My 6 year old son is at this point too. He has the sounds but does not get blending. We're doing MFW K and it just got to blending. From the above list though he has a hard time identifying the final sound (but is great with initial sounds) and doesn't really get rhyming words yet so I guess we should go back and work on that more. My 6 yo dd gets the blending and I haven't done anything differently with her. My ds can blend 2 letters but throw in that 3rd one and he is hopelessly lost so I'm trying to work more with 2 letters for now.

I really love Letter of the Week from Confessions of a Homeschooler. It's free on her site or $10 to download everything at once. My 3.5 year old is loving it although my laminator has gotten quite a work out since we started it. http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/2010/07/letter-of-week-curriculum.html

I've bought 3 of their programs and didn't like 2 of them. The first one I bought was American Story 1 and the paper crafts drove me nuts. There were way too many. We stopped at week 6. From looking at their site it looks like they have changed it some (I purchased AS 1 in 2006) and there are fewer paper crafts. It also took 2 months to get it all and I think we never did get the Native American stuff I paid for. The books I needs the first few weeks were backordered so even though I had the guidebook I couldn't start. I had a baby 2 months after placing the order and forgot to follow up on the missing books. I also bought American Culture last year but I just never got into it. We scrapped it pretty soon in so I can't really comment on it too much. It felt like we had too many different things to do each day. At least with that one I only bought the WP guide and a couple of the WP exclusives which I apparently can't sell even though we didn't use them. :confused: I've got the preschool program which is okay but I think it's too scheduled for a kid that young. I've read a lot of the books but not followed the schedule. I should have skipped the guidebook and just bought the books. Some of their programs look really neat like the Sea and Sky one. I may just buy the actual books and not the IG and read them with the kids.

I've been using Rightstart B for about 3 weeks. I like a lot about the program but there are some things I'm not liking so much. I bought it because it looks like it will lay a great math foundation for my kids. I used MUS with my older kids when they were younger and it was okay but I was really attracted to RS because of the games. I think part of my frustration is that I'm trying to use this with my twins that just turned 6 and they have different math abilities. My son seems somewhat advanced for math. He can add a lot in his head and just seems to get math. But he uses a lot of counting to get his answers which Rightstart doesn't want the kids doing. My dd is a little behind in math and she is having a hard time grasping addition although she does fine with RS part-whole circles but she must build each and everyone which I think is fine right now. My ds is bored though. We are only on Lesson 10 and it does look like it picks up around Lesson 15. I've been making him do all the lessons though because I want him to get used to Rightstarts way of doing things. I'm a little worried it's going to go too fast for dd though once we get more into it so I may have to separate them. Here's what we don't like. 1. Very few worksheets- ds loves worksheets and it seems a little light on reinforcing math facts to me. Has anyone supplemented in this area? 2. The songs- dd hates these and covers her ear when we do them. Ds is okay with Yellow is the Sun but doesn't like the others. Is it going to be a big deal so skip some of the songs? I actually contacted RS 2 weeks ago because I realized the kids each needed some of their own supplies. After my e-mail one of the reps called me and was very helpful. I wound up ordering an additonal abacus, clock, and place value cards. I told her I wish they would offer additional student packs because I had no idea which items they could share when ordering and she said they would consider it.

I'm really undecided what to use for my 5th grader for school this year. Right now she is doing TT(almost done with 4 and then do 5), LOF Fractions, MindBenders, IEW, HWT Cursive, Sequential Spelling, Trail Guide to US Geography, and MBTP. I love the MBTP Lit units so I'm thinking of sticking with those and then drop the rest of it. I only bought one unit to try and I like it okay but I don't like how it jumps around. My dd has always been homeschooled but in past years what we mostly did was workbook stuff with some FIAR thrown in there. I read WTM this summer and would like to follow a more classical approach but I'm not sure where to start with her. She is probably going to public middle school next year so I may just have her at home one more year. She hasn't done much with dictation or narration before. I'd also maybe like to add something to learn to diagram a sentence. She gets LA stuff from MBTP so I'd like to find something that just does diagramming. I have SOTW 1 and the Activity Guide and was thinking of doing that with dd and my 6 yo twins except I just found out that 6th graders at our middle school take Ancient History so dd would be doing that 2 years in a row if we do that. My 12 yo is a 7th grader at the ps this year and taking Medeival History but in 3.5 weeks they have barely done anything. She's had one 5 question quiz and a "project" that consisted of drawing several things in colored pencils and labeling them. The only reading seems to be from the textbook so I'd imagine the 6th grade is similar so I don't know if it would matter if dd had to do Ancients 2 years in a row. I also have Core 5 I bought from a friend who was done with it. It looks very challenging though and it might be a stretch for my 10 yo but I could take it slow and if we don't get through the whole thing that would be okay. Or I could just stick with MBTP and buy the rest of the units. We are doing 8-10 though and I think I should have gotten 9-11 because it's pretty easy for dd. She's not gifted and I think since it is supposedly for gifted kids that I ordered lower than I might have otherwise. I've probably spent way too much time agonizing over this and just need to pick something and stick with it. I've been reading here for the past month or so and gotten a lot of great ideas. It was because of reading here I bought SOTW 1. I will definitely use it with my 6 yo twins and we've read a little bit from it but they are finishing up MFW K so I thought I'd wait on it until they are done with that.