Also, make sure you have all of the latest and greatest Microsoft updates. You can get these by going to the control panel and double clicking "Windows Update".

I use Microsoft's Security Essentials which is free and seems to work well. http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

I'm not Mormon and haven't read through all of this thread, but I did want to comment on this. For several reasons, my wife and I started stocking up on food and other supplies about 3 or 4 years ago. For the bulk items(wheat, rice, beans, etc), we have bought those either through ldscatalog.org or directly through an LDS cannery(I think that's the what they are called) that's not too far away. The prices are very reasonable for these kind of items(especially since some of them come in cans or you can can them on site) and the people I have met at the cannery have been the friendliest people you will ever meet. If you are just getting started or are on a limited budget, I would definitely see what they have available since you'll probably be able to get a lot of food without spending too much money.

I have a related question I wanted to run by people here. I'm planning on using REAL Science 4 Kids Level 1 Physics next year simply because I haven't found much at that level for physics I like. However, my big concern is that the author is a proponent of intelligent design and affiliated with the Discovery Institute(and in my opinion, the Discovery Institute = very bad science). I'm going to stay as far away from her books about biology as I can, but how is her physics book?

My son is starting 4th grade next year and that will be his first year of home schooling. We are currently planning out what curriculum we are going to use and will be paying attention to this thread. So far, we have settled on the following: Spelling - Spelling Workout(probably starting with level C and going through level C & D next year) Grammer - First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind Writing - Writing With Ease Reading/History - ?? Geography - ?? Science - Hopefully REAL Science Odyssey if the physics book is available otherwise it's going to be REAL Science 4 Kids. My background is in physics and this is a subject I truly love so will be supplementing the material in either of these books. Math - Saxon 5/4 - See my comments about physics above. After physics, math is the other subject I'm very passionate about and plan to spend time adding extra material here. We're also going to skip the latin at first and instead have him learn a lot of what I would call "practical" skills from a neighbor who was born in the Great Depression and just has a lot of wisdom about life.

I think this is an excellent idea and we actually started our first "official" home schooling day today. It was the first snow day of the year and had made some contingency lesson plans because we anticipated public schools would be closed. I actually received a phone call from my wife's cell phone about 10:30 this morning and I thought that was a bad sign and she was going to tell me that she was feeling overwhelmed. It was actually from my son who wanted to tell me what he had worked on all morning and how much fun he was having so I think we're off to a good start.

Thank you to everybody who has responded. We really appreciate all of the help and advice. We read through all of the responses and we think we're just going to start him off with the Ancients and then just move on from there. The other advantage for us is that my daughter will be in first grade next year so they would be on the same track(although he would obviously be expected to do more advanced work).

My wife and I are in the very beginning stages of planning to homeschool our kids next year. I created this account a few days ago and have spent a lot of time looking through previous posts and learning a lot from others on this forum. However, we still have a couple questions we'd like to get some advice on. 1. My son is currently attending 3rd grade in a public school. I understand the logic of breaking the study down in 4 year blocks based on time periods. Since he has gotten essentially none of the exposure to the history/language arts areas as recommended, what level should I start him at next year? Do we just jump right into modern times or should we actually go back and do ancients for two years in a row(4th at the first level and start 5th grade on the normal track)? 2. I noticed for books in the history chapter that they really push The Story of the World. I don't know anything about this, but one huge red flag that jumped out at me is that it is written by one of the authors of The Well Trained Mind. I'm not implying that that The Story of the World is a bad book, but to me it's the same situation as when a university professor has you buy a textbook they have written. Does anybody have opinions about this book they can share? Are there other history books similar to these that we can use?