Wow, I am coming up blank on what exactly "FM of Modern Times" might be. For matching up other things with SOTW, check out the site that does exactly this on Paula's Archives. Sorry I couldn't help!

So, let me tempt you into buying more curriculum. Sorry, it's just that I was reading an ancient WTM forum thread on Sonlight today, and I discovered that Handle on the Arts has made activities e-books specifically intended to work with Sonlight (Cores A-C, it looks like). Here's the one for Core 1 (now known as B), for instance, which, according to its table of contents, has 66 projects. (That second link is a .pdf file, by the way.) It tells you which week (and even which day, although how that works with the five-day and four-day schedule options, who knows?) to do each project, and gives you the shopping list for the items required. (These range from "toilet paper tube" at the one extreme to "four yards white fabric" at the other, although the vast majority look extremely reasonable.) (I got all of this from the free sample.) And it's only twenty dollars! Wow, now I feel like a curriculum pusher. It's only twenty dollars, and it'll make you feel reeeeeeeeal good, man! I will say that I'm not buying this, because my son is just not that into arts and crafts, and I hate trying to figure out what to do with the detritus.

I usually start at cathyduffyreviews.com. Of course, she gets a little coy with the products that actually made it into her 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum. (I do actually own the book, after checking it out from the local library yearly, so it's not a big problem for me.) Also, the site isn't all-inclusive, but it's got a lot, and it is broken up by subject and rough grade-levels, where appropriate. When that fails, homeschoolreviews.com is nice. Also, Violet has done a beautiful job with her abbreviations blog, where she'll post the information she has, including links to the publisher. She updates when people post a new curriculum abbreviation they don't understand to the abbreviations thread. Of course, these are in alphabetical order by abbreviation, but this is still an immensely useful resource for dealing with this forum in particular.

I loved A Child's History of the World. It was extremely readable and interesting. I think it's a little lighter in content than Story of the World, but since you're supplementing with USBORNE and other resources, you still get plenty covered. (Plus, some of the stuff included in Story of the World seems a little random, if you ask me.) Sonlight does implement SOTW for their second run through world history. Let me give you a warning--Sonlight Core B (1) starts off very slow, with Usborne's People and Places of the World, which was my son's absolute least favorite resource. Feel free to actually do some of the activities it includes in order to spice it up, and don't even try to do any narrative activities with it--it's just too chaotic, in my opinion. (I wish I'd been confident enough to just read the introductory paragraph and have my son pick out the pictures he was actually interested in. It may have gone over a lot better that way.)

What's funny is that my right-handed oldest son throws left--because his paternal grandfather taught him how! The secret "right-handedness" my father exhibits is left-brained thinking, oddly enough. He is an attorney who deals with property law, (he never did criminal law and got out of family law a long time ago,) and hates the part of his job that involves dealing with people. He is very, very logical in his thinking. The only art as such I've ever seen him do is extraordinary pictures on an Etch-a-Sketch, although he's taken to dabbling in carpentry lately.

Math-U-See's "Decimal Street" is great for teaching place value, and, as you can see by the link given, homemade versions of this are extremely possible--you don't have to buy the program. If you get blocks anything like MUS's blocks, give this idea a whirl! (You can also bring it back to reinforce place value when teaching addition, because you can show how ten can't fit in the one's house, etc.) My son particularly liked it when Hurrican Mommy hit the Street, and he had to put all the little blocks back in their appropriate houses. This was about perfect developmentally for him in kindergarten.

I'm just a little worried about how much of the piano, particularly for beginners, is seriously set up for the right hand, with the left hand just playing boring chords. On the other hand (hah!), his left hand may already be worn out by pushing that pencil for handwriting, right? Piano may give him a break. :p (I guess this is why it's a little silly to be asking this question years before the fact. But I've found the responses so far to be very helpful!)

The recitations I have my children do have mostly been Scripture memory and their catechism. We do them at the beginning of the day with our devotions. The only other thing my son has worked on (a poem, since we followed Sonlight's memory work suggestions) I had him do at the same time. I actually started teaching the catechism before the Scripture memory, in part because it starts short, for little kids. (My oldest has already taught my youngest to say "Ah!"--presumably the "o" sound in "God"--in response to the question "Who made you?") The more pertinent reason is that it's so easy to review--I just go through the questions in order. The scripture memory box from Simply Charlotte Mason that a fellow homeschooler recommended to me has helped immensely in the area of review for fairly "random" memorizations, though. (You can use it for other things than Scripture, of course.)

