for 3 minutes, then something completely different (both topic & manipulative) for 3 minutes, then change again. All that changing makes me insane, but it is perfect for my wiggly kids. Keeps them paying attention b/c it is constantly something new. But if your kid would prefer to focus on one thing and master that, then RS is not your program!

Thanks - exactly what I needed to know! Whether it was OK to continue as I was doing, and how to supplement to make this work. I bought "Kitchen Table Math" last week. Hopefully that will have some new ideas like you are describing. Part of my problem is not being very creative about how to get at the same concept in other ways!

Yes, we have done a lot more - I just grabbed my book and flipped to a page to give an example. That one was easier to describe than some of the others!

We do have RightStart A. The problem there is that we school away from home (in therapy offices) 4 days a week, and on day 5 we are at Classical Conversations. RightStart just requires so much stuff - lugging it along is impractical. I love what we did of it before the therapy schedule intensified, but we haven't done much in several months. I would definitely help her make a fairy with the rods if I was creative enough to figure out how! :)

Y'all are going to die when I tell you what I did, but I felt so much better that I had to report back! I have one extra Miquon workbook that I can copy as needed if someone needs to re-do a sheet. I copied every page we had finished thus far (about 2/3 of the Orange book) and asked her to re-do them all. Yep, all of them. (Not in one day obviously - over the past few days.) She did GREAT!!!! I was worried that she wouldn't remember those we had figured out previously, but after a quick review of what to do, she knew how to do it. Minimal instruction, more like I expected the program to require in the first place. YAY!!! So I am going to assume that it is OK to keep going as I have been, slowly and with lots of support up front making sure she gets each page before moving on. WOOHOO!!

I think your 3 loop idea is best, but to be honest I think you are going to have to live it and work it until you figure out what works for you. There are strange considerations that you don't notice until you live it. Here, I have to have something in between subjects that require writing so little hands can rest. I have to have more active, on the floor stuff in between table stuff. I have each kids' workbooks all in one big school binder. I don't want to get out binders then put them away them get them back out then put them back away, b/c it just takes them *forever* to flip the sections over the binder rings to get them closed. If I am going to be reading/talking for more than a minute, they need to either be eating or have something else to occupy their hands. Etc. etc. It's not all just about the subjects in the list, which makes it really hard for anyone else to advise. I love your 3 loop idea, though! Thinking about modifying mine now!

We LOVE Handwriting Without Tears. Another option would be to purchase StartWrite, and make your own. I will caution you against dotted letters. It's too easy for them to fall into a habit of connecting the dots instead of making smooth letter strokes. I wish we had ONLY done tracing gray letters / letters using a highlighter instead.

This is one of my DDs who is a few months shy of seven years old. She and her triplet siblings were born a few months prematurely, so have some developmental delays. They learn at the same rate as other kids, but just started late and never caught up, so they are about a year behind. Until maybe a year ago, I would have said that this child was my most typical, and the other two were behind her. Now that we have truly started into "school", they have surged ahead and she just hasn't. So although she is almost 7, developmentally she is more like your average, typical almost 6 year old. Here's an example of what we have run into: Orange book p A-7 There is a row with 4 boxes. The first box has one dot. The second box has 2 dots. The third box is to be filled in by the student, and the fourth box has 4 dots. She was TOTALLY CLUELESS. We did the first one together. I explained and she still seemed lost, so I had her write the number of items at the bottom of each box. Then had her read the line. I thought she understood that the pattern was increasing by 1. Then she was thrown for a loop by the second one b/c it didn't start with one - the second row first box has 2 Xs, then the student was to fill in the second box, and the third box has 4 xs, and the student is to fill in the 4th box. The third row has only one of the 4 boxes completed. The second box has 5 diamonds, so the child should fill in 4 diamonds, then go to the third box and fill in 6 diamonds and 7. The fourth row has 3 triangles in the last box, so the pattern should be 0, 1, 2, and 3. So we basically did all those together. The next day I made up a similar worksheet, having her cut out and paste some little clipart pumpkins (it was Sept) to complete the pattern. She still needed a lot of help. She was OK for rows that started at 1, or had the first box filled in, but if the row was to start with something other than 1 or if she had to count backward to figure out what the first box should be, she was confused. We finally got through that, but it took probably 10 worksheets. (And I *hope* she could do it now, but I haven't tried repeating the older stuff recently.) I have read the teacher's materials (lots of times!) in an attempt to figure out where to go from here. I am aware that I am doing is not exactly what is intended, but I just don't know what else to do. So far, I have been holding the other 3 to where this child is, just because she's already worried about being behind the others, and I don't want to let them go way on past her. What's funny is that when she gets it, she LOVES Miquon. She doesn't realize that the worksheets I make up are Miquon-ish, so she hates Miquon when she first sees a new sheet, then gets what she thinks of as a break, then when she re-does the original sheet she loves it! She loves art, but making things out of the rods has NOT been any fun for her at all. (She is also my only kid not into Legos, Jenga, etc.) She's just more of an imaginative kid than a builder. "Let's build something with rods." "OK. What should I build?" "What do you want to build?" "Can I go draw instead?" "No, we are doing rods right now. If you were drawing, what would you draw? Maybe we can make that out of rods." "A fairy!" "Um, OK, how about some stairs instead?" :)

I haven't seen both, so can't compare. You can order a sample month from TLB for less than $20. It is an old box (prior year), so you may get Dec 2009, or whatever is available, but it would let you make an accurate judgement as to whether or not it was worth it to you.

I don't think you can beat The Learning Box. It is really well-balanced, and I felt covered everything a preschool curriculum should cover. Gross motor skills, beginning handwriting, etc. Every activity had modifications to make it appropriate for your child - I think you could do it with young 3s up to 5s. It was completely open & go. Open the month's teacher guide to day 4, find baggie number 4, and you are ready. Whether you needed a book, 2 inches of yellow yarn, or turkey counters, they were included in that day's baggie. SO EASY. The thing that in my opinion raised TLB above others was the quality of the crafts. Very cute, and the kids LOVED them. We colored, cut, & pasted almost every day. Such good fine motor strengthening, and something I think is truly essential to being prepped for school. And because of that experience, my kids can make ANYTHING out of paper scraps! :)

Nope, MM doesn't have a K curriculum - check these out instead: - Miquon Orange - MEP Reception - RightStart A - Singapore Essentials

We have been really enjoying the "What's in the Bible" DVDs. I think they really manage to be nondenominational. They put both in there. "Some people believe this, and some people believe that." "Catholics say this, Protestants say that."