My kiddo will be kindergarten as of 2021-2022. Don't have all the details nailed down yet, but thinking about it here gets me thinking about what gaps I need to fill. We will still be taking it easy in terms of hours a week of school time, but in terms of content/curriculum it's looking like we will be doing: MATH -- might still be finishing up the tail end of Beast Academy 2 come fall, then diving into to Beast Academy 3 (online, but self-paced rather than the classes). Also going though the RightStart abacus activity book and the Gattegno books. And I'm sure he will keep playing Prodigy, DragonBox Algebra 12+, and DragonBox Elements, but we count all those under his free time screen time minutes rather than schooling. READING, SPELLING, HANDWRITING, AND LANGUAGE ARTS -- Logic of English Foundations level D and lots of free reading. I have lots of friends recommending Brave Writer Dart as going well with LOE D, but am thinking about MCT Sentence Island as possibly being a better fit. Depending on what we use, we may start in on the First Whole Book of Diagrams as well. SCIENCE -- this year has been mostly a deep dive into anatomy (human and cat) and the topic that seems to be floating to the top for next year as far as interest + feasibility is diving into evolution, phylogeny, and identifying species. Will probably use Real Science Odyssey - Life as a spine but then with deep dives in different directions as we go. And continuing nature walks. SOCIAL STUDIES, GEOGRAPHY, AND HISTORY -- this year has been heavy on maps, civil rights, and early US history, but next year we will start into ancient history, probably using History Quest from Pandia. RELIGION -- I despair of ever finding a curriculum I truly like for this. We are currently using the "hands on religion" series from Catholic Heritage, but I end up skipping a good 2/3 of it and replacing it with other things, and will probably try Faith and Life or Gods Plan in Scripture next year. MUSIC -- continuing Suzuki violin, plus beginning music theory using Music Mind Games and I Can Read Music EXTRAS -- continuing ballet, as hard as that's been via Zoom. He really loves chess and so we will keep working our way through the ChessKid curriculum, and I am working on my own chess skills to stay ahead of him for now. He has also really enjoyed sewing all year and I think it's likely we will keep working on that this coming year. He goes through spurts of doing projects and lessons on Tynker and being uninterested in it, and I think that will likely continue as well. Oh, and we will probably add in a foreign language once he finishes LOE D. I am debating between Spanish (which seems the most useful), Russian (which I have at least some competency in but for which there is very little in terms of good materials for teaching English speaking kids), and Latin (which I'd always assumed I'd teach him but can wait until he's a few years older, as there's no need with Latin to capitalize on the early childhood facility with learning to recognize and make new sounds).

We have now started going down the Tynker Jr -> Tynker pathway for coding, which he’s been loving so far, and now he has dreams of making a video game of “True and the Rainbow Kingdom”. And Sarah, we don’t have the Miquon workbooks, but I should consider that — they aren’t expensive and he has really enjoyed the problems I’ve set for him with the rods so far.

Thanks, this is super helpful. I think I have the basic frame of our curriculum figured out, then. I am asking some of my engineering friends what coding resources they use with their kids — do you have one that you like? I have several downloaded on the iPad to try out, but haven’t had time to sort through them all yet.

Hi y’all! I had always kept this forum bookmarked for good tips for sideschooling resources, but COVID has me figuring out the options for plunging into actual homeschooling. I think partly because of temperament and partly because of a little perfectionism, my 4 year-old kiddo strongly prefers doing a lot of learning independently (whether from books, iPad apps, or audiobooks) and then checking in with me to come show me what he’s figured out, or when he’s decided he needs help with a specific skill or concept. I think he also likes that he can control the pace this way — he will suddenly go on a spurt plowing through a month or two’s worth of lessons over a few days and then spend a couple of weeks reviewing things he’s done before and testing the boundaries around how something works. When I’d first pulled him out of preschool, I wasn’t worried about actual curriculum at that point — both because it wasn’t clear this was going to be a long-term situation and because of his age. And it may be that this really is good enough, but I don’t want to be looking back and regretting that he had some real gaps in the foundation or picked up some habits that will cause challenges downstream — so it would be great to hear thoughts both on what we are using and on other options that you think might work. Right now he uses “Math Seeds” (the math side of Reading Eggs), sometimes gets really into DragonBox (numbers, big numbers, and algebra 5+) for a few days at a time, and then we use the “Mathematical Reasoning” workbook (finishing up level A) a day or two a week when he wants to show me what he’s been working on or for me to fill in some gaps I’ve noticed (or truthfully, for the fine motors skills practice, as that book is one of the few things that will get him to hold a crayon or pencil). He really likes cuisenaire rods and such, and will play around with those or sometimes bring them to me when he’s stuck on something. Anyway, because he’s at a point where he’s enjoying learning on his own and is making reasonable progress, I’m reluctant to interfere in that. But is this likely to leave him with some big gaps and later I’ll regret not doing more of a “full” math curriculum like Singapore or Miquon? Thanks!

I love Developing Skills in Algebra -- there are four workbooks, A B C and D. Here's one of them: http://www.amazon.com/01442-DEVELOPING-SKILLS-ALGEBRA-BOOK/dp/0866512225

That program looks very cool, I'll have to look into it. Titu Andreescu was my calculus teacher back when he first immigrated to the US.