I love that idea! So far I've only looked at Snapfish and Lulu, but haven't published anything yet. I know that with Lulu, they can do print-on-demand, so you can have relatives and friends purchase the book as well.

I have Building Foundations for Scientific Understanding K-2 on my Kindle, and it's worked fine for me. I use the table of contents a lot, and come back to the page that shows the map for the order of lessons you can follow. When I first downloaded the BFSU, I first read it end-to-end and marked the pages for the activities that most appealed to me so I could jump back and find them. Lilac

If your son has built up a dislike for pattern blocks, maybe switch to a different manipulative like Tangrams or Legos (copying each other's patterns) for a while so he's getting the same skills without feeling like you're making him do something he doesn't like. I've always heard the spatial/geometry skills that kids get from pattern blocks is really valuable, so maybe it's something you don't want to skip.

I just (re)joined this forum, but I was hoping I could jump in, too. Here's what we did this week in our Homeschool Preschool: http://learnersinbloom.blogspot.com/2012/10/homeschool-preschool-week-8.html It's so much fun checking out what everyone's been doing.. Lilac

For preschool science, I like the book Science in Seconds for Kids by Jean Potter. It has a bunch of experiments that are very easy to do. You could pick a topic and then set up stations that let the kids explore the topic in different ways, so there's something for each age in your group. A couple months ago, I did some experiments on air with my twins (blog post about it at: http://learnersinbloom.blogspot.com/2012/08/preschool-science-learning-about-air.html). They really enjoyed participating in all the little demonstrations, and I think those types of experiments would be appropriate for a variety of ages. Lilac

I think you can do some memorization exercises alongside the conceptual stuff from RightStart and they should complement each other well. That's what I'm doing with RightStart A - I let them solve addition/subtraction on abacus or other manipulatives so they understand what it means, then on a separate occasion they do just the flashcards without using the manipulatives. I don't see any harm in doing that - as humans we memorize a lot of basic concepts to help us solve the more difficult problems more efficiently.

I just started RightStart Math A with my twin girls (2.5 years old), and so far we all love it. We're taking it very slowly and repeating most of the lessons, but they're really catching on to the concepts. I love that it uses a lot of manipulatives and games rather than worksheets, and I think it has a good balance between getting the kids to really understand concepts and reinforcing arithmetic skills that should be memorized.

I just want to say that I love reading all these responses. I'm doing 'homeschool preschool' right now and we're still deciding whether to send the twins to public school for kindergarten, so it really helps to hear the feedback from homeschooling moms.