I have to say, I'm using 100EZ for the second time, and so far it's going well. This time my son has used Starfall for a year, so we might be able to get through lessons a bit faster. I agree with a previous poster, though--don't read stories three times (ouch!), stick to ten to fifteen minutes a day, no matter how little of the lesson that covers (unless you're in the middle of a story, of course), don't do the writing, etc. Actually, for the writing, we're going to be trying the Wikki Stix Alphabet Fun Cards I've just ordered, along with tracing the letters with a finger, but I don't know that we'll even be doing that every lesson. I don't know that Explode the Code books 4-6 actually taught my son anything, but they sure kept him busy while I took care of his siblings! As it turns out, he loves having some workbooks, so he didn't even hate ETC, however much it resembled busy work to me. Worst buys? They were both from Sonlight, which I otherwise love. The Sonlight LA program (to go along with Grade 2 Readers) were way, way too involved in the composition part, although the copywork and grammar actually fit where my son was. Really strange. Also, in Sonlight Core 1, the Usborne Peoples of the World book that they have you start off with is horrible, particularly for first grade. I bet that person who hated Sonlight Core 1 tangled with this one and understandably gave up. After we got through that and moved on to Archaeologists Dig for Clues, life suddenly got much easier. Admittedly, my son didn't much care for Understood Betsy--I wish they'd had a boy's alternative--but overall, it was an excellent program, and we're doing Core 2 now. Of course, next year we're dropping Sonlight for another item that's shown up on this thread a few times: Biblioplan! Here's hoping it works out better for us.

I liked Chancy and the Grand Rascal, Mr. Mysterious and Company, and Jingo Django.

This has been my experience, too. Actually, grad school had Powerpoint in abundance, which had certainly never been an option in high school, and which none of my college teachers ever tried to use. What makes it worse is that many teachers started teaching to the Powerpoint, instead of to the students. I loathed Powerpoint, for the record. It doesn't allow you to get a good lengthy outline, which means that all you really get are soundbites, instead of an in-depth discussion. That's great for an overview, but not for the nitty-gritty. Of course, like several posters above, sermons are the exception to this. Even then, our bulletins always (unless it was a guest pastor) had the three points of the three-point sermon, which is a good starting-off point. Of course, my father-in-law's church uses Powerpoint. So even there, it's not like you're always starting cold. By the way, outlining from written works may actually be a more useful skill than you think, and one that would have benefited me immensely if I'd done it more in college. And it's not like the skill has no carry-over from written to oral presentations.

What about Patricia Wrede? She might not be as funny as Pratchett, but I'd definitely recommend Mairelon the Magician for some very funny moments. Her Dealing with Dragons series can be good light-hearted fun, too. I've also enjoyed Gilbert Morris' Squire's Tale series, which rewrites Arthurian legend with a light and deft touch. And going another direction... There are some traditional British humorists who are at least as clean as Pratchett, although usually marketed to adults. Have you tried P. G. Wodehouse? His short stories (of which there are loads) might be more accessible, but it's not like his longer books are hard to read. Do try to find the beginnings of series, or stories that aren't parts of series at all, or he might get a little lost in the sea of names that come, for instance, with his growing Woosterian universe near the end. The generation of writers from whom Wodehouse pulled include Saki (who I find gets depressing in large doses), and Jerome K. Jerome, whose classic Three Men on a Boat, to Say Nothing of the Dog is just as readable now as in the heyday of Victorianism, when it was written. If your son enjoys time travel, he could try out Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, which, as you may have guessed, is based on Jerome's classic work, but has a very different style. More than my other recommendations, it was written for adults, but I can't remember any objectionable content to it. A note on Stardust: Boy, does that book have a real downer of an ending. And it's none too happy at the beginning or in the middle, either. Nothing like Pratchett's overall optimistic view of the world; then again, that's what you often get from Gaiman. I hate to say it, because I loved his 1602 Marvel comic book series, and do occasionally reread bits of Good Omens (which was cowritten with Pratchett, of course), but I'm not actually a big fan.

Well, there are other logic books from Prufrock Press besides just Lollipop Logic. We're using Primarily Logic and Logic Safari this year. The former is general logical thinking, while the latter is logic puzzles, specifically. (I've sacrificed a page protector to make a sleeve to cover the pages that we can then write on with dry-erase markers, so we're not even using the books as consumables.)

