I wrote and drew different activities from Flowering Baby on index cards and placed them in a recipe box under that day's tab. When there was a lull in the day or need for distraction I sent my preschooler to choose a card.

It went well. The problem emerged in handwriting halfway through book B the following year. My DS wasn't ready for the leap to full sentence copywork and dictation at the end of B and in C. We ended up using everything but the handwriting the last few months.

I would choose Living Books Curriculum if looking in the Sonlight genre. While Memoria Press is wonderful it has quite a bit more workbook/writing requirement than Sonlight. However it is closer to Sonlight than ABeka by far. Another option is the award winning Veritas Press k.

We have used The Way They See It by Artistic Pursuits with my non-artsy son. It's made such a difference. We are finishing it this week and beginning book 1 of the k-3 series by Artistic Pursuits.

Interestingly Charlotte Mason included some comprehension questions in the geography book she wrote. http://books.google.com/books?id=YWcDAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=editions:0_lWtKgZ62bkKDU5#v=onepage&q&f=false

Wow, sounds like RS books are much more thorough.

For that age I'd go with something like Foundations A from Logic of English. You'll practice writing in sand, use tactical letters, play with sound, play hopscotch and basketball while learning phonograms, and other fun things.

Seems regional. The kids here seem to say Pastor Lastname and the adults either Pastor Firstname or Firstname. My dad's church in a different part of the country says Pastor Firstname with some adults just Firstname. When he pastored down south it was all Pastor Firstname.

Definitely stands out. How marvelous of him.

http://resource2.veritaspress.com/Resources/downloads/MARRAnswersBU.htm meadowlark, it's the content in Middle Ages Renaissance and Reformation that would teach Roman Catholic Church's beliefs were wrong. That's year three. Church history from the protestant perspective is the emphasis and the cards explicitly state the beliefs of the protestant reformation were the truth while the beliefs of the RCC false. It's multiple cards, not just one or two, & the supportive readings to go along with it also. The lit many times shows the protestant character as the believer with the Catholic as following a false religion. The link shows the answer key for the worksheets and tests so you can see what they teach about faith in year three history.

Thanks! You'd think as a 2nd generation homeschooler I wouldn't have these sort of questions. Monday I'd ordered level B and then started the what if game. He's ready for it now but what if down the road, or what if I had to put him in school etc. Anyway I'll just deal with things as there come and carry on! Thanks again!

T has been doing well with RightStart A (2nd edition). Assuming he shows mastery (if there's not we stop and revies until he does) during the final assessments in the next few weeks he'll finish level A before Christmas. The latest I could see is January if he needs any review. That means we could begin RS level B next month. Yet I'm hesitant beginning first grade RS halfway through kindergarten. Keep thinking about further down the road. What if we're progressing too fast at this end? Would it make more sense to use the second half of k to make sure he understands how to apply things using a different program like Singapore or Miquon or MathMammoth? Or even from a different approach entirely (my much dreaded Saxon 1 or something else)? Then begin B in 1st (he's also getting ready to begin Foundations C in January, so it's not just math, and we're also working through Rod&Staff 1) instead of halfway through kindergarten. Or would you advance him to second edition RightStart B in January and just slow down later if he ever needed it?

In Foundations A has 4 sounds, c 2, e 2, g 2, i 4, o 3, s 2, u 4, x 2, y 4 and the others in the alphabet 1 each.

We have been focusing on memorizing Mother Goose. For winter-spring we'll be working through Favorite Poems For Children Coloring Book from Dover. It has poems like Owl And Pussycat, Wynkyn Blynkyn And Nod, Jabberwocky etc. My plan is after each poem is recited the page gets colored.

We used Making Math Meaningful K first before starting RightStart A. It was very enjoyable. My ds called it "race car math" because of one of the activities. It was definitely more like a sampler plate of math concepts than anything else.

OK, but I realize as new curricula emerges this may change. Preschool: Flowering Baby levels III-V K-2nd: Foundations (followed by ?) Begin Latin Copybook RightStart math with Singapore supplement books Rod & Staff arithmetic VP history with SOTW BFSU (poss. adding Science In The Beginning series if my oldest asks for more science once we start chronological history) MP literature MP recitation Shurley English (Not k) on odd days with FLL Artist Pursuits AO literature for read alouds, AO nature, composer, picture study American history biographies/lit from TruthQuest

Ambleside Online EpiKardia Living Books Curriculum Veritas Press is heavy on literature even though each week springs off a card on a timeline TruthQuest

So my 5.5 yr old ker has been saying "I want more science, Mom!" We already do BFSU two days a week and pull out Magic School Bus kits on Weds. I asked him what else he'd want. Well, he wants another science course with experiments for every. Single. Day. Would you expand experiment time so he does something daily (like Elemental Science or Mudpies/Magnets) or just say "good! Yes, it's quite interesting" and keep going as planned? We spend most afternoons outdoors exploring nature whenever weather allows.

