There is a fair amount of handwriting in it. Each letter has 4-5 practice pages. There are also little art projects, find the letter, and coloring pages too.

If he likes to cut, color and paste my 5 year old loves lapbooks. I print the materials and let her work on them. I help as well, but she can do most of the items herself. She would work on them all day if I let her. She has learned a lot from making them and enjoys showing them to everyone. She also love the ThinkFun logic games. I started her with Rush Hour Jr and she finished all of the puzzles in two days. I bought Rush Hour and that has slowed her down a bit. We have 8 of the games that I rotate. Perplexus, Inchanimals and Shut the Box are also favorite independent games.

I buy these from Amazon. The price does fluctuate, but usually hovers around $10. http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Thermal-Laminating-Pouches-03NPSM/dp/B0006VZAZS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1308908322&sr=8-2

Beethoven's Wig cds - we LOVE all 4 volumes in this house. Even my 3 year old loves them and as a result both girls have developed an appreciation for classical music. Here Comes Science cd by They Might Be Giants. My girls love this cd so much I have bought the Lyrical Life cds just for more fun science songs. Jim Weiss audio cds. Galileo and the Stargazers is a favorite here as are his other works. Pop-up books: Robert Sabuda is great and his paper engineering is amazing. They also love the Steve Alton (Chewy, Gooey, Rumble, Plop and Blood and Goo and Boogers Too!), Alive (DK Eyewitness), and anything by Cicely Mary Barker Wizard of Oz series. We are almost done with the first 14 books and I am so sad to see it come to an end. I am contemplating trying the second series written by Ruth Thompson. For the original series I bought the hardback versions published by Books of Wonder. They are beautiful and include the original color plates. Books of Wonder books. They have reprinted a lot of the classics and they are simply beautiful books.

My 5 year old DD can spend hours polishing rocks and seashells with a toothbrush and some water. She loves water transfer activities, playing with the balance scale, pattern blocks, and the ThinkFun logic games too. She love science so we do lots of reading and experiments. We bought her compound and dissecting microscopes a few weeks ago and we have spent a lot of time looking at slide and various things from outside and around the house. She loves her magnifying glass too.

Unless you decide to laminate all the AAS cards! :tongue_smilie: I thought they would hold up better if they were laminated since I am using them for both of my girls. I started to regret that decision after cutting out the first 20 cards. Now they are all laminated, filed and sitting on my desk ready to use, but my wrist is sore from all the cutting! ETA: Meet the Masters is fairly open and go once you print the teacher and student manuals.

My oldest likes the Fiskers, but my little one loves her purple Crayola brand scissors. They open and close very easily and she has been using them well since she was 18 months old (keeping up with big sister!).

I am so sorry. I hope everyone feels better soon. We had a round of the stomach flu pass through our house this winter and it was not fun. Tomorrow is always another day!

Confessions of a Homeschooler has a letter of the week curriculum that incorporates crafts and lots of hands on activities. I did these with my little one while her older sister was in preschool. You can buy a download that includes all the files in one pdf, or you can download the individual letter activities for free. http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/ She also loved the Kumon cutting and pasting workbook.

We love the history pockets here. HSBC offered a subscription to the TeachersFileBox a few months ago (it may still be there). All the history, science and lit pockets are on the site. I printed all of them as pdf files so they are ready to use when we study the various time periods. I think the subscription was $70 for the year so if you are planning to buy more then 4 or 5 it may be worth it to subscribe.

We will be spreading it out over 2 years and also doing world geography along with SOTW 1. My oldest graduates from pre-K next Monday and she is already counting down the days to when we will start learning about Ancient Egypt. I think we will be hitting the ground running on Tuesday!

Yeah! That is great to hear. I was planning to start AAS in first grade, but after reading so many positive reviews I decided to add it to our phonics instruction this year. I can't wait for it to arrive!

My husband wants to learn to play the guitar as well. When I was researching the options I came across this instrument. I haven't tried one, but they look interesting and they said they are a great into to the guitar. http://www.strumstick.com/html_pages/ss_catalog.html

We love our skeleton model. He was one of the first things I bought when we decided to homeschool last summer. My girls named him Skelly and they have learned a lot from him. More importantly he sparked a huge interest in science. This is the one I bought. http://www.hometrainingtools.com/human-skeleton-model-33/p/CM-SKELETN/ My girls love these resources as well. http://www.hometrainingtools.com/human-torso-model/p/CM-TORSO25/ http://www.amazon.com/Uncover-Human-Body-Book-Books/dp/B001BSOUA6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1306451034&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Lab-Explore-Human-Body/dp/1932855785/ref=pd_sim_b_3 http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-X-rays-Human-Paul-Beck/dp/1607101432/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1306451129&sr=8-3 I was a bio/chem major in college so I will admit our HS room has a lot of science resources.

Hands down, the Wizard of Oz series. We just started book 10 this morning and I asked for a short break after and hour of reading so I could enjoy my coffee for a bit. My 5 year old loves this series. She also loved Pippi and the sequels as well as the Usborne World History Encyclopedia :tongue_smilie:

So cute! I grew up in Carlisle and my grandparents lived in Greencastle. I miss the smell of the dairy farms. We relocated to NH 12 years ago and the farms here do not smell the same as they did in PA.

I find one day at home with the kids all day quelches any mention of this. I take two days a year for me. I go shopping, have a facial, eat lunch by myself and he stays home with the kids. He gets to do the whole routine and by the time I come back around 3 pm he is ready for a break. He knows being a SAHM is HARD and is happy to go to work. We haven't officially started homeschooling yet, but he knows it is not a cake walk.

I bought our copies from Rainbow Resources.

Thank you! Our praying mantis babies hatched this weekend so I just ordered our next round of caterpillars from Insect Lore. This will be a perfect addition.

My girls love the Eyewitness, Magic Schoolbus and Liberty Kids dvds.

Thank you for posting this!

You could try finding it used. I do own it, but it is in the pile of books I want to read. I bought a used copy in good condition from Better World Books for $3 shipped.

You can also download free audio books from Librivox. My girls loved listening to The Just So Stories, Thorton Burgess and others. My husband read one of the Just So Stories from our illustrated volume the other night. After he read the title my 4 year old chimed in "This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain." Maybe she has heard too many of them! My girls love to read and be read too, but the audio books are a nice break and they are great for the car. http://librivox.org/

Thank you!! You can also use coupon code COUPCAB593 to save 10% on orders over $30.

Santa brought the Magic Schoolbus Inside the Human Body kit and my girls LOVED it! We are working on the Space kit and Dinos now. They are very good introductions for the younger kids.