I have to disagree with all those who say that you should stop and make sure she understands every word. If she isn't interested enough to ask what it means, just let it go by. (If she's so lost that literally every word is new, find something slightly different to read.) Just make sure that your inflections indicate as much as they can about what you're reading. Then, five months from now, you'll be visiting a farm and be told "Watch out for the manure!" Five years from now, she'll be learning about gardening and help carry some composted manure to enrich one. Fifteen years from now, she'll be watching Back to the Future and see "I hate manure!" By that time, she'll know what manure is and appreciate the scene. That's how vocabularies are built. And sometimes, we guess what a word means and get it wrong--but often, we guess and get it right, which is why sometimes we don't know what words we don't know. It's not like reading with phonics; guessing a word's meaning and getting it slightly wrong (like hay, manure is soft, is often put in piles, and is found around animals, so she wasn't completely off, right?) does not mean that we are using a bad approach to reading. It may mean that we'll be embarrassed a few years down the road when we use a word we thought we knew and learn that we are wrong about its meaning, but that's just life. More important, to me, is that a child is following a story as best they can, despite the minor details that may not be understood. I'm reading The Door in the Wall to my son, and you can bet that there are loads of words and phrases he doesn't understand (what's a breviary, anyhow?). But as long as he's following the central thrust of the story, I'm not going to stop every time we encounter new vocabulary.

What about Molly's Pilgrim? This is one that I still remember fondly from my youth. Of course, that might work a little better for girls than for boys. Here's a site that has some great (free) ideas for activities.

The term "classical Christian education" has a fairly widespread meaning in the U.S. among those who are followers of Bluedorn, etc., to mean something rather different than what you're describing. (I've never actually read Bluedorn, but I still am familiar with what is meant by the term.) I don't know that I'd ever heard the term "neo-Classical" to refer to this until this thread, but I had heard "classical" plenty. European culture may have an entrenched view of what is meant by "classical education," but that doesn't necessarily extend to the U.S. (I don't know anything about what Canada considers "classical education.") Personally, I tend to think of what you're describing as an education in the Classics, not necessarily a classical education. (Note that it's a rather fine distinction. I'm probably just splitting hairs, here.)

I kind of hate to ask this, but... Why not grab a marker and a set of index cards and make them yourself? I hate, hate, hate flashcards. Until it turns out I don't. But part of what I hate about flashcards (when I do) is that part of the set tends to get lost really easily, and then where are you? Index card boxes that hold index cards work well for keeping my flashcards neatly arranged and out of the hands of little sibling (which I notice from your .sig may be an issue for you as well). Premade index card are sometimes strange sizes, so they don't fit in boxes very well. Plus, a multiplication set that goes up to 18x18 is going to be MASSIVE. You'll need something more than a rubber band to hold them. Just a thought!

Maybe so that she'll really know that the commutative property of multiplication is true, and then she'll never have to do it again? (I don't know, we're just about to start Gamma, so we're not there yet...) ...Or, so that when she divides 4,446 by 234, the part where she has to multiply 9 by 234 won't confuse her?

Well, I actually wouldn't know, because my family has all the artistic ability of a... very unartistic animal or thing. (We're not creative, either, as you can see. :p) But my understanding is that budding Picassos can feel unduly restricted or may be unduly influenced into a lockstep mentality by "draw this picture like this" programs. Sort of like how the composition program I'm looking at for my son (Meaningful Compositions) might be very frustrating to a budding writer. On the other hand, even a "budding writer" can do copywork (and maybe even drawing programs, right?) as a first grader and not become a worse writer for it. And it's not like I'm pushing Draw Write Now as an art program. So, how's this: if your kid hates the drawing program, it probably wasn't a good idea. (How's that for obvious?) Oh, and watch out that the drawing program is aimed at six-year-olds, not one of the ones for junior high. Those could just get frustrating. Edited to say: And if my son ends up hating Meaningful Compositions because he feels restricted by the topic choices for the various kinds of writing, I'll certainly either adapt them or change programs. He's going to have to learn how to write essays at some point, though, no matter how boring the process may be.

Look what I found for playing with the pre-primer years while researching for this post! It didn't answer the original poster's concerns, though, since it's more about what games you can play with your young children, and not how to keep them happily occupied.

That sounds more like R&S Reading (probably the Bible Nurture and Reader series?) than R&S English, which is very grammar-focused (at least at the level we're using).

Wow, that does seem like a lot of sight words that can be taught using phonics fairly early on. I used 100EZ with my oldest, and that uses "sight words," but it didn't seem like it had that many, and most of them were phonetically irregular (at least at the level of phonics you're teaching kindergarteners), like "said" and "to." It did do "I" and "his" as sight words, but "he," "with," etc., were certainly taught as phonics. (Actually, I think they were concerned about the "s at the end of the word being pronounced z" thing for "his," which is the reason they included it as a sight word.) The list above looks really strange to do as sight words.