My oldest son is really enjoying his piano lessons, and is doing very well in them. Clearly, the music gene that skipped me found its way to him. (Well, his dad is far more musical than I am, so he may just be getting it from that side!) The thing is, I kind of "lucked" into his lessons, when I learned through the grapevine that a piano teacher was willing to give lessons at the church next door to us, and the way he's really taken off with his lessons have surprised me and convinced me that music education (or at least a trial) may be worth it for the rest of my sons. My main problem is that my second son is a lefty, which he gets from both his grandfathers. My current plans are to use the child's guitar I picked up at a yard sale long ago and got properly restringed, and have the wife of the pastor of the next door church teach him some lessons for that. He's only three and a half now, so it's not like this an urgent issue; I'd probably be interested in him starting music lessons in another three years or so. So, in general, what would you recommend as a good instrument for a lefty? (The only posts I've easily been able to find on these boards regarding this subject have been about finding left-handed violins, so I'm assuming those are pretty hard to get and therefore definitely not a good choice.) And, since we live about a million miles away from anywhere that would make personal music lessons easy, could anyone recommend a curriculum to help teach it at home? I would be willing to make the drive ("That's quite a commute!" per Hobbes) to the nearest city if he showed an aptitude for whatever instrument he's learning, but I'd like to make sure it will be worth the time, energy, and money first. (After all, he may turn out as unmusical as I.) Or, if it's a fairly common instrument, we may be able to find someone local to teach it. (My husband played sax for years in school band--I think bari sax, actually, though I may be misremembering and it may be tenor--and a little trumpet, for instance, so he may be able to muscle through some lessons in woodwind or brass given a really good curriculum to help him out.) Of course, we may move in the next three years, or have somebody open a Yamaha school two miles away, or something, so who knows how relevant an issue this may end up being. Anybody have any ideas? Recommendations? Practical tips?

:iagree: If your child is willing to experiment with new media and has an artistic vision of what he or she wants to achieve, Artistic Pursuits is probably perfect. For my non-artistic son, it became very frustrating, although he really did enjoy playing with watercolors. (Oddly enough, he much prefers using the cheap Prang watercolor set he got from his grandmother now, although the expensive watercolor crayons were great for when he had a little less motor control. He still uses the technique of drawing with an art pencil and "coloring in" with the watercolors recommended in Artistic Pursuits, though.) I don't know anything about Drawing with Children. We did get Draw Write Now to work on my son's fine motor skills (even more!) and make handwriting a little more fun for him, and he's loved it, but I wouldn't necessarily call that art. Following the advice of someone on these boards, I picked up the first year of Scott Foresman Art--it was cheap enough used on Amazon, and it does seem to give the more step-by-step instructions that my son craves, along with occasional art appreciation lessons. I'm planning on using it this next year. I will say that I found the art appreciation lessons in Artistic Pursuits to be very good, with a nice mix of styles and periods covered in the first book, although I've seen people complain about the quality of the rendering.

Oh, that's easy. All you have to do is be patient, gentle, firm, and consistent. Unfortunately, that requires discipline and a well-developed character on my part, so I've never been quite able to manage it. Parenting is haaaaard! (This is why I'm so glad that my sons' Father is perfect, even when their father and I are not.) Since this is a curriculum board, let me link you to a resource that I've been drooling over: The Christian Gentleman's Series Lessons in Responsibility for Boys. My favorite part is that they recommend having Daddy go over the (once-a-week) lessons with his son(s). (They also have gender-neutral "character-building" Kingdom Stories, which I find less interesting. But if you think it may be worthwhile, they have one for free!) Of course, I don't actually own anything from this publisher, so I have no idea what sort of doctrinal/interpretational positions their books take, or how that would match up with what your family believes. May I add, I love your signature!

You may want to cross-post this to the Special Needs Board.

Actually, since my son is currently doing Beta, let me correct this summation: Alpha is single-digit addition and subtraction. Beta is multiple-digit addition and subtraction. Also, a quick reminder: you are not supposed to do all the pages for every lesson, as per the curriculum itself. Instead, your child is to do the pages until it is clear that he understands them and/or has learned the math facts applicable. For a lesson he isn't getting, that might require all the pages, and maybe even some additional ones from their online worksheet generator, but usually you should be able to move on a little faster. Also, there are free placement tests available at the Math-U-See website to give you an idea of where to put your son.

Here are some of the revisions I know have been made to Biblioplan in general: Kingfisher Encyclopedia has been dropped, because it is no longer in print. Questions have been changed to draw from their Companion instead of other resources. The high school supplement has been folded into the main program. Biblioplan is very generous if you are willing to buy direct from them. They'll give you any old version of your purchase that you request, apparently, and updates are free, as well. Of course, the freebies are in e-book format only, but that's still a very generous offer!

