Add me to the list of Quiet Time advocates. My three are 5, 3 and 1, and the daily hour and a half of rest is a sanity saver. The youngest naps and the older two play Legos, draw, look at books. They've had Quiet Time all their lives and are used to it. My 3 yo will often put herself in Quiet Time if I'm not moving fast enough after lunchtime. Good luck in finding a solution! You have a very full plate! Any way you can drop some things off of it?

Luckily for my kids, they have a nice grandfather who puts money into their college savings account every year. Honestly, though, college costs are astoundingly high. I'm just waiting for some kind of implosion on that front. Surely surely the way tuition costs keep going up is not sustainable.

No, but I'm eying it as well. I'm going to try getting it through interlibrary loan to see if it's worth it. Also interested in other people's opinions. :bigear: ~Rabia

Thanks for being the voice of reason, Christine. You're right. After having done most of Alphaphonics (we're on the next-to-last page right now, hooray!), Sir I. is reading pretty well. We tag-teamed reading a Curious George and hour ago and I was impressed with his fluency. I just want to work with him on polysyllabic words a bit more to give him some decoding strategies. I am not as stressed about this as I was last week (and weekend). Now I'm calm and confident--until the next time I have to make a curriculum decision!

My oldest (5 yo) and I both take piano lessons. He uses The Music Tree and A Dozen a Day (he's using the pink book, but there are others that Amazon carries) and and I started with Piano Adventures. I was using the Alfred's Beginner Adult book to teach myself the piano before taking lessons, and I have to say that it got too difficult too quickly. Personally, I think the best thing I've done for our musical education is to for us to take lessons. It's good to have a teacher catch mistakes before they're ingrained. I had no musical training before I started piano last year and I couldn't get what "legato" meant until my teacher showed me what it was supposed to sound like. Also, my teacher will pull material from various sources to work on our weaknesses and give us songs that we're interested in learning. Plus, it's one subject I have to do zero prep for. :D HTH. ~Rabia

Of course! How could I forget that?? ;) ~Rabia

Since I know y'all have been waiting with bated breath, here's what I've decided for now*: After Alphaphonics, we'll continue with readers from the library and McGuffey's (sp?) Third Eclectic Reader. I'll use Elizabeth's helpful pdf guide and Webster's speller to work on polysyllabic words with Sir I, possibly supplementing with ETC 4. We'll move on to Spelling Workout A after that (or possibly even sooner) since I. is keen on it. I'm trying to keep my costs low and work with what I have or can get for free. Thanks for your thoughts, everybody! ~Rabia * Plan subject to change based on, but not limited to, the phases of the moon, the migratory patterns of Canadian geese, the weather on Tuesdays and Thursdays, solar flares, underwater volcanic eruptions, and hormonal changes.

K, I get it, I think. :)

No worries. :)

Elizabeth, Thanks for the link. I'm looking at your Blend Phonics guide right now. Are you suggesting that I pick it up at about U16, when they learn that words and syllables ending in vowels have the long sound? And start Webster's Speller from Table 4, where teaches words of two syllables (like baker)? Thanks. ~Rabia

Lynn, I don't recall ever seeing workbooks to go along with Alphaphonics. Could you provide a link, please?

Yes, far too often. :( And my oldest is only five! Part of it is that I have no personal experience with the school system in the US. What I know about it is from news reports and books and from my husband (who went to an average school system and fully supportive of my homeschooling). On my good days, I am so glad that we homeschool my K'er. I'm thankful that he doesn't need to be up early to go to school. I'm glad that school for him barely takes 1-2 hours a day and he can play with his siblings so much. I'm thankful that he doesn't have to go to school and come home and crash (like he did when he went to a 3-hour camp for a week last summer!). I'm glad he's not picking up things from other kids (not that my kids are saints--they're not--but why is it that out of all the mostly-positive traits of their friends, my children always pick the one or two negative ones??). I'm glad we can work at our own pace. On my bad days, though, yikes! On my bad days I think I. would be better off with a more patient and kind teacher. I think that he could be making new friends and doing more art and making music and playing in a playground and all that other fuzzy purply-hazed idealistic stuff (the things you read about in feel-good books called The First Day of School). I look to the future and feel doubt about my ability to give him a thorough grounding in all subjects. I fear that I will transmit my own insecurities and inadequacies to him (to them all). I feel bad for my younger two who are not getting as much attention as the oldest did at their ages. Just today I've been getting anxious and wound up over spelling. Spelling! My kid is not even in first grade yet! *goes off to take a :chillpill:* ~Rabia

I've been looking at this First Grade Phonics Skill Builders book. My husband picked up a Sylvan Center second grade phonics workbook from Borders, which starts out with blends and goes through diagraphs and prefixes and such, but I'm not wild about it. I think the way it's packaged would go right over my five-year-old's head. Maybe I should jump into Spelling Workout since he'll encounter all that stuff later on in the series anyway. I don't know. I know this is such a minor minor issue, really, but I guess I always need something to get worked up about. :P

We started Alphaphonics in January of last year. I supplemented with BOB books and level 1 readers (a lot of them by Syd Hoff). By now, I. is comfortably reading Henry & Mudge, Mr. Putter & Tabby, Frog & Toad and others of that level. ~Rabia

My five year old son is almost done with Alphaphonics (we're in the last few lessons, learning about -tion and -sure and suchlike). I had intended to start Spelling Workout A with him right after, but now I'm thinking that some phonics reinforcement might be good for him. Ideally I'd like a good phonics workbook that would move him pretty quickly from blends to diagraphs to prefixes and suffixes and multisyllabic words (like "nationality" or "physician"). I've looked at ETC, but I'm afraid it'll stretch out what I want to cover far beyond what I. needs. Any suggestions? Thanks.

The first time I ever heard of homeschooling was from a college friend who'd been homeschooled. We went to Dartmouth. So, yes, it does happen. :)

I found Outliers fascinating, but there's not much we can do to about our kids' birthdays now. :D The 10,000 practice hours was what stood out most for me, not as a homeschooling mom but as a writer. ~Rabia

You guys rock! *scribbles notes*

Me again, looking for more book recommendations. I have Christmas gifts for the nieces and nephew all sorted out--it's time to move on to the parents! My sister-in-law likes mysteries, her favorites being Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter books and the Brother Cadfael series. I was thinking of getting her one of Victoria Thompson's Gaslight Mysteries, but aside from that, I'm stumped! Any thoughts?

Have you seen the Mike Venezia biographies of famous composers and artists? My son (also 5) and I really like them. He's got one of Tchaikovsky which we read when we studied Russia earlier this year. We got it from the library.

Check out The Crafty Crow (http://belladia.typepad.com/crafty_crow/) for Christmas craft ideas. We are also reading one or two Christmas-related picture books a day.

Their family introduced the series to *me*. They're so much fun! That reminds me--I need to get the third book!' Keep the ideas coming! I'm filling up my shopping cart. :)

I'm looking for books with strong female protagonists for my niece. She is 7 and a good reader, well into chapter books. I also need book recommendations for a 9 yo boy, also a good reader (he has read all of Harry Potter, to give you an idea of his reading level). My own kids are much younger and my own elementary days are so far behind that I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas! Thanks so much!

:bigear:

I have an Acer laptop only a couple years old, but I've had power cable, battery, and mouse issues with it. My husband has seen other reviews online that mentioned similar issues. My next computer will not be an Acer.