It's the content / readalouds that I have several manuals for. Sonlight for the cuddle & read stuff, Memoria Press for the more rigid contenty stuff, HOD LHFHG for the religious stuff. I have the TIME to do a few, just because of the amount of time we spend at medical appointments waiting. So why not, right? Either I read to them, or the kiddos fight. :) I'm just trying to figure out how much effort to put into integrating all these manuals.

Yep, that's us. Two kids with vision problems - we are on the waiting list for vision therapy. One of these two is in physical therapy, the other in occupational therapy. The one in OT has been described by more than one therapist as having "processing issues", but they have all recommended that we get through VT & see where we are before pursuing that. Both of these two struggle with mild apraxia that seems to have dramatically improved with NN fish oil. I have already held these kids back one year (they were 5 1/2 last fall and slated to go to kindergarten), so I hate for them to get even further behind their same age peers, so despite the vision issues, I have tried to press on with the reading. We don't bother with books, b/c that just isn't happening when a kid sees double - I write really really big on the whiteboard.

Yeah, and since the big kids are a little delayed, and the youngest is smart as a whip, I have FOUR kids in this sounding-it-out-but-have-no-clue stage. I'm so glad other people think it is painful too! I was trying not to admit it, but I am NOT enjoying this part of homeschooling!!! :)

If you do more than one curriculum for the same subject, do you try and line them up and teach them in an interwoven manner, or do all of one then all of the other? I have several kindergarten manuals, and hope to spend about a year and a half doing them. I would NOT be doing double phonics, handwriting, & math - just double readalouds (we spend a LOT of time sitting in waiting rooms for medical appts). But there are some themes and so on, so they could be integrated...

My kids can sound out anything, but figuring out what the word is after sounding it out is a whole different beast! Any thoughts? Some of these are words that they have been sounding out for ages - at some point shouldn't they *know* that C-A-T says "cat" without having to sound it out?

shameless bump - hoping for a reply! :)

Would you mind elaborating? My plan for the summer was to breeze through Beautiful Feet's Early American History, so that when the info was presented at CC, they had a clue what the tutor was talking about as the class gets to each topic. Is that a bad idea?

I had read on here that Phonics Pathways & Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading were both great resources for teaching a kid to read. OPGTR was dry & scripted & boring, but very effective. PP was the fun equivalent! Of course I chose PP. But I've never taught a kid to read before. I looked at it for ridiculous amounts of time, but I just could not figure out exactly what I was supposed to do with it! So we hopped to OPGTR. Yep, it's boring, but I am a lot more confident that I am not screwing up something so important!

OK, I think I'll order P4/5 without the readers, and read across. THANKS!!!

Hmmm. My kiddos would be 6 1/2 when starting it, though starting their kindergarten year. That makes me think twice.

Thank you all for replying!

Color with tiny crayon bits (like 1 inch crayons), cut, and paste EVERY SINGLE DAY. My kids choose one page from a coloring book, color it, cut it out, and paste it on a colored paper background. They used to just cut the outline - now they cut the pieces and reassemble on the new page. Practice practice practice.

Any thoughts about Sonlight P4/5? My just-turned 6 year olds are about to start kindergarten. I think I have everything pretty much decided - - phonics OPGTR, ETC a good bit behind as a review - handwriting HWOT - math RS-A, MEP & Miquon for fillers if needed - Classical Conversations I have Beautiful Feet's Early American History, and I want to try and skim through that with the kiddos this summer, just so that the Classical Conversations history stuff sounds at least vaguely familiar. Doing 1 lesson a day (they look like 10-15 minutes of reading), I will finish that this summer. The fall/winter/spring is what I am thinking about. I have FIAR, but somehow getting it done consistently has been a challenge. I spend SOOOO much time over-planning it & trying to coordinate it with Galloping the Globe. It takes me 10 times as long to plan as it does to do it. I'm sure with experience it gets easier, but I just don't seem to get very far b/c I end up spending ages looking up what other people have done with each book, planning art projects, collecting stuff, etc. I think I might be one of those people who just needs someone else to plan it, at least until I get a little more homeschooling experience under my belt. I am wondering if Sonlight's P4/5 would be a good, open & go, scheduled way to get those good readalouds in? I have purchased the 30 day access to the private Sonlight forums, but the discussions aren't particularly helpful. Those are all pro-Sonlight folks. There are a few complaints about it feeling chopped up, but most of those are old, and I think the instructor guide has been revised since then. So what do you think? For an nervous newbie, is Sonlight P4/5 a good program? What do you think of the books? The program as a whole? Would I be better off trying to work a little harder at FIAR? They accomplish the same thing, right?

I took violin lessons in elementary, and clarinet in middle & high school. I did some practicing at home, plus daily at school in middle & high, and I was more than adequate, but was certainly never an accomplished musician. In college, we had to have 2 fine arts credits, and I took piano to avoid the art history & music history I had heard horror stories about. I finally GOT it!!! I so so so wish I had had piano before all those years of clarinet. The music theory just made so much more sense. It was no longer all these random facts that you were supposed to remember - it was all tied together. Piano just really connected the dots for me. Dumb things, like why did a "concert B flat" mean that I was supposed to play a C and other instruments played different notes? If a baritone asked what note he was supposed to play, how did I figure that out? I can't remember a lot more, but I know there were a LOT of a-ha moments during piano lessons!

