:iagree: I have at least one kid that understood the concept at least three months before the body was physically developed enough. Since physical development isn't linked to giftedness, how could successful potty training be?

There's a fair amount of sexual content that I wouldn't be comfortable letting an 11 year old read. At the same time, I started reading them at age 14 and I'd be comfortable letting my kids read them at that age, I think, so YMMV. The main problem, as I recall, is that some of the most explicit content is in the first book or two of the series; there are a few of the later ones with very little sexual content, but who wants to read out of order?!? :D

Yes, this is what we're using. Love it!

Making a Family Home The big kahuna: Home Comforts The Well-Ordered Home Radical Homemakers more specifically food, but I loved it: Full Moon Feast

We have the more expensive one; the sides & beads are wood. I *believe* that the less expensive one has plastic sides and beads.

Our plan is to homeschool through high school graduation. That said, we are willing to reevaluate before ninth grade, via investigating the other opportunities available; we just doubt that there will truly be an opportunity better for them than what we can do at home, when all factors are considered. Frankly, at this point, I feel like I have "invested" so much that I am really looking forward to doing rhetoric stage--I think I would feel cheated if I didn't get to!

They haven't mentioned it. I did tell them at the outset that these were recordings from around the time their grandparents were children, so that may have helped them adjust their expectations.

Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts Sister Wendy The Complete Collection We have enjoyed both of those. I have my eye on The History of Rock and Roll

With ds: language arts, math, history, science experiments/kits, memory work, and music appreciation. With dd: language arts, literature, math, history, science, poetry, music appreciation, and art appreciation.

Vocabulary Workshop

Things I or we really, really love right now: WWE Miquon Right Start Art of Problem Solving SOTW + AG & audiobook Calculadder, ReadyWriter, and AlphaBetter drills--I don't often see them mentioned, but I love all three. Classics for Kids podcast The Complete Idiot's Guide for Music History--I know, I know, the title, but it's great for practicing outlining, and has great suggestions for WHICH albums to buy as representative They Might Be Giants' Here Comes Science TIP's Growing Up Heroic Macs for Dummies--again, I know, I know, the title, but dd is learning things that her father and grandfather, who are both in IT professions, don't know! Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing

Don't know if you want my opinion, but for what it's worth Yes, I would have a huge problem with it. It would honestly be a dealbreaker to me. That said, I found it to be a common attitude ("It brings kids to church!") in evangelical Baptist & Southern Baptist churches in our area. It's part of the reason I started looking elsewhere for my religious needs.

Lol, well, we're six years in, and I seem to just have more! :tongue_smilie: Ours is up!

Puzzles. Those Lauri ones with slightly different shapes (we have a butterfly one, for example) are really great. Dot to dots. Mazes. A good recipe for homemade playdough. A sturdy stepstool or other way for them to help cook (and do the dishes!). Good crayons, lots of good paper, fingerpaints. If you have a space, an easel. A table where you can leave works-in-progress, whether they be art projects, science models, puzzles, you name it. Fun rhthym instruments. Lots of music! (Right now, everyone in our house is loving They Might Be Giants' kids albums, especially Here Comes Science.) Audiobooks and other audio (like Jim Weiss). A library card--get your kids their own now if you can, lol.

La Clase Divertida

Art skills for my oldest, art projects for my middle one (though for the past eight weeks he's been in an outside art class w/ a project every week, at least), more intense work with foreign language, even more writing focus than we already have (for my oldest). I should also probably stay on top of the laundry better, but that's a different thread. :lol:

It's not a "curriculum," but I'm planning on using these three books to do American history with my youngest during her "preK" year as the other two do in-depth American history at the same time: Journeys for Freedom Places in Time Journeys in Time

We diagrammed from fourth grade through eighth grade, every year. I admit, I would have preferred continued diagramming to the grammar workbooks we still did in high school. :tongue_smilie:

Yeah, I know of sites in Marietta since that's where I am, but not otherwise. Here is the info for testing at Master's in May. You don't have to be enrolled in Master's or Cordis to take the ITBS there.

Ha! Now I don't feel so bad with my combo of Killgallon, MCT, BraveWriter, The Paragraph Book 4, and the Lively Art of Writing.

Dd is technically fifth grade, but I've had her keep working because her penmanship is truly 'below grade level,' if such a thing can be said. She used HWT for printing, but switched to Spencerian for cursive. I'm having her start SmithHand whenever it arrives.

AAS is, in my opinion, the best spelling program available if your student needs intensive work in spelling. I have one kid that uses AAS because she absolutely, 100% needs that intensive work with spelling, the one-on-one teaching, and all the extra helps. I have another one that uses a workbook approach to spelling (Spelling Workout) because that's all he needs. I will have him memorize the rules from AAS (Key Cards) by 3rd or 4th grade and the Sound Cards by the end of 1st or 2nd grade (he's already in the process of memorizing the Phonogram Cards). I will probably incorporate some of the teaching about syllabification at some point. But he doesn't need the whole program, so we don't use it.

I finally placed some orders on Friday and thankfully at least one will show up tomorrow! I also managed to win a contest on facebook last week (!!) and that box should be here soon, too. What I really can't wait for, though, is the beautiful dSLR for which I just clicked 'buy' on amazon. :drool5: How will I wait two more days?!? Worse, I wasn't really supposed to get it until after Greenville and paying off a few things, so I'm going to be good and not use it until then. (Bought it because the one I wanted is being phased out and I was afraid it'd be gone by then.)

We start around 8:15. Sometimes it's closer to 8:30. We alternate 'writing' subjects with 'oral' or hands-on subjects, and I try to make sure all the 'writing' subjects are done in that first hour after we start. Generally, we do all of our LA stuff: handwriting, phonics, readers, spelling, writing with ease, first language lessons, phonogram cards, readywriter drill. I usually use some of our literature in there as well for non-writing subjects. Then we do a page of Miquon and read more, as well as do a calculadder drill. We take a break starting around 9:15 or 9:30 and lasting until 10:15 or 10:30. After the break, we do Right Start. History fits in on one side of the break or the other, depending on the day. We do science informally, which generally means the only science we would do in the morning would be reading a Let's Read and Find Out or Magic School Bus book. He does experiments once or twice a week in the afternoons. We listen to German & Classics for Kids during mealtimes or in the car. We also do memory work either during the morning work or in the car or whatever. I've found that having set times for his work without worrying about the exact order within the subject has helped.

My children, especially my oldest, learn so well by hearing things. Frankly, my throat starts hurting before I could read aloud as much as they would like (especially when I add all three together!). My oldest will listen to a poem 3-6 times in a row for a week, and at the end of the week? She has it memorized. Just reading it alone does not produce the same results (I know, because we don't have audio for all of her other memory work!), and I really couldn't read a poem that many times without going crazy, lol. Apart from those advantages, the mix of poems is good. The mix of lengths is also good. Yes, I could pull it together myself, but I'm not sure I would do as good a job of varying the poems. I know I wouldn't've at the outset.