No experience with Singapore, but we are doing RightStart A, and my 5yo absolutely LOVES it. We finish a lesson, and she wants to do another right away! Plus she is retaining sooo much. Huge fans here!

Sounds like a lot of fun to me! And a boat-load of learnin' too. :)

Ooh, I'm enjoying all these suggestions, but didn't see my favorite listed: American Girl! Lovely, thoughtful games, well-designed, with a wide range of skill levels. There are things for pre-readers as well as games for learning Spanish, and everything in between. Very nicely put together, and the biggest plus for me is that the background music is lovely classical and folky sounding music, as opposed to the screeching music found on most "kids" websites.

Does anyone have a link to a good list of "irregular" words for a beginning reader? We've been making a list as we encounter them, but I was just wondering if there were already good resources out there. My 5-year-old is doing so well with phonics and sounding out, but she gets flummoxed by those silly words that don't follow the rules -- and of course, many of the most common words are rule-breakers! Anyone have a link to a good list I can use with her for review? Thanks!

I keep running into the need to laminate things, and I'm looking into getting a home laminating machine, but I literally know nothing about these things. My understanding is that I can get one of these cheapy $30 machines and then I need the pouches? I see them in 3mm and 5mm but I don't really know what that means. Any guidance? This is for laminating progress charts, word cards, etc. Thanks in advance for helping a newbie! :)

We are using AAS as both phonics and spelling. My DD absolutely adores it. Yes, it moves a little slowly, but that works well for her, and the repetition and manipulatives are really excellent. We have the Beehive Reader, but haven't started yet (waiting to get to Lesson 15!). We are using ABC Reading Eggs as our online phonics component, which she also loves. I did the free trial and then happily handed over the money for a 6-month subscription when I saw how much progress she had made.

It seems to me that many of us homeschool because we find something lacking in the local public school curriculum (at least in part), and for me a lot of what is missing is a thorough, chronological approach to history. It seems a big piece of things in our homeschool world perhaps in part because it's so *not* a big subject in traditional schools. Of course, I feel the same way about science. In our local school, my kindergartener would be getting 30 minutes of science once a week. Hahahahaha. And do you know that in the high school, it's not even required to take biology, chemistry, and physics? <shaking head> But that's another topic...

My 5 1/2 year old decided she could not possibly wait for fall to start kindergarten ("and since you're teaching me at home, can't we just start now??"), so we've recently started kindergarten. In April. Gotta love homeschooling. :) We are using RightStart level A, which she adores. I have a feeling she will be mathy like her big sister, and she is breezing through level A, which is great for her confidence level. I would rather have her have the basics absolutely down than skip ahead to level B and miss something. If she continues to enjoy it so much, though, we may be starting level B by September. :) We tried the OPGTR last year, and she was just not feelin' it. Recently, she started using Reading Eggs (online phonics program), and she loves it. We just started AAS this week, too, which we are going to take niiiice and slow, but she likes it so far -- anything with a kinesthetic aspect is great for her, so the letter tiles are a bit hit. We're also using HWT -- she likes it but tends to go too fast and not be careful enough with her work. I'm going to add some copywork in for more handwriting practice. We've started SOTW, but are taking our time with it. No expectations of necessarily finishing by the end of the year, which is fine since we're technically a year ahead. Other than that, we do a lot of nature study and interest-led science learning, and lots and lots of reading.

EB White reading Charlotte's Web is extraordinary. Such a joy to listen to. We have a wonderful recording of Sarah Plain and Tall read by Glenn Close. Lovely. I'll have to look up what versions we have of our other audiobooks... we listen to them a lot. Great for bedtime, when mama's already been reading for an hour and is all done, but the kiddos are not! :)

My DD will "officially" start K at home this fall. But she's so excited, she wants to start right away. The RightStart box arrived two days ago, and she just could not wait -- she wanted to dive right in. Who am I to squash intellectual excitement?? So I relented, and we started yesterday while her little brother napped. Oh. my. goodness. The child was LOVING it. She totally "got it" (we are starting with Level A just to make sure she's got the basics covered), and thought all the manipulatives and everything were super fun. After one lesson, she absolutely BEGGED to do a second. And then at bedtime, pleaded for just one more math lesson before bed, please please pretty please??? Um, ooookay, twist my arm. Could it be this easy? Could the rest of the year go this well? Please please please? :)

I bought it for this coming year, haven't even started using it yet, but I've been reading the teacher's manual and it just makes soooo much sense to me. I love it already. :) My plan is to use it from the get-go (DD5.5 is juuuust beginning to read), to get the reading and spelling things going at the same time. And I love the review -- I think my DD will really respond well to that approach.

