We love the Let's Read and Find Out series. We own a bunch and always checked some out of the library too. To find good books, you might check out a few programs like the Noeo level 1 science courses and the Winter Promise animals program and see what books they recommend. We have the Kingfisher Animal Encyclopedia. I wish we had a more advanced animal encyclopedia--I think my kids would not have minded an older level instead of Kingfisher. That said, they do read the Kingfisher one.

Try to find Scandinavian ones. My parents got one when they went to Norway. We always called them what sounds like "doona" but I think is spelled duni, and I think that's Norwegian. Later they got them for us kids and the quality was superb. My kids have cheap American versions and the little feathers leak out all the time--not the same thing at all!

I'm using something I remembered having in my college days--book rings. You 3-hole punch your papers, then put a metal ring through all of the top holes, another through the middle holes, and a third through the bottom holes. I bought a package with 40 book rings from Office Max for probably $3-$4 (don't really remember, but pretty cheap). I'm thinking of teaching a co-op science course and if I need to bind papers, this is how I'll do it as students only pay a $10 materials fee that needs to cover everything. I think you can use a cardstock cover and back to make it a bit more durable, but it will not be as durable as a coil binding. I just got the small book rings (about 1") but there were much larger ones available too.

My 5th grader is moving on to vocab this year in place of spelling. Seems like a better use of our time at this point.

We'll be using Elements this year and I'm contemplating teaching it in our co-op. From my quick reading earlier this summer, I remember only activities, not experiments. I'm going to add Adventures with Atoms and Molecules for experiments. I have the library copy and love what I see--the experiments start with a question like "do molecules move" and then have simple experiments using stuff from around the house to find out the answer (like dropping food color in water for the above). I think the two will tie in together really well.

We had no difficulty starting at the beginning of 1st when my dd was 6.5 years old. Like others have said, she was reading and writing well and all went smoothly. The difficulty level stays pretty constant...what your child is asked to do at the beginning is pretty much what she or he will still be doing at the end of the year. And for copywork you can choose a shorter sentence or longer sentence for them to copy. We got a little behind by skipping too much during some busy fall days and I found that we could easily do two worksheets in 1 day in spring to catch up. This meant basically doing both a narration and copywork in 1 day.

We finished SFC A and are waiting patiently for B to come out. SFC is more of a grammar approach than an immersion approach. We also use LFC and I appreciate the similarity in the structure of the two programs. I would definitely recommend the DVD. We started with the workbook alone before the DVD was out and we bogged down in it. My dds like the DVD teacher (who wrote the book). She's perky and fun. Even with the DVD you can bog down in some chapters. I don't think there is really enough practice to be mastering some of the stuff. But I haven't found anything I like better...

If the money just isn't available, you can certainly home school for less. But if you can swing it, I think money spent on books is an excellent investment. The largest part of our home school budget is spent on real books, mostly for history. I use a less expensive base program (Biblioplan, about $30 per year and now I own all four years so no cost for our second cycle through) but still probably average about $500 a year on books. But we have an excellent home library that my kids turn to over and over. Books are not just read once around here. Our style of teaching and learning is based on reading (as opposed to workbooks or hands-on) and though we used our public library a lot, I really like having good books on a variety of topics available all of the time in our home.

You might be able to do LFC A in 3 days a week, but if you're going to continue with Latin I think you will need more days after A. We did A in 4 days a week and B in 5 days a week (which I expect to continue for C). If I were going to do A in 3 days of 20-30 minutes, I would do the following: Day 1: Watch DVD--chant and grammar lesson. Look through grammar pages in book together. Day 2: Watch DVD chant only (and chant with it). Do worksheet. Day 3: Chant through vocab list in book. Do quiz. If you are getting the history reader, I would translate a chapter of that orally, but you don't begin it until something like week 18. I would put the chant CD in the car and play it regularly (at least once a week) while driving to kid activities. It helps you learn all of the vocab.

