I wouldn't read it before 1st. For K I suggest a general geography/social studies approach. Go through each continent and learn about the culture, a bit of history, the animals, and the land.

I didn't read all of the replies yet, so I don't know if this was mentioned already. :) You could make two cards for each word and play memory match. We did this with groups of words by word families and rhyming words, making cards, and playing memory match. For instance I would do -een and -ean words. Make two of each for bean, lean, glean, dean, mean, seen, queen, teen, seen, keen. Then play memory match together, me reading the cards as they flip them over the first few times.

For younger children I like Usborne's, for older kids I like Kingfisher's.

I don't time it, but that's about average time spent I'd say. I don't require oral narration from my eldest and only require oral narration from my 10 yr old ds for his read alone. We do use Lit guides for some of the books, with written questions and graphic organizers to fill in. I also read aloud a chapter from Story of the World for History most days and I read picture books and/or fairy tales to my youngest every day too. I probably read to my youngest for 30-60 minutes a day but I don't consider that school time. The big kids also read alone to themselves for enjoyment at least an hour most days.

Babe James and the Giant Peach The Family Under the Bridge The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler Abel's Island The BFG The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe The Phantom Tollbooth (it may be better to wait a year or two though) Detectives in Togas

Not really a game but my kids enjoy thisissand.com. When you click on the website it is blank aside from a small box in the upper left corner, click it for directions. It is cool. You get to make sand art on your screen. I can't really think of anything else totally non-interactive. That's what online is all about. Even the above has the option to submit to a gallery and you can go look at other people's art. Not sure that qualifies as being totally non-interactive.

I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about what I want to use, but I'm definitely not set. Some things will be easy as we will just be continuing what we are already doing. Other things I haven't made a final decision or plan for yet. I have all summer to fine tune our plans, no stress here. :)

During school time, the kids reading alone and me reading aloud Literature, we probably spend about an hour each day. I'm sorry I can't help you with the reading level stuff as I've never paid attention to that myself. I would say it only makes sense to have kids read alone at their level and even below to build confidence and fluency. I would read aloud at their level and above to help with gaining vocabulary, interest, grammar, etc.

I made a printable pdf of our PreK-Kindergarten read alouds and posted it here on my blog.

I agree with previous posters not to worry about it. He is very young. It is good that he is receptive and positive about learning. That is so much more important than learning letters at his age. It sounds like you are both doing great! If he is into crafts and pasting you might find some useful links in my blog post about free resources for Letter of the Week. I did Letter of the Week when dd was 3, now she is 4 and we're doing Letter Sound of the Week. I did tell her the sounds as we did the Letter of the Week and she retained some of them. I think it made it easier for her that I told her the name and sound(s) the first time around. Now we are focusing on the sounds as we go through the letters.

I just started to blog. My dd is 4 and we do preschool stuff. There's a link in my sig below with free resources for Letter of the Week/Letter Sound of the Week activities. There's some more preK stuff on there and I will be adding more in the future. :) http://misstatejones.wordpress.com/

I wouldn't for the three R's, but I may veer from the course for History, Literature, and Science. I wouldn't sell anything you may use though. I'd consider more a side course, just in case you wan to go back to what you were doing before. :)

The Book of Three (Black Cauldron series)

I personally like the Blue and the Red Fairy books (and the other colors too), even for my youngest who is 4. She doesn't seem bothered by the grim parts. She understands it is fiction, but I wouldn't read them to her if she was sensitive to them. She loves them. We've been reading Little Red Riding Hood and doing related activities for two weeks now. I made some puppets and props for our felt board and she has been retelling the story and making her own versions all week. She thinks it is great fun! :)

Read alones- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Mr. Popper's Penguins Charlotte's Web Babe: The Gallant Pig Stuart Little The Trumpet of the Swan Read alouds- The Tale of Desperaux Narnia books Dr. Dolittle

I read aloud the lesson, and we go over the example together. I don't make it any more complicated than that. If necessary we go over the first part of the assignment together so that I am sure they understand, but this isn't usually necessary. I think really it just takes doing several of the lessons to get the feel of it, for the student and the teacher, then it is easy. I recommend just plowing through a few lessons, fumbling if that is what it takes, and see if you get it after that.

Just wanted to say the coupon code LEARNINGJAN is still active and good for 30% off the total order, even on $1 items.

I read it years ago and enjoyed the book, there's some good stuff there and it was worth reading. If you don't want to read it on screen perhaps your local library has it? I borrowed from our library when I read it.

I set up a store over on teacherspayteachers, with some freebies and a fairy tale unit I made. I'm feeling kinda lonely though, being a homeschool teacher. I'm wondering if most public school teachers might not even consider my stuff because I'm upfront about being a homeschooler. Does anyone else have an account on there?

Dd and I did her room today. She tends towards untidiness (though nowhere near as much as I did as a kid), so her room was first on the list. Every room needs work, honestly.

Is it possible to take a break from school for Spring, or an early summer vacation? Just throwing it out there because this is one of the wonderful things about homeschooling, flexibility. If you take a break, then ease back into school by adding one thing at a time, he may be over it by then. Also I'm not sure from your post, but are the activities you're giving him done where you guys are schooling? When my youngest was that age a made a bunch of busy bags. Nothing kept her busy for more than 15 minutes, but she had lots of activities. Having her hang with us with her activities definitely made things go smoother. I also made a finger food snack tray before starting. Several choices of foods, this helped too.

Another vote for buy, buy, buy. We also have the Hoover upright cleaner. We've had it for, geesh, 12 years. Wow, I'm feeling old now, lol.

You might want to check out my blog post about free Letter of the Week/Letter Sound of the Week resources ~ link in my signature. :)

When my children were 7-8 I extended bedtime by 30 minutes so long as they were reading quietly in their rooms. I eventually extended that to an hour, now at 10 and 12 there is no time limit. So long as they are reading quietly they can stay awake. They don't abuse it and still get plenty of rest. They both read for school and for pleasure every school day, and read every day for pleasure. It really helped them start reading alone daily. Now they both read tons because they love reading. Also I let them both read whatever they want, outside of school time. For ds reading Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and Bunnicula really got him hooked, when I never would have picked those books. For dd it was the Junie B. books. Now they both read a wide variety of literature on their own. Ds recently started Robinson Crusoe and dd recently read The Secret Garden, both of their own volition! They still read plenty of twaddle, but I'm fine with that. They LOVE to read. :)

For Science I really like the Young Scientist Club Kits. It's one of those- would I rather spend the money or put in the time things. I pull together so much of our school and I had the money a couple years ago, so I bought a bunch of them. They are reusable too. You'd only need to replace a couple things here and there, like yeast and maybe a rubber band. :)