I'd like to point out that developing a sourdough culture really isn't that hard. I use the "Five Minutes a Day" recipes, mostly from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and while these recipes do use yeast, the breads also develop a sourdough culture if they're kept in the fridge long enough. The authors of the books even talk about how to incorporate some of that sourdough flavor into your new loaf without the waiting. (Don't clean your container between batches and/or use the remainder of your old loaf as a pate fermentee, if you're curious.) I tried doing straight sourdough years ago, and it was an utter flop. That poor starter--I never remembered it. Now that I understand sourdough a bit better, I might be willing to try it again. After all, I've got a quarter of a batch of whole wheat olive oil dough in my refrigerator--and it's already got a sourdough culture!

My son enjoyed the Math-U-See Primer level. (I'd write down his answers for him, because he, too, was not much of a writer.)

My son loves, loves, loves these. Getting him to do art with Artistic Pursuits was like pulling teeth--he loves the step-by-step instructions in DWN, and he particularly likes the pictures that start with, say, the word "boy" and end up being a boy. I guess he's just a little too like me--my idea of art is counted cross-stitch, or knitting, where I just have to follow someone's instructions and I end up with something that looks nice. I want to exercise my aesthetic principles selecting a pattern, not following it! Just like my son, apparently.

You're very welcome.

Do you mean Redshift's Story of the World page?

:iagree: Oh, absolutely do I agree. My philosophy of reading is that the more excited a kid can get about it, the better off you are, and phonics are booooring and fairly abstract. Plus, your children need to learn that there isn't a hard-and-fast rule for everything in life, and particularly not for pronouncing (or representing) the English language, because kids at reading age usually are very rules-oriented anyhow, and that can bog down their reading. So I just went with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons for my oldest, and I'm planning on sticking with that for my next. That said, I am doing a phonics-based spelling approach. (I'm doing All About Spelling, because it's soooo pretty.) Spelling is boring no matter how you do it, so I'm going to sneak in some phonics instruction while we're at it!

Well, to be fair, Amazon will convert .html and .pdf for you; they just charge for the service, and I'm a cheapskate. :p Plus, I like having a little more control over the process.

I would like to add: Don't forget the scrapbooking portion of lapbooks. While the mini books may add the "Wow!" factor, there's no reason you can't also include index cards filled with information from your children (e.g., a memory verse that pertains to the subject, or an important term and its definition) and just glue them straight to the file folder. Or you could cut out something written on lined paper--if you have pinking shears or scrapbooking scissors, this can look very interesting. Plus, you could trim with nifty paper or ribbon, etc. If your child is very confident in his or her writing, why not let him or her try writing directly onto the file folder to talk about the relationship of two separate elements? (For instance, in a lapbook on the solar system, you could have an arrow going from the minibook on Mercury to the one on Mars, saying something like "is smaller than", and continue that chain all the way to Jupiter, or the sun.) Notebooking and lapbooking are not geometrically opposed ideas, to me--they're more like a continuum, with plenty of room to "meet in the middle," particularly if you think of it as more of a scrapbook with the occasional mini-book. That said, I have been doing more straight notebooking this year with my son, although he really liked lapbooking last year. It does get a little time-intensive for the teacher!

I don't know how useful your son's kindle will be for daily scheduling. It's not like he can just check things off. For other things, the best utility I have found is Calibre. It easily converts html and the e-book formats that Kindle doesn't have, and even tries its best with .pdfs. (I've been cleaning up the conversion of a .pdf e-book by correcting the .html format Calibre came up with.) Plus, it works just fine on my OS, even though I use Linux!

Last week I started How to Report on Books, which is a (very basic) introduction to literary analysis for first and second graders. Each week, you read an example (or two for, say, fiction and nonfiction), talk about whatever aspect of the book is the subject of the lesson, and then give your kids the (free reproducible) worksheet to fill out for their book that week. Since my son *hates* writing, this was about the most I was going to ask of him. DITHOR looks extremely attractive too, though, and I'll probably pick it up someday when I have multiple kids to teach at the same time. I'd like an answer to that "How much is too much?" question, too!

Wow, that is a very generous offer from the school. I wish our local schools were so generous--they require that you do a lot of school (say, three classes, probably at very different times of the day) if you want to do any. Ouch! And the state sports are run by a NGO, believe it or not, that is very hostile towards homeschooling, although that won't affect me much until my kids hit high school and even then only if they're serious about sports. That said, if I were you, I'd seriously consider that PE. I send my son to martial arts class twice a week because I am so not into sports and physical movement, and know nothing except that I could seriously hurt my kids and/or train them up wrong if I attempted any instructions beyond "Go run around outside." PE tends to have more of a social aspect, anyhow. Of course, that's not so good when kids are "picking teams" and playing up the school pecking order, but otherwise, it could be a good thing. Art may offer lessons that are too messy to try much at home, along with a place to put masterpieces in the making while they dry/harden/need a little more work tomorrow? If you want your son to explore ensemble music or choir, the local school may, again, be a good place to go. Actually, I can't think of anywhere else he *could* do band! Just my thoughts. I don't have that practical experience, though. Sorry!