We aren't very far into our HSing journey so far, but my major changes thus far have been related to me not really understanding what *I* needed to be successful. For example, I had read on here that Phonics Pathways & Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading were both great resources for teaching a kid to read. OPGTR was dry & scripted & boring, but very effective. PP was the fun equivalent! Of course I chose PP. But I've never taught a kid to read before. I looked at it for ridiculous amounts of time, but I just could not figure out exactly what I was supposed to do with it! So we hopped to OPGTR. Yep, it's boring, but I am a lot more confident that I am not screwing up something so important!

Ditto. We told everyone that we were just planning on HSing for ONE year, in order to let the kids finish PT, OT, and vision therapy. After we've done it for a year, and everyone sees that the sky hasn't fallen, we'll tell them we are going to do it for just one more year! And eventually, my hope is that we won't have to discuss it every year! :) Somehow, HSing for "just one year" isn't nearly as upsetting to people. Especially if you have a good "excuse", like needing to do therapies, kids are behind their peers and you want them to have one-on-one instruction to be sure they get caught up so they aren't permanently stuck in the bottom groups in their classes (we used that one too!), etc.

Talk went well - I think they got it. (And I got it too!) Thanks so much to everyone who replied!

Thank you all SO much! I'm a newer Christian, and while I have the basics down, these kinds of things (especially when sprung on me pre- morning caffeine!) throw me for a loop. I'm so afraid of messing up when trying to lead my children toward God. Your answers were SO helpful - I'm printing them out!!!

I was explaining to the kids this morning about Osama bin Laden, and about how blessed we are to have amazing soldiers who are willing to die for us even though they don't even know us. "They are just like Jesus, Momma!" I didn't quite know how to respond to that one. I avoided it, but need to explain later. But I still don't know what to say. Thoughts?

I am curious about how you are going to use the board. Just for what they are working on at the moment? Then go to a box or something else for the stuff they have already learned? You would outgrow the board quickly if you tried to use that alone. We use a notebook that stays in the car for all memory work (current and prior). Each kid has their own, and we review as we drive.

Copied from an older post: We do it in the car. Each kid has a "smarty pants" notebook. It is tabbed into sections: - Bible - Math - Geography - Timeline - History - Presidents - Foreign Languages - Science - Music/Art For almost everything we are memorizing, we use music initially. I have printed off a page for each item we have memorized, and they just follow along and sing. Once they are confident, we do it without the notebook, and I "try to trick" them. ("Aw, man, you knew that one too??? Y'all are so smart!!! But I bet you won't know this next one!") I frantically change CDs as I drive and we just review as we go. For the most part, that's the only work we do on memory stuff, but they have learned so much! - Bible verses: AWANA CDs - The Ten Commandments: Veritas Press Blue CD with the board book "Hand Commands" by Ann Dunagan - Books of the Bible: Classical Conversations CD with Bible Bookcase poster - Christian catechism: Songs for Saplings - Skip Counting: One Hundred Sheep (Christian) with hundreds chart - Geography (solar system, continents & oceans, states): Audio Memory's Geography Songs CD (I am NOT a huge fan of the states & capitals CD) - Timeline: I plan to use the Veritas Press CDs & cards (but haven't started this yet) - Presidents: Veritas Press Yellow - everything else: Classical Conversations Memory Work CDs (haven't started CC yet)

OPGTR is VERY scripted. VERY. She says every single thing you are supposed to say – you read it word for word. It is dry, boring, and extremely thorough and effective. Kids that learn to read that way will be strong readers, if you can get through it. It starts at the very beginning with the sound each letter makes. If your kids already know those, you can skip the first 26 lessons. It takes the average kid about 2 years to go through the whole book (10 minutes a day), and they will be reading at a 4th grade level when they are done. Most kids are ready to start this program between ages 4 & 5. If you get to a lesson that they don’t get, you are expected to park it and do the same lesson daily until they get it. You don’t move forward unless they have the lesson down. PP is the fun, unscripted version of OPGTR. Same phonics, same skills, same results. I was determined to use PP for the fun factor, and I got it, but I just couldn’t quite wrap my head around exactly WHAT you are supposed to actually do. So we ditched that and are now using OPGTR. To make it work for more than one kid, I use a big magnetic whiteboard and magnetic letters rather than having them look at the book itself. It’s not the most fun I’ve ever had, but I am confident that I am doing it right and not screwing this up!

And don't you dare suggest we get a gerbil - that's not in the cards either!!! :)

Yeah, but not the one she wants. Course, she wouldn't be getting that one even if she were going to public school! Does everything marketed for 5 & 6 year olds have to be hideously glittery????? :)

It's funny the things that kids miss. I had one who was DEVASTATED about not getting to ride the schoolbus, and another who was heartbroken that she didn't get to go to public school b/c she heard that they have a gerbil in the kindergarten classroom. #3 is bummed b/c she wanted to pick out a lunchbox. But since they have met some friends who are homeschooled, they are MUCH happier at the thought! Would adding a weekly park date be possible?