We have 5 houses that are very close to our backyard. Our neighbor works at night and sleeps during the day. My kids don't really play loudly, but they will occasionally scream if they don't like something their sister did. I will not tolerate screaming in this set-up. It's only okay to scream if you are being kidnapped or attacked by a pit bull or something severe like that. I don't want neighbors thinking some horrible thing is happening when it's usually something like "she dumped sand on my head." So if I hear screaming, they come inside. Outdoor play is over. I haven't heard screaming in awhile now...

We have done several of these (Colonial Life, Revolutionary War, Civil War), but we add them in to a very full history curriculum that is primarily reading. For me, two per year is comfortable, three would be too much. But we weren't using them as stand alones. We just did the lapbook portions of each. Maybe you could do 3 if you're not adding it to something else. After doing them with my girls in 3rd/K and 4th/1st, when I had the opportunity to teach one in a co-op, I made the age range for the class 3rd-6th. There is a lot of cutting and pasting that is really better suited to upper elementary. Be prepared to have to help your dc quite a bit.

Mine likes it, but I've always thought it's because we use a whiteboard! Everything is more fun on a whiteboard.

here.

I think there is a jump in expectations from the earlybird books to the primary math 1 books. Primary math 1 can look pretty easy at a glance, but there is some pretty sophisticated thinking going on. Some math programs have kids just memorize addition facts to 20. Singapore has kids understand number bonds to 10 very well (i.e. be able to "see" 10 as 8+2 or 6+4, etc.) and be able to use those bonds to figure out how to add 8+6 (rather than just memorizing 8+6=14). The child will think, "what would I need to make the 8 a 10? Oh, 2. So I'll take 2 from the 6 and I know 4 is leftover and it is very easy to add that 4 to my new 10--the answer is 14." But be able to do that in a second. It may seem like more work than memorizing, but it is a great skill that will make harder mental arithmetic much easier (like adding 58+6, or 58+26). But it is not something to rush into too early. For my youngest, who finished the earlybird books in preschool, we used a different program for K so that we wouldn't hit primary math 1 before she was ready for all of that mental number manipulation. We used Horizons K since we supplement with that program anyway, but I am sure that there are lots of good programs that would work. So you might just go through earlybird at a pace that is comfortable for your ds, but don't be anxious to jump into 1A too soon. Maybe just use some RS games since you know them or pick up a workbook he can do on his own like Horizons after he finished earlybird. I am not familiar with Essentials--maybe that can follow earlybird???

We do blueberry muffins and the occasional blueberry lemon pound cake, but most of them get eaten straight out of the freezer by my 10 yo. We also make blueberry yogurt parfaits: a little Nancy's vanilla yogurt, a tablespoon or so of granola, and a handful of frozen blueberries. Yum!

Weather.com says 65 here in Oregon. I thought it was warmer than that. We've had highs in the 80s recently. Sunny and breezy now...a few clouds too.

Yep, the ripe berries come off easily when you "tickle" them. I love finding large clusters with 20 or so berries all perfectly ripe...that's what I call easy picking! But it seems you will always get a few that are still a bit red around the stem instead of deep blue. Marionberries are probably done now. I picked some a week ago and asked the farm owner if they were late this year. She said yes and that she was usually closed by the 3rd week of July. She expected to close at the end of this week. Oh and my 9 pints cost me $7.80!!

Sometimes, even with the best equipment, they just don't get a good enough view to tell the gender. We wanted to know with our third because we were moving into a new house and the gender would determine who would be sharing a room. Baby just didn't cooperate...oh well. And I will agree with a previous poster that the purpose of the ultrasound is to check baby's health and development, NOT GENDER. My first-born is severely disabled because her brain did not divide correctly, so for my next two pregnancies my doctor sent me to the big out of town hospital for their better equipment and specialists. It drove me crazy when anyone was asking about the gender because I wasn't going to the doctor to find out baby's gender but to see if the brain divided correctly. While knowing this condition in advance would only help parents to be more prepared at birth, there are many other conditions that can be treated in utero or at birth if revealed by an ultrasound. So I've experienced both sides of this one...being mildly disappointed at not knowing which gender to be prepared for but also completely understanding that that is not the purpose for this medical procedure. Incidentally, for my first we were told "50% chance it's a girl". Umm, I could have told you that without an ultrasound! Her birth defect was not seen, but this was just using the ultrasound in the doctor's office--not as good.

