Thank you so much for this. I'm about to start with my eldest and it's great to have the equipment list up front.

For some of the reasons to teach reading phonetically, read some of Diane McGuinness' works (In particular, this one: Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us about How to Teach Reading, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 2004), I taught my 3 older children to read using her methodology. My younger daughter learned to read last year at school here in the UK aged 4. She was taught using Jolly Phonics which is very popular with the schools here. HTH. I've been out of the homeschooling loop for the last couple of years because our kids have been in school but we're gearing up to homeschool again from July. For what it is worth, and I'm going through this again now with my youngest. Teaching phonetic sounds is easy and kids pick it up as easily as they pick up any other picture/word association. What you need to watch for is if they are ready for the process of connecting the sounds to make words (blending). My youngest knows all his sounds and can spell some words but isn't quite there with blending sounds together to make a word. Because of all the groundwork we've put in though, once it clicks, he will fly.

All my kids have dh listed as an attendant.

The original Winnie the Pooh books by A. A. Milne. They have fantastic language and humour and my kids read them over and over again. Beatrix Potter books, they have lovely illustrations too. I'm not much help after that, ds is stuck on Star Wars:confused:

Winnie the Pooh Dear Zoo Where is the Green Sheep? is a big hit with ds 4months and dd3 at the moment. Anything that is tactile, particularly for my oldest dd, she loved touching things.

My oldest dd was 2yrs 3 months because she was trying to figure it out herself. My boys were 3 years old. My younger dd was around 3. I start when they start trying to read for themselves.

:iagree: I have this and Wheelock's Latin. Getting Started in Latin is a much less overwhelming text. Actually the most Latin I've learned has been from teaching the kids with Latina Christiana, but don't tell them that;)

Living in the region we say "oh-she-ah-nee-uh"

The Latin Centered Curriculum http://latincentered.com/.

:iagree:

My kids loved science experiments at that age (actually they still do). I've found that we get a period of intense interest in workbooks and schoolwork and then a period where they want to do nothing for a while. I also had different types of workbooks lying around when they were that age that they could pick up and do independently. Have you had a look at BrainPop or BrainPop jr? My kids like those as well.

I was bullied and ostracised as a teenager for my lack of pop culture knowledge. Even now as an adult there are many conversations that I cannot participate in because I have no knowledge of that era. Conversations between my dh and my sil, or conversations with friends. A lot of small talk and conversation with people you are getting to know revolves around pop culture. Now as an adult I don't watch much TV and don't follow pop culture, but that is my choice and I will not inflict that choice on my kids when they get older.

I had the same situation with my oldest and I still occasionally feel sad about it. On the plus side, she slept through at 6 weeks which none of the others have. You've done what was best for you and your child at the time and that is what matters.:grouphug:

Australians say APE-ri-cot. Using phonetic rules it should be AP-ri-cot, hmmm.

We're using Elementary Greek which can come with audio that I wish I had bought. It is definitely not secular, all the memorisations are from the Bible. As a textbook though I really like it, the kids have learned the alphabet really easily and some of them can read and translate a little bit too. I think, if you wanted, you could probably find some other passages for memorising and skip the Bible verses, I just don't have the time or the resources to do that at the moment.