For math, have you considered Math-U-See Primer? If your daughter is anything like my son was in kindergarten (he certainly wasn't that far along as a 4-year-old), it'll still require some time from you, but it won't require as much brain power. Plus, the blocks are kinda fun. Another idea is to pull out the old busy bags, tot packs, or workboxables, whatever you want to call them, and whether you want to pay for them or not.

For a free variation, try Blend Phonics. Since your daughter knows her capital letters, you could just teach it with capitals and work on the small versions of the letters later. That's what programs like Teach Your Child to Read in Just Ten Minutes a Day do anyhow, to reduce guessing--since all letters are the same height--and because then they can start reading store names, etc., from the car, and headlines in the paper. To reinforce what she's learning, instead of having her write, you could take another leaf from the Teach Your Child to Read in Just Ten Minutes a Day book and use an index card with the letter written on it--large--and have her trace. Or, you could have her use some of Handwriting Without Tears' products (or at least ideas), such as their wooden pieces for capital letters, or their other manipulatives. In a similar vein, check out the Wikki Stix alphabet cards. Personally, I prefer that my children learn to write from their handwriting program, so, like many other posters here, I skipped over the writing portion of the phonics program we used with my first kid (100EZ). I'm pondering starting with capital letters and using some of those manipulatives myself for my second and third children.

Ooh, here's one! If your child is a strong auditory learner, or is weak in reading ability, he or she may prefer First Language Lessons. (Actually, I only say that because my son is not an auditory learner, so FLL would never work for him. It's not like you don't read the R&S lessons out loud, though, so...) Or, if you enjoy the closeness that FLL brings, you might find R&S alienating.

Or, if you want a nice little change, have you considered a drawing program? It keeps your child working on the whole fine motor skills/using a pencil area, but makes a nice little change. If you get something like Draw Write Now, it even incorporates copywork (although I know that's not what you wanted). Of course, if your child is brimming with actual artistic ability, a program like that would be horrible.

:iagree:That's what we use. Sometimes we get a little behind, but as previous posters have said, it's pretty easy to catch up. NO writing in the book, though. We usually stick with oral lessons, although I've been having him write stuff out more recently, as his writing stamina increases. (NOTE: We're in R&S English 2, since my son is in second grade.)

Yeah, when you have kids spaced the way yours are, Sonlight gets a lot harder. Mine are spaced a little further apart, (more like every three years instead of every two,) which means that my first will be in fourth, and presumably a little more self-sufficient, by the time my second gets to first. (For kindergarten, I'm sticking with Five in a Row, thanks.) I'm still planning on switching to Biblioplan so that I don't have to deal with exactly that issue, though--I can't really imagine trying to teach two separate cores, and by the time my third got up there, I would really be going crazy!

Well, I remember really enjoying Three Strong Women as a child... As a plus, you can talk about what the women had the sumo wrestler do to be strong and segue into what we can really do to grow and strengthen muscles.

We've been doing How to Report on Books, which is an Evan-Moor publication. I find it adds a nice touch of the kind of literary analysis you say you're already doing. It gives 18 "lessons," which each have a book or two that you're supposed to read as examples, (and plenty of "back-up" books in case that one's not available) with reproducible book report forms on the opposing page, which are meant for the child to fill out himself or herself with individual readings. Yesterday, for example, we covered setting in terms of place, (the report was titled "Location, Location, Location,") and the report asked for the title, author, and illustrator information, and then asked where the book was set and three clues included in the book for giving place setting. It was the second such report on place setting--the first didn't ask for a particular number of clues, but it was pretty similar. If you do the lessons, however, the first merely talked about the place a book was set, while the second focused on the importance of the setting to the story. (It was one of the double-bookers, so you could contrast an urban and a country setting in two stories about gardening.) The amount of writing required to fill out the reports is pretty minimal, and several of the "character" reports actually involved drawing, as well. It works well enough for us!

This is almost exactly what I do. Except that I use History Scribe. I liked having the little blurbs at the top, but I could just as easily have gone with something free instead. I will say, my son really likes drawing pictures of people shooting arrows at each other, even though he's not terribly artistic. The actual writing part of it is much more of a drag, even when he's just dictating and I'm doing the writing. And I'm not even trying to get him to come up with the important points! (That's where we are in our composition lessons.)

And as long as you were using Zaner-Bloser, and are okay with doing copywork, check out their free generator. (Hit the "Try Now" button and it will pop up in a separate window.) That's what I've been using for my son's copywork for a year now. (And we didn't even use Z-B for our handwriting!) Edited to add: I usually hit a couple of returns at the line breaks so that there's a line of text, then a blank line for copying, then another line of text.

This sounds sort of like the Math-U-See that I've heard really good things about. (Is it Cathy Duffy who really liked them?) I'm not sure how you'd use them, though--we're not there yet!