My 16-year-old is dyslexic, and so is my best friend. When I was going through the process of getting my DD "diagnosed" (when she was 8), my best friend asked her how she knows how to spell a word. My DD replied that she finds the "picture" of the word, and then figures out what letters make up the picture. Every word she knows is stored as an individual *picture* in her brain. And my friend was like, "yep, she's dyslexic." I know that's just one aspect of it, but she turned out to be right. FWIW, my DD is now very, very high-functioning, in all honors & AP classes, etc. She still struggles with speed in terms of reading, and will never be able to spell (spell-check is our friend!), but absolutely excels in math & music. I would recommend using some approaches recommended for dyslexic students (I highly recommend The Gift of Dyslexia), and do testing down the road if it seems called for.

The album Here Comes Science by They Might Be Giants is *amazing*... we are huge fans in this house. :)

Our plan is to school year-round in order to be able to take time off for illnesses, holidays, field trips, and needed mental breaks. :) I look forward to moving on to the next level "whenever," since one of the reasons we are homeschooling in the first place is that DD does *not* move at the same pace as her peers, and we want to honor that pacing. I imagine that she'll be doing work at several different grade levels at the same time, depending on the subject, which suits me just fine.

I am planning on coming, and am looking forward to checking out the MCT stuff in person! :)

My dyslexic best friend studied Latin in school specifically because of her dyslexia. She found it extraordinarily helpful with her reading and decoding skills -- knowing word roots was really invaluable to her. Also, with a spoken language, there are two separate pieces -- decoding text, and mentally translating what you hear. With Latin, there was just the one piece, and thus she found it easier. Latin is often recommended for students with reading issues. Just my two cents.

I am really pleased to read this. Math is the one aspect of our curriculum for next year that I haven't firmly decided, but I've been leaning heavily toward RightStart. I am happy to read so many good experiences.

I am a secular new-to-homeschooler, and my blog will be evolving to include more about our homeschooling adventures. Right now it's more generally about kids, crafts, food, and gardening. :) There aren't really curriculum lists or anythings, but there's educational content, KWIM? http://www.chickencounting.com

I read the newspaper at the kitchen table while we all eat breakfast, and I make a point of reading to them anything I think they will find interesting, showing them pictures, etc. Where we live, the newspaper has a daily kids page that is current-events-but-not-overwhelming-or-scary, so we generally read that, but also any science articles or a story about a kid who did something remarkable. We will do more as she's older, but right now the "real news" is too overwhelming for my 5-year-old.

Hi! I've been lurking and benefiting from your collective wisdom for a while now, but have just registered and am jumping in with my first question. :) My dd is 5 and we'll be starting K at home in the fall. As I'm gearing up for my first year as an official homeschooler (although I've been doing this less formally throughout the preschool years, obviously), I'm trying to pull together curriculum ideas and am a bit overwhelmed by the number of choices out there. Yikes! A friend is using Math on the Level, and it looks like a nice approach -- I like how you can pick and choose topics and apply them to real life, but I don't like the lack of manipulatives (I just remember how essential manipulatives were to my own early math comprehension). Otherwise it seems solid, although requiring a fair amount of parent effort in terms of planning lessons and assessments and whatnot. I also have really liked what I've seen of Saxon, particularly the heavy use of manipulatives. But I guess I really don't know what the real difference is between Saxon and MOTL, and I feel like either way I'm making a big financial commitment to one approach or the other. Any thoughts?? Thanks so much in advance! :)