RSO Life was too easy for my 4th grader too. I would say it is ideal for 2nd grade (also fit my 1st grader well).

My best finds are books for history (almost always cheaper than Amazon) and art supplies, specifically pads of paper much cheaper than our local stores.

We used both Biblioplan and picked up books from the AG at the library. This was 3 years ago now, so I may be a bit fuzzy on details. I recall that Biblioplan did not have specific reading for K-2 for the Reformation, but I think that was only the last 3 weeks of the year, not the whole second half. I used Paul Maier's book on Martin Luther which was great. A huge benefit of Biblioplan is that SOTW is weak on the renaissance, which surprised me. Since there is not much in SOTW, there isn't much in the AG either. One very useful addition that came from Biblioplan was Rats, Bulls, and Flying Machines. My general recollection of the AG books is that they are shorter reads. Biblioplan will have more options that are a bit longer. There is always a family read aloud and the 3+ and maybe even 5+ books can be done as read alouds too. The read alouds are one of our favorite parts of history and it's Biblioplan that makes that happen for us. Biblioplan makes that easy to implement but if you don't want to invest in that you can find other book lists to supplement SOTW. Every once in awhile a thread gets started here about listing all of your favorite books for a particular year of a cycle. You could search for old year 2 threads and see what books come up a lot. If they're not in the AG, just add them to your list.

We do both Spanish and Latin and it is very interesting to study both at the same time to see the similarities in the languages. While we do not spend 1/2 hour a day on Latin (more like 15-20 minutes), the total time commitment for both is significant, so I wouldn't recommend it for the the time-pressed. I'm not sure there is a great benefit to my kids hearing Spanish at an early age because they are hearing MY Spanish (non native speaker, 4 years high school Spanish). Would love to have classes available with native speakers but we don't have that here. Still, I think they get some benefit from what we do.

I voted Biblioplan because it was best for ME for our second cycle (we used it first cycle too). That doesn't necessarily mean it is best for you. I have not really looked at MFW much--just enough to know it wasn't a great fit for me. I did carefully consider switching over to TOG for our second cycle. The points against it (for me): -covered more than I was looking for -expensive -I was looking for some specific books that I love that weren't in their plan -lots more work for the teacher -after all of that expense, it really wasn't a good match level-wise for my 5th grader. Upper grammar reading was too easy; dialectic activities a bit advanced. Would have required too much tweaking for how much $$ was spent. I thought it would match up better for rhetoric level. So of course you can get input from other people, but you'll have to figure out what is important to you and really dive into each program to see what will be a good fit for your family.

We do Latin everyday for maybe 15-20 minutes. Once you get into LFC B there are some translating worksheets in the book that I think are a great brain workout, but those days are longer than other days. LFC A just has one worksheet if I recall correctly, but if you're trying to fit in the activity book, you can just do that the other days if you want to fill 5 days. So this was our LFC B schedule (LFC A I think we did 4 days/week. Haven't even opened up LFC C yet!) Monday: Watch DVD chant and grammar lesson Tuesday: do chant (with or without DVD), review grammar in primer, memory worksheet Wednesday: do chant (with or without DVD), translating worksheet Thursday: do chant, last worksheet page in primer (can't remember name) Friday: chant, take quiz. Early in the year we also did the history reader on Friday, but we lost the book around Christmas. I found it at the end of the year. I think we will keep working on the LFC B book this year and it may work better to have that be a bit behind the current grammar we're learning.

My dd was fine doing LFC A in 3rd grade, and if I already had one child using it I would just have them do it together. However I do sit with dd and we watch the DVD together and go through the book together. I don't think it would have worked quite so well for her to do it independently. I think I ask good questions as I am trying to figure it out, and she learns from my own learning process.