I second guessed it too! However like you I've decided to move on with level C. This discussion is very useful. Thanks.

This is very helpful. Like the OP my kindergartner (5.5 years old) is a couple weeks away from finishing B. He can easily pick up and read books such as Frog And Toad, More More More Said The Baby, Kitten's First Full Moon. This encourages me to stay the course. The only struggle we're having is the cursive sentence work in B; my son resists, wanting a handwriting book with letter practice instead. His handwriting has progressed the slowest by far and copying cursive sentences is very difficult. He wants to write his spelling words in all caps. Considering his age that definitely isn't a concern so we are slowing down and supplementing handwriting.

1- I bought 2nd edition and have only looked at 1st end. With that said I really appreciate the layout of the second edition. It makes prep and instruction time a breeze. I want to say lsst year the company made a YouTube video of a RightStart workshop comparing the two. 2-Sounds like it'd be fine. Here's partly why. I have a friend who teaches honors math at a top classical school. Several times when we got together he'd talk about what he thought was lacking in his students' prior math education to really prepare them for upper level math. So one day I asked him what he'd do differently. He said right off hand he'd just note the difference between Singapore and Saxon students (the school had switched). There was definitely more understanding with both but he wondered if the two were combined...A few weeks later he got back with us saying with his children he'd want to combine old fashioned arithmetic that drills and reviews until you automatically know it with conceptual understanding program. So my son, who is 5 years older than B's, is now a bit of a guinea pig. We are combining RightStart (almost finished with A) with Rod&Staff. Wonderful combination so far. The two very different methods seem different enough to complement each other (McRuffy didn't work as well with RightStart). We have a fun math day once a week when he uses Singapore supplement books (he likes the color). I'd probably use Mathematical Reasoning in much the same way. 3. I started RightStart A when he was four. We made it to lesson 70 before kindergarten started. After Christmas he'll begin level B unless we slow down (now doing 4 lessons a week since end of August). He'll be a couple months shy of 6.

Oh yes! Starting out the day at the kitchen table with Mind Benders.

Let's see... Reading lots if historical fiction outside. Going to the library to choose books for history to supplement the What Your -- Grader Needs to Know. Loving the Famous Men Of series. Entering information on a timeline that lined the hall. Later on a book of the centuries. Confusion over KeyTo followed by angst with Saxon. Trying out Jacob's Algebra and loving it but having to switch back to Saxon due to it being more self guided. Disliking Saxon. Lots of sketching practice and nature hikes in grade school. As a teen switching from the colorful Bob Jones science to Apologia biology when it came out and liking the way Apologia seemed to be speaking to me while missing BJP's colorful pages. Journey Through Grammar Land, Jensen's, and Grammar Songs. Dancing to Audio Memory's music. My first intro to Little Women and Lamb's Shakespeare at 9. Watching the plays on vhs when I was older. Playing wrap ups, Outnumbered, and Carmen Sandiego for "spare time" practice. Books, books everywhere. All the literature and historical fiction I could read. Obsessively reading every and any book about the Tudors and Pearl Harbor during high school. Used interlibrary loan a lot. Getting a note on one book from the librarian saying it was dug out of the basement at the state library. To me that was a huge highlight! Getting our first Veritas Press catalog in was it 97? And pouring over the pages. Telling my parents what I wanted to do to make my education more like the catalog for high school (VP didn't have upper levels at first though). Running back and forth to tell parents about an interesting passage when reading in high school. Particularly in Paradise Lost, On The Incarnation, and Bondage of the Will. Doing this whole course on Dickens one semester. Mom using The Learnables German with me in grade school. She'd have me use dollhouse miniatures to match. Made it to level 4 before we got lost. In high school she wanted me to study German but I insisted on Latin. I also asked to learn Greek since she and Dad knew it but that didn't happen.

Love that book. Am loving it. It's like a more advanced version of Preschool Art by Mary Ann Kohl crossed with Gladys Blizzard's Come Look With Me series. I used Preschool Art at 3 & 4 and it was a perfect lead up to The Way They See It. With my toddler I plan to use Preschool Art and Mudworks through age 4 and move on to The Way They See It at 5/K. The Way They See It *does* require more attention to detail than the free exploration in Mary Ann Kohl's books, so I believe it sounds like your 4 year old isn't ready for it. You do things inspired by the fine art prints you examine every lesson. So there are definitely directions to be followed. For example this week the assignment after looking at a painting was to find some flowing water and draw it. Other weeks have required use of certain colors, sketching the sky and matching the various shades as best you can, making models of clay inspired by other art etc.

Very interesting thought regarding French and Shakespeare! Completely agree regarding language. That is a major reason why I'd want to have my children study Shakespeare. Love this Picard comment! Shakespeare references are all around us in books, TV, and movies. And completely agree with memory. Shakespeare was written to be memorized as the author of How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare reminds early on in the book.